Funkmaster Whale
Daedali Inc.
647
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Posted - 2013.09.21 17:47:00 -
[1] - Quote
Every major feature that was promised has now been put on the "backlog", whatever that means...
As far as what I think is going on, the DEVs are, like you said, focusing on the core aspects of the game. Balance, aiming, performance, all these things have to be fine tuned before they can start releasing more content. Problem is, the PS3 is so limited in its memory capabilities that I'm thinking most of the major content won't start coming until the transition to the PS4 is made (whenever that is).
The DEVs already stated that DUST is most likely going to outlive the PS3 so as far as the transition it's just a matter of time. Not everyone is getting a PS4 day 1 so I'm assuming it won't be till ~2014 that DUST comes to the PS4. Following that, I think DEVs will have a MUCH easier time as far as technical limitations because of the vastly improved architecture. From what I've read, and I'll spare you the intricate details, the PS4 is GDDR5 memory architecture which is capable of 48 GBps per module. The PS4 has 4 split modules which gives a theoretical output of 176 GBps Read AND Write.
Now compare that to the PS3's split memory layout (Cell processor and RSX GDD3-based GPU) which gives a read between 17-25 GBps for the Cell and 11-16 GBps for the RSX GPU as far as memory bandwidth goes.
176 GBps memory bandwidth vs (17-25 GBps x 11-16 GBps). That's HUGE. Also consider that the PS4 is going to have 8GB of GDDR5 memory available to both the GPU and CPU. That means there's 32x more memory for the GPU and 32x more memory for the CPU. Pretty massive jump...
So what this means is that the PS4 is going to be capable of some pretty astounding performance and won't limit developers nearly as much as the PS3 did. We all have heard CCP talk about "staying within the memory budget" and not being able to do X or Y because of "technical limitations". Sony really went all out on their design architecture this time around to not have the same problems we face with the PS3 with the whole limited memory and bandwidth. That's honestly probably why a lot of people are having issues with frame rate and such. With the PS4 we'd be able to have Crysis-level graphics while doing 32v32 no problem, assuming engine and coding are all running in tune.
All in all, it's honestly just a waiting game at this point. CCP is going to strive to get the core gameplay and fix all their backend code before moving on to the really big things with the PS4. This is all just my theory, of course, so take it with a grain of salt. |