Revolution Easy To Port To

Despite suggestions that the Revolution will not be as powerful as the other next-gen systems, 1up is reporting the system will be easy to port games to. From the article: "It's easy to see Nintendo's logic, though. Even though Revolution won't have the same memory bandwidth as Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, the familiarity with current generation development and tools that Revolution takes advantage of means most companies shouldn't have much trouble working Revolution into the mix."

Re:Why?

[Eightyford]

Sure it might be easy to get the games onto the Revolution platform, but due to the lower specs they obviously won't be as good, so why bother? Go with the PS3 or 360 and get the same game in all its graphical glory.

Because it's more expensive maybe? And because not everyone buys all 3 systems! And because without an HD TV, you wont see a huge difference.

Think about it. The X-Box had the best specs of the last generation, but the lowest spec machine (ps2) had the most sales.

Re:Why?

[TD-2779]

Won't be as good? I suppose they won't look as good graphically, but that did't stop people from purchasing inferior looking games on the PS2.(less powerful than both gamecube & xbox) Still, ease of programming is probably not the problem. With games targeting hi-def on the PS3 & 360, how much time will it take to tailor the art resources to work on the Revolution?

Re:Why?

[yurnotsoeviltwin]

This is true, but the fact that it's easy to port games to the Revolution doesn't mean it'll have better games like the PS2 did, it just ensures that it'll have the same games, or at least most of the same games. Unless developers FOCUS their game-making on the Revolution, it'll be stuck with ports of games made primarily for the other platforms, which will make it equal to the others at the very most. Not better. You do have a point about the pricing, but my personal viewpoint is that unless I'm getting somethin a LOT better, I'm going to stick with my PC and PS2. I'd rather spend $400 on a huge improvement than $200 on a marginal one. That might be different for other people, of course.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Lets bring a whole sack of salt for this.

[rAiNsT0rm]

No offense, but the reason that no third party companies have come out to say wether they will or won' tport to the Revolution.. is because it hasn't even been officially announced yet. NO company is going to begin to speculate in the media about a system they haven't even seen official specs or stats on.

Give it time, ports will be very common actually among these next-gen systems due to the high development costs, they need as much exposure as possible to even begin to recoup costs.

Re:This has always been the case

[rAiNsT0rm]

I'm not sure who you're trying to sell on that, but I'm not buying. I work in the industry and have friends who develop for consoles including the 360. I am well aware of what the system is capable of and while it is a step in the HD direction, I have yet to be wowed. Just because the term HD is thrown around like it is something new, it isn't. PC titles had far surpassed the resolution levels that the Xbox 360 tops out at for some years now. While they are great for a console, they really aren't all that amazing once the hype is done away with.

They will get better, but my PC has been able to do the same or better for quite some time and with no real AAA titles even on the local radar for the 360, I'm not getting too excited.

Re:This has always been the case

[rAiNsT0rm]

heh, well think what you will but you are not even close. Theoretically you are correct, in reality you are wrong. You are looking at the individual components, not the whole. Look at I/O speeds, ram speeds, drive speeds. Now tak einto account the data transfer rate of HD content. You are forgetting that the 360 is having to process over 8 times the data with the new content, so even with component increases the overall speed is about 2-3x the original Xbox. You left out all of that. If it was the 360 running an Xbox level title it would be 7-8x, but it isn't and even Xbox titles need to be emulated and as such suffer from slowdowns. I have tried numerous original Xbox titles and at times the FPS slows to crawls.

You need to take more factors into account than what you are doing now to get the real numbers, 2-3x is right on.

Re:This has always been the case

[rAiNsT0rm]

While your numbers are correct, again you are only looking at THEORETICAL performance. Not real life performance. Theoretical numbers are always deceiving.

You are making the same errors in reasoning in regards to the CPU and it's cores. Each core is not a whole new CPU... it is just like hypertrhreading except LESS efficient. Also if you do the math for HD texture size and resolution and effects you will quickly see that I/O bandwidth becomes a limiting factor quite quickly. Same with the GPU. While it is impressive, look at the numbers for the Geforces you quote running say Doom3 or Farcry at the resolutions the 360 does... they are nowhere near 4x as fast let alone 6x!

The 360 is an impressive bit o kit for the money, but it is not this amazing marvel as many are apt to make it out to be. You also have to remember that the CPU is NOT a finely tuned CPU like Intel or AMD puts out... it is a fairly inefficient and crude design compared to some of the more robust and mature technologies. There is no doubt that at some point in it's lifecycle Dev's will figure out some tricks but you will NEVER see 6x the power of the xbox 1. Could some features and applications see 4x improvements? Yes. Will entire games run at 4x? No way.

Also remember how MS stated the 4x AA was "free"? Then why is it that the first run games are only 2x AA? Hmm... Something doesn't add up, now does it.