The Risk Behind The RAM: Is next-gen's biggest strength its greatest weakness?

When Sony announced that PlayStation 4 would include 8GB of GDDR5 RAM, developers and consumers alike revelled at the possibilities afforded by such a sheer amount of memory.

But the amount of RAM available in next-generation consoles could lead to developers failing to optimise code and spawn a generation of 'lazy' game creators, developers working on PlayStation 4 and 'other next-generation consoles' have warned VideoGamer.com.

[GalacticEmpire]

This only means that the devs who DO put in the extra effort will be rewarded with games that run a lot better, which in turn should review better and it should follow, sell better.

[JoySticksFTW]

Well said.

Some devs will cruise while others who commit to put in the extra work will most likely have better results and excel.

Honestly it's the same every generation.

[NewMonday]

"spawn a generation of 'lazy' game creators"

Thief is an example, the developer said 60fps can be done on the PS4 but he doesn't want to "burden" his team.

[TechnicianTed]

'Thief is an example, the developer said 60fps can be done on the PS4 but he doesn't want to "burden" his team. '

What is Killzone going to be? Was it 30fps or 60fps, I can't remember. If it ends up being 30 fps, I guess they must be lazy.

Any dev team working on ps4 who sacrifices framerate for visual quality MUST be able to actually make a game 60fps with the same visual quality if they really want to, that's the logic.

[irepbtown]

Totally agree with you JoySticksFTW.

Exclusive games will most likely be the ones which excel. Though some multi-platform games here and there (from what I've seen, WatchDogs being one) will do great also.
There will always be those devs that cruise.
But that's just part of the Gaming world...

I should also say, unfinished games...
Then charging us a fortune for DLCs. If you want to release a DLC take some notes from Dice (Vietnam pack BC2) which cost the same price as an average COD DLC and included tons more.

Unfinished games really pee me off.

[sengoku]

the only down side i can think of would be the price

[DragonKnight]

@newmonday: A game like Thief doesn't need 60FPS so why spend time and resources to make it so? It's a stealth game. 60FPS should be for fast paced, action-heavy games.

[miyamoto]

Great Games will always be a platforms biggest strength not just RAM.

On PS3 gaming sites complain about low RAM now that its 8GB of RAM they still complain.

click and hits then?... NO, Videogamer-flame bait site

[Gazondaily]

Pretty insane that were going from 512MB to 8GB RAM! Look at what has been possible this gen with such a restriction. Can you imagine what is possible next gen?

Fair enough you might get lazy developers churning out unoptimised games but the competition will ensure that, that kind of attitude will be short lived.

[nukeitall]

You put your resources where it matters and RAM optimization is hardly needed. At 8GBs of GDDR5 it is already overkill.

[dcbronco]

I think the first generation of games on the new consoles won't be 60 fps because they aren't using the HSA features of the Chips. I believe Mark Cerny mentioned that in one of his interviews. Once they get the hang of the chips the games will be 1080p 60fps.

[kneon]

@Septic

It's not insane, it's par for the course. If I'm remembering my specs correctly then Sony have been pretty consistent, each generation since the PS1 has increased memory by a factor of 16.

[SolidStoner]

I predict that all PS4 exclusives will be 1080p and 60 fps.... Sony developers never rushed the release, they always polish it until its done... unlike other developers who rush and put deadlines!

Also there are great all platform developers like Rockstar games etc... they never rush things up... all I want to say is that it is up to developers how theyre game will end up on any game platform!!

[starchild]

@Tvensky

Wasn't Killzone 3 already confirmed to be 1080p and 30fps?

I think many developers will target that setup for PS4 games.

We'll see.

[Kennytaur]

The difference now is, lazy and/or poor ports will still perform decently.

[Xof]

Not really. As standards increase for high-quality games, so, too, will standards increase for low-quality games.

Case in point: what is considered a low-quality port today (i.e. Dark Souls, PC) still performs better than top-of-the-line titles from last-gen.

Instead of people whining about Blight Town's framerate dropping to 15 FPS, we'll get people whining about Blight Town's future analog dropping to 25 FPS.

[Blackhawk3]

What it all boils down to is that I will trust game developers and the engineers opinion on how great these games will look and not some PC gamer who honestly has no clue on how to code a single thing. I'm not saying God of Warlooks as good as crysis maxed out, but if u compare a rig powerful enough to run crysis against the PS3, you would think GOW stood no chance. I have faith sonys studios are going to prove then all wrong. Kill zone dev said it best. Trolls and haters. Watch and see.

[CommonSenseGamer]

So nothing has changed. Developers without as many budgetary and time constraints will potentially put in more effort.

[3-4-5]

This is a really good read. More actual truth and insight into the PS4.

* Games are limited now by 512 MB, so maybe they can only give us 80% of what they want to show us.

Now with 8GB, they have more than enough to add extra features and polish it up.

The problem becomes when that isn't the focus and you get somebody saying " let's just make everything Bigger and more more more"....instead of just fine tuning the experience you are trying to give the gamer.

[dedicatedtogamers]

This article is good, and it flies in the face of the idea that "consoles hold graphics back. PC gaming is the future". The reality is that most PC developers are terrible at optimizing their games. That's why it takes top-end hardware to run them at peak settings. I love PC gaming, but I find myself gravitating toward console gaming in the next gen for this very reason. PS4 will have 8 gigs. NextBox will have more than the 360's 512 MB, at least. Even the WiiU has 4 times the RAM of the PS3 or the 360 (2 gigs). Developers are being given the hardware they keep demanding, so if I hear any crybaby developers saying "consoles can't give us the power we need", I will take an axe to their favorite appendage.

[TechnicianTed]

It's just a repeat of the last gen. Many games will be far more playable on pc compared to their consoles counterparts. There's no difference with the exception that console technology will be even further back on release than what it was in the ps3 and 360 generation.

Multiplats will perform better on pc, and linear exclusives will give a wow factor on console.

All this talk of optimisation is just talk. At the end of the day I will play all the multiplats on my pc at a better visual quality, which make up 90% of a gamers library, and will own my consoles for the relatively few exclusives they will provide. Just like I did this gen.

[jtenma]

You'll play all multiplats on PC?

Have fun playing Dragon's Dogma.
Have fun playing Red Dead Redemption.
Have fun playing Vanquish.
Have fun playing Bayonetta.
Have fun playing No More Heroes.
Have fun playing Marvel Vs. Capcom
Have fun playing Destiny.

Then there are exclusives...

I can do this all day, but the list would be so long, I would get reported for spamming.

I love PC, but let us be honest here:

You are lying.

[Hozi]

Well said indeed. I will not support lazy game creators....The games will speak for them selves and honestly they will make the money too.

[hkgamer]

Well sometimes it is not about being lazy... its more about the talented team or size of the team. Obviously there is also budget that needs to be thought about.

Some teams have 200+ employees, others have like 10. Also the budget my cut into it, publishers give a certain amount of money to pay for certain amount of wages. Once that has been cut off its time to release the game.

[Hozi]

While that is true, there should be no excuses this time around for a shitty game since it's everything the developers asked for in a system.

[rainslacker]

Also, code optimization and memory optimization are completely different things, which can play off each other, but are mostly separate.

Code optimization is when you write your code in such a way to reduce the number of compute cycles it takes to execute said code, or find alternative methods that are more efficient to perform the same function. This is mostly independent of memory, unless function requires a lot of memory to operate, or there is a memory leak...which would require a fix regardless.

Memory optimization is when you try to utilize memory to it's fullest by not having bloated resources which take too much space...something devs have been dealing with this entire generation.

They can overlap. Such as, if you have bloated API's then they could take up memory, which would reduce the amount of memory, thus it would need to be optimized.

Writers of these articles should realize that console developers are masters at memory management. Go to any trade show and ask any of the people in the developer's tables about getting a job, and they will tell you(or ask you) about the skills needed in this regard. I know this because it's what I had to go through, and it made me go learn about memory management.

[ijust2good]

Well if us gamers continue to buy CoD every year it proves that game devs in general are not being innovative enough. You can't blame CoD. They create a game knowing people will continue to buy a copy and pasted rehash.

Games like Bioshock infinity, Mass effect and Uncharted are great example of devs who innovate and bring to the table of what is possible when devs work hard and achieve great and unique things from artistic and gameplay perspective.

[Metfanant]

CoD gets a bum rep that is not deserved as simply "copy and paste."

if you were to actually do some research there are significant improvements under the hood of the IW engine throughout this generation...

However, there have been sacrifices in the visual department because of a gameplay formula that the devs set out to create...

Ill keep with the PS3 (because i do most of my gaming there, but it holds the same on the 360)...

Killzone 3 looks INFINITELY better than Blops2...there is no denying this. But CoD has set out this gen to be a 60fps shooter...and because of that sacrifices have to be made because of the resources (or lack thereof) available to devs on the PS3/360

no matter what Guerilla Games does to their engine they could never get KZ3 running at 60fps on a PS3 while keeping the visuals the same...NEVER going to happen...

CoD is still a technical achievement on current gen consoles...just in a different way than KZ3

[ijust2good]

@Metfanant i have both Consoles and i think Killzone 3 was nasty. Graphicaly nice. CoD is a game i admit i hate more than anyother game but i still buy it every year and hate on it just like everybody else. I have the balls to admit it.

The reason why is because not many shooters are any good..they don't innovate at all. To beat CoD u have to come up with a completely new formula. CoD started this gen with a huge innovation in its multiplayer side. COD4 was heavily praised. Since then its stayed very much the same and most other games wanted to be like it. 60fps, fast paced shooter, killcam, perks & killstreak made an addictive formula that works and people still buying proves it. Its feels stale now but its still good when u compare what allot of other shooters can come up with.

What allot of devs need to do is don't go CoD. Build there own game. Games like Uncharted felt unique. Thats what we need to see. Don't blame CoD, CoD devs will do little cause they know people are gonna buy it. To beat CoD u have to beat it with awhole lot of innovation in the multiplayer side .

[papashango]

@ijust2good

Nobody should judge you for that. It's simple really. Take the mmo side for example. WoW gets 10x more hate than all other mmo's but at the end of the day when another wow clone comes out the people who are lying to themselves day 1 of switching from wow and fill up chat with "OMG this is sooo much better than wow!" Usually end up just going back to WoW.

CoD has refined FPS simplicity while maintaining fluid gameplay. The mentality with sticking to CoD is "why play a cod clone when I can just play cod?" EA sacrificed Medal of Honor to learn this lesson and I honestly don't believe they really understand. Battlefield is next up on the chopping block. It will follow MoH if they don't stick the formula that made it famous.

[CourierSix]

@GalacticEmpire Very well said. @JoySticks, your dead right. I just hope to see a gen of devs who all put that little extra effort in.

[Software_Lover]

Thank you for putting GDDR5 and not DDR5, lol.

I only saw one problem within the article. DDR3 is not slower than GDDR5. DDR 3 has lower latencies (faster), thats why it's used for the CPU. GDDR5 has a higher bandwidth,, hence why GPU's use it.

[superterabyte]

Unless you have a degree in computer engineering then:

[Software_Lover]

Would have been funnier if it were Jesus.

Nice try though.

[zebramocha]

That's not true,a person on neogaf posted a link showing the latency between ddr3 &gddr5. I don't know how to post links but search for sisoftware zone memory latency.

[ZoyosJD]

DDR3 has lower latency, but that is only really beneficial for CPUs that are heavily multitasking as different applications fight over threads/cores.

Seeing as the PS4 CPU has 8 cores and a streamlined OS, this really shouldn't be a problem.

APU capabilities while gaming are very sensitive to memory clock speeds. Note that these are separate from core clock speeds.

Common memory clock speeds for DDR3 RAM are in the 1-2GHz range. Common memory clock speeds for GDDR5 are in the 5-6GHz range.

Although 8GB GDDR5 may sound excessive, it will be very useful later in the gen when pushing textures and polygon counts in absurd numbers with code that is more optimized to do so.

[a_squirrel]

Considering that there's already been performance benchmarks with ddr2 vs ddr3, I'd say we're safe with Gddr5. Even though ddr2 has a lower latency, ddr3 beat it's pants off.

[papashango]

AMD CPU's are weak in general. See AMD's current lineup of 6/8 core processors to see how well they stack up to current Intel offerings.

Hell The Phenom II x4's of 2 generations ago are beating out AMD's newest lineup. They just aren't that good.

[JsonHenry]

DDR3 is lower latency. The OP was 100% correct and a 1 second google search will prove it.

[ziggurcat]

leave it to N4G to post a doom article about something like this... how is 8GB of GDDR5 a bad thing??

[BLow]

Exactly what I was thinking. For every generation, this is the MAIN factor that developers complain about for consoles. They want more memory. This is a fact. Now that these companies are giving them this, now it's a problem. You can't win in today's world. No matter what you do, somebody will turn a positive into a negative. This was done because these machines are going to be on the market for probably 10 years or longer. It boggles my mind what games will be like next gen seeing what they have done with 512mb.

[Nitrox]

If you actually want an answer to your question, read the article. It's not really a doom and gloom piece. Don't worry, PS4 is still going to be capable of curing cancer and bringing about world peace once Naughty Dog and Guerrilla Games unlock it's potential.

[sourav93]

Read the bloody article.

[Roper316]

" developers failing to optimise code / lazy' game creators "

so in other word everything will stay the way it is with the exception of a few developers who actually tale pride in their work.

[ajax17]

Yeup! No slack from Sony's first party devs. I can't wait to see what Naughty Dog will create!

[hesido]

Yeah, no more having to resort to pre-rendered cut-scenes to be able to load the next level, all cut-scenes can be dynamic. Having so much ram will offer new gameplay possibilities. Open world games will be able to do split screen, for example, thanks to the excessive amount of RAM. You could instantly jump between totally different levels of a puzzle platformer, levels with totally different textures / assets, as several levels could be held in the RAM at once. All the greatest stuff will surely come from first parties.

[Monkeysmarts]

This is when you know there's nothing else to talk about.

[HappyGaming]

The problem I have with N4G is that there are topics to talk about. Other sites update you about new games and their development. N4G updates you with "Why X will fail", "6 Reason X is better then Y" and "Z-list reporter makes claim about console Y which has not been announced yet".

[_-EDMIX-_]

More in terms of gaming is never going to be a bad thing when it comes to tech. Not in any way shape or form.

And the whole "lazy game creators" comment is just silly. I think the writer is under the impression that developers will some how take a LONGER time to make games with more ram....as if they where just spoiled and just had NO clue what to do with that massive 512mb of ram. LOL!

Yeah, I bet Square didn't know what to do with FFVII either you know coming from 8mb to 750mb and then using up 3 disk....so like 3X750mb lol! They must have been overwhelmed.

Did they stop to consider that game developers have had about 7 to 8 years to think about what they would make with more ram? More space doesn't equal more time, you do know less space means limitations and in fact that equals longer game development cycles more then others.

Just saying, Uncharted 3 took up 85gigs on Bluray, yet this team is on their 4th game this gen. More doesn't some how equal its going to be harder.

Developers were not spoiled this gen, they were limited and held back (some few had more room to make stuff then others and STILL released games on a realistic time frame)

Games will start maxing ram out in no time.

[ZoyosJD]

"Uncharted 3 took up 85gigs on Bluray"

PS3 BR disks only hold 50 GB of data. U3 plus all of it's DLC was ~43GB. If you downloaded the bundle off of PSN you would need ~85GB to download and install.

I agree with your sentiment that things will be put to good use, but your statement was incorrect.

P.S. Any ambitious dev will never be spoiled, the best of the best enjoy a challenge.

[hollabox]

I don't see how 8 GBS of ram could ever be a bad thing. Yeah you might have some sloppy coding in the beginning but late in the console cycle lets say 6 years form now you are going to have highly optimized games using all 7-8 GBs of ram.

I'm actually more worried about the optical media not being enough. Some PS3 games like Uncharted series and Metal Gear maxed 50GB BR out using textures and sound only from a system only having 512 MBs of split pooled ram. Now they have increased that number by 16 which means 4K textures, 7.1 DTS HD audio, and levels being 7 gigs or more in size. I guess Sony or Microsoft could surprise everyone and announce the use of 120 GB BRs to compensate for the increase in system ram.

[hesido]

I think 50GB blurays will do fairly well. Currently, a good portion of the blurays may be used for duplicate data for more efficient streaming without optical head seek penalties etc. Also, instead of high quality video, games may well resort to real-time cutscenes (MGS has realtime cut-scenes for the most part, tho). I remember uncharted having different cutscene video files for 3d, for example, which also added quite a bit of size.

[hollabox]

50 GB BRs should be ok in the beginning of the console cycle but the same was said about the Xbox 360 DVD-9. It was ok in the beginning but as developers became familiar with the expanded ram from the original Xbox you started seeing multi disc games. I think even the PS2 4 MB of Vram had an hand full of games that maxed out DVD-9.

This current generation we're seeing 1K-2K textures using only 256-512 MBs of ram push the optical media limits in certain in games. With 8 GBs of ram I can see games using 64 bit 8K textures. If you played Max Payne 3 on the PC downloading it took almost 7 hours because of the large texture size.

Max Payne 3 download size was about 30 GBs with 4K textures using all 2 GBs of my GTX 670 graphics card. Now quadruple that along with increase in sound quality and you have exceeded the capacity of 50GB BRs. Like Hobohunterz link mentioned 128 GBs is possible but you will need an compatible BR drive for this. Sony didn't announce if their PS4 BR drive is capable of supporting BR128 only BR50.

[_-EDMIX-_]

1. No 50gb isn't enough. If games are coming in at 35gb, 45gb, 50gb, 87gb....no. Mind you that is THIS GEN! Max Payne, LA Noire, Killzone, GT5, Uncharted series (lets just say PS3 exclusives)came in at some HUGE sizes. and I doubt this years games are going to be different ie Watchdogs, GTAV etc.

@Hollabox- Who in their right minds thought DVD9 was enough? PS2 and Xbox used the same damn format, a couple PS2 games used that much space. ie why we don't have a sequel to GTASA. I think a few crazies thought some how this was ok, but I know enough about gaming to had seen what was going to happen ahead ie FFXIII and GTAIV gimps. (GTASA is made with around the same space as GTAIV....good luck with that train wreck)

But I do 100% agree with you. Games don't get smaller each gen...they get bigger. Another thing to take into account is that those Bluray drives in the PS4 and 720 might support layers as I think most do. So its still possiable to have a duel layer or 3 layer using 50gb, 100gb, 200gb, etc. Yes...expect games to get that much bigger. And really...thats actually not a big jump at all. 4x or 5x is a small jump. um...NES to PS1 anyone? 8mb to 750mb Even NES to N64 was a pretty big jump 8mb to 70mb.

Coming from PS2 with 5 to 8gigs and then going to 360 with 7.5gbs to 8.5gigs is a bit of a joke. Note most PS3 game (even the multiplats) use more space then what is inside DVD9...meaning yes indeed it wasn't enough space, they had to make games with 8gigs in mind while the rest of gaming PS3 and PC pretty much went to town on huge size games. Less is never good, it ends up limiting everyone in the end.

But I think MS Bluray drive won't need to read layers like the PS3 one if the rumors are true. Only cause if your just installing the game on the HDD, then there is no reason to care about the end size, it can just be installed in chucks on many disk. (lets really hope thats not true though)

[hobohunterz]

There are bd-xl disks that are 120/128gb in size

http://m.gizmodo.com/551039...

[neoandrew]

But the textures on old consoles couldn't be compressed as much as on pc's. (and movies also)

Now ps4 and new xbox will can do this kind of compression, every game will be installed.

There will be no more problem of slow dvd/bluray discs, hence games won't be larger in size, only 1080p videos count make them big.

[thebigman]

Didn't devs only use up that amount of space because they doubled the data for faster read speeds?

[hollabox]

@_-EDMIX-_

Apparently Microsoft thought DVD9 was enough and not HDDVD. I actually wonder if MS was ever serious about HDDVD in the first place. It would have made since to launch the console using this higher capacity format but MS wanted to save a couple of dollars while Sony went all out on the PS3. Nintendo finally got wise and included 25GB BR on their Wii U which is perfect for the 1 GB of ram available to the developers.

I like the hard drive install option but those HD better be pretty big. 50GB BRs or more will eat up any 500 GB HD quick. Heck I ran out of space on my 1TB external drive on my PC installing games and movies. MS and Sony might copy Nintendo and allow external hard drive for game installs, this would probably be the best option to keep cost in check.

Any who 8 GBs of ram is what developers has been asking for. If the PS3 or Xbox 360 shipped with 8 GBs of ram I don't think Sony or MS would be updating their console anytime soon since ram and not horsepower is what developers complain about. Well maybe not MS since they would need 6 game disc just to load 7 levels or so.

[jetlian]

you dont know what your talking about ram has nothing to do with disk space or even HDD space!

Its video and sound that take up all the space plus padded files.

8gb of ram will be great. I cant see it being a weakness at all.

[hollabox]

@ jetlian

Of course Jetlian, that is why I mentioned 7.1 DTS HD audio and 64bit 4K textures. If PS2 video ram can fill up an entire side of a DVD what do you think 8GB of ram can do to a BR? The argument I'm making is 50 GB BRs will not be enough later on when developers figure out how to maximize 8GBS of ram.

As consoles ages level size; sound quality, texture quality, mesh quality all go up which increases storage space needed for these assets. This is why games on the SNES increased from 4meg cartridges to 32 meg cartridges. Xbox 360 games went from using single disc to 2-3 disc with 1 disc being used to store HD textures (BF3).

You made the comment ram has nothing to do with disc space, what exactly do you think the disc is storing? If you don't know its storing game assets (logic, textures, movies, audio, code, ect) design to fit in system memory at any given point.

Incase you still don't get it,the more ram you have the higher quality assets developers can create. The higher the quality the more space is required to store. From what you're arguing 3.4MB floppy should do a game justice using 512 MBs of textures per level.

Any who 8GB of ram is not the problem, it will be storage later on in the console life. Which is again not really a bad thing, just don't be surprise when you have to swap blu ray disc in the middle of a game.

[jetlian]

actually your wrong and still dont get it. Pc games have higher textures than ps3 and still come in under 50GB!

The disk is storing the assets of the game the ram only stores a part of the assets at any given moment.

Textures dont take up that much space its the sound and video that does it. Lost Odyssey came out early in 360 life and it was 4 disk.

Cant think of any game since that was more than 4 disk.

[hollabox]

@jetlian

Alright Jetlian listed below is an handful of multi platform titles that has come out over the last year or so. Looking at these titles its obvious the PC versions look better with increase textures, higher polygon count, and shading effects. With the increase in visual and audio fidelity more storage space needed to compensate.

Crysis 3
PC=14.2 GBs
PS3=5.77GB
Xbox360= 5.1GB

Bioshock Infinite
PC=14.9 GB
PS3=6.63Gb
Xbox360=6.6GB

DMC5
PC=8.33B
PS3=6.75GB
Xbox360=6.7GB

Far Cry3
PC=8.87GB
PS3=6.47GB
Xbox360=5.8GB

Hitman Absolution
PC=23GB
PS3=16.3GB
Xbox360=7.1GB

Assassins Creed 3
PC=15.35GB
PS3=11.46GB
Xbox360=7.4GB

Tomb Raider
PC=8.6GBs
PS3=13.2GB (more audio formats, 7.1 lossless and DTS)
Xbox360=7.3 GB

I hope you get this jetlian. You can't have higher quality and more quantity assets take up less or the same storage space if all things are equal (non/compression, same format etc). Example 4K uncompressed textures takes up 40 plus MBs of disk space, 8K texture takes up 170 MBs of disk space. If I had to put these files on a CD the results will be 16 complete textures at 4K and 4 complete 8K textures.

PS3 games that uses more space is either using higher quality sound samples, more content, or saving multiple copies of the same content for 3D.

The whole point of my argument was 8GB of ram not being the problem, but in time storage will become the issue if PS3 games are hitting the limits of BR.
I'm probably wasting my time here, jetlian is just trolling. PS

[givemeshelter]

It's not just RAM and Storage that effect how a game operates. This entire argument about RAM is almost comical at best.
Higher Polygon counts and shader effects are not the pull horse for the RAM. That's the GPU mostly.
It seems as soon as word got out that the PS4 would have 8gb of RAM, most people especially on this site figures RAM is mostly responsible for Graphic calculations and Physics etc.
Good grief this site drives one insane.

[Bigkurz85]

Things that gamers should care about: Enjoying the games they play. Good graphics. Running smoothly.

Things that gamers should not care about: Whether or not developers can "cut corners" and still produce quality games with things listed above.

[-Gespenst-]

My concern is that even though the technology is more developer-friendly, game projects will be even more ambitious than before and take even longer. I suppose theoretically that shouldn't be the case, but I hope it doesn't turn out that developers spend years trying to make the goddamn graphics as overly detailed as possible- eclipsing everything else. I think in some cases, cutting corners won't really be an issue, but it could become problematic.

All I'm hoping for is a true sequel to the Ps2 here. Great quality games and lots of them.

[KwietStorm_BLM]

So certain people called PS3 developers lazy this entire generation, but now that they have some very powerful and modern tools to work with, we're already pre-emptively calling them lazy, for no other reason than having a high ceiling. Just another day...

[BrianC6234]

Dumb. Maybe early on it will be an issue but after a while they won't want to waste RAM. If they want to get the most out of the hardware they'll be careful and not waste anything. I don't see too much RAM being a problem at all.

[Adolph Fitler]

STUPIDS.....STUPID ARTICLE, WRITTEN BY KID WRITERS.
Of course some developers will take shortcuts & fail to optimize code for there games on PS4, just like developers have done from NES to SNES to PS3/360 & especially the Wii this generation.
I mean, check out all the shovelware Wii copped. These are typical rushed, non-optimized games. This is something that has plagued the game industry from like, forever.
And, it's not only "kid" developers, it is also caused by the huge publishers that rush developers to get there games out by a certain date, meaning the game has a gestation period of 12months, or less. Activision did it with multiple Bond games, that had no reason to be rushed as they were not affiliated with a particular film.
So, this is a common problem, that has plagued game consoles, since there inception, into the world.

[landog]

ps4's greatest weakness is the cpu, then the gpu, the ram is great

[stonecold3]

sony should put 8.gb gddr8 in the ps4

[CaptinzLee]

Sony Is Really A Game Changer That's Why I Like Them Better Than Microsoft Because They Give Gamer's What They Know We'll Need

[fabiani]

yea it will be tough to maintain hard working devs

[leogets]

people on the internet will always complain. sad but true. internet is 90 percent fools

[MRMagoo123]

lets just go back to 128k memory or even 16bit lol, and this site is run by sony fans huh, why would the sony fans want an article trying to make out like 8 gigs of ram is a bad thing lmao

[jaixvx]

As long as its a constant 30fps and not dipping all over the place slowing down because of too much action happening.

[cyclindk]

Could happen to some extent, but I think we all know how poorly designed/implemented games' sales are affected by these sorts of technical deficits.

More than anything, I believe it will provide a sort of "cushion" for, as they stated the junior developers, but as usual it will be the true masters who push the console once even the MIGHTY eight gigabytes aren't enough anymore :)

Those are going to be some truly mouth-watering games to experience.

[MikePhoenix]

Guerrilla Games, Naughty Dog, and Hideo Kojima's part in Konami are no where near sloppy, that's a fact.

[isyourhouseonfire]

MS won this gen and the nextgen. Can we start talking about next next gen instead?

[Bladesfist]

I believe all programmers want to write good code. We take pride in what we create which makes me feel a little offended by people using "lazy devs" when they should probably be using "less experienced developers". I am not sure why having to use cheap tricks like huge guns and texture streaming is considered good practice. More ram means everything else will run a little better. The CPU will have to do less garbage collection which is a very expensive operation that goes hand in hand with languages that handle memory allocation for you. These languages are popular as they are easier to use and learn. Both Unity and Cryengine have high level scripting languages. If anything more RAM just makes the machine developer friendly.

[Viper7]

Not really.

It just means, you can focus on the game instead of trying to implement new ways to stream data from the disk, HDD or the internet.

Developers store all kinds of data like Textures, Sounds, texts, numbers to the Ram when developing the game. If you run out of RAM you need to remove stuff from the RAM to make room for new stuff to be processed.

Content streaming is a pretty bad bottle neck on some systems and games. E.g Diablo3 and Arma2 are constantly loading stuff from the HDD which really breaks the performance on computers with slow HDD.

E.g Diablo3 runs steady 30-60fps on my computer, as long as the enemies stay the same. New one appears and fps takes hike down to zeroville.

Still the stuff from the RAM still needs to be processed so while it might make a lot of the things easier, there's no room to be lazy.

[B16B0SS]

This is article doesn't make any sense. I've been a game developer and have never met a game developer that is lazy. Game development is very demanding and consume all of your time. Anyone who can say a developer is lazy because a game is in 30fps instead of 60fps is ignorant.

Costs to develop games are be priced outside of what a realistic return is. Something needs to be done in order to preserve the Western game developer market. More work is being outsourced each year and local artists and programmers are losing their jobs. But hey, I guess its lazy to work a normal 9-5 job and expect to have a life outside of game development.

[mediate-this]

Just horrible what if scenario, if the kid does not optomise his/her game proper the kid wont have a job for very long.

I would rather have devs who are passionate about their work.

[kingPoS]

A strength can become a weakness if you take it for granted. I'll say it again... Most seasoned ps3 developers already know not to take the tools afforded to them for grated.