Jonathon Blow: The Witness Uses 5GB RAM, Calls Xbox One DDR3 RAM “Cheap”

The Witness which was announced at the PS4 reveal conference supposedly wants 5GB RAM, according to creator Jonathon Blow.

[Mr_Nuts]

So it's basically maxed out the Xbox One?

[Hatsune-Miku]

so hes just speaking the truth. no worries

[Peppino7]

Cheap??? Ooooooooooo Geeeeeez!

[US8F]

BUT BUT BUT the cloud would add 20gb more RAM in the future!

The only one claims that is Microsoft and even PC makers deny the possibility of that. Since they saw there is a majority of people could be tricked, might as well, spend less to make more, even if deception is involved.

[Enemy]

Let the tears flow.

[badz149]

360 and PS3 both uses the DDR3 and they were released 8 & 7 years ago.

It's fact that DDR3 modules are cheap.

[adorie]

@Enemy

Oh, yes. Yes, indeed.
http://24.media.tumblr.com/...

[NatureOfLogic]

@ Enemy

Tears are indeed tasty lol.

[jivah]

@badz149

You're kinda off

360 uses 512 ddr3 ram
ps3 uses 256 xdr main ram + 256 gddr3 vram

[husomc]

The truth is that his PS4 game is so bloated to be using 5 GB of ram. He should start optimizing his code without hating on MS

[NatureOfLogic]

@ husomc

While I agree with the first part of your comment. I doubt he's "hating on Microsoft" by stating facts.

[abzdine]

these words coming from the mouth of a dev who used to back Microsoft might hurt them.. and at the same time they are the only ones to blame.

Greatness awaits
4>1

[Ritsujun]

Microchiip. =)

[palaeomerus]

Tears for Jonathon Blow? Lol! No sir, I don't think so.

[TheSurg]

What?? A game like this uses 5GB of RAM? Hhaha! There's not a single PC game that uses that much (all run at 2 GB) and his"amazing game" is so high tech it uses 5GB? Dude needs to learn how to optimize. I can give you a JPEG file hat is 50 MB or I can optimize it to a loseless 800KB. How about that Jonathan Blow?

[Tr10wn]

BF3 ultra settings on PC use 3gb to 4gb of RAM, The witness cartoon-isn dated graphics use 5gb of RAM, seems legit.

[ShinMaster]

Cartoony graphics and dated graphics are not the same thing.

[Blackdeath_663]

for those above who are saying the game is badly optimized @husomc and @TheSurg that is the point he said more ram means devs need to spend less time trying to optimise and cram the game in and spend more time making the game better. besides you'd have to be a moron to be given 8gb of ram to play but still try to make it only use 2gb if its there make the most of it. i think the fact that the witness uses 5gb of ram means that the whole map is loaded at the same time.

[hay]

If game like that uses 5GB of ram, damn, that seems to be not optimized at all, just grinding on the machine's performance.

[RedHawkX]

so why again are some people still buying the xbox one? i dont get it because xbox one sucks pretty hard lol.

[KiRBY3000]

@TheSurg

Blow actually wrote "The Witness wants to use over 5GB right now". he didnt say his game requires 5GB to run, after being optimized.

he basically said the more RAM you have in a system, the less you need to optimize (which is undeniably true). optimization demands time. not having to spend time on optimization, means you can instead spend THAT time on making the game better by polishing it or adding more content to it.

btw, how many people do u think work on The Witness? i doubt the team is as big as those who worked on FC3, C3 or BF3. this is an indie game (and it looks damn good) so please quit the BS comparison.

[YNWA96]

He is definitely hating on MS, has bitched and whined non stop since PS4 was announced... so, ok. Do not develop for Xbox, limit your audience.... simple..

[Rhaigun]

Now, I'm not trying to defend the Xbone, and I am certainly glad Sony went with GDDR5, but it is a highly known fact that Jonathan Blow despises M$ right now. I would take anything he says regarding anything Xbox with a grain of salt.

[MysticStrummer]

As far as we can tell from this article though, he didn't say anything objectionable. His game uses 5GB of RAM and DDR3 is cheaper than GDDR5. He may be disgruntled but he's not lying.

Though I suppose it's possible he made his game use that much RAM on purpose so he could complain about running out of RAM. lol

[Enemy]

He doesn't despise Microsoft. He despises the way they treat indie developers like dirt. On top of that, he despises anti-consumerism. He's no longer sugarcoating his concerns, he's just telling it like it is. He's also calling them out on their "cloud computing" lies. If you follow his Twitter, you'd know he's just waiting for them to tell the truth.

[Redgehammer]

I did follow JB until his anti MS rhetoric became a problem for me.

[Rhaigun]

@enemy That's just more reasons why you can't expect him to be objectionable. His comment may very well be valid. But, you have to agree that this comment would be far more damning if say, Pete Hines from Bethesda said it.

At the risk of sounding like an Xbone supporter, I thought it was only fair to point this out. I will not be buying the Xbone, nor would I recommend anyone to. I'd just like some more devs to pony up and proclaim the same.

[Cueil]

what he said is factually correct... also I'm wondering how his game is using 5 gigs of ram... my guess is the PC version uses 4... max

[Blackdeath_663]

not just jonathon blow but all indie devs hate microsoft for the way they treat them when they try to publish their games on the xbox and rightly so. games can't be published on xbox live without a publisher (which defeats the purpose of being an indie dev) and the game has to have sold twice as much at retail then it has digitally which is impossible for indie games.

[Triforce079]

Look if Crysis and Skyrim can run on ps3's 256mb RAM then 5GB is overkill end of ?

And with Havok nextgen u can basically compress 5GB of texture ram to 512MB so all this ram rules is nonsense and graphics can only be as good as your gpu and gpu bandwidth ect more RAM just means zero compression even on huge games,in other words if u make a game using 4GB memory,2GB for textures and 2GB for everything else,it can be compressed using havok down to half a GB easy.

[Ashunderfire86]

Damn and it didn't even come out yet!!!

[Pillsbury1]

Xbox one: obsolete before it hits the ground.

[solar]

So is the PS4. Guess you forgot to mention that.

[zebramocha]

@mr_nuts I don't think this game is coming to xbone at launch.

@badz149 the ps360 use gddr3,the difference is its faster and graphic specific in comparison to DDR3.

[CoLD FiRE]

Actually @badz149 is completely wrong and @jivah is partially wrong.

The Xbox 360 uses 512MB (shared) of GDDR3 RAM.
The PS3 has 256MB XDR and 256MB GDDR3.

GDDR3 is basically DDR2 with a few modifications.

GDDR5 is based on DDR3. GDDR5 advantage is higher bandwidth and disadvantage is higher latency.

[shutUpAndTakeMyMoney]

lol

[Garbanjo001]

wow Mr_Nuts when you put it that way... that's sad. No offense, the Witness looks alright, but I wasn't impressed... Next thing on XB is COD... 8 bit.

[Bathyj]

Ha. he called it an Xbone.

[itBourne]

Maxing out consoles is a total lie, its never "maxed". I think it was a ND employee that said it best. Its like filling a cup with rocks and saying we filled the cup, but then a dev turns those rocks to pebbles, its more in the same space. Then a dev makes some of those pebbles dirt, then a dev adds water the fill areas, it goes on and on.

[SephirothX21]

There are different speeds of DDR3 ram. Most modules are 1333-1600mhz but you can get ram well above 2000mhz. The main thing is gpu speed. PS4's gpu is the equivalent of a 7880 so its decent in comparison to current commercial gpus. Crysis 3 maxed out on pc only needs 3gb ram so ram isn't everything. The only thing that drags the PS4 down is the weak cpu. Though the console is a mile better than Xbox One.

[SoCalledMe]

7880 doesn't exist m8 , it's equivalent to 7850 :D , cheers

[SephirothX21]

I know it doesn't exists but it is basically in between a 7870 and 7890 in performance.

[linkenski]

I guess this confirms that the "O' so smart" Xbox One "Surface" UI uses 3GB. So much for being able to watch movies and playing games-while-watching-tv-while watching-another-movie-at-the- same-time, huh?

[nukeitall]

Wow!

Jonathan actually used 5GB of RAM? Seriously?

At this point it is pretty damn clear that Blow is a practically a shill for Sony. There is no way there is a need for 5GB of RAM on his shitty game.

Blow needs to optimize his game instead of talking smack.

[Gildarts]

if this guy knew how to code properly this game could have easily run on a PS3.

[JsonHenry]

Seems kinda strange that BF3 on my PC (with ALL of the overhead that comes with windows) only uses about 3.5-4gigs of RAM even when running maxed in stereoscopic 3D but his game running on a console that doesn't go above 1080p resolution is using 5gigs of RAM. Granted my PC doesn't share RAM with the GPU but that still seems like sloppy coding on the part of his dev team.

However his statement is still 100% correct. The RAM in the Xbox1 is dirt cheap. I can pick up 8gigs of DDR3 for like $56.00 USD. (and that is the retail price) http://www.newegg.com/Produ...

[WolfOfDarkness]

The meaning of " cheap " In game developers standpoint : Cheap = weak = Old = Not recommended = PS = WTF "

I wish you All Great Day Today , E3 starts today ...... and Its historical day today

enjoy the Great Gaming News ONLY in NG4 !

[JsonHenry]

Except that "cheap" DDR3 RAM in current PCs is more than capable of outdoing what is in the next gen consoles. The problem with the fact that the "cheap" RAM being in the xbox1 is that the video card is sharing slow(er) RAM with the video card. Using GDDR5 as system RAM is overkill and not needed and in some ways counter intuitive. But since the PS4 is a unified memory system it will benefit the APU better than Microsoft solution.

So no. the meaning of cheap does not = weak inherently. Even in this context.

[WolfOfDarkness]

That exactly what I meant !

[fermcr]

Everybody knows Jonathon Blow is in bed with Sony... can't take him seriously.

[miDnIghtEr20C_SfF]

MS rattled this Blow guy so hard he's still talking about them. He's like the rattled ex boy friend that was dumped by the hot chick.

[nosferatuzodd]

but but later the so called cloud is going to help out the now obsolete ddr3 lol like sony cant do cloud has well yeah right Microsoft epic fail

[Majin-vegeta]

The comment section should be good lol.

[gano]

?
Is there a possibility, of you going ss3 o great prince?

[DarkBlood]

dont hurt his pride dude :P

[DragonKnight]

Why would he when he can just go SS4?

[Haki1112]

@Dragonknight He can't do it if we take away his Action Replay aka Bulma lol

[PsnGammer21]

No he has to go ss god

[wenaldy]

Hence the bubbles reset. Pour your comment guys!!!

[Godmars290]

All I'm hearing is a dev who's going to the complaining in a couple of years that the PS4 doesn't have enough power. How he has to work to get anything extra out of it.

[HammadTheBeast]

But PS4 has GDDR5 and only 1 OS.

[Godmars290]

And by most counts devs never tapped the PS3's true potential because of the extra effort involved. That's including first party.

Just saying its not a good thing hearing devs talking about maxing out a system early.

[mmccarthy4]

@Godmars290 I'm pretty sure the first gears used all of the 360's ram when it fist came out so this isn't that much of an issue. What amazes me is that the game requires 5gb of ram that's either very poorly coded or freaking massive

[JasonXE]

Da memory leaks :D

[yewles1]

"But PS4 has GDDR5 and only '1 OS.'"

https://mobile.twitter.com/...

[Cueil]

I've heard only 6 gigs will be usable... but 5 maybe if you use some of the social features?

[rainslacker]

I kind of got that vibe too. I mean I'm all for Sony right now, but the Killzone demo they showed was reported to use 1.5GB of ram, which is what the average PC game uses, so I'm wondering what he's putting into all that memory.

I mean it may be an interesting game, I'll give it the benefit of the doubt right now, but The Witness looked to be nowhere close to Killzone's graphical level, and him having a small team means it's likely that it has a lot less going on at one time than KZ does as well.

Even bloated code can slow down processing, so it doesn't mean memory management can go out the window just because you have a crap load to work with. I know he was talking about a lot of texture effects and stuff, but even still, you can't force the GPU to do more than it can handle, so there are still restrictions on the processing power of the unit.

I dunno, maybe he just has huge world that use a lot of culling to pull them off, in which case, yeah more memory could play a part.

[moparful99]

If you go back and listen to the reveal Jonathan reveals that there is 25 hours of gameplay.. That is a ridiculous amount of gametime which could help explain the amount of RAM usage..

[rainslacker]

I suppose if he loaded the entire game in one go sure. But that's not how it's done. Games are loaded in what's called a scene. That scene makes up everything that you can possibly see, and all the script that goes along with it.

Basically an entire level is a scene. More often than not, the entire scene isn't rendered at one time, and things like occlusion culling will be used in order to make a world look bigger. What this does is only draw the stuff that you can see. Think of walking through a tunnel in a game. you look to both ends but you can't see the world outside the tunnel. They do this in order to load different parts of the world, although both sides can reside in memory at the same time, just not both be displayed at the same time. If you didn't have some way to break it up, there would be pauses as the graphics processor tries to render both scenes at the same time. I'm pretty sure even the fastest Titan GPU can't render an entire scene with none of these graphical "tricks" that requires 5GB's of data at one time.

He did mention some graphics stuff, and obviously more memory will be required for that next gen, but it could be that he has many parts of the world loaded into memory at any given time for quick access or whatever.

Anyways, it's all speculation on my part what he's using it for. I haven't seen the game. I trust his word on it, and I'm sure he's putting it to good use for something. He's not a hack developer, and anyone saying he's lazy because of this doesn't really understand how the engine works under the hood when it comes to game programming.

[KwietStorm_BLM]

@moparful99

That's not how RAM works lol

[moparful99]

@Kwiet I know how RAM works man.. I mean that if it's one giant progressive world that is a lot of physics, lighting, textures and other game assets that need to be calculated on the fly.. Instead of like on the ps3 and 360 where the game wouldn't "draw" parts of the environment that isn't in your line of site to optimize ram.. I'm just speculating on why an experienced programmer is using 5gigs of ram on a game that isn't graphics intensive..

[husomc]

mebbe it supports 4k :) or mebbe it's a really large map looking at that island that we see so often and the entire thingy is loaded in memory to avoid making reads from disc/hdd

[Angeljuice]

It could be an autonomous world where everything affects everything else. There would therefore be a need for everything to be running at once, the whole island being constantly altered by events that happen.

[Krew_92]

@Angeljuice

If I remember correctly in the reveal, the whole island is in real-time and I think he said it as well. So that is one reason why the high amount of RAM would be needed, other than that I wouldn't know really.

Also @moparful99 I think you mean memory as in the disk space or something. More memory in a disk would lead to a bigger story, and more content. So I can see what you were thinking, just RAM doesn't play a part in that.

[ninjahunter]

I remember Somewhere they were saying there are OVER 1119 footstep sounds in this game. Jonny boy isnt a push over, he more or less lives to develope games. Hes a single man dev juggernaught pouring millions of his own money into his game, that rams going into the finer things.

[GamersHeaven]

Lol whelp hes telling the truth.

[sak500]

Really when devs were speaking against PS3 all you SDF told them to shut up and how you all wanted to boycott them.

[Revolver_X_]

Yet PS3 exclusives ended up looking better then 360's. Weird...

[GamersHeaven]

"All you" Sorry how do you know what i said about devs on the PS3?

[MysticStrummer]

Not wanting to do extra work to figure out how to program for the Cell is a little bit different from having access to less memory that's also slower than the competition's.

You also can't deny that DDR3 is cheaper than GDDR5.

[majiebeast]

Dont cry too much because Blow is attacking your precious box. How does it feel to take to bend over for a corporation?

[cleft5]

You know what, I like this guy more and more. Not really, but at least he isn't brought off by Microsoft like so many other developers.

[starchild]

Of course you would.

[TheBrownBandito]

"...but at least he isn't brought off by Microsoft like so many other developers."

Perhaps a Freudian slip, but really funny all the same! Bubble for you sir.

[rela82me]

You seem just as much "bought of" as Sony. People have their opinions, technically the ps4 is superior, we know that. What we have yet to see is utilizing potential. If for some reason I sacrifice minor performance for BETTER entertainment I will. I own ago current gen right now, and xbox exclusives did more for me. I really only enjoyed infamous and uc series...

Whoever produces the fun will keep my living room lit up, I will own both.

[BattleAxe]

I'm going to have to agree with Mr.Blow on this one.

[MysticStrummer]

I'm not sure how anyone can disagree with him. His game uses 5GB of RAM and DDR3 is cheaper than GDDR5. These are facts.

[LOL_WUT]

Judging by the disagrees everyone is getting, people like to hear facts ;)

[telekineticmantis]

5 gigs? What is this game?

[HammadTheBeast]

An island with puzzles.

[BABYLEG]

He's lying

[rainslacker]

I believe he said it was heavily influenced by Myst. Unless I'm thinking of something else.

[KwietStorm_BLM]

Yes he said that. He actually responded to a question of mine on the PlayStation blog, asking about Myst.

[tubers]

"@Jonathan_Blow

More RAM means developers spend less time in contortions to make the game run on the machine, more time making the actual game good."

I take that it just means they don't have to work as hard to optimize for a smaller memory..

Doesn't mean high RAM usage is automatically gonna blow your pants off.

[nunley33]

It uses 5gb so it'll run on the XBONE, it'll be on that later sometime afterwards. 5gb is the max a game uses on XBONE with 3gb for the OS, coincidence?

[Loki86]

Hey Blow, give it a rest, your incessant whining is just making you look like a moron.

[HammadTheBeast]

Actually its hilarious lol.

[elhebbo16]

more like making M$ look like a dick for not being indie-friendly.

[rela82me]

I recall Microsoft stating lack of support, link please?

[WarThunder]

Blow is right... Ram is cheap...

[BlaqMagiq24]

Umm Jonathan Blow telling the truth is considered whining now?

[Agent_hitman]

Hahahahahaha this made me laugh.. What a shame xbone!

[AO1JMM]

Link https://twitter.com/jonatha...

Taken out of context yet again.

[Wingsfan24]

Gamechup does this a lot and it's really annoying.

[Smurf1]

He also says this https://twitter.com/Jonatha...

Nothing misleading. The RAM is definitely cheap and the console should have had more according to him.

[Wingsfan24]

Yea, but the way it reads is in a negative matter by emphasizing the word "cheap".

[AO1JMM]

PockyKing:

exactly, It is a title fail by the person who posted this. Jonathan Blow didn't mean it in the way it is presented here on N4G.

off topic: I didn't notice I had 5 bubbles. I was at 2 LOL

[BABYLEG]

I had one. They want the comment section to be booming during e3

[r21]

5Gigs?! O_O
Damn, just makes me wonder how open world games will be for next gen!

[Zhipp]

I'll say this right now. If The Witness requires 5gb of RAM on my PC when it's released, then I'm not buying it. I can't name a single game that even recommends more than 4gb or RAM, let alone actually uses it. The game would have to be freaking incredible for me to spend $10-20 on something so poorly optimized.

[HK6]

This. So much this. If their game is using 5 GB of RAM, they clearly have no idea how to make an engine properly. To give non-tech-people some context, GTA V on the 360/PS3 has to use 512 MB of RAM or less; that is 10% the amount of RAM that The Witness is using.

[Zhipp]

Even The Witcher 2 only requires 2gb and recommends 4gb of system Ram. When you account for the OS, it can't be using more than 1gb of ram, all told.

[wishingW3L]

GTA just like Elder Scrolls and most other open-world games just use tons of repeated textures.

[BlackKnight]

Everyone needs to remember that when we talk about a console game, we are talking about both system and video ram/memory requirements. When you talk about PC memory requirements, we are talking about just system memory and just to get the lowest graphical setting the game offers.

Take a look at this article on metro last lights graphics.

http://www.geforce.com/what...

"Ordinarily, this level of detail would require gigabytes of system memory and GPU VRAM, but thanks to a highly efficient streaming system Last Light’s world uses less than 4GB of memory, and less than 2GB of VRAM, even at 2560x1440 with every setting enabled and maxed out."

So here they are talking/bragging how they have so much detail packed into almost 4bg of system ram and 2gb video ram at 1440p (about halfway between 1080p and 4k). That means the whole game uses about 5-6gb.

Minecraft is a ram hog due to how many damn blocks there are in the game and how big the world can be. When you mod minecraft to have decent texture, you must run the game in 64bit java so as to let the game use more than 4gb of memory. It is very possible for PC games to already be around 4-6gb and that's even when being held back by the old console muliplats.

[SoapShoes]

Planetside 2 does. It recommends 6gb of ram but minimum required is 4gb.

[Zhipp]

I stand corrected. That game is on an unprecedentedly massive scale, though, so my point still stands. There's no way The Witness should be using as much or more RAM than Planetside 2.

[moparful99]

25 hours of gameplay with no compression and no filler might equate to 5.. How can we honestly know how much it requires? We can speculate but we know hardly anything about the game..

[rainslacker]

There are lots of programming tricks to get that stuff to work on lower amounts of memory. It's pretty common stuff. The increase in RAM means less tricks, which in theory means less time in development.

As far as the textures and stuff go, no one scene can have more than the GPU can handle and I'm sure that amount is a lot less than 5GB. I'm not familiar enough with the GPU's processing abilities, or next-gen engines to say what might be used for a given scene/world.

Could just be really huge worlds, or lots of media involved. Really hard to say unless he provided more details.

As the gen progresses those tricks will still be used to theoretically increase performance in other areas, or make worlds bigger. There will come a point though where no amount of memory will improve the graphics as there is just a definite wall that will be hit on the GPU side.

[tubers]

Summary:

RAM usage = depends
GPU = bottleneck

[Cryptcuzz]

I don't think his new game the witness is going to be released on the PC is it?

[Riderz1337]

Breaking News!

Xbox One maxed out before it's even released.

lol =P

[kennyg3739]

I don't know much about this game but it better look 10x better then last of us. Because this guy talks a lot smack.

[Sevir]

For his game, his level of coding and methods of optimization calls for 5 gigs... As an indie developer who isn't really bound by Sony, his game will require as much, but GG already revealed that the KZ:shadow fall does well with just 3Gbs of GDDR5. It's really all in optimizing and coding. And launch titles from different teams will max out to varying degrees the hardware due to unfamiliararity with a platform, I'm sure his next game will look better with less memory due to the engine being refined and streamlined. So right now his game uses 5 of the 7 gigs available for the game development but in the future that memory foot print will become less and more efficient.

[kennyg3739]

all i'm saying he better deliver because I don't see any other developers talking as much as him.

[BlackKnight]

If killzone sf used 5-6gb, say by increasing texture res massively or having MANY varied character models, that doesn't mean the ps4/GPU could handle it. If you cram a shit ton a textures and the ram is there to hold it, that doesn't mean the texture fill rate is going to be able to keep that up. There are many bottlenecks.

Hell, minecraft on PC can use gbs of ram if you keep exploring and have the game setup to load lots of the world into ram and not cycle out blocks you aren't looking at. And we all know the graphics of minecraft aren't cutting edge or meant to be.

[rainslacker]

He didn't specify what was in place to be using that much memory besides some random boosts to graphics. memory can be taken up by code, size of the game world, number of objects, textures, media, etc.

More memory does not necessarily equate to better graphics, although more memory is needed for better graphics. That will come with the increase in performance of the GPU.

[SlavisH2]

doesnt kill zone ps4 use 3gigs? This sounds like waste and a butt hurt dev.

[mmccarthy4]

The first gears "maxed out" the 360 as well but some how the graphics improved in the sequels.

[SlavisH2]

then it didnt make it out, genius!

[IntelligentAj]

What kind of optimization has he done for the game to require 5 gigs? Interesting...

[stragomccloud]

Seriously, sounds like lazy programming to me.

[wishingW3L]

lots of textures and light-maps is what he said.

[Tei777]

Very little I assume, which is kind of his point. Do devs really want to spend a ton of time simply getting a game to run on said hardware? I assume they'd rather spend that time making the actual game/tweaking the gameplay.

[horndog]

Why does anyone even post what this man has to say? Hes just trying to make a name for himself. Watch how quickly he will change his tune about MS once he sees his games flop on the ps4. Please dont make games for the xbox mr.blow.

[SCW1982]

I highly doubt this game will flop.

[Omar91]

blow just shut up already! Microsoft did you dirty we get it move on with it already. geez

[M-M]

LOL http://gyazo.com/54a03c77ac...

[wishingW3L]

oh dear. Is that for real? XD

[banjadude]

Yep, that is indeed his real account. I don't know if that particular tweet is doctored though...

[CoLD FiRE]

Yes, it is. Here's a link for that tweet

https://twitter.com/Jonatha...

[MajorLazer]

Sounds poorly coded if he's already using 5 Gigs. If the visuals hold up however, then I apologise in advance

[Finalfantasykid]

So far the visuals don't really look that impressive, but from what I understand the game will be huge and open world, which would be what is taking up all the ram.

[HALOisKING]

lol blow is buthurt

[Shadow Man]

sigh... what sucks is multiplatform games will look equally on both xbone and ps4. Once again microsoft has hijacked next generation with their cheap hardware.

[mmccarthy4]

yeah but most 3rd party titles I imagine will be cross gen at launch and then some will be out on wii u which would hold games back even further.

[Oh_Yeah]

Hopefully xbox isn't going to be gimping next gen multiplats.

Off topic, why does everyone have 5 bubbles now?

[C-Thunder]

Ha! Didn't even notice.

[Krew_92]

Refer to this blog post: http://n4g.com/user/blogpos...

They're remaking the comment system, everyone was reset to 5 or more bubbles depending on how much you had.

[Karpetburnz]

Sweet as, I'm not complaining lol

[Oh_Yeah]

double

[wishingW3L]

the site is glitchy probably from people flooding the site because of e3 and the admins don't give a f.k. ;)

[XabiDaChosenOne]

Wow.... Xbox one can't catch a break lol.

[MRMagoo123]

it doesnt have any breaks to catch thats the problem.

[theWB27]

Jonathan Blow HATES Microsoft...this is one guys opinion I could care less about. If the XboxOne was that bad developers would be dropping support of it just like the WiiU...he's a whiner if I've ever seen one

[Krew_92]

"Jonathan Blow HATES Microsoft...this is one guys opinion I -could care less about-."

So you would care less, so you care a little bit?

[sGIBMBR]

I see tons of people saying 'I could care less' when they really mean 'I couldn't care less'

I have no idea why!

[Angeljuice]

@sGIBMBR
It's an American thing. Its in all their tv and films. The fact that "I could care less" means that they DO care about it whereas "I couldn't care less" means they DON'T care about it seems beyond their comprehension for some unknown reason.

The thing that I find funny is the words like "gotten" which isn't a word in English but is completely normal in American English. What is wrong with "I've never had" or "I never got"?

Another example is the use of 'aggressiveness' instead of 'aggression'.

[theWB27]

We Americans understand each other pretty swell, we get along with daily life communication just fine. So I couldn't care less about why either of you wonder why we say what we say.

I don't worry about how other countries speak english. Don't care at all. If someone can't understand if I use slang, I know exactly how to clean it up so the average Joe can comprehend.

[dcbronco]

Sony must be paying him.

He's actually not really saying much. Since his game is an exclusive he probably hasn't had a One dev kit and doesn't know how it works. If rumors are true of the system being far more efficient with RAM than normal, and rumors apparently mean truth now, One will have plenty of space and he wouldn't have needed nearly 5gb on it.

[mmccarthy4]

sony isn't paying him he has a bad history with ms

[dcbronco]

I was just saying that because every time someone says something good about a MS product or bad about Sony many say they must getting money to say it. So I assumed no one does anything on their own anymore and they are all getting paid. Cause that seems to be the silly world we now live in.

[greenpowerz]

Did MSFT ban Jonathon Blow from the xbox platforms permanently? WoW!

The Witness is also on PC, are most PC owners going to be able to play games that use "5 gigs of Ram" oh wait most PC's don't have 5 gigs of RAM. Seems bitter talking smack and doesn't have all the facts(hey that rhymes)

If any of the speculation about Ram is true MSFT will just up the Esram

Does a simple arcade looking game with cartoon visuals really need specs most ultra real PC games barely use? The guy is cracking up.

[raytraceme]

The eSRAM that is having yield issues and is 1.6 billion transistors big for 32gb yea..... no.

[greenpowerz]

Not true. Sick of posting the link I posted a thousand times about MSFT debunking that bull.

Not getting into blah blah blah with you but I will post this so your blah blah blah at least matches MSFT's blah blah blah.

Xbox One 5 billion transistors, versus Xbox 360's 500 million transistors.

[greenpowerz]

LOL disagrees.

http://www.gametrailers.com...

Just what in the heck are you people disagreeing with LOL. Agree with the person with misinformation. You could have used google before you disagreed LMAO

@below
5 to 6 years seems about right for people with money that can afford to upgrade that often. Most people won't upgrade even that often, which is forever for some people that upgrade whenever something new comes out.

Talking about a laptop having specs a number of years ago doesn't mean that hardware and those specs were mass market products.

[raytraceme]

You're an idiot. The 5 billion transistor part is what the entirety of the xbox one has in it.

The 1.6 billion transistor count comes from the 32MB (Can't believe I said 32gb first post :S ) eSRAM which is what we are talking about. It is on die with the cpu/gpu.

There are rumors of low yields solely because of this gargantuan of an eSRAM.

So you saying MS should just up the eSRAM is total bullocks and just CAN'T work.

[UNGR]

You just got those new bubbles, why waste them with ignorance?

[mmccarthy4]

first time I seen you with more agrees than disagrees

[Pandamobile]

"oh wait most PC's don't have 5 gigs of RAM" What is this, 2008? Even my modest laptop from a few years ago came equipped with 8 GB of RAM. 16 GB in a desktop costs less than $100.

[WeAreLegion]

What is the average RAM for PC's?

[raytraceme]

8gb is now the average I presume as even all mid range ones come with 8gb.

[WeAreLegion]

I know. Lol. I have 12 Gb of DDR3. I just wanted to hear Greenpowerz' response. Thank you though!

[SCW1982]

Glad you know your tech talk green powerz (sarcasm)

[BlueTemplar]

He banned himself.

[DoesUs]

"If any of the speculation about Ram is true MSFT will just up the Esram"

Er, no...just no. Do you actually know what ESRam actually is? Do you actually know how it actually works?

Good grief you babble never ceases to amaze.

[kingslayer1000]

This guy stays butthurt 24/7.

[RM-TatoTiburon]

butthurt...BIG TIME

[whoyouwit04]

I really believe that all these cheap shot this guy is taking at Microsoft will come back and bite him in the ass. I mean this guy act like he is kojima or Shigeru Miyamoto. What the F#ck did you create that was so great? not a d@m thing. Braid was in Okay game, it was nothing revolutionary; get over yourself. you got a raw deal with microsoft so you trash them every chance you get, why don't you just be a professional about the situation? You're acting like your game is guaranteed to sell on PS4 when we all know that's not the case.

[SCW1982]

Actually BRAID is pretty damn good and considered a critical gem.

[whoyouwit04]

Braid is a rip off of Prince Of Persia and Mario

[Krew_92]

Wait so Braid is a rip off of Prince of Persia because of the time mechanism? Also a rip off of Mario because it's a platformer?

Wow, so I guess every other game that deals with time and left and right side scrolling is a rip off, we never got the memo...

[despair]

Braid was awesome, really amazing puzzler, I thought the story was weird (especially since I had to google the 'real' story) but I didn't play it for that.

Also he never really attacked MS did he? He just explained how much ram his game is taking and expressing surprise that the X1 doesn't have more than 8GB ram considering how cheap DDR3 is now.

[Hayabusa 117]

Strange thing is, The Witness was the one game at the PS4's reveal that gave me that feeling of "I really want to play this game" despite the lazy graphics and the fact that is was just a bunch of trees and panels. I haven't even played Braid either :P

"you got a raw deal with Microsoft so you trash them every chance you get"

What's wrong with that? If he doesn't want anything to do with Microsoft then what the hell does he need to be professional about?

[a_bro]

Well holy sh*t, some just leaked a lot of info regarding Microsoft

http://m.neogaf.com/showthr...

[Enemy]

A bunch of multiplatform games? What's there to see?

[whoyouwit04]

How the hell is that a leak?

[thebigman]

The guy posting is an insider, and everything he's mentioned before has come true.

[Blackdeath_663]

prince of persia is news to me also the thing about drm plans being worse than you think is worrying. heres the translated notes
1. Confirmed Microsoft is actively attempting to get developers to not mention PS4 versions. If they don't say "OUR GAME IS EXCLUSIVE FOR XBONE" expect a PS4 version. #truthfact

2. More DRM messaging at Gamescom. There is no rental strategy. Try to sweep it under the rug and hope people don't remember.

3. Cloud power was designed as DRM. Period. DRM was Microsoft's idea. EA and Ubisoft are supporters, Activision slightly less so.

4. DRM plans are actually worse than what they've stated.

5. Mirror's Edge 2 at MS conference.

6. Prince of Persia (reboot?) at MS conference.

7. Secret Phil Spencer game = World of Tanks

8. Live paywall still there.

9. Dead Rising 3, and exclusive DLC for another Capcom game at MS conference.

10. No online paywall for PS4. Unconfirmed.

11. No DRM info for PS4.

[goldwyncq]

5 Gb for an indie game? 0_0

[wishingW3L]

just because it's an indie it doesn't mean they can't go crazy using high-res textures. I mean, these freaking consoles have 8GB of it so they better use it.

[NatureOfLogic]

The man speaks the truth. Facts are facts. I see a lot people still have a hard time coping with the fact that PS4 is technically superior to Xbox one.

[daedra]

its not ps4 is way weaker youll see

[SCW1982]

I hope you are joking thinking that way.

[strigoi814]

I think Microsoft now it before they even reveal the xbox one

[daedra]

says a ps4 dev LOL loser in denial

[Enemy]

He's a multiplatform developer.

[threefootwang]

Regardless of what Blow said, it doesn't defeat the fact that M$ cheaped out on the RAM. Considering how cheap ddr3 is today, they easily could've put 10 or 12 gbs instead of 8. Oh well, glad i'm making the jump to Sony, buy buy M$! PS4 FTW!

P.S: See what I did there? ; )

[vishmarx]

horrible coding...i dont give a Shit what xbone has but 5gb ram is way too much dedicated ram for a game ...
not even games like crysis3,withcer use nearly that much ram..
and for an indie he must be doing something wrong

[2pacalypsenow]

The game does look pretty impressive graphics wise

[vishmarx]

as impressive as killzone infamous?
ram hardly determines how GOOD the game looks...
VRAM and ram are completely different..
ps3 had like 256 mb ram in all

this is almost 20 times..
is the difference in quality ,detail or graphics really THAT ecponential?

[2pacalypsenow]

Of course not . It looks impressive in its own

[UNGR]

GDDR5 has higher latency, if you need to move a lot of small files through the RAM DDR3 will perform better, for large files, GDDR5 will perform better. It's all about the file size, and optimization.

[ThatsGaming]

When has Jonathan Blow had anything positive to say about Xbox?

Right after Braid was released and ever since he has been slagging MS every chance he gets.

[2pacalypsenow]

If they are using that much for an indie game ,when Metro last light requires 8gb on Pc and looks amazing Im thinking the game must not be optimised very well

[brianunfried]

Having the cheaper console is usually a big advantage, its just a business decision.

[Krosis]

Articles like this really bug me. READ THE ARTICLE. He says "cheap" as in COST. Of course N4G puts the mandatory bias spin on the title. From the comments, not many read the article either. I don't support either console as a "loyalist"--usually get both. But come on, just pathetic bias. FYI using a lot of RAM doesn't equate to "awesome"--better looking games use far less.

[Krosis]

I'm mainly a PC gamer and even the Intel/AMD and Radeon/Nvidia arguments are not this sad. Also, consider who this guy is. Man I don't understand brand loyalists at all...

[cunnilumpkin]

oh, jonathan blow, your cutting edge games always amaze.....lol.....how did you ever manage to get that wondeous spectacle of a graphical monstrosity braid to run on the lowly xbox360????? please do tell us oh wise one....

http://braid-game.com/news/...

what a tool, your new game (the witness) looks like baby diarrhea

http://www.quickmeme.com/me...

the ps4 and xbox1 will be maxed to the limit day one by real devs like naughtydog, cdproject, guerrilla games, 343 studios, crytek, dice

these machines will be pushed to their absolute limits, im sure your turd of a game will run just fine on the cell phones and tablets that you can't wait to sell this boring, pretentious indie snore fest to.

/endrant

and I know they are trying to spin this like he's only bagging on the xboxone, but he also saids he is surprised there is only 8gb ram, which, lets be honest, laptops have 8gb ram, hell, cellphones will have 8gb ram in a year or two

he's slamming the ps4 as well, saying his crappy looking indie game is already calling for 5gb ram and its not even done, so at least he is honest

with the slow cpu's and weak-ish mid spec gpu's in the ps4 and nextbox, there will be bottlenecks galore, hopefully not in the ram, definitely in the cpu's, they are really, really slow

[MRMagoo123]

I am actually surprised anyone got anything to run on the 360. I will be even more surprised if anyone buys the Xbone and doesnt return in within 2 days.

[SixAmpFuze]

first off when he says ddr3 is cheap hes not talking about the quality but the cost compared to ddr5. second theres basically no game that uses a full 3 gigs now on pc let alone 5. The witness has not been optimized at this point because theres absolutly no reason why that game should require anywhere near the amount of ram he is supposedly claiming.

hes just butt hurt and is venting. if it wasnt for xbl his game would be nothing

[urwifeminder]

Blow out he needs to stop burning his bridges and get someone to braid his hair he sounds like a real nutter what happens if falls out with sony can they expect they same hate.

[airshiraz]

i dont get it
what does it mean that a game need 5g ram? i can play max payne 3 maximum settings on my pc with one gig ram gtx560 and it runs good but it says it requires 2 gig of ram what is this???

[kingPoS]

Guess what people he's an indie dev with a small crew. He doesn't have the luxury having three dozen coders working for him. So cut the guy some slack for using up 5gb.

Unless you can do better on your own you can't say nothin!! He's not Criterion Games... jeez.

[UNGR]

Mr. Blow, how do you have an ass at this point? I mean if you're this butt hurt I don't see how you could have one. 5GB of RAM? Really man? Your game is sounding more like an un-optimized catastrophe than a middle finger to Microsoft. Anything you say towards them from now on is being ignored, you're a biased nob that doesn't have the decency of being objective. I don't care what games you make, this is beyond childish behavior.

[quenomamen]

Why do these people keep posting these articles stating true and honest facts about the PS4's memory being superior to XB1's ?! Don't they know facts mean squat round these parts !

[starsi360]

Why do people keep calling BS on this cloud computing idea on XBone? Has noone used OnLive? I can basically use a terrible spec netbook to run Dirt 3/Batman AC/etc. The netbook couldnt even think of running these games on it's own!

Now that is using the cloud 100% to render the game, all MS are saying is that the cloud could take SOME of the workload away from the console to allow for extra horsepower. Doesn't seem far fetched at all.

The XB One will be an awesome console, for what it's worth! The used game policy is just an attempt to make more money for a game title, keeping the revenue going to the industry instead of the second hand games shops. Considering the time, blood sweat an tears (and costs) of developing a game these days, I don't necessarily disagree with their thinking on this!

[palaeomerus]

The witness doesn't look like it should take up 5 GB of an HDD when fully installed much less need 5 GB of RAM to run. What exactly is it being used for? Whatever it is, it's not showing up on the screen shots.

And in case you think I'm defending MS, I'm kind of in the 'Xbox One sucks' camp at the moment.

[F4sterTh4nFTL]

5Gb RAM for a Myst clone is hilarious.

[badvlad]

Thats what i said in the beginning that they should have 16 gb in both cuz its so cheap but i got disagree bubbles like 100 on this site lol

[F4sterTh4nFTL]

Yeah I would take 16 Gb DDR3 over 8 Gb GDDR5 anyday.

[benmiles]

Taken slightly out of context whoever wrote this article

[blackbirdi]

i'm pro sony guy but i don't know i feel that blow become little arogant he make one game and he think he become the next carmack lol

[windblowsagain]

Not Quite sure why he is going on about 8gb being little.

It isn't.

As for people with PC'S that have more. It does not help PC gaming.

I max out BF3, GRID2, CRYSIS3. etc.

Unless your running triple screens at insanely high rez with multiple aa, you won't get past 2gb.

[blackbirdi]

It s never enough try to Download unity or unreal and try to make a game or even a Level you will See how fast you run out of Memory

[unworldly]

Do People not realise this is going to be on iOS too? I Doubt it will use even a 10th of that amount. This is just an excuse for the developer to be lazy on PS4.

[maniacmayhem]

5 GigS!!??

What the heck could they be doing that would require 5 gigs?

I smell a lot of optimization problems and excuses.

[blackbirdi]

A bigger world with 5 GIGA you can make sandbox game 15 x bigger then GTA 4 or skyrime

[badvlad]

goodbye real world lol

[KongRudi]

Prefer Playstation, and what he's saying is true.
But despite the fact that the RAM itself is pretty cheap, it would also be extra costs in regards to cooling.

[Indo]

It doesnt matter how much RAM you use, its how efficient you use it.

[Kennytaur]

Seems people aren't considering the possibility of this game loading up pretty much the entire map to the RAM for quick access, no load times and seamless gameplay.

[Anonagrog]

Indeed.

Near enough all games on the current consoles have had to rely on pretty heavy resource streaming to keep hot data in ram at all times. This may just be a case of simplified streaming, or no streaming at all. It doesn't just have to be "higher resolution textures" or "poorly optimized code" as the only two reasons being thrown out there. (In fact, this is pretty far from poorly optimized code I would say - inefficient code doesn't automatically lend itself to excessive memory usage).

[PCpower]

The reason this game is using 5 gigs of RAM is because of the fact that the game data AND THE GRAPHICS DATA are sharing the SAME RAM FOR CRYING OUT LOUD PEOPLE!! How could you not see this, guys? If this was two separate RAM system like on PC, then one GB would be used for graphics and 4 GB used on system RAM, but the PS4 is a UNIFIED RAM ARCHITECTURE. Really guys....I am disappointed that none of you could logically see this as I did.

[JackVagina]

^

[Fationably Late]

From his tweets--
"The Witness wants to use over 5GB right now, and that is by a small team. Textures + lightmaps + audio = lots of bytes.", "The Witness is 5GB so far, and it is an indie game."

From the way he's talking, the entire game takes up around 5GB of HDD space, not using 5GB of RAM, unless he's loading the entire game into RAM for speed reasons.

Seems to me that a lot of people are taking his verbage out of context and it doesn't sound like he know what he's talking about.

[N4realGMRZ]

Why would such an Ugly game use so much resource?

[brewin]

The Xbox One is a piece of crap that I won't be buying, but This guy is a big headed douchebag regardless. Guy makes one friggin game and thinks he's the shit. His first game was shit. Braid was biggest piece if crap game. Ugh. I hated that crap. Whimsical graphics do not make a good game. I bought Braid thinking it was more of a thinking mans Mario instead we got a game whining about lost love with super annoying puzzles and rewindable gameplay. If you're an artsy fartsy type who sticks their nose up at everyone you might like braid. I thought it was a boring, dull piece of crap. This guys words are shit. Its total flame bait. Oh this console has better memory! Stfu with that bs.

[creepjack]

So basically, the only thing Jonathan Blow confirmed is that he blows at optimizing games.

[UnHoly_One]

I am SO sick of this no-name indie dev preaching to everyone who'll listen like he's God's gift to gaming.

[Blacklash93]

5GB? That sounds like a lot for an indie title, which are usually very tame as far as hardware requirements go. Kinda makes me wonder how expansive the game is. Hopefully it's being put to good use.

[Arietos]

Xbox One and PC? hahaha, the modded Directx11.1 of the Ps4 will crush them both. Think of the Controller functions too...

[Belking]

NO, it won't crush either. You may never see any dev use all the RAM for either console, simply because it's not really needed.

[Arietos]

If even AMD Chef said it that you will not find a pc like the Ps4, it does mean atleast something, or not? Witcher 3 developer said that it's better to Programm with Ps4 than PC itself, means nothing? I don't think so..

[Smoovekid]

I think he meant 5 gigs of DDR3 for both the CPU and GPU.

[Belking]

This just goes to prove what I said about how bad games journalist are. Notice how they totally twisted his words to make it sound like he was slamming the xbox-one's RAM.

[GraveLord]

Well DDR3 RAM IS cheap. You can see for yourself on NewEgg or any other online retailer.

[ChickeyCantor]

AKA not optimized. Here we have developers who make it all sound edgy. And every fanboy will fall for it.

[CyrusLemont]

I don't think he means Vram but the actual game loaded into the RAM yeah? Like when you load a program into the RAM on your computer. Or have I got it totally wrong aha.

[Razputin]

I can't believe people are ranting about this.

I don't care much for MS but seriously 5GB for an indie game, that is just horrible programming and development.

Crysis 3 for god sakes doesn't take more than 2GB to run.

Even Battlefield 3 you can get away with 2GB.

Don't try to "crap" on MS for this, its your damn Indie Teams fault. 8GB for a console is more than enough, WAY more than enough. They have almost no true dedicated OS, and don't have a laundry list of crap running in the background.

[ChickeyCantor]

exactly, it's un-optimized crap that is loaded into the game.

[Arietos]

Good News for future console owners.

"The PS4 sees Sony move to a 64-bit x86 chip architecture, which will be music to the ears of developers, especially those used to working on PC games. The good news doesn’t stop there, though. Developers will be able to take advantage of Microsoft’s latest industry standard DirectX API — DirectX 11.1, but Sony has taken the time to improve upon it, pushing the feature set beyond what is available for PC games development."

[Jnewday2k13]

For all of the people saying that he hating on MS, and the graphins in his game are dated. You guys are delusional M$ defenders. The Witness is actually an interesting looking stylized puzzle indie game. He is just telling the truth. Everytime somebody decides to come out, and tell the truth about MS, theyre just hating. You guys lack all objectivity, and are in straight up defense mode. Shameful

[palaeomerus]

5GB of RAM to run THAT ?

lulz

[Arietos]

"
We know a lot about the next gen platforms that we can't comment on yet, but our strategy is that we're always trying to maximise the quality for the platform, to use its particular strengths and advantages. Usually the weakest platform dictates the quality for all platforms, but high-quality visuals are our trademark so we need to approach each platform as individually as possible.

Of course, large scale technical decisions in our engine, such as opting for 64-but architecture, Direct X11, are made globally, but we do try to treat platforms individually. PC allows for more at the moment, but new platforms are stepping up. In the future, it should be much easier to unify the requirements. Some things, like control schemes, will still need to be tailored to the platforms but the new platforms will unify requirements.

PC was the lead platform for Witcher 2 because it was the most powerful, but that might change in the future."

PC developer seem to like the new plattforms. This is only one example of things being made in future of gaming.

[Arietos]

I didn't believe it myself, but look at this: Sony to improve Direct11 on Ps4. Wow.

http://www.geek.com/games/s...

[Holeran]

His game is using 5gig of ram but if they actually spent the time to optimize it would more than likely be under the 2gig mark. The industry has a whole lot ahead of them with 8 gigs of ram, ddr3 or gddr5. We have all seen what 512mb can yeild.

[BewareOf]

The Xbox 360 has 512MB of GDDR3 RAM clocked at 700 MHz

[REDAVUTSTUVADER]

blow johns is funny, his game which doesn't look like much needs 5gb but crysis 3 on pc only recommends 4gb of ram and 1 gb video, and witness is no crysis 3.
http://www.systemrequiremen...
in game developement if one is lazy they will waste ram memory
http://www.pushsquare.com/n...

[tristanwerbe]

This is not even true at all

[isyourhouseonfire]

The RAM in the XBOX ONE is definitely above what is needed, and its nice to see Microsoft has future proofed this console.

[Ben12]

Then stop your crying and go make games for ps4 leave the xbox gamers alone.