EA VP says the Xbox 360 is "maxed out"

Microsoft might be busy extending and building on the Xbox 360's capabilities with Project Natal and all manner of NXE and Live updates, but it sounds like some of their third-party devs think they're running out of headroom -- in an interview with the Official Xbox Magazine, EA senior VP Patrick Soderlund said that "we've maxed out the 360 but we haven't maxed out the PS3." That's an interesting parallel to what Miyamoto was just saying about the Wii, of course, but it doesn't seem like the situation is entirely dire: Soderlund also said that he's "truly impressed" with the 360 and that he "would have a headache" if he were running Sony. Still, that doesn't bode well for Microsoft's planned 10-year 360 lifecycle if it's true -- we'll see if Redmond has something new for us before 2015 after all.

[Amrosorma @ Jun 9th 2009 1:30AM]

Well, it's nice to know that I'm not alone in saying this.

[Cash @ Jun 9th 2009 5:18AM]

Yeah, looks like you and this guy are totally on the same page.

Did you just start shaving yesterday too, or is it just him?

[LilTmac2003 @ Jun 9th 2009 1:32AM]

Xbox 360. Maxed out?

...I think not.

[Kurian @ Jun 9th 2009 1:50AM]

Neither of the consoles are maxed out. But the 360 is closer to being maxed out than the PS3.

[EGOvoruhk @ Jun 9th 2009 2:31AM]

Kurian: That's because nobody knows how to max out a PS3

[andres @ Jun 9th 2009 2:51AM]

how to max out the ps3
step 1.) divide by zero
step 2.) whooarghhaarrbllblllasdfljasdfklasd
step3.) dear god what have we done
step 4.) profit

[joeybeast @ Jun 9th 2009 10:08AM]

andres,

Except that Sony is no where near step 4.

[bluesky_v2.01 @ Jun 9th 2009 12:10PM]

I love my PS3 but based on what I saw at E3 (Spliner Cell, Forza 3) xbox is capable of a lot. You know how they say: "it's not the car, it's the driver", that applies to game design as well.

[WickedEast @ Jun 9th 2009 11:01PM]

@EGOvoruhk: Yeah right, and millions of 360 RROD just right now. Let's cut the crap for a moment will ya? It's 2009. Not 2007. The PS3 is too difficult to program or has no game BS is passe. Things evolve, try to evolve a bit yourself for your own sake.

[xValentine @ Jun 9th 2009 1:33AM]

this will not end well.

[Ellianth @ Jun 9th 2009 1:34AM]

And the interviewer never thought of asking him to define "maxed out?" Maxed out in what way?

The EA guy did say it was his favorite of the 3 consoles though, so at least he has some sense/taste :P.

[TareX @ Jun 9th 2009 2:36AM]

It sounded pretty self explanatory.

AND it echoed my biggest fears. Too bad it's meaningless too if devs aren't behind that "maxing out the PS3" quest.

[sweet greggo @ Jun 9th 2009 1:34AM]

It took EA 4 years to finally push the Xbox to it's limit? What the hell have they been doing this whole time, half-assing it? I would hope game developers would try to push a console to it's limit at launch. Otherwise don't bother.

[The Walrus @ Jun 9th 2009 2:08AM]

They've been treating their designers like shit and pushing out BF games way to early leading to a ridiculous amount of patches

[tX2 @ Jun 9th 2009 2:15AM]

They never said WHEN they maxed it out (I think). The Xbox 360 was made of basic PC hardware so it was easy to "max" out. The 360 was maxed out a long time ago, improvements graphically in games are only marginal now.

[SiXiam @ Jun 9th 2009 2:28AM]

Saying 'basic pc hardware' is inaccurate. At launch the 360 was very powerful for the price compared to a PC. It's not like their gonna pull a Sega and add a 32x module...

[LameDuck @ Jun 9th 2009 3:19AM]

...PC hardware? Wat?!

All consoles have graphics chips from PCs now. All consoles have PC processors. *The OMGIJUSTCELLGASMED! processor is used in servers.* All have some form of storage stright from the PC sector. Please define what "basic PC hardware" means to you. Last time I checked, the CPU in the 360 wasn't being used for anything else, neither is the Wii's. You're being about as vague as this tard.

[Darthweder @ Jun 9th 2009 3:44AM]

@lameduck
Woah there..... Actually, before this generation of consoles (excluding Xbox 1), most of them didn't use "basic pc hardware." They used CPU's and GPU's that were built specifically for the console. Even in this generation you couldn't just go in to a best buy and point to a CPU and say "That's the one in the xbox 360" It's made by IBM just for the 360. However, in the case of the Xbox 1, you really almost could go into a store and say "that's the xbox processor" It used a slightly modified pentium 3. So, in short, Lameduck, you're wrong.

[LameDuck @ Jun 9th 2009 3:59AM]

The Xbox and Wii use a PPC processor. PC based. *By PC based I mean it has been or is a modded version of something from a PC. G5 macs are a great example here*

The 360 and PS3 GPUs are early versions of GPUs used, now, in computers. These you can point to and say, "Hey! That is the same series as the 360/PS3 GPU!"

I'm not saying they are off the self parts, I'm saying they are of the same family as PC compents. It isn't like it was back in the day when the PS2 had some Frankenstein processor that wasn't kin to anything except for a barrowed instruction set from RISC based CPUs. Anyway, my point still stands. These parts are kin to or used in modern PCs and computing devices. You have Cells running servers. The PS3 and 360 GPUs are now low to mid-ranged GPUs in computers. I'm sure that there are some PowerPC and Power5 chips out there being used that are just like the 360 and Wii CPUs without the gaming tweaks. The tech that made them had to come from somewhere and goto somewhere, it just doesn't stop with the Wii, PS3, or 360.

[apolloa @ Jun 9th 2009 3:38PM]

No Lameduck you are still wrong.

The 360 uses a 3 physical core CPU with hyperthreading so it can function as 6 cores, 3 physical, 3 non physical. So no it's not out of a Mac mate even if it is a PPC chip, and the Wii I have no idea about, the PS3 Cell CPU was developed by Sony, Toshiba, IBM on a joint venture and the PS3 is the first device in the world to use it ever, it's also very different from any 'PC CPU' and totally bespoke, it's only now that supercomputers are using them and so are televisions too.
As for the graphics, again yes and no, the 360 actually featured technology that came out in PC's AFTER it was launched so kudos to them, the PS3 does use a modified top end Nvidia chip. But the memory systems of the consoles are very different to PC's, the PS3 uses XDR for example.

[John @ Jun 9th 2009 10:30AM]

The CBE uses a 3.0GHz dual core PPC chip in addition to the 8 SPEs. It is not actually used in computers in any way that would be meaningful to traditional computing because no OS will natively utilize the SPEs; when you run Linux on a PS3 or a cell blade it's running on PPC chip and the SPEs are only used by C programs using IBM's SDK. And if you would like to buy a computer that uses the Cell processor (e.g., a cell blade) they cost somewhere in the 5 digit range.

[Jagster @ Jun 9th 2009 2:58PM]

@Darthweder
The discussion was not about the original XBOX. LameDuck was responding to tX2, who said "The Xbox 360 was made of basic PC hardware". tX2 was dead wrong, there is no "basic PC hardware" in the 360 other than external connectors and the hard drive. The HDD's will always be "basic PC hardware" as there is no need to reinvent the wheel there.

In all reality, the PS3 is much closer to "basic PC hardware" than the 360. The PS3 uses a CPU that is also being used in a limited fashion on some servers and the GPU is basically a consumer GPU, just soldered onto the PS3 board directly instead of a PCI Express card. Conversely, the 360 CPU is not used in anything other than the console and the GPU also does not have an equal in the consumer graphics card market. A quote from Bob Feldstein, ATI VP of Engineering, "The Xbox GPU had nothing whatsoever to do with the PC products". - http://interviews.teamxbox.com/xbox/1458/The-Power-of-the-Xbox-360-GPU/p1/

[Brian @ Jun 10th 2009 4:54AM]

Neither console is really much like any PC.

The PS3 has the Sony/Toshiba/IBM Cell Broadband Engine as its CPU and a custom NVIDIA GPU. The NVIDIA GPU is somewhat similar to a 7900-series GPU, but the Cell is like nothing you'll find in a PC. It has 8 total cores (7 SPEs + 1 PPE), and only the PPE could be described as vaguely "PC like" (in that it's a general-purpose CPU with direct access to main memory). The PPE implements a version of the PowerPC instruction set, which was also used in (among other things) Series 1 TiVo boxes and older Macs.

The PS3's memory is split into two banks, with 256M for the GPU and 256M for the CPU. The GPU memory is GDDR3, just like many PC graphics cards. But the CPU's memory is Rambus XDR DRAM, which doesn't really resemble anything in a PC (it's a successor to RDRAM, which appeared briefly in PCs).

The PS3's Cell SPEs are also not like anything in a PC. For one thing, they don't have direct access to main memory. They also are much poorer at handling instructions like branches. Cell-derived CPUs are used in some supercomputers, but I would hardly consider those to be "PCs" (although many of the largest supercomputers are just clusters of PCs).

The 360 uses a unified memory architecture, similar to PCs with integrated graphics. However, instead of DDR/DDR2/DDR3 (as is used in PCs), the 360 uses GDDR3 as main memory (note that GDDR3 and DDR3 are very different). This is more similar to the memory arrangement on a GPU. The 360's GPU is similar to the Radeon 2000/3000/4000 series (which were derived from the 360 GPU) but with a number of differences, notably the inclusion of eDRAM in the 360's GPU (which is DRAM with custom logic and an extremely fast bus, in a multi-chip-module with the 360's GPU).

The 360's CPU is a triple-core PowerPC. Each core is derived from the PPE developed for the Cell processor and has two hardware threads. Note that "two threads" does not mean that there is one "real" core and one "fake" core; there is only one "core" (set of execution units) but it is capable of picking instructions from one of two instruction streams. It's not correct to call this "Hyper Threading" as that's an Intel specific term, but it similar to the technology used in some Intel CPUs (Nehalem, Atom, later P4s).

So, no, neither the 360 nor the PS3 are much like a PC. Both have significant differences in their memory systems, CPUs, and GPUs. They are custom hardware, designed to be game consoles. Yes, there is design heritige. That's to be expected. But they are no more "PCs" than my TiVo or my G1.

[Brien @ Jun 9th 2009 1:35AM]

Lifecycle != no new product before then. It just means they plan to support it until 2015.

I wouldn't be surprised to see an Xbox 3/Wii HD next E3.

[Mr. 14 @ Jun 9th 2009 1:37AM]

+1 for realizing this. Seriously, what makes it so hard to understand the PS3 and 360's ten-year life cycle?

[sitruc @ Jun 9th 2009 1:57AM]

I know plenty of people who are still pissed all of the good games aren't coming out for the PS2.

[Cody @ Jun 9th 2009 1:59AM]

Correct. For example...the PS2 was released in 2000, Sony plans to support it until 2010 even though the PS3 is already out.

[Nick Ritch @ Jun 9th 2009 2:17AM]

I don't see microsoft or sony upgrading anytime soon.

There have been jumps in graphics technology but not large enough to justify people spending 4-500 dollars on another console that is just an incremental improvement.

Also the Xbox 360 only reached profitability about a year ago and Sony is still in the red with the PS3. I doubt microsoft or sony is ready to start taking more losses on consoles with newer and more expensive technology in them.

Also Many developers are having a hard enough time staying profitable with the high development costs of creating a game. Sticking with the same platform will let them spend less time learning new hardware and more time bringing us great games that take advantage of what we already have.

I don't think there is too much further to take systems graphical capabilities.

Graphics will always improve but it will be years before you see something that truly wows you the way games went from generation to generation.

The only system I can see getting an upgrade would be the wii and it's money printer hasn't started to run low on ink yet.

[loosely_coupled @ Jun 9th 2009 3:28AM]

"I don't think there is too much further to take systems graphical capabilities."

HAHAHAHA... You can't be serious? Now I will agree with you that current-gen R700/ NVidia GT200 isn't an enormous leap from the ~7800GT in the PS3, but there is a long lead-time on console development. I wouldn't be surprised if Sony and Microsoft are working with Nvidia/ATI behind the scenes looking at GPU designs that are two generations ahead of the market.

I'm sure an ATI R900 / Nvidia GT400 gen GPU can easily fit the bill for an upgrade over the PS3/X360 generation. Even the next DirectX11 cards coming out are advanced enough to make a new console with.

As interesting as GPUs are, It will be just as interesting to see what direction they go with for GPUs. I assume Sony will stay with the Cell family, perhaps just use an upgraded 45nm cell with a higher clock rate or more cores. I'm not sure what Microsoft would do however... Maybe another custom Power job from IBM? Maybe move architectures to Directx11 on x86 and Larrabee? hmmmm

[Mr. 14 @ Jun 9th 2009 1:35AM]

Let the pissing contest begin!

[Nando @ Jun 9th 2009 1:35AM]

Damn Jimmy Fallon....

[Nohone @ Jun 9th 2009 1:39AM]

When has EA ever created something visually and computationality taxing on any game console or computer? How can something like GOW2 be done and CliffyB has said that there was still room to grow, but the best EA has is Madden - which has not changed in years.

It all comes down to the devs. You can create software that is inefficient and of course you will bump on the upper ceiling of any processor. Optimize, and you free up resources.


Oh, and good job Engadget. Pulling out the one article negative against MS, but ignoring others negative about the comptetition!

[Nohone @ Jun 9th 2009 1:48AM]

For example, here is an article published today where game developers are upset with Sony for not dropping the price at E3.
http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/news/publishers-retailers-clamoring-for-ps3-price-cut/?biz=1
Can this be a news article?

[SiXiam @ Jun 9th 2009 2:43AM]

Crysis dude, but that's it, so I can see the confusion...

[Nohone @ Jun 9th 2009 2:51AM]

Damn, I forgot about Crysis. However, it kind of proves that the 360 has not hit the ceiling, being as Crysis 2 will be available on the 360, PS3, and PC. http://e3.gamespot.com/story/6210583/crysis-2-ps3-360-pc-bound

If the 360 is so limited, how can they port the most power hungry game to it?

[Ridgecity @ Jun 9th 2009 3:00AM]

how are they making crysis 2 for it? because the game is taxing for pcs because in there it has not limits, not for the console version that comes with limited everything.

[Nohone @ Jun 9th 2009 3:17AM]

@Ridgecity:

I am just linking to an article saying they announced it for consoles. I don't know much about it beyond that.

One thing I should clear up, as it was reference down lower in the comments. There once was a report CliffyB (I know he does not like going by that name now, but I am not even going to attempt to spell it correctly) said that GOW2 had pushed the 360 to the limit. A few days later there was another article saying that CliffyB had been misquoted/taken out of context, etc. and that was not true. I am looking for the article, but cannot find either the original nor the retraction.

[VGSFTW @ Jun 9th 2009 2:52PM]

DeadSpace looks great, so does Burnout Paradise.

[hemmy @ Jun 9th 2009 1:39AM]

I'm gonna go grab some popcorn.

[kidvalor @ Jun 9th 2009 1:52AM]

I was just about to go do the same... this fanboy rant is about to get good!

[Thomas @ Jun 9th 2009 7:08AM]

I'll bring some unpopped corn, the heat from the upcoming flamewar will pop it nicely.

[dailyaddict @ Jun 9th 2009 1:41AM]

Maybe it's just me, but I think E3 was sort of a lot of indirect proof that the 360 is about maxed out graphically. There wasn't a single game shown for 360 that looked any better than anything that's coming out for 360 in the past 2 years and nothing that touched the quality of some of Sony's better crop, namely Uncharted 2. Halo ODST was essentially a smoother looking Halo, but not a new graphics engine, Forza 3 wasn't much different looking than Forza 2 and everything else followed suit. The 360 was not built with a long life cycle in mind and it's definitely beginning to show its age, hence all of the social networking updates the 360 got as opposed to talking about "pushing graphics performance" as Microsoft has been known to brag about in E3's past.

[LilTmac2003 @ Jun 9th 2009 1:48AM]

The reason Forza Motorsport 3 didn't look that different than Forza 2 was because Forza 2 had fuckin' amazing graphics.

[Lando Calrissian @ Jun 9th 2009 1:55AM]

Yeah, Forza 2 pretty much had the most amazing visuals I had seen at the time, but the cars do look noticeably smoother and more refined in Forza 3, not to mention the tracks look even better.

[tX2 @ Jun 9th 2009 2:04AM]

Yeah, but even Forza 3 doesn't look better than GT5P, which is from late 2007-early 2008. In Forza 3 all they did was add globs of shine to the cars to make them look better.

[Lando Calrissian @ Jun 9th 2009 2:05AM]

I've played GT5P and the cars looked blocky as hell around the edges. Polyphony needs to learn how to use AA.

[Lando Calrissian @ Jun 9th 2009 2:07AM]

Also, ODST is based off of Halo 3, hence the name "Halo 3: ODST", so why would they change graphics engines? I still think Recon was a better name than ODST, but that's just me.

[mybalsagna @ Jun 9th 2009 2:12AM]

You're right, it IS you. Are you saying that games like Alan Wake, Splinter Cell Conviction, and DiRT 2 don't look any better than anything that has come out for 360 in the past 2 years? You are nuts. Don't get me wrong, Sony has some beautiful games. Killzone 2 is visually amazing and Uncharted 2 looks great but its not blowing the 360 out of the water.

Microsoft went after the social networking sites because of its strategy to make the 360 the center of your your digital lifestyle, as corny as that sounds. Truthfully, how many times did you check Facebook and/or Twitter while at home today? It makes sense.

Also, I agree with Nohone, the EA VP should have given us an example of an EA studio maxing out the 360.

You gotta love how there are some people who will read this headline and maybe the article, then quote them like facts.

Props to Engadget for starting yet another flame war. MORE HITS MAKES IT EASIER TO SELL THAT AD SPACE!

[webran61 @ Jun 9th 2009 9:04AM]

Forza has never been able to match Gran Turismo ever, anti-aliasly blind or not. Forza 3 is about as close as it will ever come to matching the graphics of Gran Turismo, and that is only because both games right now are maxed at about 200,000 polygons per car (400,000 total for inside and outside views of cars). Historically, Gran Turismo has always used more polygons per car than Forza. Gran Turismo is a hallmark title for the PS console, for it has always demonstrated the very limits of each iteration of the PS console. I am also willing to bet that the only reason it is taking Polyphony so long to release the final GT5 is because they are adding more polygons...

[Nomi @ Jun 9th 2009 10:40AM]

I don't think its fair to compare GT5 to Forza3. Forza is a much younger franchise and it will take it a while before it could reach the graphics quality of GT games. That doesn't mean that Forza isn't a fun, good looking game...but GT has always had the crazier graphics.