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Posted on August 29, 2014, Jeff Mills Crytek Says “Next-Gen” Still No Where Near as Powerful as PC

Crytek’s Nicolas Schulz and Theodor Mader admitted at this year’s SIGGRAPH that high-end PCs were far more powerful than the “next-gen” systems at launch.

Okay, to most this isn’t really a surprise. PCs were always the more powerful system, but consoles exist on proprietary hardware. This minimizes the chance of bugs popping up due to hardware incompatibilities, which makes them the platform most developers enjoy. It’s just easier to release and support a game that runs on very specific hardware.

Crytek’s Rendering Engineers disclosed that, when the XBox One and PS4 were released, they were already outdated compared to most equivalent hardware for the PC.

“Console hardware was considerably less powerful than high-end PCs at launch,” reads Crytek’s SIGGRAPH 2014 presentation.

The Engineers at Crytek claim that Crysis 3 at Ultra settings, is still a beautiful game. But on a console system such as the XBox One, adding additional effects (special effects, higher resolution, etc..) isn’t an option due to its somewhat weaker hardware. This is the cause of Ryse only running at 900p at 30fps on Microsoft’s system.

MSAA, a standard feature on any modern video card available to a PC, is simply not an option on the next-gen consoles. The limited amount of ESRAM on the XBox One is a main culprit as MSAA requires a certain amount of memory to render the textures with the effect. At a 2x MSAA level, they were running out of memory. Anyone who’s ever messed with MSAA understands that running at 4x is the optimal level as it’s a balance between performance and overall visual quality.

Crytek’s engineers also revealed that the beautiful pre-recorded cut scenes with SSAA in Ryse will be available in normal gameplay on the PC version of the title.

Crytek shared a number of videos from the SIGGRAPH 2014 presentation and can be viewed below.