Consoles holding back PC graphics, says Epic boss

Posted at: 6:01am 31st July 2007 by Ben Hardwidge

Not ‘economically viable’ to do the super high-end stuff, says Mark Rein

Vice president of games developer Epic, Mark Rein, has blasted the games console industry for holding back graphics development in PC games.

‘I don't see people going way, way over what these consoles can do because then they can't sell the game,’ said Rein, ‘they have to dumb the games down for the consoles. Consoles will pretty much define what the next five years of games look like on the PC.’ Rein also said that ‘super high-end stuff’ was becoming less ‘economically viable.’

One of the PC gaming business’ most outspoken commentators, Rein made the statements in an interview with CVG. The problem is basically economics; you need to put a lot of money into developing a game with DirectX 10 graphics, and you’re not going to get a lot of financial return on that if the game is only available on the PC.

As Rein said, ‘if you build the game that's a really super amazing high-end game, how do you make all the money you could make from that game? Because it'll be too high end eventually to be on PS3 or Xbox 360.’ Rein also added that the forthcoming game Crysis was likely to be the pinnacle of DirectX 10 graphics until the next generation of consoles comes out.

Via CVG