Or you can buy one machine that does it all. Consoles will eventually be phased out as PC tech gets better and cheaper.

I'm sure that's what they said about the arrival of the Commode 64 way back when.

Well I think Bethesda did use a new engine , Creation engine is new engine and designed for skyrim

It's really not. Bethesda tried to bill the Creation Engine as an engine made for Skyrim, but all it is is an updated/re-designed version of Gamebryo. It has almost all of the same hardware limitations, as well a large number of the same software bugs.

Technology is fast merging though. Tablets and i phones are perfect examples of do-it-all gadgets. One can realistically buy a PC with gaming specs comparable to the funbox for $500-$600. Before long, it won't make sense financially to buy both a console and PC. Nonetheless, I sacrifice a baloney sandwich daily at my 'death to consoles' altar. I think it's working..

As more and more things become streaming and more and more computing is done in the cloud consoles and home computers will be replaced by the same thing. Today you can play a game of Quake in a web browser, streamed to your computer. It isn't the perfect experience but it's the future. The altar the xbox and ps3 will be sacrificed to is the same one that will cause the death of your pc.

http://www.onlive.com/. I'm not sure this is going to happen really soon. Google announced quite some time ago that local computing was dead and that it's all about the cloud now, but very little outside of mobile computing has moved to support that from the consumer end of things. Time will tell.

I must admit I'm slightly struggling to see how the cloud is substantially different in concept to the likes of the VaxCluster technology that appeared in the 1970s. Though I guess it doesn't have to be: reinventing old things with new and exciting names makes them, well, new and exciting!

The concept is similar to load-balancing across a server farm, except that it's done on a larger scale with servers that could theoretically be spread all over the internet and more factors are taken into account in terms of optimizing performance (distance to the server, protocols, client types, etc.) In many cases the distribution of resource and propagation of changes is also optimized based on demand against servers across the cloud. It actually is pretty cool stuff.

What I don't understand is why end-users are excited about it. It's awesome stuff for the IT geeks managing resources, but from the consuming end the client software doesn't behave differently than it would if everyone was using the same central server. It's become a bit of a marketing buzzword, methinks.

It's exciting because true cloud computing will eliminate rhett need to be constantly spending money too stay on the cutting edge. You just need a receiver with a screen and controls and the cutting edge of games are pipped right to it. Obviously is a ways off but it's the future.

I know that's the idea. In practice, though, similar ideas that have been around and technically viable for 20+ years still haven't caught on despite expectations to the contrary. Like I said, time will tell.

The problem with doing this with games is that the games keep getting more demanding as the technology gets better. This makes it really cost-prohibitive to host games in a cloud. The hardware cost-per-user to run games with high-end graphics, AI, physics, etc. at 1080p is pretty high, and given that games tend to improve with the hardware it might not get cheaper very quickly.

The only thing better than people comparing games of different genres (Skyrim vs. Uncharted for example) is people comparing a game to another game that hasn't come out yet.

The only thing better than people comparing games of different genres (Skyrim vs. Uncharted for example) is people comparing a game to another game that hasn't come out yet.

The horse less carriage was invented in the early 1800's but was only a novelty for a long time. Just because an idea comes along before it can be successfully implemented does not mean it won't happen! It's just a matter of time sir!

Not saying it won't happen eventually. Just saying "don't hold your breath." Current gaming technology doesn't scale all that well in a "cloud-like" environment. Splitting up GPU resources is problematic...partially because of all the data (like textures) that would need to be constantly loaded and un-loaded. The technology needs to change a bit before that could be done efficiently.

Yes but if we can play Quake from the cloud today where will we be in 5 or 10 years? Maybe Unreal 2! Lol

Wait a second. What does the game being a sandbox rpg have to do with animations? A game like Uncharted has many many more animations possible then Skyrim. I don't see what the sandbox aspect of Skyrim had to do with this.

More different models with more different textures that need to interact with them. More different systems that the animations need to remain consistent with, etc. In general there are a lot more different meshes, textures, and other animations that all have to have a consistent look with one another. That makes things much, much more difficult. Lots of fairly scripted animations (as in they don't interact dynamically with many other systems) using a smaller variety of meshes is much easier to pull off.

The concept is similar to load-balancing across a server farm, except that it's done on a larger scale with servers that could theoretically be spread all over the internet and more factors are taken into account in terms of optimizing performance (distance to the server, protocols, client types, etc.) In many cases the distribution of resource and propagation of changes is also optimized based on demand against servers across the cloud. It actually is pretty cool stuff.

Well they don't even do this well with the engine they have. Put Forsworn armor on and notice how many boots leave you with large portions of your legs missing. Just no texture there at all. It's ridiculous

I think the bigger question you should ask is: do the programmers at Bethesda even have the skill to use a new engine? People seem to act as though Gamebryo is the root of all their problems, and that when it was supposedly changed for Skyrim, everything would get magically better. And when they didn't, everyone once again attributes it to the engine for "just being Gamebryo again."

Whose at fault really? The engine or the devs?

Todd told in an interview

I think we'd need a more reliable source than something Todd said.

Well we came off of Fallout 3 and we’re always moving our own technology forward. Whether that’s using a piece of middleware or doing AI or things like that. We had a pretty big list of what we felt the 360, the PS3 and the high-end PCs could do, and it wasn’t like we said “we’re going to re-write the engine”; we just sort of started with “okay, let’s do this to the graphics; let’s do this to the gameplay”.

We started hitting that hard right after Fallout 3, so I’d say after the course of the next year and a half it turns out we’d re-written all of this -- look how it looks; we’re not using this anymore; we’re not using that anymore. So that’s when we actually decided to brand it; we should call it something of our own.

But it wasn’t from the get go “we’re going to re-write the whole engine”. It was a priority list and we ended up re-writing more than we thought we were gonna, but it worked out.

As more and more things become streaming and more and more computing is done in the cloud consoles and home computers will be replaced by the same thing. Today you can play a game of Quake in a web browser, streamed to your computer. It isn't the perfect experience but it's the future. The altar the xbox and ps3 will be sacrificed to is the same one that will cause the death of your pc.