With Gears of War 3’s release, most of us were led to believe that the Xbox 360 has been pushed to it’s limit, with no more room to improve upon any technical aspects, especially not visually.
But Epic Games’ Clif Bleszinski is of the opinion that there’s still more to be “squeezed” out of the 360 if done rightly. “With creative programming you can squeeze anything out of any given platform,” he told Edge. “
“Go back to the demo scene where these guys would take a 286 PC and in 38k make a demo that rivalled the most triple-A game of the time.
“It’s just a matter of code magic, time and effort. I don’t know how much longer the 360 will be around, but I’m sure that if we have a product coming out before the end of [its] lifecycle we’ll continue to try and squeeze more water from that stone.”
“We’re kind of at that point where in the SNES [days] they started using Mode 7 in ways you never expected,” he continued. “We’re now at at the point where it’s not learning how to use the hardware, it’s learning to trick the hardware into doing what you want it to do.
“The first thing I was ecstatic about was the new lighting…we’re at the point where an artist can just let the artist breathe, a nice brick wall can just be a nice brick wall; it doesn’t need 8000 pipes layered on it.”
What do you think? Is there still more “water to be squeezed out of that stone”? Or is Microsoft trying to flog a dead horse? Tell us in the comments below.