Epic's Mark Rein Says Next Gen Does Not Start With Sony >

	2006/10/03 12:09:32: Posted by DM
	The outspoken Mark Rein, VP of Epic Games, had quite a lot to say at the start of his London GDC talk. Most importanly: "Sony says the next generation starts when they say so - bullshit!" He then said Gears Of War on the Xbox360 is likely to look better than any PS3 launch title. Oh boy. >Link
	Labeled With  epic pc Comments [30]  | Rate this article: -- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10  | Avg. rating of 8.9

Hmmm, making a highly anticipated game for the 360. I can't imagine why he would say such a thing.

:-)

i love this guy...rotfl

Finally, I love video games, and plan on buying a PS3 when one is available and affordable, but it is so nice to have someone finally call them out on their patented brand of arrogance.

From the "true HD is 1080p" statement to the "next-gen starts with PS3" statement, I am blown away by their huge ego. Considering that most HDTV's that even display in 1080- can only do so at 30fps, how is that a good display for a game that should run in 60fps?

I look forward to all of this next gen, from wand-waving, locust killing, odyssey adventuring, and metal gear sneaking.

Let the good times roll!

This is strange, as Epic put together UE3 demo for E3'2005 in a matter of weeks. Then, during one of UT2007 work in progress interviews the same Mark Rein stated that they took PC code, translated it to PS3 and UT2007 ran @49fps without any optimisation in 720p mode. In the same time GoW ran (or crawled should I say) @ 10-15fps.

Around E3 this year GoW still had some unpleasant animation hiccups, then some news on the new multi-threaded renderer emerged, things were to improve significantly for the X360, and the same Mark Rein stated that this renderer would help UT2007 on the PS3 as well.

Right now all of a sudden we can hear that UE3 runs better on X360

I wonder who to believe, some guy in a comment box on the internet or the VP of Epic...tough one.

i'll believe a poster in a forum anyday! j/k

Great article, But a little double standard lol. Ive seen erased post's due to ONE cuss word. Yet headline news can say "bullshit".. Cmon now.

"Sony says the next generation starts when they say so"

Arrogance can kill a vido game machine.

Well thats basically true, but mark rein didn't have to say that.

I mean gears of war is one of the better second gen 360 titles of course its going to look better than all ps3 launch titles. I mean it blows resistance away graphically, but thats expected. Also New York don't believe that ut2007 rubbish. Back then they didn't even have what would be called alpha ps3 hardware to work with. That was just marketing talk especially knowing how hard it is to translate pc code over to the ps3.

"next-gen starts with PS3" statement can sound arrogant but it is not that far away from reality. Look, even if 720p is accepted as true HD, X360 is not more than a game machine (xbox gamers are proud of that) while PS3 is a multimedia system, with full next-gen (out of the box) support for playing media content besides games, that is a huge difference and supports SONY "arrogance".

opta: It is impossible for me to compare both games, did you have play Resistance and Gears of War? or are you talking about your impressions from videos? Maybe Gears is superior graphically but Im sure is not by much and how about smoothness?, it is well known Resistence and all others PS3 games run extremely smooth (even those running at 1080p), the same can be said about Gears

of Wars and other x360 games?

determined fans can be so funny.

Mark Rein is the Vice President of the entire Epic Corporation, so he is not biased in any way. Epic may be releasing Gears of War exclusively for the Xbox 360, but Epic is releasing Unreal Tournament for the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3, as well as the PC.

In response to the comment made by Mr. New York, the varying frame rates of a game depend on the style of game it is; that much is common knowledge. Pretty much, it boils down to: Is the game a fast paced first-person shooter, or is the game a slow-paced first-person or third-person shooter.



Unreal Tournament is a fast paced game, and it needs to run at 60 FPS, just like a fast paced fighting game.

Games like Halo, Gears of War, and MGS are slower paced games that do not need to run at 60 FPS. 30 FPS is fine for the kind of gameplay found in those kinds of games.

One thing you need to know is that if a game drops below 60 FPS, even to 49 FPS, like you mentioned, the human eye will perceive that to be slowdown, even though 49 FPS is higher than 30 FPS. The framerate needs to stay steady at 30 FPS or 60FPS, or else the human eye sees slowdown.

Unreal Tournament on the Playstation 3 will have a lot less detail in each individual frame than Gears of War. For example, if a game system can display 120 polygons per second, it could display 2 polygons per frame in Unreal Tournament, and it could display 4 polygons per frame in Gears of War. This is an advantage for Gears of War.

Mark Rein and Cliffy B have said before that every time Gears of War started to display too many frames per second, they just added more polygons. This lowered the framerate back down to 30, but it also increased the level of detail found in the game.

Unreal Tournament is going to have suffer the opposite consequence, because its fast paced gameplay requires it to run at 60 FPS. When a game like Unreal Tournament 2007 runs at only 49 FPS, polygons will need to be removed from each frame of the game. This means detail will be lost so that the framerate can once again go back up to 60 FPS.

Epic took as much time as they could to get the gameplay and detail found in Gears of War perfect. The minor framerate inconsistencies found in the unfinished versions of Gears of War are very minor factors that the employees of Epic were well aware of at E3, and they had improved a lot by the Game Convention, and even more by Tokyo Game Show. At the X06, those inconsistencies were virtually unnoticeable, and the developers said that they were use the final month of development time to sort out the final amount of detail that would be allowed into the game to make sure that the game always stayed at a constant 30 FPS with excellent gameplay.

Mark Rein bashed the 360's storage capacity and also said the Revolution isnt worthy of playing their games. This guy is a complete douche bag.

According to the things I have read, even in Playstation magazines, Gears of War is a much more impressive game than Playstation 3 games. I am not trying to display any personal bias, just as I believe Mark Rein is not displaying any personal bias. But when Playstation magazines say that Playstation 3 games don't look as good as games like Gears of War, then you know it is not a matter of bias, it is just a matter of truth.

Gears of War does look good, but what i dont get is that he used to think the Xbox 360 was so lame because of its storage capacity and constantly said they are taking advantage of the PS3's Blu-Ray drive. Now all of a sudden hes saying 360 started the next-gen race. Which is true, but before you could tell he was kinda disagreeing with that. Maybe hes just saying this because he wants people to buy his game, since it will be the only Epic title for sale this year. Who knows.

Mark Rein didnt have to go out and call bullshit on Sony just for the hell of it, yet he did so he can say his game is amazing and get some units sold which is something that i dont blame him for. But he still is a douche for doing that lol.

Games of the 1st two years are no method for truly testing a systems capabilities. 2 to 3 years from now, we'll see the best from both systems IMO, and only then will one be able to compare the two. Like opta said, 2nd gen Gears should look better than 1st gen PS3 titles. Keep in mind also, that w/ the big developers, and depending on the game itself, the difference graphically will be so minimal most of the time that fanboys on either side will seem stupid b/c of their arguments about which system is better.

Well I don't really see GoW as being second gen, sure it is coming out after the first batch of games but this is Epics first 360 game. The PS3 final kits may have been released only a few months ago but the system was supposed to be released last year and they were working to meet those specs. When was development started on this and resistance? Both were shown at E3 last year so prob around the same time. Yes the 360 hardware was final but the development cycle was about the same for both games. And personally I don't think Resistance is that much better looking than COD2, if they had a few extra months the games would have prob looked identical.

Men! this guy wants to sell his game, nothing else...when UT2007 is released, you will see how quickly Reins starts saying good things about ps3. Its called marketing!

RastaDator seriously, what do I need all the extra, non-gaming crap for? I want the PS3, and have the 360.

It's not a PC, it's a gaming machine. I want it to play games.

It's like the problem with cell phones these days. Who cares how many megapixels I can display my camera in? I want to use my phone to make phone calls.

And the banter on who's swings the biggest gaming dick is just tired and played out folks. Both systems look great, GET OVER IT.

Rubix42: I do understand you but Im not a 12 year kid. I really, really want all that extra "crap". If a get a extremely powerful game machine and aditionally a complete set of next-gen multimedia capabilities out-of-the-box I can not be more happy

its pretty funny.. i remember when people liked sony. what happened??? for me i was allways a nintendo kinda guy. ^_^

Rasta, besides playing blu-ray out of the box what can the PS3 do that the 360 can't?

As for the PS3 being a blu-ray player, the PS2 was a pretty piss-poor DVD player, why are people assuming the PS3 will be a better blu-ray machine?

@ jon

who ever said it will be a better Blu ray player?

i do know though with cell which primary use is for video decoding.... i will let you assume the rest

and to help answer your question " besides playing blu-ray out of the box what can the PS3 do that the 360 can't?"

you can view multiple webpages.. built in wifi... dolby and thx HD sound output... display HDMI 1.3 for "deep color".. lol and also FULL BACKWARDS CAPAT... not that BS Ms did

well it is his game so yea

Jon: Obviously PS3 BR capability is a main seller, if not why is MS getting an add-on for playing HD-DVDs on x360? I know nothing about x360 functionalities beyond gaming, but surely SONY is trying to use PS3 like a station to recieve (and to stream perhaps) diferent types of content from internet, to do that both High-Def video and full Dolby 7.1 sound are supported.

It seems PS3 (if SONY delivers) will be a top notch BR player, remember that they already included HDMI 1.3. Dont forget this is SONY flagship product, created with the idea to introduce BR in every home. See you.

Response to Sky;

The Playstation 3 is not capable of outputting THX sound quality.

There are only two forms of sound quality: The Sony way, and the George Lucas THX way. This is the reason why there has never been, and never will be, a Sony Audio/Video Receiver that receives a THX license.

Just as Sony was unwilling to pay for the license to use Vibration features in their Playstation 3 controllers, Sony is unwilling to pay for the costs associated with having their products tested for a THX license.

Here is the deal: Sony wants all speakers set to Large and the Subwoofer set to 120hz. George Lucas and THX wants all speakers set to Small, and they want the Crossover Frequency set to 80hz. The THX way is noticeably better while watching movies like Jurassic Park 2 where there is a lot of deep bass.

Some movies use music rather than just sound effects, and the frequency is lower than 80hz. This doesn't sound good, so you need to set the THX Crossover Frequency to 50hz. THX Audio/Video Receivers can do that with the push of a single button, but Sony ones can't do that, and it is often annoying to have to make individual adjustments for each movie...Assuming that you have one of the higher end Sony Audio/Video Receivers that even allows you to make adjustments like that.

Stores like Best Buy and Circuit City don't carry impressive Audio/Video receivers from Sony. Look at the specification called Total Harmonic Distortion. Almost all of Sony's Audio/Video Receivers have a THD of 0.7%, which is TERRIBLE! Then, go and look at a Yamaha one: they have a THD of 0.04%, which is FAR better!!! The lower the Total Harmonic Distortion, the better!

One other thing you need to watch out for with Sony Audio/Video Receivers is the way that they measure Watt output per channel. Sony now uses a way that makes it seem like their $200 equipment is more powerful than $700 THX Yamaha equipment. This is not true, though. Sony uses a reckless way of measuring the Watts per channel, which basically doubles or quadruples what it actually is compared to other products from Yamaha, Denon, or Harmon Kardon.

Harmon Kardon may seem to always have the lowest Watt per channel, even though they are expensive, but that is because Harman Kardon invented the original measurement system, and they stick to it, even though it is the strictest. Harmon Kardon is a great company.

Your goal should be to get an A/V receiver with less than 0.07% THD, because that is when the human ear starts to be unable to tell the difference.

Sky, the Playstation 3, and every other Sony product is not a THX certified product. Thankfully, the Playstation 3 can output true 5.1 sound, just like the Xbox 360 and the original Xbox. It is unfortunate that the Wii cannot do that, though.

I was in Best Buy today, and I was very disappointed to see that the Playstation 3 is being called a "Computer Entertainment System," rather than a videogame system.

This is nearly identical to some of the things that Atari and Coleco did to mess things up! Sony has really made a big mistake by including Blu-ray with the Playstation 3; that format is not needed, and it is too expensive.

Sky, I should also let you know that reliable sources have told me that the Playstation 3 is 100% NOT fully backward compatible.

Playstation 3's backward compatibility is VERY similar to what Microsoft did with the Xbox 360. As few as 50% of Playstation 2 games will work properly on the Playstation 3.

I should also mention that the Playstation 3 is actually NOT capable of downloading Genesis/Turbografx/PS1/PS2 games, like some of the websites originally reported.

It turns out that Sony's Ken Kutaragi was mistranslated and misunderstood when he said that. Sega made it clear that Ken Kutaragi was simply referring to things that Sony was considering might take place in the future. But Sony has no plans to include those features with the Playstation 3 any time soon like the Xbox 360 has now and the Wii will have at its launch.

Take a look at one of these website articles here: ps3.ign.com/articles/734/734955p1.html

you may be right with the THX.. but everything else i will take with a grain of salt.. your clearly biased towards Sony

as far as the backwards compat goes

and blu ray being expensive

"I was in Best Buy today, and I was very disappointed to see that the Playstation 3 is being called a "Computer Entertainment System," rather than a videogame system."

whats so dissapointing about that? biased ass



" i agree with yahoo , the 360 is the best console to get this chirstmas"

that comment right there is indicator of how biased you are.. im done with you

Rasta, actually Dolby HD 7.1 only works for blu-ray films not games or dvd movies.

As far as streaming and video the 360 is right there, hell the 360 can pull files off a PSP or iPod.

Using a console to surf the web, I'm gonna piss myself laughing the first time I read the post of someone bitching about spyware on their PS3.

Sky, I was gonna ignore you, but come on.

Clearly, if he has a bias it's against sony.

The official PS3 site says that not all PS1/PS2 games will work correctly, if they work at all. 100% BC is BS even sony knows it, why don't you?

Sony makes pretty bad recievers, this is common knoledge on any AVS board.

The PS3 can output 5.1 sound for games, so can the 360.

Pull the blu-ray drive and the PS3 gets $100 cheaper. Neither the PS1's cd drive nor the PS2's dvd drive added that much to the cost of the console.

Sounds expensive to me.

the blu ray drive of ps3 is part of the stategy of sony to turn a 10 year old encription technology popular....(MPEG2).

Personaly I think that was no need for that drive as the modern compresion tecnologys can fit "next gen games" into dvd-9's.

but with the majority of gamers being blinds and loyals , they will buy the ps3 thinking beliving in 2 teraflops , 1080p at 120fps , 2 times better than xbox360 etc,,,,

Iam thinking in buying the ps3 , but instead I now what im buying.

@ jon

you asked "what can it do out of box that the 360 cant".. and i told you.. nuff said.. the ps2 wasent 100 percent BC....the ps3 will have a much higher percentile of BC then the 360.. i can promise that

plus the blu ray drive is also designed for games as well.. not just movies