The Xbox 360 may be regarded as a less powerful console than the PS3, but BioWare believes there is still plenty of gas in the can, denying that the system has reached its full potential yet.
“For this game, we’ve squeezed even more out of the Xbox 360,” saysMass Effect 2producer Adrien Cho. “Mass Effect 1when it came out I think represented this watershed moment; it was a benchmark, it was really innovative in many ways. But we knew at that time there were many ways in which we could improve, it’s just time limitations. So given two more years of development our artists, engineers and programmers have learnt how to extract more out of the engine.
“Have we actually peaked? No. I was the technical artist on the first game and what we do is build things a lot smarter to avoid some of those issues like texture pop-in in the sequel. But I don’t think we’ve reached that ceiling yet; there’s actually a lot more power that we can get out of the 360.”
If BioWare keeps making Xbox 360 ports like the console version ofDragon Age, I doubt it’ll hit that peak anytime soon!
