The main reason is memory capacity as you ”can’t do that much with 512MB” of RAM, as opposed to a PC with around 4GB. Roberts looks to today’s high-end gamer as tomorrow’s normal gamer.
In two year’s time if Star Citizen releases on schedule then today’s top performing PCs will be considered ‘the norm’ among desktop gamers, providing the best environment.
”What I was showing you can’t do on a current generation console,” said Chris Roberts on his concept footage for Star Citizen. The game is powered by Crytek’s CryEngine 3 because he’d rather spend two years refining the tech and squeezing in better features than building from scratch. ”You can do most of it on a next generation console, but I can promise you a top-end PC now is already more powerful than what a next generation console is going to be.”
”You can’t do that much with 512MB,” he continued, referring to console RAM limits, ”so that constrains a lot of your game design. If I’m building a PC game, I’m going ‘Yeah, you need 4GB on your machine.’ Of course you’re not going to get all 4GB because Windows is a hungry beast, but you’re getting a lot more than 512MB so it kinds of open up what you can do, what you can fit in memory at the same time, and it changes your level of ambition.”
The creator of Wing Commander, Freespace and Freelancer is looking to invest in the future of the project by declaring today’s cutting edge as ‘average’ by the time two years pass. ”I’m looking at the high-end today being the ‘Normal Gamer’ level in two years time,” he said. ”It’ll be kind of like Wing Commander used to be. If you had the extra memory, if you had the 386, it was a better experience, but you could still play it on a 286.”
Chris Roberts wants to prove that high-end PCs are worthy of more than just ‘ports’ from console.
”I have a high-end gaming rig, but I’ve also got all the consoles, and if someone is making a game for a console first, and it’s being ported to the PC, I’m always buying it for the console. I don’t want a buggy port of a console game on my PC that doesn’t really show my PC off.”
”I have an iPhone and I can watch The Dark Knight Rises on it, but I don’t want to watch The Dark Knight Rises on my iPhone—I want to see it in IMAX on a big screen, and I’m willing to spend $18 to see it on the big screen in IMAX versus downloading it for a couple of dollars on my iPhone. I definitely think there’s a PC gaming audience like that.”
Hopefully Roberts can warm gamers’ hearts with PC by releasing us into the cold vacuum of space with Star Citizen. As of today the Kickstarter campaign stands at over 18,400 backers pledging more than $914k with 14 days to go. The project asks for $500k and has begun revealing stretch goals with $1m unlocking the ”largest playable ship”.
Check out the full interview between Chris Roberts and Ars Technica.
