8 games so powerful they pushed consoles to their limits. Or so they said

I always thought that any game can push the limits.. Just only some actually do, but the reason Gears and games like that continually "push the limits" year after year was because the developers continually build better technology for their newest game, not for the system. They find ways to pack in better graphics and stuff but can still work with the current console.. i could be completely wrong though... i know nothing on the subject.

I call bullshit on MW2, that is literally MW with new maps and guns. Infinity Ward stop tooting your own horn you basterds.

I would say it's just like when u watch a movie trailer they say "The #1 Movie in America" or "Critics Rave" it's all just BS to make ppl want the product. I personally could care less about limits and all of that crap, I just want to play a good game.

When I hear pushing the limits, I hear pushing them farther so they'll be easier to push again for the next developer that will push them. The PS2 gave us 10 years of limit pushing, I guess that 360 and PS3 games in 5 years from now will make the games of today look old and sad. It is likely however that, by then that a new console era will have begun with native dual 1080p DX 12 type of machines. Let hope they'll all be compatible.

I don't really understand this stuff either, but I suppose many games push the limits of the game engine being used by the developer (and therefore, if it's a meaty engine then it would push the system somewhat). Surely if you're modelling a tree, for example, you would want it to look as flashy as possible with loads of branches and leaves and stuff, which obviously takes up POWER. If you were making a typical shooter, driving game, modern beat em up or any graphics heavy game, why would you not push the limits of what you could do on screen or in the background workings? If you had some POWER left over, you could just plant, for example, another tree somewhere?

The conduit. It pushes the limits of the wii. It has bump mapping, blurring effects, ass kicking filters, shaders etc. Then please tell me, why does the game look so boring? (and plays just as much) Oh, wait, they pushed the console to its limits but it seems its not enough, they had to push their BRAINS to their limits also. Because the console isn't responsible for the level design and art direction (both FAR more important than tech alone), that's the brain's responsibility.

Big, fat meh. I remember games saying the same thing a YEAR into the PS2's life yet later on we got GT4, GoW1 and 2 and SotC to prove it was all bollox and the damn same's true this time round. Someone will always find a new trick, some extra memory or optimise their code better than the last guy and even when we move onto a new console the old one is rarely, if ever, maxed.

Once again Mr. Cundy, a very enjoyable read. Your tongue-in-cheek approach to this largely overlooked topic begs some serious debate. I agree that any developer can claim that their respective offering pushes whichever system to the limit. It is definitely something that a developer needs to consider to ensure that their apps don't overheat the CPU too quickly or brick wall the memory and so on. PC gamers are definitely familiar with this since PCs are not standardized the way consoles are, which means the onus is often on us to make sure our system can actually handle the games we are playing. A quick ctrl+alt+del to inspect performance will tell you how much of a "resource hog" said game is, and it is fairly safe to say that for my modest rig any A-list game that comes out these days will easily max it out. But here's the thing (and the crux of my point, better late than never): Pushing a system to its limits isn't something worth bragging about. Most consumers think that it is, taking the claim at face value and interpretting it as "wow, this game pushes it to the limit, which clearly means that nothing can possibly look better". Obviously this is exactly what developers want consumers to think when they say this, the problem being that it is not necessarily true. Let's use Gears as the example here. More than likely, when Gears 1 came out, it did push XB360 to the limit, meaning that the final product probably couldn't run any better considering the programming code that was used at the time. But with Gears' success came the inevitable discussion regarding Gears 2, and I am sure a big part of the early planning was "well, we need to make it look better". So likely one of the first orders of business with Gears 2 was to make the programming code more efficient, thereby freeing up some room to make those graphical improvements, which in turn pushed the XB360 to its limits again. And now we have Gears 3 doing the same thing. After all, any developer who has been working with the XB360 since its earliest days probably has learned quite a few programming tricks along the way, allowing them to squeeze even more out of the system. Same with Wii, same with PS3. But in each case, the "limit" hasn't really changed. It's a very fixed thing, particularly for consoles. Sure, some firmware patches delivered along the way might have improved the system's efficiencies, but probably not by an incredible margin. Rather, the developers have simply gotten better at getting the most out of the limitations they have to work within, which basically means that proclaiming "our game pushes this system to the limits" doesn't really count for much of anything. Hell, a developer could probably slap together a sloppy version of Pong using a horribly inefficient code that could just as easily "push the limits" of whatever console if they so wanted. Just look at GTAIV for PC: Horr...ib...ly.....In...ef..ficie...nt...Co..de...To...Sa...y.Th..e..Lea...st. Did it push the limits? And then some. Was it playable? For most PCs at the time, not at all. At least Rockstar realized they had dropped the ball and wisely decided against bragging about GTAIV pushing PC to the limit. So when Cliffy B takes the stage to show off more of Gears 3 to a packed audience at E3, may I suggest someone call his ass out if he decides to once more brag about the game "pushing XB360 to the limit". Force him to pull the wool from everyone's eyes by explaining how each release managed to max out the 360's capabilites at the time and why we should care. If anything, the bragging should be more about his team figuring out new ways to shoehorn more features into the code rather than hitting any hardware ceilings. It is almost a shame, really. Kind of "boy who cried wolf", actually. The XB360 is starting to show its age, which means that developers likely are at the point where they truly are "pushing it to the limit" since programming code can only be maximized so much. Developers now more than ever probably are squeezing every last drop out of the XB360 in order to release games on par with today's expectations. The problem is that we've heard it too many times already to assign such claims any real sense of worth. So I raise a glass, held high to those developers that are trying desperately to squeeze as much as they possibly can into our games while maintaining a decent frame rate! Let's give them the credit they deserve for once (rather than the marketing team's heated hardware boasts!).

I push myself to the limit, does that count?

Too true Matt, Kojima is an amazing man...

Great article, but I would have liked some last gen examples; God Of war 2 anyone?

it depends on the engine, AND i believe very very very rarely (possibly never), do games actually push a console to its "full" limit. maybe it is the limit with the designers tech and engines and what not, but never really push the console to its limit.

i dont believe MW2 was pushing the consoles limits, they could of padded out the campaign with bigger and more levels and drastically improved the graphics, sure its agood game but saying that it is pushing the limits of a console is a bit too far

Developers saying they're pushing a console to it's limits isn't a recent "phenomena"; developers said the same during the PS2/Xbox/GameCube days so I'm a tad bit apprehensive nowadays when they say that.

hmmmn...you joke about the Gears advertising by asking do the limits of a console move. I would say that this is actually completely true, at least for the first half of the console's life... Whilst the physical specs of a console do not change, every new generation comes with new technology that devs are unable to maximise properly due to a lack of familiarity with architecture - prime example is current console war and the inability of devs to utilise the ps3 to it's max potential as they had not used the technology before. The bar only stop moving when developers have had enough time/experience with the new technology to be able to get the most out of it....only then can the limits truly be super-pushed to the max in a suitable extreme fashion

None of these games pushes the consoles to their limits. Don't believe the hype -_- There are games to come that will prove me right.

efficiency and beauty are two different things. Just because they've pushed something to the limit, dosen't mean that if they pushed a little less hard, they would'nt fit more in.

wow, too much of a coincidence. Is the guy who gave that Echochrome analogy a k-on! fan?

It is just a catch phrase, like "reinventing the genre", "revolutionary ________", "genre defining" and so on and so forth. PR BS.

Developers keep saying that they "still haven't unlocked the full potential of the ps3 yadda yadda" Will they ever?