Well that is a decent solution actually... use the PC -- do what you want with it -- pay less for it -- not have tonnes of redundant hardware and accessories -- don't have a platform developer to pull the plug and deprecate every piece of art in its catalog (Poor Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath) -- use whatever control mechanism the game developer wishes to support (rather than the platform developer) -- not pay license fees to said platform owner.

If only an open platform like Linux actually had enough marketing to stretch its wings.

He's (now) still talking about using videocard hardware... just not the Direct3D/OpenGL libraries to interface with them.

So it's not a memory bandwidth issue -- because the component that's used for the massively-parallel processing would essentially still be a videocard.

Don't confuse "Software Rendering" with "CPU-Only" rendering. The videocard will still be there... along with its memory and massively parallel many-simple-core structure. The difference is instead of making Direct3D and OpenGL function calls, you'll be making code that looks sort-of like a very very very multithreaded software renderer.

We already have as large draw distances as we want. The question is how much detail do you want there.

Framerate locking IS common... because on the console with set hardware you can optimize to hit one specific framerate... ... and then when you port to the PC you need to keep the framerate locked (or have a REALLY painful porting process) because of all the assumptions you made making the console version assuming the framerate will always be 30 fps (like with Gametime, etc)

Wii was actually one of the only consoles to NOT be sold at a loss.

2006 Article

Just about every console port doesn't have the resolution locked. ... that said their internal assets are usually low-res enough that the extra resolution will just be rendering the crappy artwork with even more crappy detail.

They wouldn't matter without extra resolution to display that extra detail... assuming of course that the input detail is equal or greater than the output detail the screen resolution allows.

He was actually talking about something like CUDA or OpenCL programs that look similar to a typical software rendering engine.

GPUs would still be there... but you would "talk to them" in a similar way you would a CPU. Only with slightly more simple commands that are parallelized across thousands of cores.

Basically Tim Sweeney is annoyed at all the DirectX and OpenGL quirks they need to dodge and would want to program each engine basically from first principles -- but still use the GPU for calculations that could be split into hundreds or thousands of independent parts.

Eh... the consoles are slightly more memory bound than anything. As for rendering at 720p? That's generous... many of the blockbusters render at lower (some much lower) than that.

If Apple gets around to it, of course.

They've been known to let vulnerabilities go until they can roll them all up into a nice 250MB-or-so patch.

Hey, what's the rush? They're not a target.

And this is why people who believe there aren't such things as "Defensive Patents" are wrong.

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Sure... there SHOULDN'T be such things as defensive patents... but there are... to protect yourself from plagiarizing... vulching... trolls.

Because that would mean that their just released Facetime for Mac would be called Arsetime for Roadapples.

Nah, that was the project his team was supposed to spearhead.

Ugh, imagine that thing getting set off.

And if the security measures really helped... I'm sure there'd be more support. There's a balance between security and convenience/performance/freedom in whatever we do. Many people have many different lines they draw -- regardless of where you draw your line... you need to be efficient at getting the most of the former for the least of the latter. I mean hey -- easy way to solve this problem: ban flying. No airplane problems then.