Leading up to the PS4’s February reveal, leaks and rumors suggested that the console would include 4GB of GDDR5 RAM, and that’s because, until just before the announcement, that was the plan. Developers all thought that the console would have 4GB, with Quantic Dream’s incredible The Dark Sorcerer tech demo only running on 4GB, but thankfully Sony decided to double their RAM after a warning from Randy Pitchford. That move will pay dividends, says CCP’s CEO, who feels that the decision will be very important in the future.
Hilmar Petursson told GI.biz (for comparison, the Xbox One uses 8GB of ‘slower’ DDR3 RAM):
I’m getting personally very excited for the PlayStation 4. For all the softballs Microsoft is throwing [Sony’s] way, they’re knocking them out of the park. It’s kind of amazing. The whole thing with the 8GB of GDDR5 memory is you can make pretty amazing games with that memory architecture. I think it’s going to be important in the future, rather than the CPU and the GPU. It gives you an easy path just to update the graphics just through increasing the texture resolution. I think that’s hugely exciting.
Developers of the PC MMO EVE Online, CCP Games are probably best known by PlayStation fans for the PS3 exclusive F2P FPS Dust 514. There has been a lot of speculation that the game will make the jump to the PS4, but Petursson said that it’s not something that will happen immediately:
We’re off to the races with an audience of core gamers. So we’re now entering our fast iteration cycle, doing monthly updates. A very tight collaboration with the community, as we’ve done with EVE throughout the years. That really is our focus. Not worrying too much about all these future platforms. There’s no need to rush into that. They’re going to be selling through next year. There’s 70 million PlayStation 3’s in the world. Huge audience, not a lot of product coming out, and we have a free-to-play game.
With so many F2P shooters set to hit the PS4, including the behemoth that is PlanetSide 2, do you think Dust 514 would struggle on PS4? How happy are you that Sony doubled the RAM? Let us know in the comments below.
