Since the release of the highly anticipated next generation consoles like Sony’s PlayStation 4 and Xbox One from Microsoft, there have been a few niggling worries about whether the concerned memory for each of the consoles will be enough to last an entire generation. However, Havok (of Havok Physics fame) feels it won’t take much time before artists make use of all the available RAMs for the new consoles.
Speaking to Gamingbolt in a recent interview, Havok’s Head of Product Management Andrew Bowell spoke about how he believes that “it will take absolutely no time for artists to use all available RAM.”
For those who are not aware about Havok, it’s an Irish computer software company that provides interactive software and services for digital media creators in the gaming industry.
Havok works in partnership with a number of developing companies like Activision, Electronic Arts, Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony, and its cross-platform technology has been used in more than 150 gaming titles – such as The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, Age of Empires 3 and Fallout 3.
“Developers have long dreamt about more RAM. RAM has been so scarce over the last 20 years in console hardware that I feel many prayers have been answered this time around. However it will take absolutely no time for artists to use all available RAM, even 8 GB, you can be sure of that,” he stated.
Bowell, additionally, went on to explain how his company itself decides to make use of the RAM to assist developers in the future.
“In terms of Havok technology, it has always been our goal to enable developers to do more with less. Even with the large amounts of RAM available, the developers will still find ways to use even last byte. To that end, it is always a requirement for middleware to have the smallest possible memory footprint,” he stated.
“This is also becoming even more of a requirement as console developers look at ways to bring their title to mobile platforms.”
As of now, while Xbox One is known to allocate 5GB of RAM for games, it is still potentially unknown as to how much the PS4 allocates in that department. And while there have been rumors in the past about the PS4 allocating 5.5 GB for devs (also 6 GB), we are yet to find out anything solid related to that.
