Gears of War Costs Microsoft

I was just reading something interesting today in a British Xbox 360 magazine (X360 magazine) about how Epic Games shaped a part of the Xbox 360 development which, apparently, cost Microsoft $1 billion.

Prior to the Xbox 360s release Epic showed Microsoft a version of Gears of War running on an Xbox 360 with 256mb of onbard RAM and a version running on an Xbox 360 with 512mb of onboard RAM. Apparently, the 256mb version of the console was extremely choppy. Microsoft, at that point in time, had planned on releasing the Xbox 360 with only 256mb of onboard RAM. However, after seeing the demo running on the 512mb version Microsoft decided immediately to ship the Xbox 360 with 512mb of RAM. A move which cost Microsoft $1 billion dollars.

However, it would not be the cynical gamer if I was not at least a little bit Cynical. Of course, this really hasn't cost Microsoft anything. Because it is the consumer who pays for the product. It is the consumer who eventually foots the bill for all of the Research and Development costs associated with any product. While the company foots the bill while they are developing and initially selling the console they, of course, recoup their costs with the sale of the product. Of course, when consoles are released you hear that a console is not making any money. In the long run it will not have cost Microsoft a cent and probably provided an improvement on the hardware prior to it being released which was lucky for Microsoft. So much for their R & D department.

Interesting to note that the PS3 ships with only 256mb of onboard RAM. Will be interesting to see how much such a small difference in hardware can make to each console in relation to frame rates at high resolution. You should hear gamers go on as soon as a game becomes choppy too. With a PC various excuses can be made because frame rate is generally hardware dependent. However, with a console every game should be relatively smooth.