Xbox 360 tech hasn't hit its limit yet, argues Epic Games

Gears of War: Judgment co-developer Epic Games has argued that the Xbox 360 can still be pushed further, even though rumours of a next-gen Xbox are growing by the day. The developer and People Can Fly claim to have squeezed even more out of Microsoft's rig for their upcoming shooter.

Speaking with OXM, Epic's lead level designer Jim Brown said, "I'm trying to remember if it was the transition between Gears 1 and Gears 2 or the transition between Gears 2 and Gears 3, there was like a million different changes to Unreal Engine 3 to get to that point.

"When we first released Gears of War, the first one, people were like 'woah, they're pushing the Xbox to its limits, they're doing crazy things' - and every single time we've been able to step it up and find some corner of the 360 that no one was aware of and more areas for us to push."

Both teams felt they had pushed things even further with Gears of War: Judgment, with more enemies, more action and more visual trickery than before.

People Can Fly art director Waylon Brinck added, "We're pushing way more enemies, way more particles, the environments are a lot more dense than on previous games. Our rendering engine, we've even added a few new features that allow us to do richer lighting, more dynamic lighting, darker darks, brighter brights.

"It's the most colourful Gears game ever, which feels weird to say. But I think it also has the richest darkest mood out of any Gears game since the first one. So yeah, it was all hands on deck optimising this thing, we squeezed a lot more out of it."

When the site asked Brinck if this extra clout meant there was no immediate need for a new Xbox, he replied, "Yeah, there'll always be something more we can figure out, do better."

What do you think? Is the Xbox in danger of looking under-powered soon? Let us know below.