Bleszinski: 360 graphics limit quote was "taken out of context"

Gears of War 2 dev lead Cliff Bleszinski, speaking at a recent London press event for the game, has claimed that this quote, in which Rod Fergusson appears to have said Epic was reaching the limit of what's visually possible with Xbox 360, was taken out of context.

"That was a Rod [Fergusson, Gears Of War 2 franchise senior producer – Ed] quote that was taken out of context," when quizzed on the story.

"I think we're pushing the 360, but the system's not going to get any more RAM, it's not going to get a faster processor, but at the same time that puts the impetus on our programmers and artists to be smarter with what they work with."

Bleszinski went on to liken Xbox 360's life cycle to that of SNES, saying there was more to come from the machine graphically.

"I always like to use the metaphor of the SNES," he said. "You know, the first games that came out for the SNES we were like, 'Wow, this is a new console, this looks great.' The next generation came out and it was like, 'This is good,' and by the time they got to the end it was like, 'Holy f**k, I can't believe they're doing this with the Mode 7 graphics, how did they figure out how to do this?' Right? All these ninja code tricks.

"If you look at whole demo scene, from Assembly in Finland and all these sorts of things – they could make an amazing graphical demo in 32K, right? It's amazing what programmers can do. I wouldn't count our guys out yet."

We asked Bleszinski is we can expect another graphical bump up for Gears 3. He wasn't having it.

"If there's a future product I have a feeling it'll probably look better than what we're going, but whatever percentage that is remains to be seen," he said.

Gears of War 2 ships for 360 on November 7. For the rest of our coverage from the event, including play impressions and new shots, click this.