1up.com has posted an interesting piece talking to a bunch of game developers about next-gen consoles and why we’ll never quite get the amazing AI and smooth-as-silk graphics we’re always promised. Nathan Martz from Double Fine notes that creating smart AI is still one of the most difficult programming problems out there and tends to get sent to the back-burner since the purpose of most enemies is to “put up a bit of a fight and then die in an interesting way.” He also comments on framerate issues, noting that “features tend to be more marketable than framerate, so most of the time features win out.”

Good reading for anyone interested in how the games industry operates. Made me think back to the days when I was wowed by the visuals on the 7th Guest box art, only to find that my poor 486-SX could only manage about 5 fps. Things have definitely improved since then. Still, according to these folks, even with the processing power that the Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii are offering us we’re still likely to see our fair share of choppy framerates and monstrous load times. Hopefully some folks in the industry are taking notes and working on making games play better as well as just looking better.

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