A Crytek executive has expressed concern at the limited RAM available on both Xbox One and PS4.
US engine business development manager Sean Tracy told GamingBoltthat while both consoles are powerful, the relatively modest 8GB of RAM on each may cause problems in the future.
"I would have to agree with the viewpoint that 8GB can easily be filled up, but also keep in mind that developers don't necessarily even have access to all eight gigs of it," Tracy explained.
"For example, the Xbox One retains some of the RAM for OS purposes. Since technology, as [author and futurist] Ray Kurzweil states, progresses exponentially, we will soon find that the computational requirements of games will quickly hit the ceiling of a few gigs of ram."
However, Tracy said this doesn't necessarily point to a disaster scenario, as improvements in technology (such as new, more efficient gameplay engines and middleware) can help produce greater results with the same cap on available RAM.
"We already had to manage quite intensely our memory usage throughout Ryse and this will be one of the limiting factors surely in this generation," he stated. "As hardware gets stronger the complexity of scenes can be increased and the dynamism within them.
"However, with that said it's not the raw power alone that will allow for photorealistic graphics but technology that intelligently scales and utilizes all that the hardware has to offer."
Tracy also praised both consoles' main processors, saying: "Though the PS4 and Xbox One don't offer an enormous jump over the previous generation in terms of raw processing power, the custom AMD APUs within both platforms represent a huge leap forward in terms of integration and capability."

http://www.computerandvideogames.com...un-out-of-ram/