We had 4 way split on 20inch tube tvs on hardware that measure their ram in MBs
And were still compute-bound. Things like the N64 pretty much used resources per pixel, mesh data being so light that the whole level could be in the limited RAM at the same time – and needed to be because there weren’t CPU cycles left over to implement asset streaming. Nowadays the only stuff that is in RAM is what you actually see, and with four perspectives, yes, you need four times the VRAM as every player can look at something completely different.
Sure you can write the game to use 1/4th the resources but then you either use that for singleplayer and get bad reviews for bad graphics, or you develop two completely different sets of assets, exploding development costs. I’m sure there also exist shady kitten-drowing marketing fucks who would object on reasons of “but hear me out, let’s just sell them four copies instead” but they don’t even get to object because production-wise split-screen isn’t an option nowadays for games which aren’t specifically focussing on that kind of thing. You can’t just add it to any random title for a tenner.
And were still compute-bound. Things like the N64 pretty much used resources per pixel, mesh data being so light that the whole level could be in the limited RAM at the same time – and needed to be because there weren’t CPU cycles left over to implement asset streaming. Nowadays the only stuff that is in RAM is what you actually see, and with four perspectives, yes, you need four times the VRAM as every player can look at something completely different.
Sure you can write the game to use 1/4th the resources but then you either use that for singleplayer and get bad reviews for bad graphics, or you develop two completely different sets of assets, exploding development costs. I’m sure there also exist shady kitten-drowing marketing fucks who would object on reasons of “but hear me out, let’s just sell them four copies instead” but they don’t even get to object because production-wise split-screen isn’t an option nowadays for games which aren’t specifically focussing on that kind of thing. You can’t just add it to any random title for a tenner.
You know, a fun game doesn’t have to be built to use all available resources.