For all those who are waiting for Bio4 port..

According to a japanese publication (CG World), the Capcom team working on the PS2 version of RE4 are facing a very difficult time porting the game to Sony's console.

Here are some few points they mentioned in the article:

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1). The original team headed by Shinji Mikami was able to incorporate 24-bit textures into the GameCube edition of RE4.

However the team working on the port of RE4 will have to incorporate downsampled 4- and 8-bit textures into the PS2 version, whose texture memory capacity is far smaller than that of the Nintendo console.

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2). The polygon count used for the main protagonist (Leon) will have to drop down from 10.000 seen in the GC version, to half that amount in order to perform well on the PS2 version.

The magazine mentions that Leon has almost 3 times the amount of polygons than the Solid Snake character featured in Metal Gear Solid 3 for the PS2. Snake is made up of only 4000 polygons.

(As a side note, according to Factor 5, the pilots from Rogue Squadron were comprised of 4000 polygons. The X-Wings themselves, were made up of 30,000 polygons!)

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3). Due to the PS2's huge Direct Memory Access bandwidth, the team working on the RE4 version will be able to provide an exceptionally high number of textures into the game.

However, adding such textures to the polygons will slow down the frame rate of the game, even more so than it occasionally happens in the GC version. This due to the PS2's limited texture memory capacity.

The PS2 version will have dramatic frame-rate problems if they try to include all the texture layers and polygonal lighting featured in the GC version. Some major adjustments will have to be made.

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4). The GC graphics engine can produce 50 percent more polygons to all the characters than the PS2. The PS2's graphics engine can draw 10 million triangles per second, but after adding gameplay, collision, logic, sound, and so forth, the PS2 edition of RE4 ultimately will move around 30,000 to 50,000 triangles per frame, at an average rate of 30 frames per second.

The GameCube also has a faster CPU that can boost the frame rate to 60 frames per second (twice that of the PS2), and utilizes its texture compression ability to deliver high-resolution textures with improved color variance.

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In other words: the team working on the PS2 version of RE4 will surely sweat bullets to make that version just as good as the one currently available for GameCube. If that is ever possible, it will be a major achievement!

My prediction is that the version for PS2 of RE4 will be a watered down version of the original. But Capcom will include some nice extra features into the mix in order to make things better. Like a gallery or a making off featurette.

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This article is from p.ster of IGN boards.