Game developers naturally learn how to use the capabilities of consoles better over time. Early games don’t looks as good as those released after a couple of years, and that’s just the way it is. 360 fanboys might go nuts over the fact that Epic Games’ Rod Fergusson (Gears of War franchise senior producer) now thinks developers are starting to reach the upper end of the 360’s capabilities.

In an interview with Gamasutra, Fergusson stated that the learning curve isn’t as steep as before, but that there will still be improvements over time - mainly due to more time spent working on the development. “With the two to three more years of optimization that we’ve had, we’re much further along than I think, three years ago, we thought we were going to get,” he explained. “So I think we’re certainly approaching the upper end of it, as far as what developers are able to do with it… It’s clear that all the games just keep improving, and keep pushing that bar.”

If the 360 is truly starting to approach its limits, we might be seeing an evolution of the PS3 that goes on for quite a while and finally, clearly surpass the visual power of the Xbox 360. Don’t worry though, for the next few years at least, 360 games still have time to improve themselves. “There will be games in development that won’t ship until 2010, and I’m sure they’ll look killer, just because, again, they’ll have more time with it, and learn from mistakes and optimizations of others,” Fergusson added.