By: Nick Evanson Aug 21, 2007

Possibly not true but it could just as easily be the case: when questioned about "next gen audio", Mark Rein from Epic Games responded with this suspect hint that caught our ears at this year's Leipzig GCDC event.

Whilst discussing middleware and licenced engines, Rein stated that he believed the metric for audio (i.e. what's possible in terms of technology) is determined by consoles, and since they're a fixed platform for several years, this means that for games using the likes of Unreal Engine, developers will have a fixed level of "technology" to work with too. This should, in theory, give them more freedom to design and create, rather than worry about nerd stuff.

So if an uber new sound card gets released onto the market, packed with new hardware features, how likely is it that a licenced engine or other chunk of middleware will take advantage of it? And what about the fact that Microsoft's forthcoming audio system in DX10.1 (called XAudio2) uses the CPU for the signal processing?

With PC sound card sales making up just 15% of Creative Labs' revenue last year, it makes you wonder if PC add-in sound cards have gone as far as they can.

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