"The sad part is that unless it truly needs an exorbitant amount of RAM, maintaining 32 bit compatibility is generally as simple as some compile time checks and a recompile."
AFAIK You'd still be limited to less than 4GB of RAM (with the LAA flag checked, on 32bit Windows), which often means streaming in textures from disk---IIRC, thats what Unreal Engine 3 games (with 32bit binaries). Even as far back as Crysis 1---the 32bit binary would stream in textures and other data on demand, where the also included 64bit binary did not need to. And that was like 5 years ago, or an eternity in computer time.
If the next gen PCs want to keep pace with the consoles, its about time we allowed that 4GB+ memory to be put to good use. After all, the next gen PS4 and X360 have at least 5GB free memory, which is a lot more than it sounds due to the optimized and compact game engine code for a fixed hardware base.
As it is, with the mainstream video cards only having 2-3GB memory locally, to play some console games, we are going to have to swap textures in and out of VRAM, the last thing we need is the added overhead of swapping textures in/out of disk to local RAM and THEN swapping to VRAM.
Seriously, if you dont already have a 64bit Windows OS, you just *may* need to upgrade to play some next-gen games. How is this any different than people complaining that their Intel HD3000 cant play Crysis 3 at any reasonable level?
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