An interview on Ars Technica talks with Chris Roberts about Star Citizen, his upcoming space simulation. Here's part focusing on how he looks to up the ante on PC gaming in a way that consoles cannot:

The main reason, Roberts says, is memory capacity. "You can’t do that much with 512MB [of RAM on a console], so that constrains a lot of your game design. If I’m building a PC game, I’m going 'Yeah, you need 4GB on your machine.' Of course you’re not going to get all 4GB because Windows is a hungry beast, but you’re getting a lot more than 512MB so it kinds of open up what you can do, what you can fit in memory at the same time, and it changes your level of ambition."

Four gigabytes of RAM might sound like a lot, but keep in mind that Star Citizen isn't set to see a final release for another two years. "I’m looking at the high-end [hardware] today being the 'Normal Gamer' level in two years time," he said. "It'll be kind of like Wing Commander used to be. If you had the extra memory, if you had the 386, it was a better experience, but you could still play it on a 286."

Roberts added that he hopes Star Citizen proves that a high-end PC is good for more than warmed-over ports of games made for the consoles. "I have a high-end gaming rig, but I’ve also got all the consoles, and if someone is making a game for a console first, and it’s being ported to the PC, I’m always buying it for the console. I don’t want a buggy port of a console game on my PC that doesn’t really show my PC off."