I was wondering if anyone knew if they use bump and specular maps in console games on characters and such. Also if anyone knew the average polycount of a console Character.

Thx

That's a very broad question. Different kinds of games will have different limits on how much memory the characters can eat up. A fighting game will probably have the biggest poly counts and best looking characters.

Whether or not you have bump, specular, normal maps depends on the console. But if the game engine supports it, then sure, why not.

Average poly counts for characters, I'd say 2 or 3 thousand. It can be much higher for games where there's only a few characters on screen at any one time. And I'm sure the current batch of console games are pushing higher poly counts. Although in Halo 2, the characters actually have fewer polys than in Halo because they use normal maps to give the extra detail.

I'd say the average poly count for the next generation of consoles will be closer to 10,000 for the main characters.

Yeah your question is a bit vague - it really depends on the type of game. Soul Calibur II (PS2, GC, XBox) has characters around the 8000-triangle mark, I think, while something like Goblin Commander (PS2) has below 1000 triangles per character because it's an RTS-style game, not a fighting game.
It really depends on the game engine and style, but there is nothing stopping you using spec and bump maps, I think, especially on GC and XBox. The polygon count is entirely dependant on how many characters are on screen at once, how big they are, and how detailed the environment is compared to the characters.

MoP

The console versions of our characters are around 5000 tris, each. There are going to be 10 on-screen at any given time, with low-poly ambient chars as well.