[QUOTE="SeanBond"] Every once in a while someone brings up a statistic about the PS3 or 360's hardware, and spins a reason as to why said hardware creates issues for developers. As somone brought up earlier in this thread, the sad fact of the matter is that NEITHER console was made for running every game at native 1080p. Whether it be the PS3's memory bandwidth issues, the 360's less powerful processor, or now the latter's eDRAM, there are always excuses as to why one system is better suited for HD gaming than the other. I'd say it's clear that they're both fairly equal in terms of graphical power (the best PS3 games are about on par with the 360's best), and that it's equally clear that neither system will be pumping out nothing but native 1080p games from now on.
On the topic of 640p, is there any reason to believe that games like Gears of War (among others) were in this resolution? Because if not, there's no particular reason to worry about it, as the 360 has shown itself to be more than capable of 720p output. In fact, give Bungie another year or two, and they'd easily be able to have Halo 3 running at full 720p with all the same effects they've got going right now; time changes everything. 640p now will be 720p by the end of the gen. Not that you can tell much of a difference...
BobHipJames
As far as your comment about 640p becoming 720p at the end of the gen....I think that's the embodiment of the limitation.
I mean, look at the jump from Resistance from Ratchet, and the jump that Insomniac claims will occur from Ratchet to their next title. Instead of adding in dozens of ships floating around in the background, high qual shaders, thousands of physics-interactive "bolts," particle effects, etc, like can be seen in Ratchet....can you imagine if they had spent all that processing power kicking Resistance up from 720p to 840p?
Sure, the resolution may be the same as its next nearest competitor in this theoretical circumstance....assuming there's a console that displays most of its first party games in 840p. But you're sacrificing image quality for a totally unnecessary, in your view, push towards a higher def resolution.
Of course, this theoretical scenario is mostly nonsense....720p HDTVs cannot display in "840p," it was only brought up for the sake of argument. You can have your extra 80 lines of resolution, but at the cost of development in aspects like units on screen, draw distance, etcetera? I think it'd be better to stick with the 640p, from a developer standpoint, and develope all of these attributes as best you can. Then the only differentiating factor will be 80 lines of resolution.
If this is the case, expect Xbox 360 games to be inferior in one way or another graphically to Playstation 3 games if the eDRAM framebuffer cannot be used on 720p games. If it can be used on 640p games....maybe that's a different story. But you should be arguing in favor of 640p for the sake of the Xbox 360 in this thread, not for 720p as an arbitrary designation and at total liability for the Xbox 360. Accept the premise of this thread, please.
As far as Bungie being able to display Halo 3 in 720p....that's totally speculative. This entire argument is speculative, if not simply hypothetical.
Anyway, the PS3 does not have memory bandwidth issues. I think we should be quite clear on this. Read the IGN tech sheet...Wiki, or Gamespot's. Read anywhere on the net you trust to have legitimate information on the PS3. You will find that the PS3 has 22.4 GB/s bandwidth videomemory, same as the Xbox 360's bandwidth. You will also find that the Playstation 3's main memory, the XDR, has 25.6 GB/s bandwidth, faster than anything the Xbox 360's shared memory has to offer. Again, unless you're factoring the eDRAM into the equation, which you refuse to do, bandwidth is CERTAINLY not in the Xbox's favor. You'll have to settle for sub-720p resolution today. Sorry, man.
Moreover, this forum has made it very clear that the Playstation 3 has better looking first party games than the Xbox 360. Uncharted has been voted console graphics king and I think this is totally undeniable in my personal opinion. No upcoming Xbox 360 game usurps Uncharted's position.
Also, it's worth noting that the Playstation 3 currently has 3 total games in 1080p @ 60 FPS: NBA 08, NG:S, and GT5 (upcoming).
I understand what you're getting at, and I agree with some of your points, but you're making it sound like the PS3 has a clearcut advantage over the 360, and that's just not true. The various stats for both systems make it fairly clear that they both have strengths and weaknesses, and thus the true test will be in the games. So far, the 360 has been the winner in that category, so to claim victory for the system with the majority of inferior multiplats is a little preemptive. My point about Bungie being able to run Halo 3 at a higher resolution had they waited a while longer was simply to give an example of why all the crying about "640p" isn't important. You've noted 2 current PS3 games running at 1080p (one of which, NBA 08, is garbage, so this shouldn't really be a bullet point), but the 360 has a few as well (Virtua Tennis and NBA Street if I remember correctly). But who cares? It's not a coincidence that all the biggest games of this generation have been 720p (Halo 3 obviously notwithstanding), and that goes for the 360 and PS3. My point isn't that 720p is the best we can get, but that for this gen., it's probably the best we should expect. The PS3 has the "power" to run Ninja Gaiden Sigma at 1080p, but it can't handle F.E.A.R. or Madden '08? We can all pick games to support our opinions, but the sweet spot is clearly 720p, and very few of us will be complaining if, at the end of this gen, all the best games are still running at 720, and not 1080p.
And for the record, no matter how many votes Uncharted gets for graphics, it won't get mine. Playing that game on my 42" plasma with a $130 HDMI cable did nothing for me except convince me that people are easily duped into thinking brighter more colorful games are better looking...
Log in to comment