[QUOTE="SakusEnvoy"]Technologically, yes, the PC can have anything that a console can have. But, in a certain sense, due to optimization on developers' part, it is technically possible for the graphics on a console to exceed even the best PCs on the market at the time of release.
I point at The Witcher 2's direction, in this case. The videos and screenshots coming out of Gamescom seem to indicate the game is running near medium-high on the Xbox 360. No untouched, non-upgraded computer from 2005 could possibly play The Witcher 2 on medium-high.
Therefore, if someone was to ask me: what would be a better deal? Getting a top of the line PC in 2005, or buying an Xbox 360 for $299-399? If I had the foresight to know that a game like The Witcher 2 would come out on consoles in 2012, and still look beautiful, I would have been forced to say buying the 360. Hands down.
BrunoBRS
well i never said "keeping the same technology". it might be more expensive, but PCs can be tuned to be better than they were a year back. case in point, you think the 360 shots look like medium-high PC shots. it shows that the PC was able to produce the prettiest, fps-est (lol), HDest version. it's up to the player to choose which path to take. Oh sure, yeah, PCs can always advance beyond console technology. That's just not even fair for consoles really... consoles are a fixed box, intentionally locked into the same hardware for 6+ years. The best a console can ever hope to do is match a high end PC in the same year of its release, and maybe as a result of optimization produce games that look better than it graphically.
[/spoiler] Console 2006: [spoiler] 
[/spoiler] PC 2007: [spoiler] 
[/spoiler] Console 2007: [spoiler] 
[/spoiler] Let's look at what we have there. In 2006, Gears of War on the 360 was arguably the best looking console game available. On the PC, a game like Company of Heroes was considered up there. (note: I took these from IGN's awards for best graphics technology for each year, since I don't have a 360 and didn't follow PC gaming back then as much) Gears of War looks, I would say, maybe even BETTER than Company of Heroes. Consoles have some pretty good technology for the time, and their better utilisation and optimization caused Gears to look on par or better with a PC game (it's up to you to decide which looks better, though I think it is Gears). In 2007, the winner of the award on IGN for the 360 was Bioshock, and on the PC it was Crysis. Crysis is still, to this day, considered one of the best looking games. From those screenshots, it is clear, to me at least, that Crysis beats Bioshock. Basically, in 2007 PC beat consoles. Why is this? Because console optimization wasn't enough to match advanced technology on the PC. Almost, but not quite. As the years go on, this starts to get a little bit more noticable, until today, where Crysis 2 beats Gears 3 by about 1.5x, in my eyes. So I speculate that consoles will not surpass the PC for the next generation, graphics-wise. Maybe for a while the games will look similar or even a little better, but I think history will repeat itself again. I'm mostly interested in seeing the poll results, so we can get a general consensus to look back on in a few years. I'm not trying to start a flame war or say that the PC is NUMBAH ONE AND BETTER THAN THE PLEBIAN CONSOLE RACE, because I don't think that. I'm just looking at it the way I see it, and trying to see if other people think that way too, or, if not, what they think will happen. What do you think, SW?
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