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[pswii60]

QFT. The Ps3 is notably more difficult to take advantage of than the 360. This comparison makes as much sense as looking at Ps2 vs. Dreamcast 2 months after launch and declaring a winner based on available games.

Sony and developers have said that the PS3 is actually a lot easier to take advantage of than the PS2. And 360 wasn't easy in its first year - Xenos is notably more difficult to 'take advantage of' than the RSX due to its new methods of working and unified shaders. Also, developers have been getting their heads around multi-threading, using the three cores and 'in-order' coding.

Gears of War is an obvious example of how hard 360 development must have been for the last year because absolutely no other game on the platform even comes slightly close to looking like it. Hell, even what we've seen of Halo 3 and most of the 2007 line-up doesn't.


In the end it is inevitable that PS3 will look a bit better but the 360 still has a hell of a way to go in the graphics dept, just like the PS3 does.

 

[Dr_Cogent]

It really is BS that we don't have a larger HD to buy for the 360. The 20 gig should drop in price and a 60 gig should be 100 bucks, or something similar.

 

[speculawyer]

It proves that the lack of scaler in the PS3 is a major problem because games developed at 720P that play on a 1080P tv set--remember it was Sony beating the 1080P drum--look better on the 360. If folks who own a 1080P tv think the PS3 is the best choice given that resolution, they've been misinformed.

You can't really make blanket statements like that . . . things depend heavily on the game. If the game is actually rendered in 1080p, the PS3 might do a better job since the PS3 has (in theory) more horsepower. However, it really remains to be seen whether developers will be able to take advantage of this power.

Are ANY games rendered in 1080p natively yet? By what I understand, most of the games are not pushing the limits. Much has been said about how PGR is just 1024x600 upscaled to 1280x720.

 

[soul creator]

It's not a reasonable decision, since it's limiting what's possible with live arcade. The existence of the core is PRECISELY why you won't be seeing 500meg downloads like Tekken: dark ressurrection on live anytime soon.

The core is also breaking backwards compatability- it's not a priority for microsoft because no core users can take advantage of it. if EVERYONE had a hard drive and the ability to run back-compat software, I GUARANTEE things that SHOULD be playable but arent yet (Panzer dragoon I'm looking at you) would be up and running.

Users without hard drives can't even make use full use of the TV episode downloads etc, since they're simply too large for a mem card. There you go, fragmenting your market for no good reason.

I also suspect load times would be shorter since everyone would be optimizing for the hard drive, but I have no proof of this, so you can toss it in the "speculation" bin. reasons 1, 2, and 3 are good enough for me.


QFT. The Ps3 is notably more difficult to take advantage of than the 360. This comparison makes as much sense as looking at Ps2 vs. Dreamcast 2 months after launch and declaring a winner based on available games.

MS could easily reverse their live arcade policy, even with the existence of the memory card/core system. Obviously they have plenty of other downloadable content available that is much larger than 50MB, so there's nothing necessarily stopping them from removing the XBLA limit. The current limit is mostly a philosophical one ("take a game to your friends house! XBLA games should be short bite-sized experiences") rather than a hardware issue.

And even if every system had a hard drive, it's not like BC becomes super trivial all of a sudden. They'd still have to write the emulator for it. And honestly, the only people who worry about Panzer Dragoon Orta being compatible are probably already hardcore Xbox fans...and hardcore Xbox fans will own the 360 hard drive, so I don't see how the core system has anything to do with PDO not working on the 360. I'd love for PDO to be compatible too, but I'm not gonna pretend like game set the world on fire.

And once again, if you're the person who's looking to download TV shows on your game console, you'll just buy the hard drive anyway. It's not like if you buy a core system, you're stuck forever with no hard drive. If you buy a core system, you're obviously not interested in massive downloads so why would it even matter to them? And the load time thing is probably the only somewhat valid point...but some developers still take advantage of it sometimes so I wouldn't call it a "super critical" issue.

The 360 hard drive has waaaaay more content and support than the Xbox hard drive, so I don't see how the lack of standardization has really hurt it that badly.

 

[speculawyer]

It seems pretty defensive for MS to be saying 'graphics are a wash' already. The best they can come up with is that 360 multiplatform games might not look any worse than PS3?

'graphics are a wash' is a huge win for MSFT. The PS3 was hyped up as the uber machine (with a price tag to match). If the games look the same on the two systems, why not buy the one that is cheaper and has a much larger game library?

 

[pswii60]

Having thought about it, the most likely reason for the 360 to be not capable for any digital output (HDMI, DVI etc) is because of Ana. It most likely scales up and down in analogue fashion.

 

[jarrod]

QFT. The Ps3 is notably more difficult to take advantage of than the 360. This comparison makes as much sense as looking at Ps2 vs. Dreamcast 2 months after launch and declaring a winner based on available games.

Well... except DC hardware predated PS2 by over a year and had half the main memory. I don't think that comparison really works, no matter how many times certain sectors like to trot it out...

 

[h1nch]

In the end it is inevitable that PS3 will look a bit better but the 360 still has a hell of a way to go in the graphics dept, just like the PS3 does.

i dunno

there hasn't been anything shown as far as upcoming games, tech demo or otherwise that doesn't look like it could be done on the 360 just as easily, and vice versa.

imo if there is a slight advantage in ps3 graphical quality, it will be an even smaller gap than xbox-ps2, which will make it pretty much meaningless.

 

[Pseudo judo]

It proves that the lack of scaler in the PS3 is a major problem because games developed at 720P that play on a 1080P tv set--remember it was Sony beating the 1080P drum--look better on the 360. If folks who own a 1080P tv think the PS3 is the best choice given that resolution, they've been misinformed.

You can't really make blanket statements like that . . . things depend heavily on the game. If the game is actually rendered in 1080p, the PS3 might do a better job since the PS3 has (in theory) more horsepower. However, it really remains to be seen whether developers will be able to take advantage of this power.

I was making reference to 720P games on a 1080P set. There was no mention in my post about native 1080P games at all.

 

[RavenFox]

You can't really make blanket statements like that . . . things depend heavily on the game. If the game is actually rendered in 1080p, the PS3 might do a better job since the PS3 has (in theory) more horsepower. However, it really remains to be seen whether developers will be able to take advantage of this power.

Are ANY games rendered in 1080p natively yet? By what I understand, most of the games are not pushing the limits. Much has been said about how PGR is just 1024x600 upscaled to 1280x720.

Ridge Racer 7 & NBA 07 are two launch titles that render natively 1080p @ 60fps. You cannot have the frames any less. Also Lair will natively support 1080p and Im sure more are to come.

 

[krypt0nian]

It really is BS that we don't have a larger HD to buy for the 360. The 20 gig should drop in price and a 60 gig should be 100 bucks, or something similar.

Amen!

 

[ypo]

"Well... except DC hardware predated PS2 by over a year and had half the main memory. I don't think that comparison really works, no matter how many times certain sectors like to trot it out..."

Well good thing you have forgotten about the the DC having 2x the "VRAM" and how better texture was also the crux of Sega fanboy's arguments.

 

[sonycowboy]

Are ANY games rendered in 1080p natively yet? By what I understand, most of the games are not pushing the limits. Much has been said about how PGR is just 1024x600 upscaled to 1280x720.

Ridge Racer 7, NBA 07, Marvel Ultimate Alliance, GTHD (Demo), Cash whatever (PSN),

and there are quite a few coming

 

[Manmademan]

But MS could produce a 1Gb memory card whenever they wanted too as well. If they did that and it was reasonably priced, they could make large XBLA games without too many people complaining.

That's not the point. The reason why the core is busted is because even WITH a larger mem card, there are still a large number of consumers running around with just the basic- you can't assume people are going to upgrade. (especially with the HORRIBLE attach rates for console add-ons...) A 1 gig or 2 gig card isn't any more significant to the marketplace than the add on 20 gig is.

Well... except DC hardware predated PS2 by over a year and had half the main memory. I don't think that comparison really works, no matter how many times certain sectors like to trot it out...

were you gaming then? DC games at the PS2 launch were equivalent to and in some cases SUBSTANTIALLY better than the games Ps2 had at launch. Also: yes there was less main ram, but more video ram AND it had VGA-out. Where have I heard this before....hmmm....

 

[Klocker]

Well... except DC hardware predated PS2 by over a year and had half the main memory. I don't think that comparison really works, no matter how many times certain sectors like to trot it out...

exactly

that comparison is old and rotting IMO

these systems are as close as close can be with each having its relative strengths. Comparing the fluke of launch IQ between DC and PS2 to our current situation is reaching.... hard.

 

[plagiarize]

were you gaming then? DC games at the PS2 launch were equivalent to and in some cases SUBSTANTIALLY better than the games Ps2 had at launch. Also: yes there was less main ram, but more video ram AND it had VGA-out. Where have I heard this before....hmmm....

while you are right that DC games looked better than ps2 games did at launch, that in no way remotely proves that this is a repeat of that. people keep bringing this up, in the hope i guess that things will improve as much as they did in ps2/dreamcast comparisons, but there's really no way of knowing.

last gen, both the cube and the xbox looked better out of the gate and remained looking better for the course of the entire generation. we were promised a system that would herald the real start of the next generation... not a system that in time might start looking better than the one we already have.

i wonder what dreamcast games would have looked like in 2005 if the system hadn't failed. i wonder how big the gap between them and the ps2 would be. obviously when we look at a 2005 ps2 game the dreamcast titles don't remotely compare, but we don't know how big that gap would have been had the system not failed. as they say, when sony are on their second generation titles, they'll be on their third. it's more a question of how far away from maxing out the 360 developers are. we don't know... but i think it's fair to say that we haven't got their yet.

i don't disagree with the opening article on this thread... nor the bolded points... though you should have bolded the 'i'm buying a bravia' bit.

 

[jarrod]

were you gaming then? DC games at the PS2 launch were equivalent to and in some cases SUBSTANTIALLY better than the games Ps2 had at launch. Also: yes there was less main ram, but more video ram AND it had VGA-out. Where have I heard this before....hmmm....

Honey, I've been gaming since I could walk. Actually, I once "ran away" to the Pizza Hut down the street to play Galaga when I was four. :lol

And DC had roughly a third less total RAM than PS2... that situation's in no way equivalent to the PS3/360 dynamic. I'm constantly tickled by the variety of ways and burning frequency in which the Sonycorps try to equate them though.

 

[Manmademan]

Honey, I've been gaming since I could walk. Actually, I once "ran away" to the Pizza Hut down the street to play Galaga when I was four. :lol

And DC had roughly a third less total RAM than PS2... that situation's in no way equivalent to the PS3/360 dynamic. I'm constantly tickled by the variety of ways and burning frequency in which the Sonycorps try to equate them though.

eh, no. The DC had 16 megs of main RAM, with another 8 megs dedicated to video and 2 megs for audio (?) for a total of 26.

The Ps2 had 32 Megs of main ram with another 4 megs of RAM embedded into the GS for Video purposes.

The Ps2 has more total RAM but the gap between the two isn't as big as you think it is.

Until programmers got a handle on the Ps2, a lot of games were treating the Ps2 as if it only had 4 megs of video ram. Launch games like Orphen and Summoner were nowhere near as nice looking as DC games like Jet Set Radio and Soul Calibur. Remember how long it took for PS2 games to get Antialiasing right, while DC games had it right off the bat?

while you are right that DC games looked better than ps2 games did at launch, that in no way remotely proves that this is a repeat of that. people keep bringing this up, in the hope i guess that things will improve as much as they did in ps2/dreamcast comparisons, but there's really no way of knowing.

In no way am I saying Ps3/360 is a repeat of DC/Ps2- the systems are a lot closer in terms of system specs this time. What i AM saying is that it's far too premature to declare the graphics "a draw" 2 months into the launch.

 

[jarrod]

The Ps2 has more total RAM but the gap between the two isn't as big as you think it is.

So the difference between 24 and 36 is roughly what then? :lol

In no way am I saying Ps3/360 is a repeat of DC/Ps2- the systems are a lot closer in terms of system specs this time. What i AM saying is that it's far too premature to declare the graphics "a draw" 2 months into the launch.

Well, that's certainly legitamite... but you'd have gotten a better response had you not used such a grossly inappropriate analogy. Any Dreamcast comparisons are going to be inherently tinted with the implication of failure at some level, best not to even broach it really.

 

[Manmademan]

So the difference between 24 and 36 is roughly what then? :lol



Well, that's certainly legitamite... but you'd have gotten a better response had you not used such a grossly inappropriate analogy. Any Dreamcast comparisons are going to be inherently tinted with the implication of failure at some level, best not to even broach it really.

my point in making the ram comparisons was while in a purely numbers sense the DC did have a third less ram, it had twice the amount the ps2 did available to dedicate to video (edit: as well as hardware AA?). It wasn't a simple "x console has more ram than y console" comparison.

The DC's failure had nothing to do with the capability of the hardware. SEGA was bleeding money for the wrong reasons. the hardware itself was fine, and likely would have sold more than the Xbox or GC, given time.

 

[JB1981]

How in the hell did they hook up a 360 into the bravia using VGA. Do Bravia's have VGA inputs or are they using some sort of converter. IF it does, I really need to look into getting a bravia. Also that was an excellent read. Im glad someone got into MS ass about the hard drive and the market place. I wish he would have gotten on them about the live arcade dl size as well but that was a really good read.

As an owner of both systems, The PS3 is a mess for the average joe and anyone who buys one will eventual find out how not having a scaler effects their viewing. A lot of people on GAF dismiss this as growing pains but for early (non-fanboy) adopters this is a big issue.

El ( I wont even talk about the lack of rumble)

The XBR 2 flat panel Bravia's do 1920x1080 @ 1:1 pixel mapping over VGA. So yeah, that's how they did that.

 

[Burai]

It really is BS that we don't have a larger HD to buy for the 360. The 20 gig should drop in price and a 60 gig should be 100 bucks, or something similar.

No need.

[Microsoft Rep]You don't need a bigger drive cos you can just delete stuff.

That actually makes the drive Infinity GB and makes the PS3's paltry 20 GB and 60 GB drives look pathetic in comparison.[/Microsoft Rep]

 

[plagiarize]

No need.

[Microsoft Rep]You don't need a bigger drive cos you can just delete stuff.

That actually makes the drive Infinity GB and makes the PS3's paltry 20 GB and 60 GB drives look pathetic in comparison.[/Microsoft Rep]

well, this isn't spin, but i can't be the only person who finds 20 Gigs plenty. i'm totally planning on getting a ps3 with a 20 gig harddrive.

 

[Manmademan]

well, this isn't spin, but i can't be the only person who finds 20 Gigs plenty. i'm totally planning on getting a ps3 with a 20 gig harddrive.

you don't have the full use of the 360 HD. Several gigs are blocked off for backward compatability reasons. Don't quote me (as I admittedly don't own one) but I've heard it quoted as being closer to 12 or 13 gigs of usable space.

edit: just checked. some is reserved for caching, some for backwards compatability profiles.

If you're downloading lots of media, this is going to go fast.

 

[Mrbob]

I'm not trying to make excuses for Sony, but I believe one of the reasons MS could use a scaler is the system only has an analog output, with an analog scaler. With HDMI on PS3, Sony would have had to use a digital scaler which would cost much more money.

The moral of this story?

Sony probably should have thought harder about putting Blu Ray in their system if they weren't going to include a scaler chip. Hopefully Sony finds a way around this issue.

On the MS side, yes the hdd is way too small. And I want to see how MS plans on having existing premium owners replace hdds without losing data. Hopefully there is an external HDD you can buy that will allow you to store movie and tv content while keeping your existing 20GB hdd. If the hdd has to attach to the system, it better be 100GB+ (available space) and it better be at $99.99 or less. If they try to charge $149.99 or more for a proprietary 100GB hdd MS can go **** themselves, and I'll take that money and put it towards a replacement hdd for the PS3 I'm getting down the road. As much as some of these Sony issues annoy me, I think they have their head on straight with regards to online content pricing. Sony will have movies and TV shows available too, and their online content pricing is already better than what MS has to offer, which I expect will extend to tv shows and movies too. Plus I can go buy any 2.5" hdd I want for more storage. I have no qualms giving Sony money I would normally have given to MS had they not screwed up the hdd issue.

 

[soul creator]

all MS really has to do to transfer content is include a memory card with new hard drives. The only real "critical" thing I would need to move over are savegames. Everything else that I really wanted to keep can just be queued up and redownloaded to the new drive.

 

[Blimblim]

As far as I know there is no such thing as a truly totally analog scaler. Somewhere inside the chip the signal is treated digitally and then the output is conveted to analog. My guess is that the first version of that chip was designed only with analog output in mind, and the next version will have digital too. Time will tell.

 

[PantherLotus]

Great read. Unbelievably, I knew what he was talking about the entire time, not a small feat for a non-videophile. I could have done without the bolding in the OP, as I think the greater statements were left unbolded.

Still, good thread.

 

[plagiarize]

you don't have the full use of the 360 HD. Several gigs are blocked off for backward compatability reasons. Don't quote me (as I admittedly don't own one) but I've heard it quoted as being closer to 12 or 13 gigs of usable space.

edit: just checked. some is reserved for caching, some for backwards compatability profiles.

If you're downloading lots of media, this is going to go fast.

yes. i know all this. what i'm saying is simple. i have had an xbox 360 since launch. i have never had space problems with the hard drive. as such, i plan on saving myself some money when i buy a ps3 this year and getting the 20 gig version.

i can't be the only person who this is true for. i'm not saying i'm the majority or whatever, i'm just saying, i really can't be the only person who finds 20 gigs ample space.

 

[Wolffen]

As far as I know there is no such thing as a truly totally analog scaler. Somewhere inside the chip the signal is treated digitally and then the output is conveted to analog. My guess is that the first version of that chip was designed only with analog output in mind, and the next version will have digital too. Time will tell.

Great point, Blim. The only question I have in that regard is this: does a digital pass-through satisfy the needs for HDMI, or does the chip have to do more to secure the digital signal before passing it as HDMI (as far as movies go)? I've got little to no clue about the requirements of the HDMI standard.

MS has a very, very easy way of increasing their HDD storage: USB. They just have to agree to open up the USB ports and make them read/write instead of read-only for non-MS approved devices. I'm sure there are at least 3 different reasons for not doing that, though; (1) They make a ton of money on HDDs sold as accessories. (2) Existing contract agreement with Seagate (who supplies the HDDs to MS) probably prevents MS from allowing a replacement to the drive for a certain # of years. (3) Security. Once you can put Xbox360 data (movie downloads, DLC, XBLA games, themes) onto an external device, you can then hack that data, possibly leading to hacked game saves that allow cheating or worse on XBL, piracy, and whatnot. (I realize that the X-Sata provides this to some extent, but it's use is limited right now, compared to grabbing any off the shelf external USB memory device).

I'm anxious to see a larger hard drive myself, as I won't be partaking in any of the movie/tv downloads until I can attach a larger drive. Gotta save space for the Halo 3 Beta, and the new Halo 2 maps this spring!

 

[Dr_Cogent]

I'm not trying to make excuses for Sony, but I believe one of the reasons MS could use a scaler is the system only has an analog output, with an analog scaler. With HDMI on PS3, Sony would have had to use a digital scaler which would cost much more money.

Uhhh, I'm willing to bet it's not scaling anything analog. I would be confident that it's all digital.

 

[Quagm1r3]

Yeah good read.

After reading this article I think Microsoft took the better approach by making the HD DVD player separate from the system to keep the console price down, unlike Sony who came out with the very pricy PS3 that came with a feature that most people don't even know about, let alone care about. And after Sony's crappy launch, I think it's clear who won the console wars. Wii60 FTW! :lol

 

[Quagm1r3]

The MS guys seem very sure of themselves in terms of what they have that makes them so much better than the rest but it does seem as if they forget the average consumer thinks Playstation > Xbox

After Halo 2, I don't know if that statement is completely true.

 

[Bildi]

crap and I did a serch too, sorry.

It happens, but is it so hard to search for "Ars Technica"?

Thanks for bolding though.

 

[santouras]

anyone else remember the days when consoles only outputted in one resolution, there was no such thing as internet connectivity or built in hard drives? Ah, the simpler days.......