Xbox 360 graphics worse than PS3?

Overheal

gizmo wrote: »

The next generation will more than likely be moving in that direction alright and if they're designed that way from the ground up then fantastic. I just don't see the point in tacking on this functionality when it's next to useless compared to a fully featured PC-based browser.

For people who don't want to deal with Options?

DARK-KNIGHT

Overheal wrote: »

call me back when you drop a grand on a new PC :cool:

IM HAPPY WITH CONSOLES TBH i have a laptop which i paid 700 for so there lol was that like a brag i spent a grand on a pc ROISCH LOL

Overheal

That wasn't directed at you personally. But at the idea that you weren't getting your money's worth out of a €300 console.

DARK-KNIGHT

Overheal wrote: »

That wasn't directed at you personally. But at the idea that you weren't getting your money's worth out of a €300 console.

300 euro? i reckon on different consoles over the last 3 years i have spent ps3 release day - 679, replaced ylod 400 say an average of 20 or 25 games at average of 45 so 900 min, xbox 360 60 gb 279, replaced elite 299 and now slin model 225. at least 55 360 games at average 45 say again so say 2,475. wii and few games say 400, dsi xl and games say 300, psp release and games 400 so thats 6,357 and we will allow trades of 2 360s and few games of say 800. so 5,557 i reckon over last 3 years without retro consoles

so thats why im saying our hard earned money should push gaming on nevermind 1,000 euro i spent the guts of that on a decent laptop.

gizmo

Kaidan wrote: »

Thanks to the out of date consoles holding back the industry

Consoles aren't holding the industry back, if anything they're helping it flourish.

Overheal wrote: »

For people who don't want to deal with Options?

I don't understand the point you're trying to make? Do you mean it would be useless for people who don't want to deal with options?

Overheal

raycaulwell wrote: »

300 euro? i reckon on different consoles over the last 3 years i have spent ps3 release day - 679, replaced ylod 400 say an average of 20 or 25 games at average of 45 so 900 min, xbox 360 60 gb 279, replaced elite 299 and now slin model 225. at least 55 360 games at average 45 say again so say 2,475. wii and few games say 400, dsi xl and games say 300, psp release and games 400 so thats 6,357 and we will allow trades of 2 360s and few games of say 800. so 5,557 i reckon over last 3 years without retro consoles

so thats why im saying our hard earned money should push gaming on nevermind 1,000 euro i spent the guts of that on a decent laptop.

Again you've completely missed the Message. But perhaps we're talking on crossed-tangents.

But on that note, personally, I think it's the money that isn't spent on games that drives the industry forward. If everybody bought everything at the price asked, the market would be stagnant and full of Madden 2010s. Then again if a lot of people buy a very small number of titles and expect a competitive price, that generates the games we're looking for. Developers are then more pressed to keep innovating.

I don't understand the point you're trying to make? Do you mean it would be useless for people who don't want to deal with options?

The plug and play nature of consoles, phones, etc. compared to a PC. A fully featured PC browser like firefox for instance, I spent about 15 minutes setting the blasted thing up with flash, adblock plus, forecastbar, and so on. And IE - thats just shyte. Then if you want to really enjoy netflix you have to install its software, same for hulu... I can understand consoles and TVs pre-integrating all of that. I'm a gear-geek and even I hate these setup chores. 9 in 10 people never have the patience.

gizmo

Overheal wrote: »

The plug and play nature of consoles, phones, etc. compared to a PC. A fully featured PC browser like firefox for instance, I spent about 15 minutes setting the blasted thing up with flash, adblock plus, forecastbar, and so on. And IE - thats just shyte. Then if you want to really enjoy netflix you have to install its software, same for hulu... I can understand consoles and TVs pre-integrating all of that. I'm a gear-geek and even I hate these setup chores. 9 in 10 people never have the patience.

Actually what I can see happening first is a move to a more app-based hub for this kind of content rather than a web browser. Wired had an interesting, if exaggerated article recently about web traffic decreasing but traffic over the net via apps like these to be increasing. I suggest you give it a read as I believe it will be applying to consoles more and more in the future.

If you take a look at the 360 you have the Twitter, Facebook and Netflix apps and Hulu is on the way. On the PS3 side you have Netflix and Hulu too as well as BBC iPlayer over here. For the people you described above I'd consider these kinds of apps to be far more useful than a full web browser. One button press and presto, as Wired says "the screen comes to them, they don’t have to go to the screen".

CiDeRmAn

Its not about the visuals any more, the 360 is more than capable of equalling the PS3 performance, depends entirely on how lazy or devoted the dev is.
With 780p becoming the default HD setting for most consoles it seems much of the extra power is wasted anyway.
Also, more emphasis is coming to bear on gameplay, snazzy visuals no longer cut the mustard, so that's why I prefer Project Gotham games the Gran Turismo games.
Common development across a series of platforms and picking one as the common denominator also means that extra features of a given machine are left in the dust as well.
Not to mention the fact that the brute force of the cpu or even gpu is no longer as important as how the machine handles code, getting around bottlenecks and using the available resources well means that the lesser of two machines could, in fact, be the one that gets the better results, Bioshock on 360 looked better than the PS3 version.
Valve didn't like the PS3 for ages, Orange Box and the recent surprise announcement of Portal 2 altering that position slightly perhaps.

So, really, for all intents and purposes, the two lead machines have comparable graphics, and so it will be until the 360 is replaced or the PS3 gets lots of 1st party content that takes particular advantage of the machines talents.

jaykhunter

God-dammit, this thread has been successfully hijacked into a "let's harangue console users about gaming on a PC" thread

Back on topic, yes it's been said before, it really depends on the game. I have both, and am annoyed that the PS3's 2 teraflops don't smoke the 360 in terms of graphics. Maybe the differences in hardware (and various limitations) become more apparent in 5 years but we might just have new consoles by then....

Retr0gamer

jaykhunter wrote: »

Back on topic, yes it's been said before, it really depends on the game. I have both, and am annoyed that the PS3's 2 teraflops don't smoke the 360 in terms of graphics. Maybe the differences in hardware (and various limitations) become more apparent in 5 years but we might just have new consoles by then....

Newsflash the PS3 isn't much more powerful than the 360 and is full of so many bottlenecks that it's about the same.

jaykhunter

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Newsflash the PS3 isn't much more powerful than the 360 and is full of so many bottlenecks that it's about the same.

I read your initial post (which was great, mind you) but i read everything combined, PS3 outputted 2 teraflops while the 360 did 1. What's the deal with the starting price point being so expensive if they're roughly the same??

DARK-KNIGHT

jaykhunter wrote: »

I read your initial post (which was great, mind you) but i read everything combined, PS3 outputted 2 teraflops while the 360 did 1. What's the deal with the starting price point being so expensive if they're roughly the same??

maybe thats why psn is free? or how about the fact that it has a bluray player? the consoles are both good i think the 360 is just a better gaming product apart from a few ps3 exclusives

Retr0gamer

jaykhunter wrote: »

I read your initial post (which was great, mind you) but i read everything combined, PS3 outputted 2 teraflops while the 360 did 1. What's the deal with the starting price point being so expensive if they're roughly the same??

Where did you get those values, they seem made up to me or from an unreliable source? You can't just base the preformance on 'teraflops'. There's plenty of other factors, who much ram there is and access speeds and how much strain the GPU takes off the CPU. The GPU is really important. Sony has a great CPU with the cell but when they throw in an outdated off the shelf GPU which the RSX with a video ram bottleneck then a lot more strain is put on the CPU to match 360 performance and negates the advantages of the Cell. The 360 uses off the self power PC cores for it's processors but it's GPU hardware is far more effective than the PS3's.

As for the massive difference in price I can only imagine it's because there was a lot of R&D money put into cell and Blu-ray and they needed to recoup that as well as Blu Ray drives at the time being very expensive. Sony dropped a lot of features from the slim to keep the price down and Blu ray drive prices dropped massively.

jaykhunter

lol, i got it from the Guinness book of world records Gaming Edition. i dunno all of the technical jargon but that word stuck out to me (2 > 1 teraflops) Odd to think that PS3s have gotten 300 euros cheaper to produce/sell!

Thinking about costs of PS3s, including 70 euros for PSN and ~100 for a bluray drive, maybe it (the initial price of 600) was all R&D. Those USB slots and multimedia card reader can't be too expensive!

Grumpypants

Teraflop

Retr0gamer

The Ps3 launch was 3000 terafails.

satchmo

Just like you can't compare two different games to compare hardware, you can't take a single cross-platform game and compare visuals to determine which is capable of better graphics - there are a lot more factors involved than simple raw horsepower.

It's undeniable that the RSX is less powerful than the 360's GPU, just like the Cell has more power than the Xenon. However when it comes to development, how accessible the hardware is makes almost as much of a difference as the performance it's capable of. A 6-core symmetric processor like the Xenon is well-understood, and developers knew what to expect and how to handle it. Microsoft concentrated on the right things - documentation & tools - and along with the familiar development environment of Visual Studio, definitely gave them the edge when it came to helping the developers get over the new hardware and get to the important part... making games.

In comparison, the PS3 was at a disadvantage before it was even released. A new architecture like the Cell, while having lots of potential, took some getting used to. Documentation was thin on the ground, and the tools were, for a better word, lacking. With such tight schedules, I strongly suspect many developers simply focused on getting the game done, assuming they could optimize the PS3 at the end. But with such a different architecture (including the stricter memory requirements on PS3 - it has the same amount of memory, but in a less flexible model), this isn't always possible and I'm sure a lot of projects have been badly delayed based on this assumption. Many of the first wave (and even second wave) of PS3 games barely used any SPUs. Thankfully, Sony have stepped up and documentation & tools have improved a helluva lot. Developers have learned how to cope with the Cell architecture and use it to their advantage.

These are the main reasons that we are now seeing games released that look almost identical on each platform. Like I said above, any difference in quality is largely due to choices made by the developer and not due to a specific hardware difference. The PS3 is just as capable as the 360 at doing deferred rendering. The PS3's hardware antialiasing looks practically identical to the 360's hardware antialiasing. It just depends where you want to spend your budget.

I think that, ultimately, the PS3 is more capable of producing a better-looking game thanks to the extra horsepower available from the SPUs. But for cross-platform games.... you can spend months developing the most amazing SPU-based lighting model, but you've just spent months on a feature that isn't doing anything for your 360 version, and now you need to maintain two different lighting models. The vast majority of developers don't see that as a win, so they won't do it. Therefore I think that it's only first party games that will continue to look better and better towards the end of the hardware's life cycle - God of War III is a perfect example of this.

daveharnett

Well done folks. This is the first thread of this kind i've seen which hasn't been consumed utterly by "my console is better than your console" bullsh*t.

This round of the console was has been interesting though. Wii seems to have won the battle in terms of cash, but I think sony have made more progress in terms of the war - they have come close to the XBox in terms of sales, their console has allowed them to win the (last?) format war, and had paid for (their portion of) the development of the cell, which will be useful in lots of their products into the future.

Microsoft still seem to be the kings on the software side though (apart from the awful media UI) - the most popular development environment, and XBox live seems to be miles ahead of the opposition.

Retr0gamer

I think you've got it all wrong. Sony are in a very precarious position at the moment. From completely dominating the last 2 generations they have gone on to be the runner up and only really attained that position very recently with the launch of the slim. MS have gained a lot of ground in this generation with a very strong showing and the xbox is now a household name instead of a niche console. Sony have also failed to keep up with the DS juggernaut which despite getting a hadcore following in japan from monster hunter fans is just being totally left behind by the DS. The 3DS is just going to seal Nintendos grip on the handheld market. Sony cell processor won't be used by other companies and hasn't been taken up like sony hoped. Power PC based multicore processors are the way forward and cell hasn't left Sony anything except a big hole in their R&D budget. They really messed up with a product that was way too expensive and a terrible line up of exclusives or lack thereof. They have managed to improve things recently and I feel the PS3 now has the advantage in exclusives. If it wasn't for the PS3 being uncontested in japan and the Sony bias of a lot of european countries we'd be seeing Sony in 3rd place.

Nintendo have also been left in a verydangerous position. They have gotten their household name back with the success of the DS and Wii and if they can launch a well supported and powerful system that attracts hardcore gamers MS and Sony will see a big slice of their market share evaporate.

gizmo

Retr0gamer wrote: »

They have managed to improve things recently and I feel the PS3 now has the advantage in exclusives. If it wasn't for the PS3 being uncontested in japan and the Sony bias of a lot of european countries we'd be seeing Sony in 3rd place.

But they are still in third place worldwide...

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Nintendo have also been left in a verydangerous position. They have gotten their household name back with the success of the DS and Wii and if they can launch a well supported and powerful system that attracts hardcore gamers MS and Sony will see a big slice of their market share evaporate.

Maintaining that balance would be extremely tricky though and they run the risk of turning off casual gamers and only gaining a small share of the hardcore audience. With the success they've had with their current approach I think they'll more than likely going to follow a similar route but just push their first party titles earlier. Their reception at E3 shows that they need to do very little to placate that particular audience.

Retr0gamer

Well I think this years E3 showed a return of the old Nintendo showing a whole slew of the type of games that gamers really wanted. Definitely stole the show for me. If they can release their next console with a mario, zelda or other big franchise game but this time keep the first party releases coming and make it attractive to 3rd parties they could be on to a very big winner.

I thought Sony had recently overtaken the 360?

gizmo

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Well I think this years E3 showed a return of the old Nintendo showing a whole slew of the type of games that gamers really wanted. Definitely stole the show for me. If they can release their next console with a mario, zelda or other big franchise game but this time keep the first party releases coming and make it attractive to 3rd parties they could be on to a very big winner.

Completely agree, the only thing that surprises me is why they didn't release these games earlier. They wouldn't have affected the casual audience and they certainly would have restored the hardcore's faith in the console. Not only that but it would certainly have helped them avoid the slump they faced over the last year.

Retr0gamer wrote: »

I thought Sony had recently overtaken the 360?

Nope, the 360 is still ahead by about 5m consoles worldwide. What you probably heard was the PS3 overtaking 360 sales in the US a few months back but that has returned to normal since then, even more so with the release of the new SKU.

WolfForager

If you look at the major releases of Red Dead Redemption and the new NFL game in the US, 360 Vs Ps3 sales are very similar.

dreamers75

This round is Nintendos but as a gamer i think for all the wrong reasons and i am partially to blame for it The GC was far better than the PS2 but marketted badly ie not as much.

Wii created a new market in gaming and ubisoft have released 576 games in the last 3 weeks into it, all party games. Now Mario is easier and Zelda will be toned down for the people who bought all 576 games in the last 3 weeks.

Ps3 suffered from a poorly designed Xbox being launched before it and Msft selling the **** out of it.

Now Sony are left with clearly the better machine(ala GC) but noone capable of making a game to show it off as the market is either FPS on xbox or party games on Wii.

Gt5 is becoming Duke Nukemesque at this stage now looks like you will control better than real life replays of actual races in real places.

Xbox without the US would be the dreamcast in all this and left for dead but sheer marketting power and america **** yeah spirit and they would be screwed.

Strange how places have changed and opinions on games and such have changed simply because you can control a game with the flick of your hand.

/hugs pc

Overheal

Has nintendo ever really been ahead of the console curve in terms of hardware? Not terribly, no. They dont market themselves that way. It's perfectly fine.

gizmo

WolfForager wrote: »

If you look at the major releases of Red Dead Redemption and the new NFL game in the US, 360 Vs Ps3 sales are very similar.

Kind of, Red Dead sold 3m copies on the 360 world wide and 2.38m on the PS3. Of those figures, in the US the breakdown was 1.85m (360) and 1.15m (PS3). In terms of Madden NFL '10, it sold 2.55m on the 360 and 2.02m on the PS3. Of those sales, it broke down to 2.46m (360) in the US and 1.93m (PS3).

Those kinds of figures are pretty much in line for what you'd expect for two platforms which are only 5m sales apart having sold 42.3m and 37m units respectively worldwide, 24.4m and 14.7m of which were in the US. If you took a game which would appeal to the Japanese demographic then the 15m unit lead the PS3 has in that region would show more in the software figures.

As for the 360 pulling a Dreamcast without the US, well the above figures show that to not be true. It would be trailing the PS3 and probably be in the position most people thought it would be at the start of this generation especially considering the last generation.

Overheal wrote: »

Has nintendo ever really been ahead of the console curve in terms of hardware? Not terribly, no. They dont market themselves that way. It's perfectly fine.

Outside of the faster CPU found in the Mega Drive, the SNES pretty much killed the MD in terms of hardware. Even more so thanks to the introduction of the SuperFX chip and the fantastic use of Mode 7 in some of it's best titles.

Retr0gamer

Nintendo have always only ever released a console when it was profitable. The SNES was more powerful than the megadrive in ways but you have to remember it came out 2 years after the megadrive and was outdated technology when it arrived. It had mode 7 and better colours and hardware transparencies but the CPU wasn't just out performed by the Megadrive CPU, it was woefully underpowered. It used a processor that could be backwards compatible with NES games but this was dropped at the last minute. It ended up with a processor that was only slightly faster than the master systems. Just take a look at 1989's Neo Geo platform to see how far behind the snes was.

The same with the N64 which on paper was morepowerful than the PS1 but had someflaws that really held it back such as having no hardware sound support, cartridges and the frankly ridiculous 4kb texture cache limit per polygon.

The GC was a far better machine than the PS2 but it came out about 18 months after it based on off the shelf components. However it was far less powerful than the Xbox which came out at the same time and was a loss leader unlike the profitable GC. It did however excel in volumetrically lit fur shaders. So I'd argue that they have never been ahead of the technology curve and it's been their philosophy since they began with the NES.

Starfox is a funny one because in this case Nintendo were way ahead of the curve. Starfox is the first example of video hardware acceleration in games which would lead to GPU development.

K.O.Kiki

I love Nintendo's approach to hardware design -- using old-but-tested components in interesting ways and selling at a profit lets them do experiments without large risk.

So if it "fails" (Virtual Boy) it is a small reputation dent, and a tiny loss in money.
If it succeeds (e.g. DS), they make billions.

This is called "good business sense".