If the car model is the same as the one in
this paper (i think it is?), without the ambient occlusion, then I'd say it's probably better looking than GT:HD
It is probably overkill in terms of geometric complexity, but I don't think the point was to be artistically/visually efficient about it. I guess the point of this demo was how quickly they managed to network some PS3s together toward a task.
I would like to see what a single PS3 can do, and as you suggest, with that geometric complexity spread out over a scene (the urban environment in the OP might be suitable in that regard - 3m polys in that scene, but obviously a spatially much larger model). If you can get the same performance with the same number of polys composed arbitrarily, then I'm sure there are artists who would make better use of that budget than ploughing them all into a single car model
