IGN talks PS3

[a688]

If your only reference point for video games is the current consoles, then they don't look dated.

If you have a middle spec PC, then the current crop of games still do not look dated.

If you are in the 1% minority of gamers that have monster PCs, then current console games look dated.

I have a fairly recent laptop, Pentium 4, 4MHz, 512mb, ATI MOBILITY RADEONâ„¢ X600 with 128 MB VRAM

It will run Half Life 2 on the middle settings, but the reality is that the game looks or plays no better than current console games. For the record I think HL2 is a 10/10 game experience, immense fun and pretty amazing.

But, I get dodgy framerates, horrendous pop-up, extremely long load times and graphics no better than something like Primal.

I'm no PC gamer, the only other game I have is Knights of the Old Republic. The graphics for games like MGS3, RE4 and Halo2 seem pretty amazing to me.

Easily better than Half-Life 2, but then I don't want to spend £1000 to get that game to look it's best, I've got a £200 console that does a perfectly good job.

I'm still convinced that I won't buy a next generation machine until 2008, I'm very happy with the current consoles and still have a lot of titles I'd like to complete before I move on.

Those PCs run games at a MUCH higher resolution than most console games though. I have a middle spec PC and console games DO look dated because of the limited (graphics) performances of every console. I'm also not sure why you are running a 4MHz laptop . Half-Life 2 looks a LOT better than any console game mainly because of the texture work which would most likely be impossible on todays consoles because of memory limitations. Also, you can apply a lot of Anti-aliasing and AF to older games to make them look a lot better depending on the game.

 

[Phil]

Call me what ever you want, but I would be very happy with playing my PS2 for another year if not more. Gran Turismo 4 looks amazing, even compared to current PC efforts - I really don't see the rush and all this talk about it being soooo dated. Seriously.

I still have no problem going back to some PSone games like Final Fantasy VII - IX even today.

Looking forward to Tekken 5, Final Fantasy XII and others... what more could I possibly want now? PS3 in 2006 is fine - Xbox360 late this year really doesn't interest me nor excite me in the least.

 

[London Geezer]

The real problem here is not that console games like RE4 look better than PC games because of unknown hardware limitations.
Games like Farcry, HL2, Painkiller at full settings look very very pleasing on the eye for many reasons, resolution, texture resolution, better surface effects thanks to pixel shaders, lighting in general, all together people who have experienced those games at highest settings (quite affordable today) will have a different standard of "good looks" in games compared to people who only play games on their TVs through consoles.

Sure RE4 and MGS3 look gorgeous, but it's obviously something that a PC capable of running Farcry at full settings can replicate easily, especially when you consider those games run at 640x480.

Console games look great because of the effort put behind them. Developers have closed platforms they can tweak their engines around.
PC games have to conform to a common lowest denominator as much as possible to ensure sales numbers are decent. PC engines are highly scalable, which is a good thing, but also prevents developers from coding specific effects. PC devs can't really "go crazy" like some do on console games (Zoe2, the Burnout games, RE4).

 

[j^aws]

^^ I have a backlogue of games I still want to get on all platforms and just no time to finish current games too...so no rush for me. But if B/C is present that improves existing games graphics then that would be a nice incentive.

 

[London Geezer]

^^ I have a backlogue of games I still want to get on all platforms and just no time to finish current games too...so no rush for me. But if B/C is present that improves existing games graphics then that would be a nice incentive.

Well, it's not like the day Xbox2/PS3/Rev are released, all Xbox/PS2/GC's will stop playing!
You'll be able to play all the old games you want, either on ur old console or on the new ones thanks to BC.
No one's holding anyone at gunpoint forcing them to only buy new games!

 

[Phil]

london-boy, I couldn't give a damn about fugly PC games with 100x the resolution, MHz, Memory and textures per frame if they are ugly to look at by art and not fun to play.

The experience sitting 2 inches in front of a monitor compared to a confortable living room is far different - why even compare with PC standards? Until PC gaming reaches the fun and entertainment factor of console games, it's just beating a dead horse.

 

[London Geezer]

london-boy, I couldn't give a damn about fugly PC games with 100x the resolution, MHz, Memory and textures per frame if they are ugly to look at by art and not fun to play.

Well then that's you. I never said i prefer that, i said many people will think like that.
Also, PC games dont look like crap artistically because they run on PC. The markets are different, and in the end i'd LOVE to see what some consoles' devs could do with today's GPUs. But i guess we'll just have to wait until the Xbox2 and the others.

The experience sitting 2 inches in front of a monitor compared to a confortable living room is far different - why even compare with PC standards? Until PC gaming reaches the fun and entertainment factor of console games, it's just beating a dead horse.

And i agree, i never mentioned the "experience" of playing consoles games as opposed to the yawning of playing PC games, all i'm saying is that they look vastly different from a purely cosmetic point of view, that's all.

 

[rabidrabbit]

Well, it's not like the day Xbox2/PS3/Rev are released, all Xbox/PS2/GC's will stop playing!

My PlayStation stopped playing some months before the PS3 was released, I was just able to finish FFIX before it started stuttering in fmv's, not putting it sideways helped either.
So, I'm expecting my PS2 to stop working sometime January 2006.

 

[London Geezer]

Well, it's not like the day Xbox2/PS3/Rev are released, all Xbox/PS2/GC's will stop playing!

My PlayStation stopped playing some months before the PS3 was released, I was just able to finish FFIX before it started stuttering in fmv's, not putting it sideways helped either.
So, I'm expecting my PS2 to stop working sometime January 2006.

Oh well... My PS2 won't read double layer DVDs, gets f**ked up when trying to access the second layer, so i'm just hoping Shadow of the Colossus and Tekken5 don't use DVD9...

 

[Lumine]

I'm a PC gamer, predominantly, and the problem I have with consoles (and I notice this most often on the Xbox games I play) is jaggies. In that respect I can't wait for the HD stuff to come out, so we'll see a little less of that. Anti Aliasing as an industry standard would be nice too.

I couldn't give a damn about fugly PC games with 100x the resolution, MHz, Memory and textures per frame if they are ugly to look at by art and not fun to play.

Did you intend that to be an oxymoron? I've been looking at that for about 5 minutes trying to forulate a response, but all I can figure you said was that you don't like to play bad games...

 

[a688]

london-boy, I couldn't give a damn about fugly PC games with 100x the resolution, MHz, Memory and textures per frame if they are ugly to look at by art and not fun to play.

The experience sitting 2 inches in front of a monitor compared to a confortable living room is far different - why even compare with PC standards? Until PC gaming reaches the fun and entertainment factor of console games, it's just beating a dead horse.

Well arn't you a (sony) console fan-boi to the worst degree. "Hay guys computers suck cause I'm retarded and don't have a valid argument.".

 

[BOOMEXPLODE]

IMO PS2 games still hold up reasonably well for right now. But PS3 is still over a year off, and a year from now PS2 games will seem very outdated indeed. That's around the time Unreal Engine 3 games will start showing up, for example. And of course Xenon will be out by then. So yeah it's too soon right now, but a year or so from right now it will be about time!

 

[Phil]

london-boy, I couldn't give a damn about fugly PC games with 100x the resolution, MHz, Memory and textures per frame if they are ugly to look at by art and not fun to play.

The experience sitting 2 inches in front of a monitor compared to a confortable living room is far different - why even compare with PC standards? Until PC gaming reaches the fun and entertainment factor of console games, it's just beating a dead horse.

Well arn't you a (sony) console fan-boi to the worst degree. "Hay guys computers suck cause I'm retarded and don't have a valid argument.".

it's one thing calling someone biased, another a fanboi - and then there's another, calling someone anything of the above when it's not even relevant to what the person said or the thread itself. Welcome to a thing called forums where opinions are expressed.

What personal insult are you going to throw at me next? :?

 

[sir doris]

I think it depends on the Genre of game, FPS alway looked a bit dated on the PS2 when compared to the PC. Even Xbox got Unreal championship (unreal or Unreal2 engine?) as PC got UT2003 and I think the frame rate was pretty dire by comparison. Strategy games also look much better in higher res.

However football games, these are always more 'impressive on a big TV'. A game like PES is all about fluidity and motion and here it excells. GT4 has also been mentioned. I can't think of any PC racing games which have come anywhere close to GT4 or 3 to think of it? PC racing games tend to look very flat and false when the resultion is crancked up. Even GTR looks quite flat and "computer generated". And again BIG TV wins every time. Although those 24" Dell widescreen LCDs would be acceptable

So overall I think it depends on the game and more often than not the genre. I'm sure anyone can pick a new game that looks great or dated it's just a metter that some games are better than others and some games suite the strengths of the consoles better than others

 

[Phil]

^^ that's about the way I see it too.

I read a few opinions at that IGN article and really don't see what people are bitching on about. IGN isn't a tech site by any stretch, naturally, the way they see things is much more in line with the way [tech] uninformed casuals see it. And then you got to wonder: how many of those console buyers out there are really that informed about specs and technical data or current software maxing out x console? All they care about is the software that's coming their way today and in the near future - does it really make sense to bring on next generation as quick as possible?

Of course, if you're Microsoft - it's easy to see the motives there, but honestly, why should the PlayStation/Nintendo supporter care about next generation just because Microsoft is making an insane loss on its hardware and market position and as a result wants to launch early because of that?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I've a medium spec PC - Athlon XP 2500, Ti4200 8x AGP, 1 Gb RAM. Though not a serious gamer I've seen few (mostly PRG) games that leave me unimpressed. Something like NWN. Visually it's comparable to BGA or CON on PS2 in terms of viewpoint, but there's no comparison as to which is better quality. NWN looks flat, lacks interesting lighting, lacks particles, etc. I've also seen screenshots of PC games like Dungeon Siege 2 which, though the same gamestyle as CON, isn't in the same league with the visuals. (as you can see, CON is a basis of much of my comparison as it's one of my preffered genres )

Alternatively, Crash Bandicoot racing on the PS2 stunk. It was jaggied to hell and didn't have any environment texuturing (reflection mapping) or any fancy effects. Similarly FFX, my current game, suffers jaggies the likes of which cause nasty serations needing several stitches.

I'd say there's life in the consoles yet, like Shadows of the Collosus and CON show, that the very maximum quality is only now being achieved. I've seen stuff to make normal PCs look simplistic, and I haven't yet seen a PC game without stutters. But I'm will be looking to new games. The current games have exhausted gameplay in my opinion. A driver is a driver, hack-'n'-slash, FPS...they're all the same. With more power comes more responsibility...I mean, more gameplay options. I won't get next gen at launch. Never would anyway. But certainly I'm looking forward to Collosus and Shining Force Neo still to come on PS2 and I reckon it'll tied me over with other releases until the next-gen offers something wirth the upgrading cost.

 

[cthellis42]

I still have no problem going back to some PSone games like Final Fantasy VII - IX even today.

FFVII?! No offense man, but there are just some things you shouldn't say.

I have real issues going back to first-generation 3D steps--all of them--as at this point they're like going back to play Atari 2600 games after experiencing all the best 2D has to offer. Nostalgia can help, but dammit if the low-res textures and blocky models don't make the games hard to absorb. -_-

I'd be happier going to new machines, but I could stand this generation's quality for a while longer. But PS1/N64/Saturn? No fuggin' way!

 

[jvd]

I love re4 but it looks like nothing compared to half life 2 .

Load up half life 2 even on a 5200ultra you can put on 2x fsaa . Play that for a few days and go to re4 and man it looks like a blurry mess .

 

[Legend]

Speaking purely about the style used:

This kind of writing is very lame. It doesn’t give any new info, Interviews, rumors, or anything else useful. It’s like someone typed A conversation between a bunch of friends.
I’m very disappointed at IGN For Showing such an amateur style.

On the other hand, The article titled “we’ve got next†by either gamespot or gamespy ( I don’t remember ). That article was written professionally. He summed up all the information released, rumors and possible speculations and guesses.

And why don’t they know some of the officially state expects about PS3 Like the use of blu-ray?

 

[pahcman]

for those complain about so call "pc look", u know, most if not all 3d card have video out...u can then get beloved "big tv console look"

...latest even have component hdtv support. any combi will display better 3d than console. pes4 pc tv out + ps2 pad adaptor + FREE online match up destroy all blurry console version.

buy a game pad, a wheel, a wireless kb/mouse if u have too.

so unless u have historic gfmx, pc games look superior to console port/genre as like how was mentioned, ps1/saturn times again, ps2 is by far closest to that description.

even xbox which still stands admirable against pc, the weak filtering and no aa, make games look lowres jaggies.