Is PS2 more powerfull than GCN?

The GC/Xbox is like starting a fire with Napalm, the PS2 is like starting a fire with a box of Strike-Anywheres in the Arctic. While the former may look more impressive, it takes a lot more time and effort for the latter, and given the circumstances, it's usually more appreciated too :D
 
PS2 isnt even more powerful than the DC..

Bwhahahahahaha, yeah right!!! PS2 has games with ingame models(some enemies, most likely) up to 20K polys at solid 60fps with two players at da same time.... yes that's what i've heard the beloved SoulCalibur used for the whole game....

If we go into an IQ contest sure many of the ps2 games have bad IQ... but if u go for the top SRII, BG:DA, etc... u get to see that.... the shimmaton and aliasing and massive pop-up of some DC games, goes even lower than most ps2 stuff, and when we get to the top the ps2 just wins.... games like Burnout2, Two towers, etc... DC just doesn't stand a chance....


Even the design of the casing was criticised.
if i didn't know the specs, and hadn't seen games on all three consoles... just basing the power of the console on the looks of the casing.... i'd say the most powerful console(based on looks) is the ps2.... i mean the xbox looks big and clunky like something from the 90s... the cube looks like a toy... but the ps2 looks like something from this decade... it has a very techie like look.

The PS2 is a weaker platform technologically, even PS2 developers readily say that all the time, just live with it ok and stop making excuses.

Yeah, but many dev. are not using ps2 properly they get 1-2million polys and bad IQ/texturing and go Oh this might not even be better than the DC

The dev. that do know how to use it still admit it's weaker, but say the gap is not as big, and say it still has some good things going.
 
I wouldn't say either GC or PS2 is clearly more technologically advanced then the other because they can both do things that the other cannot. When it comes to GFLOPS, which equates to raw poly output, physics, custom effects (FFX) etc, the PS2 has the advantage. That's undeniable. 6.2 vs 1.9. Now how much of that 6.2 developers will eventually be able to tap into, I'm not sure. But it does seem that the technology to vectorize data is improving every year. So my guess is that we probably haven't seen what the PS2 can really do.

When it comes to texturing and T&L, the GC appears to be well beyond the PS2. Rogue leader and SFA, exactly the way they are, would simply not be possible on PS2.

IMO, I think it's still too early to make an informed comparison. When it comes to ease of development, they're both at the opposite end of the spectrum. GC is probably one of the easiest system to program for ever and the PS2 one of the toughest so I think it will only be at the end of their lifecycles that we'll be able to determine that.

I remember when the GC was unveiled at E3 2001, somebody over at Rare said that you could tap into 90% of the system's power with very little effort. I thought to myself, if that's the case then it doesn't leave a whole lot of room for improvement. And the GC's first year kinda reflects that. Some would say that Rogue leader is still the best looking game on the system. I think 4-5 years from now games will look better but dramatically better? I doubt it.

For the PS2 on the other hand, the difference between the launch titles and games like ZOE2 and SH3 is like night and day. And I think we still haven't seen the best of what the console can offer.
 
alexsok said:
Would you mind showing me any game on GC/XBOX/DC that has this "living city" feeling while playing?
How does this have anything to do with the platforms? You surely don't want to argue that GTA3 or VC couldn't be ported to GC or XBox, do you? Please keep soft- and hardware seperated from each other in this argument, as you should know there's hardly anything unique to the PS2 hardware that makes games like VC possible, its marketing departments that take care of this exclusiveness of titles.

Sure, the graphics are a bit outdated, but the overall polish of the title is much more than you recognize. Without a doubt, Vice City is an achievement, from many standpoints, ranging from graphics, art, sound, music, gameplay and so on...
True, but wouldn't you agree that GTA3 would deserve the "technical achievement" award more than VC? VC for itself would be an outstanding achievement, but as it is its "just" more of what was already done before, polished and improved.

PS2 is a wonderful machine, but if you want to get the most out of it (which apparently, not many developer houses succeed in doing), you need to invest a large sum of money and have a very talented group of programmers, which brings me to the one major minus of the PS2: the overall complexty of the machine, the way programmers need to write assembly code to get the most out of the system as the compilers pretty much suck ass (one aspect where XBOX/GC suprass it).
Its a question of efficiency, PS2 hardware is powerfull but as you said complicated to fully take advantage off. "Great" hardware shouldn't be complicated and hard to exploit, especially if the end result isn't technically "better" than the competition. Since when are increased development cost, more complicated coding and limitations for artists great? It complicates things and takes up financial and human resources that could very well be used otherwise (e.g. making other games or producing more content). Look at your yearly tax declaration and tell me it would be "great" if you would need to fill out 10 forms instead of 6 to produce the same end result? In the end its the huge PS2 userbase which makes it possible that the increased development costs are worth it. IMHO PS2 hardware is "powerfull and good enough", it's the games and userbase that make it a geat console though.

As I noted previously, the hardware is great, we just need more developer houses investing large money in their games and a talented group of programmers who can tap the real power of the PS2 (which according to certain papers, hasn't been tapped yet).
Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds? Money is limited, human resources are limited and there's no guarantee for a retun of your investment (unless you're Squaresoft maybe)! But even if that were the case, I have my doubts that the "real power of PS2" that supposedly "hasn't been tapped hyet" is going to offer it any breathtaking suprtiority over the other systems. There are other consoles out there that have these powers right there, ready to use, even for medium and small development houses, so how the heck can it be a good thing that PS2 is such a hard beast to tame?

Its a crappy situation for a small developer you know - you see the huge PS2 userbase and you'd love to make that kick ass idea of yours into a game for the system. Yet, although you have a good art team and decent coders, there are simply no resources to pull of the micro-coding required to achieve the kinds of effects people are used to seeing from Square games (and its not only a question of money, there are probably only a couple coders on this world that know how to really take advantage of PS2 hardware). Well, you could make the game on budget and with all the visuals you have in mind for XBox instead, but then you only have 1/5th or so the potential market.
Basically what I'm trying to say is that what you are trying to sell as a minor hardware weakness, is driving development houses all over workd nuts! Not every developer and/or publisher on this planet has the kinds of resources houses like EA, SEGA or Konami have, yet PS2's hardware approach basically limits the number of developers that can really push the system to a selected few. Which basically sucks IMHO...
 
I thought it was common sense as to why the PS2 is the way it is.... why are people trashing a system that's architectural design was completed almost 2 full years before the competition even RELEASED their console?

Think of it this way....the brute power behind the PS2 comes for a reason, the difficulty to program, and the supposed "bottlenecks" of the system are all methods to achieve high power performance with as little cost as possible. One would question why Sony took the route that they did in designing their hardware....well look no further than your PC. How long, given the standard architecture, does it take for a brand spanking new, top of the line computer to become outdated? Almost as soon as you pull it out of the box I'd wager.

Now think about buying a top of the line computer 2 years ago, and how it compares to the computers today....well the difference is quite apparent is it not?

With Sony's decision to create the PS2, they knew the console needed to be designed with staying power in mind. Everything has its pros and cons, and the design used for the PS2 clearly demonstrates this. The high horsepower and yet hard to master architecture are all means to creating a console that was able to be released years ahead of the competition and yet still be able to keep up far down the road. Why people choose to neglect this is far beyond my comprehension.

One could easily say that because GC and Xbox are "newer" releases, their power is unquestionably better.....and yet that really isn't the case when looking at games themselves. I'm not going to say that PS2 is more powerful, but the fact that it can keep up today is a testament to what I've said above.
 
where is all this ANTI PS2 , ANTI SONY crap coming from?
if you cant see things the way it is, your just ANTI TRUTH!!!
PS2 is not a fine machine, it was lazy, sloppy, and poorly designed.
they put no thought into the gamer, they thought of only one thing..
lets kill the dreamcast.

Two controller ports? the only console since the PSX to be this stupid
Poor Image quality- the only console since the PSX to be this stupid
Lack of just about every 3d graphics feature to come out since the voodoo 2.

when it all comes down to it, the PS2 is basically the equal to a Voodoo 2 that can push 3 million polys. this is not ANTI sony, this is just speaking from actually having eyes, PS2's graphics are piss poor in comparison to GC and Xbox, its not even a subtle difference. I guess if all you are looking at are the ports of PS2 games on the other consoles, sure it holds its own(but even then the other two always look and run better)
 
If the PS2 wouldn't own the console market, I doubt we'd see any games on it. No sane publisher would found the development costs if they could not count on the large user base...
 
Anti-Sony thinking at it´s finest:

CaptainHowdy said:
they put no thought into the gamer, they thought of only one thing..
lets kill the dreamcast.

LOL, so this is the place where all this Sony hate comes from...

Oh, and I doubt that anyone builds a console thinking about the gamers, they´re done with the competition and generating userbase in mind.
 
If the PS2 wouldn't own the console market, I doubt we'd see any games on it. No sane publisher would found the development costs if they could not count on the large user base...
And that is different from any other hardware, how? If the hardware is not selling, why would anyone publish software for it, not matter how good the hardware is? Sure you would have enthusists making stuff for it just for fun, but somehow, I don't think that's what you had in mind :)
 
CaptainHowdy said:
where is all this ANTI PS2 , ANTI SONY crap coming from?
if you cant see things the way it is, your just ANTI TRUTH!!!
PS2 is not a fine machine, it was lazy, sloppy, and poorly designed.
they put no thought into the gamer, they thought of only one thing..
lets kill the dreamcast.

Assumption confirmed. Thanx!
 
marconelly! said:
And that is different from any other hardware, how? If the hardware is not selling, why would anyone publish software for it, not matter how good the hardware is? Sure you would have enthusists making stuff for it just for fun, but somehow, I don't think that's what you had in mind :)

Note that I was talking about PS2's dominance. If the market would be 33-33-33 between the 3 machines, PS2 games would be hard to find around... Though you're right that it'd then hold back hardware sales, which in turn would decrease the number of games even more. Anyway, what I was trying to point out has been explained quite a few time shere before so I'll just stop ;)
 
without reading the entire thread, to answer the poster's question, in some aspects the PS2 is indeed more powerful than the Gamecube, and even the XBox. In other aspecs, the Gamecube is more powerful than the PS2. Gamecube's main advantages is that it has many features the PS2 does not, and Gamecube is overall much more efficient than PS2.

Each one of the three consoles has certain strengths over the other two.
Some examples: Gamecube's CPU has more cache (256k) than either XBox or PS2's CPUs. Gamecube also has the largest effective texture cache on its GPU. (FLipper has 1MB texture cache, but it's 6MB effective with 6:1 compression) The PS2 has the widest graphics memory bus and most raw graphics bandwidth (48 GB/sec on GS to eDRAM) of the three. the XBox has the most memory, the fastest main memory bandwidth (but its shared with graphics+audio) and the most advanced pixel effects.
 
Thanks. So...can I assume from that that RL is actually very close to GCN´s maximum capacity? Since it´s still the best looking GCN title around (Metroid is much more about the art direction than anything).
 
Well from some early talk i've heard of factor5's next gamecube project, it should put rogue leader to shame. Julian has said in the past that what they've used of flipper's combiner were just the basics, not much about its programmability was used. I've heard of a 3rd person shooter with graphics ala halo2. Julian even posted in a message board after the halo2 trailer was released saying something similar to "wait till you see what we've been doing"
 
Cyborg said:
Well from some early talk i've heard of factor5's next gamecube project, it should put rogue leader to shame. Julian has said in the past that what they've used of flipper's combiner were just the basics, not much about its programmability was used. I've heard of a 3rd person shooter with graphics ala halo2. Julian even posted in a message board after the halo2 trailer was released saying something similar to "wait till you see what we've been doing"

8)
 
LogisticX said:
I'm not going to say that PS2 is more powerful, but the fact that it can keep up today is a testament to what I've said above.

Yeah, maybe today, but what about in 3 years?
Its an incredable amount of time. Youve probably spent too much time looking at ports Id wager. Im sure when people really start to code FOR the xbox and GC, the difference will be apparent.
btw, I saw the getaway running today. I was shocked, it looked terrible. Nasty nasty psone style visuals, using photo-realistc textures does not make for good graphics. The framerate was piss poor too. Am I anti ps2? No, I just want the best.
See you in 3 years!
 
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