Is PS2 more powerfull than GCN?

[Ty]

<snip>lets kill the dreamcast.

Eh? The Dreamcast was DOA when it shipped. Heck, it might have been dead before it shipped. Sega stopped being a serious competitor in the hardware market long before the DC came out.

 

[clem64]

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"

BTW, it's taking awfully long for Factor5 to show anything from their new game. RL was released almost a year ago, you think they would have showed something by now.

 

[CaptainHowdy]

Nintendo has made it set that all 2002 events will only show games that are coming in either 2002, or within the first quarter of 2003. my only guess is that they are still afraid of overhyping too soon, making too long of a wait and people just forgetting it(this happens with PC gaming, they announce it too soon, everyone rags the game for taking so long, and it becomes a bomb because people write it off)

 

[zidane1strife]

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.

This is what i like about the ps2... i certainly don't think that a low budget title from a small dev. should look as good as the game i'll buy with hollywood esque budget.... I dunno if u like that, but what i expect from a high budget title is to visually kill the low budget...

i'd be really dissapointed if i go and rent cr@ppy game from x dev.... and later went home with my recently bought AAA killa app... and instead of " WoW this looks far better than any other game on the system!!!" i went " Ahh, looks just like the piece of sh$t i was playing the other day..."

when it all comes down to it, the PS2 is basically the equal to a Voodoo 2 that can push 3 million polys.

Looks at recent and upcoming ps2 games... u do know the old game jak and daxter pushed about 10M polys right?

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.

That's the difference between console and pc gamers... pc gamers look at games like doom 3 and go... nice looks better than any other title, but i'm dissapointed it just doesn't look that more advanced to what we have(some of em, just having played games at counterstrike gphx level...).... While many console gamers see games like Morrowind and go... this blows away anything I've EVER SEEN it looks photorealistic.....

I mean whe we went from abysmal textures, and blocks as char.s to nice textures and round char.s(most of the time.) i was really impressed, i wasn't as impressed by slight jump with sharper textures, and effects.... Until i see software that makes this gen look as bad as this gen made the previous one look, i'll certainly like the better gphx but won't be blown away.

No, I just want the best.
See you in 3 years!

In one year and a few months, the grim reaper will come and give it's scythe to a certain player in the console wars... after that things will be very different....

 

[Teasy]

Thanks. So...can I assume from that that RL is actually very close to GCN´s maximum capacity?

Rogur Leader, for the most part, ran at 60fps. I'm sure if they'd had more then 9 months to do the game they could have ironed out any slowdown and had it running at a totally solid 60fps. In which case you have your answer right there. A 60fps game isn't going to be at the consoles visual capacity simply because you can move to 30fps and double the geometry, textures ect and make the game look loads better. But then I'd bet its still very possible to improve on Rogue Leader visually and still keep 60fps with GameCube.

Since it´s still the best looking GCN title around (Metroid is much more about the art direction than anything).

I'm not really sure about that actually, I've only seen Metroid Prime on compressed video's. I know some here have played the one level demo at stores in the U.S, but remember that was an E3 demo.. which is quie a while ago, so the final game should be improved.

There's no doubt that the game has great art design, but the game may also be extremely impressive technically. Also remember that Metroid Prime's framerate is an absolutely solid 60fps so it might yet be the best technically.. I suppose we'll have to wait and see though.

 

[Gollum]

This is what i like about the ps2... i certainly don't think renting a low budget title from a small dev. should look as good as the game i'll buy with hollywood esque budget.... I dunno if u like that, but what i expect from a high budget title is to visually kill the low budget...

i'd be really dissapointed if i go and rent cr@ppy game from x dev.... and later went home with my recently bought AAA killa app... and instead of " WoW this looks far better than any other game on the system!!!" i went " Ahh, looks just like the piece of sh$t i was playing the other day..."

So basically you're telling me that small/medium sized or independent developers can't produce good games anyway and thus its cool that PS2's architecture prevents them from producing the type of game they envision in a reasonable budget? I'm sure lots of people on these boards love to hear stuff like that.

That AAA vs. crap argument of yours still doesn't make sense though, these big budget games you talk about will usually look better than independent or smaller titles no matter what, there's simply more human and financial resources going into them and they will always be "bigger and badder" somehow than a game from a small dev house. You don't need hardware to make things even more difficult for smaller developers, they're struggling enough to keep up in the other departments already. I don't see how is this even an argument, any person with at least a little bit of common sense should see that this is not a "good" thing! For what its worth it's not a "bad" thing either, its just annoying and not exactly helping to keep the diversity of the industry alive...

Maybe its just me but I happen to think that there are a load of kick-ass developers out there in small companies. Where would innovation come from in this industry without them? EA's yearly sports titles ("last year's controls were too good, lets just screw them up and make thing more sloppy again, that way we can fix it next year and get better reviews") and FF XVIII Bonus Edition 5 ("play the same game yet again, but from the perspective of two previously totally unimportant characters and their pet dog JoJoBa, yay") are not really the only games I'm looking forward to play in the future, I like diversity, innovation and choice, thank you very much...

 

[marconelly!]

If the market would be 33-33-33 between the 3 machines, PS2 games would be hard to find around...

So you think someone would ignore 1/3 of the market just because it's somewhat harder to program for the console owned by it? Especially, considering the several middleware solutions available? I don't think so.

 

[zidane1strife]

So basically you're telling me that small/medium sized or independent developers can't produce good games anyway and thus its cool that PS2's architecture prevents them from producing the type of game they envision in a reasonable budget? I'm sure lots of people on these boards love to hear stuff like that.

That AAA vs. crap argument of yours still doesn't make sense though, these big budget games you talk about will usually look better than independent or smaller titles no matter what, there's simply more human and financial resources going into them and they will always be "bigger and badder" somehow than a game from a small dev house.

I know a game with a bigger budget will have better presentation, etc... but i just don't like low budget titles(sure they're cool in gameplay, etc...), to look nearly or just as good... i mean yeah, they'd probably recycle textures and models more, have less flash etc... but they shouldn't approach top budget games.... it's like indie films blowing away top hollywood studios in cg etc... it's WRONG!!!!

That's the horrors of computer advancements... there might come a time when low indie movies could craft cg actors as good looking or better looking than most actors.... with skilled people behind them, making them act even better than the real deal... and with better voice actors.....
NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!! IT MUST NEVER BE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!@!!!!
BUT SADLY IT WILL BE!!!!! i must enjoy the short time that i have where cheap movies/games usually look cheap....

 

[LogisticX]

Rogur Leader, for the most part, ran at 60fps. I'm sure if they'd had more then 9 months to do the game they could have ironed out any slowdown and had it running at a totally solid 60fps. In which case you have your answer right there. A 60fps game isn't going to be at the consoles visual capacity simply because you can move to 30fps and double the geometry, textures ect and make the game look loads better. But then I'd bet its still very possible to improve on Rogue Leader visually and still keep 60fps with GameCube.

This actually makes me wonder... the majority of Xbox and GC titles run at 30 fps I'd say, maybe not the majority with respect to ALL games, but at least in those that look incredibly impressive.

Now, I'm not going to kid anyone and say I don't take preference to the PS2... but a good deal of titles on the system are pushing a solid state of 60 fps. Whether this is purely a developer optimization issue, I don't know, but the fact remains that even though people tend to rag on the PS2 for its visuals, there are a good deal of great looking games that are running at 60 fps without much slowdown at all.


I know this isn't a strong point to make, so those who disagree have a lot that they can pick off from what I've said, but I just find it interesting to see these things.


One thing I don't understand is how people can claim that PS2 looks "piss poor" in comparison to the Xbox and Gamecube. I haven't seen a single title that completely blows PS2's finest away...what I mean is, Rogue Leader or SFA looks amazing, DOA3, Enclave etc. looks amazing as well, but in retrospect, so does Burnout 2, Baldurs Gate Dark Alliance and Metal Gear Solid 2.

Regardless if RL and DOA3 look BETTER isn't an issue...what I see are a lot of statements that try and say that PS2 titles aren't beautiful themselves.

I mean, if you found one girl attractive and saw another that you found to be MORE attractive, would you assume that the former is now, therefore, ugly? That doesn't make much sense does it?

 

[BoddoZerg]

It's simple. The PS2 has been around for 2 years, while the GC and XBOX have only been here for one. Developers have had 2 years to push the limits of what is possible with PS2. I doubt we'll see much better than Silent Hill 3 level graphics. Why do people doubt that the XBOX and GC games will continue advancing in graphics similar to PS2? Of course they will.

Comparing consoles on a game-by-game basis is stupid. You could compare "ToeJam and Earl III" to "Shenmue" and conclude that Xbox is weaker than Dreamcast. Citing the graphical quality of a single game isn't representative of a console's power, it only reflects that single game. Now, if one console had consistently uglier games than the others, then you could draw a conclusion - but right now, no single console is vastly worse-looking than the others. PS2 has quite a lot of games with extremely low polygon count, but some games have very high polycount... Xbox has a handful of impressive looking games, but it has a crapload of games that could've been rendered on Dreamcast. (or N64 in the case of TJ&E3) Same with the 'Cube.

Right now there is no clear graphical superiority, but I'd be willing to bet that the rate of advance of PS2 graphics is soon to max out, while XBOX and GC still have plenty of room to grow.

 

[PC-Engine]

So you think someone would ignore 1/3 of the market just because it's somewhat harder to program for the console owned by it? Especially, considering the several middleware solutions available? I don't think so

The only reason why the middleware solutions became widely available was because of complaints from developers to begin with. If development was easy from the start, there wouldn't be a need for loads of middleware.

 

[Teasy]

This actually makes me wonder... the majority of Xbox and GC titles run at 30 fps I'd say, maybe not the majority with respect to ALL games, but at least in those that look incredibly impressive.

Now, I'm not going to kid anyone and say I don't take preference to the PS2... but a good deal of titles on the system are pushing a solid state of 60 fps.

But are any of the best looking PS2 games running at 60fps? I think the majority of games on a console run at 30fps. I don't really see how PS2 has a noticably better ratio of 60fps games then GC or XBox.

Comparing consoles on a game-by-game basis is stupid. You could compare "ToeJam and Earl III" to "Shenmue" and conclude that Xbox is weaker than Dreamcast. Citing the graphical quality of a single game isn't representative of a console's power, it only reflects that single game. Now, if one console had consistently uglier games than the others, then you could draw a conclusion - but right now, no single console is vastly worse-looking than the others. PS2 has quite a lot of games with extremely low polygon count, but some games have very high polycount... Xbox has a handful of impressive looking games, but it has a crapload of games that could've been rendered on Dreamcast. (or N64 in the case of TJ&E3) Same with the 'Cube.

Well comparing the best looking game on one console with one of the worst looking games on another consoles is obviously stupid. But its also silly to say that for one console to be worse graphically it must have consistently worse looking games. The only way to judge this by looking at the games is to look at the best looking games on each console. Rate one consoles best again anothers best. Of course this won't tell you which consoles is best in all cases, because it depends on how good the devs are who have so far released games on each system. But its the only way to judge different consoles when looking at the games.

 

[marconelly!]

The only reason why the middleware solutions became widely available was because of complaints from developers to begin with. If development was easy from the start, there wouldn't be a need for loads of middleware.

Oh, I'm sure being able to share the code, art assets and significantly speed up the development across completely different hardware architectures, has nothing to with it.

Middleware exists solely becaue PS2 is hard to program for, yes.

But are any of the best looking PS2 games running at 60fps?

Well, truth is, almost every best looking PS2 game runs at 60FPS.

MGS2, BG: DA, GT3, Burnout 2, J&D, AC4, DMC, Ratchet & Clank, Onimusha 1 & 2, ZoE, ZoE2 (isn't out yet, but it's confirmed to be 60FPS)

There's few that run at 30FPS, most notably SH2 (and probably SH3), FFX, ICO.

 

[ChryZ]

The only reason why the middleware solutions became widely available was because of complaints from developers to begin with. If development was easy from the start, there wouldn't be a need for loads of middleware.

Isn't the reason for the ease of development on the X-Box a middleware called DirectX?

 

[Vince]

where is all this ANTI PS2 , ANTI SONY crap coming from?
if you cant see things the way it is, your just ANTI TRUTH!!!

And then:

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.

Are you were calling other people "Moron's" in another thread? Pot. Kettle. Black.

Graphic Synthesizer was first shown in 1999. It has over 40M transistors on a 0.25um process, 16X the onboard memory that the NV2A is commonly said to have, can draw 75M traingles a second, and over 3X the raw pixel pushing power of the NV2A (or 1200MPisel/sec with 1 texture) at 1/8th the transistor count devoted to raster and 48GB/sec of framebuffer bandwith.

In the mean time, nVidia's mainstream 3D processor was the TNT2U. around 10-15M transistors @ 0.22um, well under the NV2A in onboard RAM/cache, can draw around 5M triangles/sec, and around 600MPixel/sec fillrate with 1 texture. It had around 3GB/sec of bandwith to it's framebuffer.

Poorly designed? I think not.

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.

Stupid? Alrighty then, good technical answer. Make us proud. Stupid is as Stupid does.

when it all comes down to it, the PS2 is basically the equal to a Voodoo 2 that can push 3 million polys.

Did you ever have a Voodoo2? I did, aswell as a Voodoo: Banshee and a Voodoo3. I saw nothing on any of those cards that could even come near what I can on the PS2.

You Sir, are an idiot.

 

[Vince]

Actually, why did I even respond? Where's Johnny? He's good kicking ass lately... heh

 

[wazoo]

But are any of the best looking PS2 games running at 60fps? I think the majority of games on a console run at 30fps. I don't really see how PS2 has a noticably better ratio of 60fps games then GC or XBox.

Maybe, because they have to. If you want to use a half frame/full frame buffer combo to save VRAM you need to lock on 60fps, otherwise you get the RRV syndrome.

 

[CaptainHowdy]

VInce, I keep hearing this - "it was first shown in 1999", "its almost 2 years older".

what I am saying is not Anti anything, it is just fact.


fact- PS2's hardware sucks, there is more to graphics than raw polygons, like for instance, wrapping them in highres textures makes a world of difference, being you have obviously limited yourself to PS2 games, I guess you have never seen one.

fact- time has nothing to do with it, even Dreamcast took image quality to heart, and its image quality killed PS2's

Fact- PS2 does not even touch GC in power, it almost matches it in pushing polys, but the end results, the GC version will always look better, and if you like some people want to bring XBox into it, trying to compare the PS2 to the Xbox is like comparing a Scooter to a Harley Davidson. Sp I will just leave it out of the equation.


Does PS2 have a large library of amazing games, yes
do I think its a must own system now, oh hell yes.
is it a good piece of hardware? god no, like the games all you want, but just because the geometry is hanging with the big boys, doesnt mean the muddy ugly textures, and pixelized scenes cut the mustard.

 

[randycat99]

...just because the geometry is hanging with the big boys, doesnt mean the muddy ugly textures, and pixelized scenes cut the mustard.

By this statement it seems you feel that all PS2 titles invariably look horrid due to muddy, ugly textures and pixelized scenes. Clearly, this is a meaningless generalization because certainly there are numerous PS2 games that contain very impressive images. Being able to wrap pretty textures is no more a "fact" than having many polys. ARTWORK is the true fact that trumps either one of those, and that "fact" is accessible on any of the big 3 consoles. The "muddy ugly textures and pixelized scenes" seems to be a mantra for anyone who disapproves of anything that is not Xbox. Someone who has a truly objective viewpoint would simply note that each console has something good to offer, despite their radically different architectures. That's about as far as you can go with these things, because as soon as you see things as being so black-and-white to make such statements, you've really compromised your objectivity on the topic.

 

[marconelly!]

Maybe, because they have to. If you want to use a half frame/full frame buffer combo to save VRAM you need to lock on 60fps, otherwise you get the RRV syndrome.

I think that if you are running your game at locked 30FPS you still can have half/full frame buffer combo. Besides, If you are running the game at 30FPS you need lees texture updates per frame, therefore you are, again, saving the VRAM.
Still many of the games I counted above actually have full/full frame buffer. You can tell that by either them having a progressive scan support (Burnout 2, Tekken 4) or not losing the scan sync when the game starts skipping frames/slowing down.

fact- time has nothing to do with it, even Dreamcast took image quality to heart, and its image quality killed PS2's

Not that these 'facts' deserve an answer in the first place, but I'll just just say that pretty much every best looking game I counted in the previous post have the same or better image quality than the best of Dreamcast.

is it a good piece of hardware? god no,

Is Genesis a good piece of hardware GOD NO! Look at those simplistic two dimensional games! Listen to those terrible sound bleeps!

What you need to ask yourself, is: Was PS2 a good hardware for the time when it launched? Does it have better looking games than anything available on the hardware of it's time. I think the answer is yes, but I'm sure you will somehow disagree. :\