New interview about Ps3 CM:Dirt

[blakjedi]

I just love it when game A with textures B in genre C in compared to game X with textures Y in genre Z is compared... really shows the high quality of discussions as of late... Especially when considering that there's more to a game than just... textures?

Phil - Before you start going off on ridiculous tangents ane belittling the conversation... the latest discussion in the thread has been that Sony has more 1st party developers and should therefore produce better games with better technology than MS.

Games, genres, and technical elements such as textures FALL UNDER that argument. Pay attention before posting please. Ugh.

Patsu-

"Heavenly Sword was in development (on unfinished hardware) since X YEARS AGO too. The difference is: While MS/Rare chose to rush Kameo out, Sony decided to delay titles such as Lair (and perhaps Heavenly Sword) to achieve their desired standards. Doesn't this illustrate that besides more first party studios, Sony is also committed to quality -- as opposed to corporate timeline and price differential -- to sell the brand ?"

I think i discussed this point in one of my earlier posts. The difference is that PS3 hardware has been final for as long as the x360 has been out... at least... thus august 2005 to august 2007 gave NT two years on final hardware with no set release date.. although what we really got were constantly moving expected dates from the gaming journals... That doesnt necessarily show any corporate strategy on the part of Sony... rather that the game wasnt complete to NT expectations. I would posit that nearly all of their big name games have been restricted inthe same fashion.

The second part of your point seems to say that the games i have mentioned ARENT quality games deserving of next/new gen moniker. I respectfully disagree and have said as much. I only own VF5 and F1 CE for PS3 and have been focusing more on the PS2 library to tide me over while waiting for the PS3 floodgates to open.... while my library for x360 has expanded fairly rapidly every month since release... not cause I just needed something to play, but because they were great next gen games available on that system.

 

[Phil]

Phil - Before you start going off on ridiculous tangents ane belittling the conversation... the latest discussion in the thread has been that Sony has more 1st party developers and should therefore produce better games with better technology than MS.

Games, genres, and technical elements such as textures FALL UNDER that argument. Pay attention before posting please. Ugh.

blakjedi,

I was paying attention, and I stand by my point, that looking at one technical aspect of a game (textures) and comparing them to other games in different genres doesn't quite build an argument - not an acurate, constructive one, anyway.

I.e. your quote

"the texture quality on Kameo is unrivalled for example..."

So let me ask you, how does this sentance (regardless of its validity) stand in regards to the latests discussion on that Sony should be producing games with better games technology (...)?

So it's got unrivalled textures! Game technology isn't strictly limited to textures, nor are textures a good single indicator of technical experities if you don't look at the other aspects of a game: How complex is the A.I. running at the same time? Game mechanics? How complex is the geometry in that scene? Maybe, Rare simply focused on textures since they weren't pushing the envelope in geometry (or their game with the design-choices they took allowed them to do so?). Then you take a game like LittleBigPlanet that is so different to Kameo on so many different levels (and in some places simpler as its an online community game) and consider that a game like that should have better textures!

Comparing technological advances between games across different genres and platforms is never going to be very conclusive. If you think other wise, I simply don't agree.

 

[blakjedi]

Phil -

I think you are drawing your own conclusions here. I never directly compared Kameo to any other game of any other genre on any other system. I said that the texture technology used in Kameo was unrivalled as of yet by any other game on any console even the x360. From a two year old game, written on unfinished hardware, on a supposedly weaker system technologically, from a supposedly weaker 1st party team at MS. I would suspect that the next time they display Kameo or a variant it would be even better.

The other concerns regarding AI, or anything is immaterial to the statement about texture quality I made. The "direct" comparisons and contrasts to any particular game or genre are your own.

It might have been an impressive rebuttal if you would have just mentioned a current retail game in contrast to my statement. Someone else mentioned Uncharted which doesnt exist in the retail channel yet.

 

[Phil]

blakjedi,

My first reply wasn't directly replying to your contributions, just the general direction the discussion was taking and it's fixation on textures. Appologies if that was misunderstood. I think Kameo is a very nice looking game and no doubt has nice textures. I wouldn't however suggest that a game needs to have better textures to surpass it technically though - and that's not even factoring in that it's all quite a subjective argument. How do you quantify which textures are better? One game might have less but better textures, another might have more but worse after all...

Cheers Phil

 

[patsu]

I think i discussed this point in one of my earlier posts. The difference is that PS3 hardware has been final for as long as the x360 has been out... at least... thus august 2005 to august 2007 gave NT two years on final hardware with no set release date.. although what we really got were constantly moving expected dates from the gaming journals... That doesnt necessarily show any corporate strategy on the part of Sony... rather that the game wasnt complete to NT expectations. I would posit that nearly all of their big name games have been restricted inthe same fashion.

Your PS3 h/w date is off. You should be able to find availability dates of PS3 dev kits in B3D. Final dev kit is only available sometime in April 2006. Even then the SDK wasn't finalized until slightly later.

Since they foot for the bills, Sony would have to work with their developers to decide the release date collaboratively. We know of delays in key first party titles such as Lair and even flOw. We also know that Sony has inferior tools but that didn't stop Sony and the developers from setting a high goal. Amidst complains about high price, Sony also indicated publicly that their main focus is quality games this year. We also know that Sony's Japanese developers wouldn't release PS3 system software (or leak info) until they are comfortable with it. As a result, Sony took quite a beating for their silence. Those are concrete enough info to know that Sony is after [drum roll] quality... despite external pressure.

The second part of your point seems to say that the games i have mentioned ARENT quality games deserving of next/new gen moniker. I respectfully disagree and have said as much. I only own VF5 and F1 CE for PS3 and have been focusing more on the PS2 library to tide me over while waiting for the PS3 floodgates to open.... while my library for x360 has expanded fairly rapidly every month since release... not cause I just needed something to play, but because they were great next gen games available on that system.

Nope. I don't really care what your quality game list is. ^_^
I only brought up PS3 games that you missed in your post to complete your perspective. If you like detailed textures, then as you said first generation PS3 games like Heavenly Sword and LBP will surpass Kameo (and then some). So I don't know what the big deal is... or how relevant it is to cite texture as a key feature across multiple genra.

Now seeing that you only bought VF5 and F1, I don't think you have a good assessment of the PS3 game library... but that's just my opinion.

 

[pipo]

Doesn't this illustrate that besides more first party studios, Sony is also committed to quality -- as opposed to corporate timeline and price differential -- to sell the brand ?

Dunno. This is the company that figured they'd sell out the system without any title at all.

By the way, MGS delayed titles as well (eg. FM2, TH, ME). Good for them I say.

But I agree with you, better a solid delayed title than a crap rushed one...

 

[patsu]

Dunno. This is the company that figured they'd sell out the system without any title at all.

That doesn't contradict the "quality' message they want to send via the Playstation brand though (Actually, it might even validate the notion from game quality perspective). Together with the hardware build quality, they have been striving towards their own controls and goals since day one.

Note that I'm not saying they are doing the right thing (Time will tell since late to market can have negative impact too). It's that they have been consistent about their goals, actions and message in this regard.

I also don't know how a thread about "Dirt" interview can arrive at this post. But to bring things back on topic, I am curious what sort of techniques were used in this title to achieve high quality visual on both systems. I hope Sony's involvement with Epic's game engine can bring similar benefits. I remember joker454 and Mike Acton mentioned that certain optimization techniques for PS3 also work well for Xbox 360.

 

[TheChefO]

This is the company that figured they'd sell out the system without any title at all.
...

good point.



Honestly, anyone looking objectively at these dev houses would likely come to the conclusion that Sony has better developers. Their exceptional work on ps2 is proof.

Having these same super devs work on what most consider "better hardware", should result in vastly superior looking games considering they got what most consider visual parity with xb1 games.

If that result isn't attained, it would be very surprising IMO.

So far we've seen mixed results, but KZ2 looks promising. HS as well. Drake has been a bit of a letdown. Nice animation and scripting, but I was hoping for more.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Phil - Before you start going off on ridiculous tangents ane belittling the conversation... the latest discussion in the thread has been that Sony has more 1st party developers and should therefore produce better games with better technology than MS.

Produce more games with the best technology for the system, you mean. Certainly I wasn't saying because Sony have more devs, they'll have better technology. I was saying that the potential/ability to produce tech-pushing games is greater with Sony because they have more first-party devs working on that. So in a few years, where MS's first-party could have produced, say 10 games for the sake of argument, of which perhaps 75% will be really pushing the hardware in different ways (2 super graphical showpieces, two online megaextravaganzas, one massive-scope sandbox title, etc.), Sony's first party could produce 30 games...with probably less percentage-wise really pushing the hardware because Sony have more branching out. But even if Sony's developers are split with 50% producing hardware-stretching games, that'll be more than MS's first party. Thus in a count of which platform has the most hardware-pushing titles, PS3 ought to come out on top, if 3rd parties don't become more targeted in the developments. Out of the hardware-pushing titles for both platforms, the actual technical achievement from the developers is likely a wash. Top talent is top talent.

 

[blakjedi]

Out of the hardware-pushing titles for both platforms, the actual technical achievement from the developers is likely a wash. Top talent is top talent.

That is all I was saying. All the rest is just preference. For exmple MGS, FF, and GTA really arent my cup o' tea so it doesnt really matter how good they are on PS3. Similarly, I'm not a Halo fan beyond the story so really i could care less how well it looks or plays personally. But HS, and Mass Effect BETTER be good!

 

[almighty]

Textures are part of a package along with many other things and that package is called "graphics". Now when comparing a game is'nt it best to look at the whole graphics "package" and not just 2 or 3 elements in that package? Sure the textures in Kameo are stunning, in fact here's what they look like :

Now there is no denying that the texture in the above shot looks stunning BUT as ive said there only part of a package, so what does the rest of the graphics package look like? To put it bluntly, not up to the standard of the texture quality, charactors are low poly, lack of texture filtering HIDES all the texture detail unless you get up close and personal, the lighting is last gen and the animation is nothing special.

So Kameo on a texture basis has little rivals BUT Kameo as a whole graphics package? IMO its been supased by loads of games.

Now Uncharted has been tossed around in this thread a few times and has been compared to Kameo so lets take a look at it :

http://www.threespeech.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/jakes04.1.jpp
http://www.threespeech.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/jakes08.1.jpg
http://www.threespeech.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/jakes09.1.jpg
http://www.threespeech.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/jakes14.1.jpg

Now in terms of texture detail? Id say its atleast even or just a little behind Kameo, but as a whole? IHMO id say its beats Kameo into the ground.

 

[archangelmorph]

Now in terms of texture detail? Id say its atleast even or just a little behind Kameo, but as a whole? IHMO id say its beats Kameo into the ground.

I'd say its a pointless comparison.. Especially since it;'s a little hard to compare a close up, full resolution texture shot with a wide angle shot showing a fullscene with a vast amount of LOD which would hide any texture detail anyway..

So maybe we should get back to Dirt?