Hardware is a definite factor. Whether other factors are political, demographical, or spiritual, it doesn't matter because the end result of weaker performance is still just as much of a reality.
Odd wording there since "look miles better" is anything but a fact. You can compare performance properties like more polygons, simpler texture effects, etc., but how you view the importance of those properties in relation to one another in the final picture is always an opinion. For instance, if you were especially sensitive to alaising, even a lone property like an advantage in mip-mapping could be huge to your perception.
OK, so me saying "looks miles better" is somehow less of a fact than u saying "After seeing their PS2 outperformed in texturing and image quality by older and less expensive tech like Dreamcast". and that is because all u say is FACT and all i say is not...?
A pretty Dreamcast game in VGA, ripe with its accurate color and tangibly solid due to its proscan, does beat out the IQ of GC and Xbox games outputting interlaced. Not sure what's so hard to believe about that. You're making it seem like GC and Xbox games run high levels of additional FSAA and anisotropic filtering here.
we're discussing "hardware capabilities" here aren't we? the hardware is "CAPABLE" of running games in progressive scan. in fact they (all newer consoles) can run better looking games than most DC games. the fact that the "option" of VGA is not on those consoles does NOT make the hardware LESS CAPABLE. it's a software issue.
With PS2's design, one vital part was the use of embedded RAM, way back in 2000. The choice to go with such high-performance yet expensive RAM meant that not much of it could be used. This resulted in 4MB of display memory, not allowing for as robust a frame buffer to be as routinely used as on Dreamcast (448 vs 480, field rendering, etc.) and preventing the possibility for proscan - and so VGA, consequently - with the games where they had to field-render. That part is very much hardware related.
again, if "some games" can run in progressive scan, then "all games" can potentially run in progressive scan. the hardware is there, the option is not. the hardware is capable of doing it, the software doesnt support it. is it so hard to grasp?
With the mentioned hardware limitations of PS2 resulting in its library where far lower than 10% of its games are proscan and native-VGA compatible and where even mip-mapping is often a rare commodity, versus Dreamcast's library where proscan/native-VGA is standard, PS2 clearly isn't more than capable in those regards.
read above.
I'm just stating facts and logic as it relates to this topic with which we form our judgements on the issue. Misinformation didn't become any more valid with time, only more accepted in revisionist history.
again, the fact that u say it doesn tmake it a fact. what u r saying is pretty much illogical, therefore not a fact.
It's not necessarily a problem, just one way of doing things which most of the other manufacturers have also adopted as has been pointed out. It's only that Microsoft too has shown advantages to its strategy of adopting standardization, so the pros and cons of both philosophies can be discussed.
Microsoft has the luxury of being a monopoly in the PC market. of course they are going to use their proprietary standard of graphics libraries, which i must say has come a long way since it was first introduced.
that doesnt make microsoft "better" or in a "better position". it simply makes things easy for them. well buckle up boy, cuz "EASY" is rarely "GREAT". Sony dont want to be "good enough". they want it all.
