So i picked up FFXIII the other night, and I think i may have gotten a faulty disc. Whenever characters are on the screen during a cutscene, quite a few visual artifacts appear on the screen. It's very obvious and very distracting.

I browsed around a little and haven't seen any similar reports on the interwebs so far, so I'm wondering if anyone else has had this problem too? I was hoping it was just a one-time deal, but it happens during EVERY cutscene. Argh! Should i take it back to gamestop and ask them to replace it?

Curse you Squeenix for making me unlurk!

My buddy at work had the same issue. He said he noticed it a lot in the black sky during the Snow/Serah scene right after chapter 2.

This is due to big time compression on the 360 version. It is said that the CGI suffered more than anything.

Did it look similar to this?

Left side is 360 version. Right click and select view image to see the entire thing.

Yeah, I was just going to ask, is it only with the CGI cutscenes?

Because if so, that's the result of the compression method they used, since they had to compress them so much to fit onto the discs, it's made them look pretty darn horrible.

Sorry about that.

yep compression.

This is the compression. you do not have a faluty disc. that is just the way it is. 

The cutscenes are taken from 1080p(CG) and 720p (Ingame) ps3 and compressed very poorly until they fit the 360s 576p requirement. You are going to get serious Macroblocking and atrifacting. 

That's just the way it is, sorry. 

Reminds me of the good old N64 days! This machine had a lot of compression problems with cutscenes =D

Oh god, reminds me of Resident Evil 2 with the N64 expansion pack. :O

How bad is it? Does it ruin the cutscenes?

I would say it "ruins" them, but it is noticable when you see that the PS3's CGI is crystal clear.