I'm all about technical talks... But all ive got to say here is look for 2011 to continuously see nice visual improvements on ps3 exclusives as developers continue to learn the best way to utilize the Cell/RSX combo..

I'm not concerned about enemy AI at all, just my teammates. As far as Killzone goes, I only completed it once and all I remember is Rico being slightly less of a liability than Dom from Gears, though still basically useless during boss fights (constantly getting downed) and Radec being annoyingly cheap (not intelligent).

@ Mitsurugi

In any case Killzone 2 was voted as having the best game AI at AiGameDev.com:

"The AI in KILLZONE 2 in particular shines in the Skirmish mode where you can play with computer-controlled bots in large open maps designed for multiplayer, and free of scripts and trigger boxes. The bots were intended for offline play where you have 7 bots on your side against 8 enemies, but you can also compete online with your friends against various combinations of bots."

Regarding the buddy system: "Cooperative buddy AI that accompany you through the game (while actually fighting alongside you) is generally a hard problem that nobody has got entirely right to-date, and there's still room for improvement in Killzone 2's buddies. However, it's one of the best attempts yet and given the underlying engine there's even more potential. In particular, there's a balance to be found between the aggressiveness that can save you in tricky situations vs. buddies playing safe so you don't need to revive them too often."

i bought my launch ps3 purely based on the spec of cell. i know the industry's trend; I know what cell's architecture means for computation and i know PS3 will shine. it just took a long time :( way longer than I thought.  i blame game journalists and ms.

Great thread :D

I see Sony delivering on ALL fronts, highly technical showcase games with great art direction plus smaller yet beautiful games that stand on artistic strength alone (Journey for example)

@ kafar

 Most journalists are NOT well versed with regard to technicals (for example even Eurogamer in the past and they are the best ones on the topic out there), also even high level game devs (it's the low level coders who know how the hardware really works). Microsoft send fake information out to journalists claiming the 360 to be much more powerful than the PS3, IGN at the time revealed the letter to the public.

Microsoft can be blamed for many things inhibiting progress with regard to game engine development. Microsoft did a good job making their tools easy to use, but also neglected efficiency and intentionally goes against portability. This was already the case with the first releases of Direct X, games were a hell to port to Amigas, Macs and Linux. I knew the developers of a leading company porting Direct X based games to those platforms in the past, the end result was far superior in terms getting the most performance out of the hardware (compared to running on Windows on a system with similar specs), but the porting process took a lot of headaches.

 Quoting one cross platform developer for a high profile game company:

 "Secondly, the matters of multithreading policies, the whole job queue architecture, encapsulation of jobs and their corresponding data packets, etc. that work on the PS3 are indeed more than applicable of the 360/PC. And as I've mentioned before, they work better than anything and everything that Microsoft recommends (so far without exception for us)."

I don't like Microsoft's approach this gen at all. Keeping PC centric games XBox 360 exclusive, even 3rd party ones such as Alan Wake. Paying a company like BioWare to not release their PS3 version of Mass Effect 1 (timed exclusivity I can accept, but this approach is IMO anti-competitive and destructive).

I hope so

What about custom soundtracks, do any of the upcoming PS3 titles support it? I know it's still done at the developers discretion, but I'd love to see it in Uncharted 3 and Killzone 3. I don't know how hard it is implement in games (especially graphic/physic intensive-ones) but I think it'd be more appealing (and certainly more widely used) than tacked on motion controls or 3d.

GT5 supports Custom  Soundtracks...

thanks for expanding :)  yea, ms is good at marketing and excel in beating competition but not so in hardware design. Sadly, Sony just can't compete against the mighty MS, who is sitting on a huge pile of cash. example: MOVE vs KINECT :(