GTA4 360 exclusive DLC good/bad?

[MikeB]

@ Legend11

f there is such a gap between the PS3 and 360 then why doesn't it show it like the Xbox and PS2?

Because they are more similar in architecture. The XBox was like a cut down PC and was being developed for as such, the PS2's architecture was far more exotic and you couldn't do with straight PC ports without yielding bad results (too different).

The PS3 is much more powerful than the 360, but are similar.

Let me give you a simple example, in 1993 the Amiga CD32 was released. This game console vs the Amiga 500 or Amiga 1000 (from 1985-1987) had much more RAM, an incredible amount of storage (700 MB CDs vs 880 KB diskettes), over 4 times faster CPU, 16.7 million vs 4096 colours, etc.

Sadly many CD32 games were straight ports of the Amiga 500 originals, so some were using only like 1/700th of available disc space for example, a few games were updated to be a bit more colourful (like James Pond 2: Robocod, Alien Breed: Tower Assault, Zool 2, The Chaos Engine, etc), but in reality these games at their core were all designed around the Amiga 500's basic capabilities just like nearly all 360/PS3 multi-platform games today are build around the 360 (note for instance dev comments with regard to the recently released Tomb Raider: Underworld, they said they build the game around what the 360 can handle and wouldn't be able to beat Uncharted: Drake's Fortune graphically).

There were some semi CD32 exclusive games which demonstrated much better potential, like Super Stardust, Banshee or Liberation. But those too were cut down compared to what was actually possible, this because the Amiga 1200 from 1992 was similarly specced but did not come with a CD drive by default, so these games were made smaller to still be able to fit on diskettes as well.

The PS3 vs 360 situation is a bit different though, despite their similarities, there are some crucial differences which can cause problems doing straight ports, like for instance DVD and Blu-Ray optimisation require very different care (but Blu-Ray is better, especially in combination with a default harddrive for caching).

Not a lot of difference should be expected from the bulk of future multi-platform games, the main differences will be in the exclusives like is already the case.