Face palm, you guys still don't get me do you... Not once did I say that either console has been maxed out. I said a Dual-Layered Blu-Ray disc gives a game 50gb to mess around with, and with that they can add more light effects, scenery, and visually appealing things, not to mention they can extend the length of the game, as opposed to DVD where you only have 9gb to work with on one Dual-Layered disc.

And why bring PC into this if everybody knows PC graphics > Consoles graphics.

Again this is IMO, in terms of potential in Graphics PC > PS3 = 360 > Wii. Notice I said POTENTIAL, I say that because of hardware specs. And for future reference please ask if you don't understand what I am saying, don't flame, this site doesn't need to turn into a flamebait in every thread.

@Squilliam I'm glad that you mentioned this. Anyone who considers themeself a true gamer of who cares about what's going on in the industry should read at least one copy of game developer magazine. Naughty Dog mentioned several times that a fair amount of content was cut from uncharted 2 due to the space limitations of the MULTILAYERED blu ray disc. On athe topic of graphical capability, the 360's much discussed "lack of grafficks makerz" doesn't stop it from making each sequel and each new game larger, better looking, and much improved over the first. Look at the jump from fable 2 to 3, crackdown to crackdown 2, ME to ME 2-God, what large leap. Basically games that MSG usually publish-and a healthy amount of exclusives in general- have a focus on gameplay over graphics.

@red part: Actually, not really. The hardware itself is still the bottleneck. Especially the memory. Light effects and most of the visual appealing things are nothing more than code calculating pixel colors. It's not like the light is put on the disc and uses 1GB or whatever. They barely take any disc space at all. I can't believe how many times I said the following in these forums already, but what takes most disc space is textures, sound, and if you have them, the pre-rendered videos. The rest is negligible compared to those three. Having lots of ultra high res textures is not really useful. It only uses more processing power and process time, and if your texture filtering sucks, you might as well use less quality textures to free up some resources and use them somewhere else.

Having ultra high quality sound is nice for the few people that have the equipment, but most people can't even tell the difference between an mp3 and an actual cd. If you have disc space available, go ahead and do it, but it should not be a priority. Pre-rendered videos are nice, but it's the same story as sound. If real-time cut scenes work just as well, or if you need to lower the quality a bit, why not? Sure, it'll look less, but again, everything is based on priorities and there's only so much you can do. Also, filling up a 50GB disc is far from optimal for games, unless you put data multiple times on it to reduce seek times. Also, scenery is usually nothing more than an illusion. Things that are "close" are high poly, and things that are far away are usually really low quality, but your brain basically makes you think that everything far away is still as detailed as up close, since our real world is that way... And developers exploit that a lot. So that's all based on the priorities of the developer and the limit of the hardware.

The biggest problem of the X360 is not having a stock hard drive that developers can rely on. They need to program the games to run without it, and that's what hurts it a lot. If you really thought that the light effects and visually appealing things all take a big size on the disc, how would you explain Crysis fitting on a DVD and looking better than anything out there on max settings? So yes, the DVD is kind of a limit, but not really on the graphics. More on length of games, and the games that will suffer the most are RPG games.

There's no misunderstanding, it's just the reason people aren't 'getting' your point is because it's wrong.

Space is not the limiting factor to graphics quality at this time.  Sure, you could fill a Blu Ray disc with huge uncompressed textures etc. that simply wouldn't fit on a DVD but it does you no good if the system in question does not have the processing to display said textures/objects at a reasonable frame rate.

The PC is relevant because it is still 'constrained' by the same media that the 360 uses, yet still manages to have much better graphics than is seen in most console games.  Space just isn't much of a factor at this point, processing is.  PS3 games are looking better because of investments of time and money, and developers getting a better handle on how to utilise the Cell's SPUs.

Your point about Alan Wake potentially being 720p except for space is just incorrect.  A game can simply be run in a higher resolution with the same resolution textures etc, this doesn't mean the game occupies more space on a disc.  Certainly with a bump in resolution you have the opportunity to increase your texture resolution and have a greater amount of detail on display but the higher resolution can be implemented alone and will still make for a better looking game. Alan Wake is a 7.3 gigabyte file.  According to your reasoning, even if they couldn't 'fit' 720p on the disc surely they could at least have bumped the game to 600p (COD4) or 640p (Halo3) in order to utilise that last 1.7 gigs of space.  Why didn't they?

All other things being equal Blu Ray could theoretically allow developers to make longer games or at least games with more varied scenery and textures but then you start hitting budget constraints, the reason games are/seem to be much shorter this generation than last.

I never once debated your hierarchy of processing just your assertion that games are being run in lower resolutions because of storage contraints.

the consoles are maxed out , so tell me why are the pc versions of the multiplats always better in resolution and overall effects and textures ???

oh and most importantly pc games can run well over 60fps console games dont , they are maxed out the hardware is old, its just that simple

That was a nice read.

i think crysis 2 and gears of war 3, will be the games to truly push the system to its limits. and could the last games to show what the 360 can do in the graphics area, unless their is some game we dont know about that suprises us at e3.