I agree. Resolution is overrated, because people lack knowledge about graphics and what makes them look good. There are so many factors that contribute to good graphics, like the effects anti aliasing (to remove jaggies), anisotrofic filtering, colors, high dynamic lighting, nice shadows, texture quality, quality of geometry and number of polygons and probably a few more effects that I can't recall right now or ain't familiar with.

It is true that most PS3 games are not displayed at 1080p, but there are a few:

• Ridge Racer 7
• Virtua Figher 5
• Lego Star Wars
• Super Stardust HD

Also, there are games in development at the moment that may be using 1080p.  Resistance 2 could very well be one of them going by the screens that have been released and one game that will be using 1080p is Wardevil, although we don't know much about it.  MGS4 is 50/50 on it using 1080p.  And GT5 uses a resolution not wuite 1080p, but it's better than 720p.

The games will come, also you can tell the difference between 1080p and 720p, not on a 32" screen though, but on a 40"+ you can.

Also, if he intends to watch BR movies, get the 1080p screen.

all ps3 games are blu-ray how could u not know that?

MikeB said: 1080p allows for more details, this becomes relevant with larger HDTV sets (note upscaling does not add details). Relative pixel size difference with same resolution on a larger TV: With regard to optimal viewing distance: Screen and content resolution on HDTVs due to larger sizes are far more relevant than with regard to running PC games at high resolutions on small monitors (the average monitor in use I believe is ~17 inch).

Here we go again. Still not getting detail is stored in the texelss in 3D games, not in the pixels. It's texture resolution that matters here more than screen resolution.

I have Gran Turismo 5 Prologue and it runs 1080p beautifully

 Blu-ray is just the format the data is stored on, nothing more.

Blu-ray just has the capacity to hold 1080p movies as well as very large games weather their 720p or 1080p. 

I don't think resolution is overrated, you are able to see more details. Like for instance when a spaceship is far away in the distance, higher resolution also helps with regard to jaggies like AA but with better detail.

You can add smart manual color selection for art to that list, you can spot jaggies because of high level of contrast between neighbouring pixels, the various AA techniques are aimed to reduce this contrast.

IMO 720p at solid 30 FPS should be minimal for the high def consoles, that's why many are surprised a high profile big budget exclusive game like Halo 3 was only running in 640p without AA (not really relevant to those playing on old TVs) while also noticeably dropping frames in parts of the game. The PS3 is able to go higher when game engines are fully matured.

Totally, look at the RTE1080 engine that Digi-Guys are building for use with Wardevil.  Yes, we will have to wait and see how it pans out, but they currently have 1080p resolution at 60fps running on the PS3 and the visuals look great.  Who knows what we will see in a few years time.

For many years now, PC games have had resolutions far higher than 1080p with no need for Blu-Ray at all.

You could make a 1080p game in a 1.44 MB floppy disk, though it probably wouldn't have much content (unless it was mostly procedurally generated).

Of course texture resolution is of relevance just like rendering resolution, aliasing problems are however usually not noticed in textures (hand picked color contrast) but around in-game characters, on track edges, powerlines, etc.

With regard to texture quality (details), Blu-Ray and a default harddrive comes into play. More space on Blu-Ray means more and/or higher quality textures can be streamed. The harddrive can be used to store speed critical data (notice the texture popups in for example Mass Effect) or to be used as cache for the Blu-Ray drive to stream data to.

Uncharted is one of the visually most impressive games this generation so far without any in-game load times, this is achieved by seamless streaming (game does not need to install to HD). But this is just Naughty Dog's first effort, they expect to be able to deliver dramatic improvement with future games.