I am fairly sure that GeOW is considered one of the best graphically games on the 360. Now that GeOW 2 has been shown, not many people are impressed by it's graphics. On N4G there was a site that compared the the two, with the exactly the level. On looking on the comments section not many people were impressed and i would have to agree.

So does this show the 360 is reaching it's graphical limit?

Note: Again i am not trying to bash the 360 but simply asking a question?

GeoW 2 is still graphically impressive, it's just not as impressive as the first time I saw GeoW1 trailer back in the day...

I say it's about 90% tapped.

No, sorry.

Its probably getting close in theory...but devs will always find ways to tweak and improve graphics as time goes by.

Its PC architecture makes it very easy to develop games on it, and in the 360's case it has a PC architecture, its very easy to make games on it.

Thats not the same for the PS3 though, thats all I have to say.

Generally, consoles don't reach their maximal hardware output before 4-5 years into their lifecycle or even later if it lives long enough so my answer would be; no.

Well in terms of power by the developers not having to be that smart in using the console's hardware yes but with tweaking and use of software a game could appear better.

Lets rephrase your OP. Not many PS3 fans are impressed by it's graphics. You see I never really saw that Uncharted was that great graphically. It was good and maybe better technically, but it's the result on the screen that matters. I think Gears 1 isn't that far behind MGS4 even the cutscenes. To prove heres my fave Gears moment and this is entirely using in engine and is definately not CGI. Anyone who says that this is not that impressive is a major fanboy. This is still one of the most graphically impressive games. And Gears 2 will better than this by some way. SPOILER ALERT.

Except that the main limiting factor today in improving graphics is GPU related, not CPU.

The CPUs in the 360 and PS3 are great but there's only so much that can be done with now 3 generation old GPUs

Well, I think there are lots of things to be considered regarding this issue.

-The first of which is that the first Gears still holds its' own, graphically, almost two years after its' release--it's still ONE of the best-looking games on the market. All that, despite only using one of the 360's three processor cores (source: http://xbox360.qj.net/Gears-of-War-Only-Running-on-One-Core-/pg/49/aid/3378).


-Second, the character models in GoW 2 do look somewhat better, and the environments are much, much larger than in Gears, with more enemies.

So, in addition to characters with more polygons and better textures, mixed with better lighting and shadows, highly realistic water, the game also renders (some) environments that are many times the size of those in Gears, while also processing (at some points) hundreds of enemies--meaning hundreds of individual AI processes, the possibility of hundreds of guns firing at once, and character models for all said enemies and guns.

-Third (and this doesn't specifically have to do with Gears), some multiplat games with the updated Unreal Engine run better on the 360. Specifically, Unreal Tournament 3. I know this game had six more months dev. time, and I'm not necessarily saying that it's 'more powerful'.

But the fact that it can play UE3 on split-screen coop (meaning rendering every level in the SP game twice) when the PS3 didn't have this, at least shows that the 360 is still capable of being competitive.



I understand people's worries here. But to conclude what I was saying about Gears 2, the system is essentially running a somewhat-better-looking game than Gears 1, with the chance for exponentially more 'things' possible onscreen at once--massive environments, hundreds of enemies, etc. So, I would conclude from this that, were the environments the same size as they were in Gears 1, with the same amount of characters onscreen, this version would look exponentially better.