Another interesting quote:

When asked how much Sony could cut the cost of the PS3 by, the CEO said: "That’s what we’re studying at the moment; that’s what we’re trying to refine."

He also stated that current PS3 owners are happy with the machine, but said games have a long way to go until they fully exploit the system. He said: "It takes a long time for producers, and more time because of the cost factor, to embrace the full bandwidth of PlayStation 3.

"It’s only using 20 per cent of it right now. And producers will always wait to see how it’s going, and once they use the full bandwidth the games experience is stunning."

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/gaming/a61234/sony-boss-to-refine-ps3-price.html

I think some exlcusivs which will be released later this year will underline such perspectives.

 This is the logical way things go, but FEAR and other games have been actually getting worse during porting or looking identical. That's why I said Bethesda actually put effort into making the game look better over the year's time passed in my original post...

Yes, and Bethsada should be praised for that. Sales will always suffer for a lackluster port - the 360 launch games were known for that (Xbox ports to 360 like Gun). Since Oblivion has sold pretty well (150k+) on PS3, hopefully more devs realize that effort gets rewarded.

Personally, I think that framedrops on console games are inexcusable.

Draw distance between the versions are noticeable. Watch the comparison video and you can see buildings popping up in the 360 version whereas, they are already there in the PS3 version.

It's been a good idea waiting nearly a year to release Oblivion on the PS3, it's obviously helped with some aspects of the game. But you will probably find out that the PC and 360 versions were started firstly and the PS3 version was then added later. So maybe the extra time to develop the PS3 version was solely down to starting development on the PS3 version later.

@ NJS

IMO the framedrops are due to Oblivion being multi-platform (PCs are technically different, although multi-core PCs have a lot more in common with the XBox 360's overall architecture than compared with the PS3, but many people still don't own multi-core PCs), if the game was build from the ground up for the XBox 360 or PS3 they could have pushed this game further for these consoles without any framedrops, like Resistance and Motorstorm have solid framerates throughout the entire game.

The most technically impressive PC games being newly released often require significant system upgrades. The advantage of game consoles is that you will have a large userbase with identical specs, so you can fully optimise for just one specific configuration. For example if I wanted to play Crysis on my PC to its full potential I would probably be spending more on the upgrade than it would to buy a new XBox 360 or PS3 console.

IMO the PS3 is fully capable of producing more impressive games than Crysis will be if built from the ground up, so I am not plannng on upgrading my PC any further.

My point is that to release a game which can't even work properly is inexcusable. The hardware is perfectly defined, unlike PCs where there are billions of possible configurations.

If they can't guarantee that a game won't have frame dropping, they're clearly not doing their work. This is valid for any game, on any console.

@ NJ5

I understand your point, but the excuse is addional development time and effort involved ($$$). The Oblivion developers did a relative good job compared to most others though.

If they started developing this game specifically for the PS3 this may only have been released somewhere in 2008 as mature PS3 devkits weren't available until a few months before the PS3's release and considering the enviroments and the depth of the game being impressive. IMO the benefit for this less than optimal port is that you can experience such a deep game right now when there's a relative lack of truly impressive games versus having to wait many additional months, and by the time the game would have been completed there would be so many other great games available.

I think this is a transition period within which the current Oblivion game fits very well. The current PS3 userbase doesn't yet justify releasing a PS3 exclusive like this for 3rd party developers, unless Sony would dig deep into their pockets to make it worth their while.

The PC mods have made the previous Elder Scrolls games what they are, and if they suddenly start only come out for console only, I won't buy them.

Edit : And the PC version of Oblivion easily looks the best, especially if you have the hardware for it. ;) 

 Oh come on. Framerate dropping is an issue but I play Oblivion perfectly fine on the 360 it's not that bad you are totally exaggerating here. As long as it's not bad enough to get in the way of the game being good, some rate drops are totally tolerable for me. Odin Sphere has some slowdown in boss fights but I love the game and play it... same principle.