Retrasado said:
You are correct that neither system is very close to being maxed out, but I personally think that because the PS3 has more than kept pace with the 360 graphically despite launching a year later and having a much, MUCH more difficult programming architecture, it's peak will be higher than the 360s. It's more complex hardware also means it will reach 90-95% capacity much later in its lifetime than the 360 has/will (I don't think 360 has reached that point yet, but its possible). When I look at the jump from R1 to Uncharted to MGS4 to KZ2 and now to Uncharted 2 vs the jump from CoD2 to Gears 1 to Gears 2 to SO4, it seems to me that the PS3 still has a ways to go wheras the 360 is beginning to reach or has reached the "plateau" of 90-95% capacity. (the jump between the game generations hasn't lessened as much with the PS3 list has it has toward the end of the 360's list)
Note: My reasoning could be off somewhere, but I'm just throwing this off the top of my head
|
Very reasonable post, but I disagree with a few parts of it.
I agree that the Playstation 3's peak may be farther off, due to more difficult archatecture. But at the same time, I think that having the easier archatecture may lead to better looking games on the X360 in certain ways, to counteract the 'arms race', if you will.
Since the Playstation 3 is harder to develop for, one would think that (and based on what we've seen, it's true) that a good 'AAA' game on the PS3 (ala MGS4) costs more, and takes more time to make...But is certainly gorgeous.
However, on the X360, it takes far less time, and cash, from what we've seen. Because of this, it may be an issue that PS3 games are getting bigger budgets versus X360 games. A good example would be MGS4 vs. Gears 2. MGS4, for all intents & purposes was made for an extra 1-2 years and for an extra $20-30 million dollars....Both were exclusives to their respective consoles.
Now, my argument is: What if the Xbox 360 had the same development cycle & budget? What would we see? I think that's a fair question to ask, is it not? People argue that KZ2 and GT5 are going to be the new standards for graphics whores, which may be true...But are they on the same level as X360 games, when they take an extra year or two of development time & budgeting?
To my knowledge, no X360 game's budget has gone over $30m to develop (Halo 3), and most are still within $15-20m. However, MGS4 and KZ2 are well above Halo 3's budget, and are taking a lot longer to develop...How are we supposed to compare? Yes, I agree the PS3 has more horsepower - I don't think anyone can argue that, but at the same time...The playing fields aren't very even, it seems, either.
And it brings up another point: With the Playstation 3 continuing to fall behind the X360 in terms of global install base...Will we continue to see big studios churn out massive blockbusters utilized for the PS3 archatecture? One of the reasons the PS2 saw such goregeous graphics like God of War 2, was that it was a viable platform that late into it's development cycle...Will that be the case for the PS3?
For all intents & purposes, we could even see the inverse happening of what gets claimed a lot: If the X360 continues to increase it's margin against the PS3, we could see more 'uber blockbusters' go to the X360, and get greenlit for massive budgets rivaling KZ2 and the like...If that was the case...Don't you think that such a game on the X360 would look phenominal? What if, after the current argued games (KZ2, GT5, ect) Sony fails to secure any more mega-budget games while the X360 does? What becomes of the argument then?
Economics do play a significant part of this discussion. The Xbox had the best horsepower of all 3 last-gen systems, yet very few will argue that, in the end, it had the best looking game of last-gen systems (PS2 did)..Merely because the budgets & dev time was viable to do something spectacular, no?
