People need to realize that the Cell may be very fast for some things, but it is effectively 1/3rd as fast for other tasks. This frame rate issue is almost certainly tied to the 360's 3 core CPU vs the Cell.

The biggest reason framerate is an issue is because of input responsiveness. Consider the way engines render things:

One frame is currently displayed. A second frame is rendering. At this point, a user is responding to the frame that is displayed (or the frame before). Obviously, the game must calculate what happened due to user input, must respond to it, and at the very soonest moment it will show it on the frame after the next frame is displayed since it already has the information for the being rendered frame. Consider a very simple engine at 30fps:

Current frame sticks around for 1/30rd of a second.

Next frame will stick around for 1/30rd of a second.

Third frame (earliest possible with the user input) is around for 1/30rd of a second.  The response from user input will always be 2-3 frames out.  This could be mitigated if you have more CPU cores and you could have it be 1-2 frames out instead.  

This means user input will have a delay of 1/15th of a second to 1/10th of a second -- 100ms. This is the absolute best case. If the game was doing something like triple buffering to improve the framerate, it would be significantly worse. If the game is doing vsync, it may not be able to render frames at that speed.

Things get more complicated real fast. Assume the game is set to output at 720p/60 but is strugglin to render at 30fps and vsync is enabled. This means it may be rendering 20fps (due to vsync). Your latency goes up to 1/10th of a second in the best case and less than 1/7th of a second in the worst case. This feels *very* laggy.

There are tricks you can do to attempt to increase the framerate, but many of them cost responsiveness for user input. If the PS3's user input is really that laggy, the game would be mostly useless to core gamers who are interested in a top-end game experience. The 360's framerate running 60fps is nice for visual reasons, but also control latency reasons.

Um, no it isn't. Sports games, like beat 'em ups or certain action games (e.g. Devil May Cry)  have limited amounts of bodies and animations within a limited field of play, so that's not an issue. If the PS3 really had such a tough time with framerates, then "Resistance" and "Killzone 2" would not be possible.

I don't think EA is evil or got bought off by Microsoft, it's just budgeting and time schedules. The 360 has a larger install base than the PS3 (6 million versus, what, 1.7 million) so EA made the perfectly rational decision to focus slightly more developer resources on the 360 version. Remember, sports games have an unforgiving schedule - you HAVE to produce the title by a certain time.

Another point, to add to what Slorgnet said, is that Sony fanboys should not expect any PS3 multiplatform game to ever look or sound that much better than a 360 game. Even if the PS3 is twice as powerful the multiplat games will always be made for the 360 first then ported to the PS3 with little to no improvement.

This is the reverse of what GCN/Xbox owners had to put up with last gen when multiplat games never looked as good as those systems could handle since the game would be made on the PS2 first and then ported to the more powerful/lower sales systems. The only difference last gen was that the systems were easier to develop for so there was some small improvement for the Xbox/GCN games but this generation I think most 3rd party devs will be struggling just getting the PS3 version finished so they won't have much time to make improvements.

I haven't played the 08 version yet, but my roommate had gotten 07 to play on my Wii before and commented that he liked the controls better than the xbox version. Not saying it's for everyone, but at least some people may like the wiimote's controls over a pad.

Maybe i jumped at the wii to harsh in my first post but it just pissed me off to see the reviews of such PS3 games get smashed the way they did.

If the wii is next gen in the way most players look at the market should the wii not be judged against the PS3/360 games, i can see how each game should be rated different for their consoles but the PS3 version is in direct competition to the 360 one and it's rated that way.

If people want to have the wii rated seperate from the 360/PS3 graphics wise then the 360/PS3 versions should not battle it out against each other, But compare it to last years model.

I just got done playing both versions of the game at a friends house and posted my impressions in another thread.

If you would like to read them, click here:

http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=5562&start=0#end

There are no lag issues on the PS3 with the button presses, whoever says there are hasn't played the game.

I've been playing madden since 1993, and I would notice for sure. It plays almost exactly the same as the 360 version, the only difference is that it's not as smooth.

So if people complain about lag issues just ignore them. The game stutters at times, but it's in no way a deal breaker like I said in my other post.

 Yeah, the PS3 got rated against the 360...but the PS3 is supposed to be MORE powerful than the 360.  When it does less, it's a bad thing...the PS3 Madden got low scores, arguably all on its own...meaning, the PS3 can do better than Madden '08, it probably deserves its low score.
The Wii is much weaker than the PS3 or 360...so when it produces decent graphics like in Madden '08 Wii, it's a good thing...nobody expects it to look better than 360...

Amdahl's law

Basically that means that not everything a computer can do can be parallelized and all algorithms have some unparallelizable component. Complicating this is the fact that parallel algorithms are harder to write and aren't taught as much as traditional sequential algorithms.

The Xbox 360 has three equally capable cores that can be used like traditional processors so programmers don't have that much trouble adapting to it. The PS3 has one fairly weak main core and six highly specialized SPEs. If you can't break down a problem into smaller problems for the SPEs (which have some restrictions on how you can use them) to use you're stuck using the main core. This means that while you can take a traditional approach on the 360 you frequently have to rewrite your program to get adequate performance out of the PS3.

 As you said, it really just comes down to budgeting and time schedules. You can either try to rewrite the game for the PS3 or half ass it and hope your brand name alone convinces people to buy it anyway.

Such PS3 fanboyism and utter nonsense it's funny to read PS3 fanboys who are still in their own little world where the wii can't ever have a game with better graphics for it than the PS3.  Just because it may be technically possible for a PS3 game to have better graphics is no guarantee it will.  The wii version runs at upto 60FPS, the PS3 version is only upto 30FPS.  To me, despite the lower resolution, the higher frame rate for smoother animation earns the wii version a higher score.

At least wii owners realize that "on average" the PS3 has better graphics.  However, you are very closed minded to use words like "*no* Wii game could ever get above 5-7" and "*no* ps3 game would fall below a 9".  You should play some of the better games on a wii sometime.  Many have terrible graphics, but not all, especially by the end of the year when more wii AAA titles are coming out...