Yet the 360 version will outsell it completely and will get all the attention.

Not to mention the demo came out a week ago and is coming hours before release for PC...

Anyone who expected a game to look better on a console than the best PC was obviously not thinking straight. But the difference is getting smaller and smaller.

More and more PC games will get console releases too and some that were before PC games will move completely to consoles in the future.

First off, that's a far cry from 5 grand.

Second, you are inflating the price by choosing top-of-the-line components, of which NONE are required as per Bioshock's RECOMMENDED system requirements.

No. The difference will only get bigger and bigger.

This is exactly the same situation that has occurred in every console generation: First the consoles create graphics on par (slightly better or worse, but nothing to really nitpick about). Consoles have a fixed architecture. Console developers get better with console optimizations, but that hardware is everything that the devs have to play with.

PC developers can throw caution to the wind and continue developing with the latest technology in mind, and that difference will only increase in time.

Simply compare, say, the graphics in Doom3 for the Xbox with the graphics in Doom3 on a PC that met id's recommended system requirements and you can see that the difference is night and day.

Sure, perhaps the PS2 and Gamecube versions of a game looked pretty remarkable when they first came out, but five years down the line any respectable FPS on a PC worth its weight in salt would have made the PS2 version look like microwaved ass.

nah it will be smaller and smaller because we'll get closer and closer to photo realism.... of course technically you could do better quality at 5 million fps or else but it will be close to useless because you won't see the difference with your bare eyes.... the limitation won't be the technology but the human body....

Good point.

I would add that with graphics reaching realism (even though I think we are still about three generations from that point) the focus will start shifting towards physics and AI, so in a way yes, the graphics will start to normalize, but physics especially will start putting the strain on "realism".

As with Gran Turismo, getting the graphics to look real is just one part of the story. Getting the game world to behave and interact realistically is something else.

Finally, graphics won't just die at 1080p. Even before the HD revolution/evolution computer monitors were able to push beyond 1920x1080. Even now there are specification drafts for the next HD resolution formats. So, I'm willing to wager that in five years' time console graphics, resolution and physics will still stagnate at near its current levels while PCs will have made significant strides in all the aforementioned fields.

 I'll revise your comment slightly. When a console game delivers better graphics, gameplay, sound and controls than its PC counterpart, when the PC version isn't a crappy unoptimised port from a console, I'll consider that  news.

@endimion, sure it will get closer in the long run, but we are still a fair way off photorealism. Even with raytracing we are still not close enough.

I was thinking that someone would bring up Resident Evil console vs PC or something like that but you've made everything much better, thanks!

hum yeah but with the exponential curve of the technology development it could happen faster than we think....

"when the PC version isn't a crappy unoptimised port from a console, I'll consider that news."

well that's the other reason why I think the gap will get smaller too... we probably will see more and more that kind of thing happening..... especially if MS ends up dominating the market in a generation or 2

some genre like RTS some MMO and couple FPS will stay PC friendly, but i'm afraid that a lot of other things will just be port from consoles... especially if that market keep getting bigger and bigger....

That's something that I would love to know: Exactly how many people game on a PC vs a console? I always hear about PC gaming being much smaller than the console market, but I've never seen any numbers!

There are probably many more PC gamers by virtue of Minesweeper and Solitaire alone, but what we're talking about here are games that require considerably more power than running a card game. 

Anecdotal evidence isn't much to go by, but I have always known more people who game on PCs! This is probably not the case, but where's them numbers? Does anyone know?

More sales will go for 360 than the PC, because more people will be downloading the PC version than buying it.. that said, more people will be playing on PC than there are people playing on 360