This.

If Crysis 2 is graphically better than Crysis, then that's just pure win.

I believe that Crysis has the best graphics and consoles don't have enough power to run it.

But you also have to take in consideration that Good devs don't need that powerful systems to develop high graphical games.Like if a dev is develoing for PC,the dev can just increase the system requirments and the make a game more high graphical.But on consoles devs work hard and take more power out of a low spec system.And we have many hard working devs that can take out alot more power out of these curent gen consoles.

I don't want to start out war but PS3 tech is different from PC tech.Its specs work differently.So you can't say that PS3 games can't be more graphical.

Nope.

Crysis is a pretty amazing looking game and as far as textures, effects and resolution you can tweak it to look even better, not to mention it is a "large" semi non linear game with stuff happening all over.
Now, if by "graphics" we mean more than just resolution and textures, MGS4 is in a league of it's own in my book, due to it's exquisite realtime cinematography and state of the art motion capture which make those characters so incredibly varied and believable. God is in the details and this is first and foremost what i appreciate as far as visuals.

Purely techically speaking though, i don't think the consoles have juice to create Crysis visuals this gen.

Oh I understand that.  As I said in another thread, graphics for me = technical graphics, which is resolution, AA, particle effects, transparency, character models, water effects, draw distance, foliage rendering, number of objects on-screen rendering, etc.

In all these areas Crysis can achieve (on the right PC) superior results.  It obviously supports resolutions beyond consoles, it can support much higher levels of AA, it has better particle effects and transparency handling, water, etc.

Technically, even allowing for their level of specialization and good coding, neither the PS3 nor 360 have the necessary horsepower.

Remember that Crysis really was developed ahead of its time, with features that require huge amounts of memory (both CPU and GPU) to enable.

The best games on the HD consoles have impressed me with how far the tech could be pushed - say MGS4, Uncharted 2, Killzone 2, Gears of War 2, etc. - but all those games still technically trail Crysis on a high end PC.  Skill, etc. counts for a lot, but in the end so does what is available to the developer - for example, imagine what Uncharted 2 would look like if you could drop it on a high end PC, double the AA, bump the resolution up another few notches, allow for more movable objects, etc?

On the bright side, the HD consoles cost less than a really high end graphics card for a PC!

Er, yes you can. It's strictly a physical constraint. Hardware has limitations. No matter what casing the hardware is housed in, the technology can only do so much. The hardware is 5 years old. The games look 5 years old. It's only now that games on the ps3 are looking as good as PC games COULD THEORETICALLY of looked back then. However there is some leadway for the consoles as the engine is designed specifically to work for one set of hardware. Optimization is way better.

So of course you can make games that look decent for PC specs (like uncharted 2, killzone 2, god of war 3, heavy rain) but the result is that most console games are just incredibly well optimized 5 year old pc tech (unreal 3 engine etc.)

The reality is, consoles have held back PC gaming. Who knows what wonderful things we would of seen by now if this is not the case.

Regardless, the consoles have graphics processors that just simply cannot and are completely incapable of performing some of the lighting and texture work that crysis does. It's leaps and bounds above the consoles best.

Another misconception however is price. You do not need a thousand dollar + PC to run crysis well. 600$ should do you fine. Remember, you own a PC already. The general public is hilarious. Especially people who own macs. Macs are the single most overpriced pieces of technology in existence. I can build three high (or two ultra high) setting PCs for the price of one macbook.

Not only that, the choice of hardware makes the resulting machines far superior in just about every way imaginable.

(Note: This is not to hate on the operating system, just the hardware. You basically pay 75% of the machines cost for the apple brand name. 25% goes into the hardware and you assume the OS is free since you're buying the machine from apple.)

@ cold

that video does crysis no favours honestly.

Having a better art many will, look at Shadow of the Colossus on PS2. Technicaly any PS3 game look better than it, but, in matter of art it's far better than many current games.

To have a good looking game it isn't necessary just horsepower, many game in ps2 are more beautiful than PS3/360 games duo to the art and the capability to trick the player.

Technicaly it's impossible just because there aren't enough power to do so.

That's why I always, in my evaluation of a game, seperate art direction from technical graphics.

Even a fairly low res game technically can look wonderful with the correct art direction.

ICO and SOTC do have great art direction, so do games like Okami.

Crysis has middling art direction I thought - although it's of course limited by setting, as the aliens, etc. aside everything has to look as expected - i.e. a Jeep looks like a Jeep, a tree looks like a tree.

Obviously fantasy setting games have an advantage with Art Direction, as they can go to town without havint to look like something already known in the real world.