What games are you currently playing?

[Feba]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Hanako path done.

Honestly, I was expecting it to be far more depressing; maybe it wasn't just because you go in expecting it to be all dark and angsty, and it actually brightens up. Unlike someone else.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

I think the other compelling reason to go to 360 was pretty much just the fact that in my area, 360 games seem to see more sales and the used games are a third to a half less when I see many of the same PS3 games go for. This has been pretty consistent between Gamestop, big retailers and even the small mom'n'pop stores.

360 clearly owns the market out where I live.

I don't think its really a matter of ports to PS3 being shoddy so much as ports to PS3 are more difficult. Its kind of like with Nintendo and the Wiimote - developers just don't want to deal with your weird proprietary shit, no matter how well-intentioned it might be.

I do think developers need to grow out of that thinking when it comes to control schemes as we really don't have that much further to push graphics. There's a reason a lot of gamers don't care for a new system yet - what we have is still pretty damn good and no amount of power creep on the PC side is going to change that for now. How we play games in the future is going to be what keeps changing the games, not graphics.

As far as graphics go, though, I'll take high resolution and a steady framerate over raw graphical power.

The funny thing about the PS3 version of Skyrim, to me, is it only ever looked as good as the 360 version when you were on the loading screens.

It seems some studios can deal with Sony's stuff (Eidos Montreal seemed quite capable) and some just don't want to (Bethesda). I can't exactly blame the latter for just not wanting to, even though they really should show the PS3 gamer a bit more respect if they're going to port the game to PS3. But that's just it - as a PS3 gamer, I feel like I'm a low priority to the third parties and not a terribly high priority to Sony either.

[Icemage]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Uh, you DO realize that the "1080p" on the Xbox advertising is just upscaling... right? It's the same thing your TV is doing. Zero difference. Other than a handful of games, pretty much everything renders at the same resolution on PS3 and Xbox 360 (typically 720p, except for lolcallofduty), with the exception of a handful of disc games which have slightly higher resolution on 360, and maybe a triple handful of PSN games which support true 1080p rendering.

Using Skyrim as a barometer for the overall quality of the two systems is pretty flawed anecdotal evidence; Bethesda has always had terrible PS3 ports, and they're more or less the only developer that does so.


Icemage

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Yes, I'm aware its just upscaling and not rendering. Still helps a good deal.

[Icemage]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Yes, I'm aware its just upscaling and not rendering. Still helps a good deal.

Eh? No, it really doesn't, unless your TV/receiver is from 2004 and can't upscale worth a damn or you bought a faulty Vizio HDTV or something. Upscaling is the same no matter which device is doing it; it's just the process of stretching that 1280x720 image onto a 1920x1080 screen. The process has been known and perfected for years, and only the most awful hardware in the universe (a really cheap DVD player, maybe) doesn't do it properly.

Anything else is just placebo effect.


Icemage

[Feba]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

typically 720p, except for lolcallofduty

"lawl of duty"

come on man are you even trying?



Feba

[Malacite]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

FF13 was made for PS3 1st, then ported to 360 - it also looks and runs better than the 360 version (not by leaps & bounds but it's noticeable). Imagine that

Wonder if that'll be the case again with 13-2 or not.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

PS3 was the lead platform for FFXIII, meaning, the place where development originated (technically, it started on PS2, but those concepts were shelved and the game started from scratch on PS3). It shouldn't be that hard to check to see if the 360 version of FFXIII-2 suffers the same differences as XIII did on 360, though I'd say from what I played of it on PS3 that the engine is updated and that there are many more in-engine cutscenes with no higher--res model switch-ups so I have a feeling there will be fewer differences this time around.

Very, very rarely is the PS3 the lead platform for anything, though, and outside of Sony first party exclusives I can't really think of any games that were better for it. 360's architecture is much like that of a PC, so you can make games for both of those platforms without much lost between them. PS3 development and porting is a different affair. To say that Bethesda is the only one that's guilty of neglecting PS3 on the porting end, well, i do seem to recall Modern Warfare 2 being a bit controversial for PS3 as well.

The idea of a "lead" platform, however, only really exists because of someone having proprietary architectures and someone having unique controllers. If Nintendo and Sony didn't do what they tend to do, PC would always be the lead platform by default. I don't really consider 360 a lead platform since its not really that different from developing for the PC.

so far there is one thing I don't like about my 360 so far - its loud.

Wii - barely hear it when its runing
Ps3 - barely hear it, maybe a little more than the Wii, but not by much.
360 - Were the fan to spin any faster, I'm sure it could be a leaf blower

Additionally, I think the 360 is also stand in for a portable heater. For a "slim" model its not really that much smaller than the other 360s I've seen. I can say the PS3 Slim is slim because the original was a hulking thing on par with the original Xbox, which was a monstrosity. That thing was not fun to take to LAN parties.

[Armando]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Eh? No, it really doesn't, unless your TV/receiver is from 2004 and can't upscale worth a damn or you bought a faulty Vizio HDTV or something. Upscaling is the same no matter which device is doing it; it's just the process of stretching that 1280x720 image onto a 1920x1080 screen. The process has been known and perfected for years, and only the most awful hardware in the universe (a really cheap DVD player, maybe) doesn't do it properly.

Anything else is just placebo effect.

If anything, isn't it better for the console, the thing with actual processing power, to take care of it? As opposed to your TV trying to do so and adding more lag to your game. The less my TV's doing while I'm playing a game, the better, if you ask me.

[Icemage]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

If anything, isn't it better for the console, the thing with actual processing power, to take care of it? As opposed to your TV trying to do so and adding more lag to your game. The less my TV's doing while I'm playing a game, the better, if you ask me.

Nope. The upscaling is handled independently of the console computing hardware, in a dedicated circuit in the graphics processor; exactly the same thing that happens in your TV/receiver.

The only people who would notice any difference are people with really terrible knock-off HDTVs, or really old HDTVs from pre-2003 that only accept 1080i and not 720p signals (very, very rare).


Icemage

[Malacite]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

The slim should be almost silent - I never hear my friend's console,as opposed to mine which was one of the last generation of Elite models and makes a tonne of noise, especially during movies.

Since I'm done with Deus Ex & FF13 (though I didn't 100% DX because I don't have the DLC, yet the achievements were added anyway so wtf MS?) I've resumed my completionist run of Tales of Vesperia. I also just realized that FF13-2 is out in a week, but I just don't know if I want to pre-order it or not. I actually ended up hating myself for not buying 13 last time because I basically rented it, kept it for 3 or 4 extra days and found myself thinking I should have just bought it (finally did buy it 2 years ago on boxing day for $20).

It certainly looks like there will be loads of content, particularly with all the time travel shenanigans. But there are other titles I really, REALLY want this year that I have to budget for (Diablo 3 and Halo 4 chief among them) so idk. I'll probably decide by Friday whether or not to pre-order it off Amazon (I'd normally rather do gamestop/EB but F that, I want Omega).

@.@ the crappy thing about loading up vesperia is I set it down months ago and am hoping to hell I haven't fucked up any of the sidequests, especially the Broniac Spear - I could not for the life of me get the scene in Emead Hill to trigger, so I'm hoping I already did it before I set it down last time. Current in Gafarost Tower - Damn how I *LOVE* Judith

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

The Wrestler - now in English. Skip to 3:00 as half this video is really just tutorial.

Started up Lost Odyssey and was hooked within the first hour. This was the game I needed after Skyward Sword and Skyrim, not FFXIII.

[Cheezeman3000]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Speaking of XIII, I'm almost done with my 100% completion run. Just have to do the last few missions and then farm turtles for a couple years. 100% datalog too!

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

I still maintain that the upscaling makes a slight difference overall, but I think what I've really picked up on as far as Skyrim goes is the use of light and shadow is a lot better in the 360 version. Lighting comes off a bit flat in the PS3 version, but you don't really think about it while you play, but in the 360 version there were just all these details the lighting brings out that I didn't see before.

The result, in some cases, is that now characters are uglier than I remember because the light and shadow on the PS3 wasn't shadowing facial features the same way. You wouldn't pick on it at all with a character like Lydia as her features are smooth so she looks pretty much the same, but Dephine looks totally different. She definitely looks like she has a few more years than her PS3 incarnation does.

[Icemage]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

I still maintain that the upscaling makes a slight difference overall, but I think what I've really picked up on as far as Skyrim goes is the use of light and shadow is a lot better in the 360 version. Lighting comes off a bit flat in the PS3 version, but you don't really think about it while you play, but in the 360 version there were just all these details the lighting brings out that I didn't see before.

The result, in some cases, is that now characters are uglier than I remember because the light and shadow on the PS3 wasn't shadowing facial features the same way. You wouldn't pick on it at all with a character like Lydia as her features are smooth so she looks pretty much the same, but Dephine looks totally different. She definitely looks like she has a few more years than her PS3 incarnation does.

As I said, Skyrim is undoubtedly better on the Xbox 360.

That does not justify your statement about there being a "difference in upscaling". Unless your HDTV was picked up out of a dumpster on the side of the road or something, there should be effectively zero difference except in how some of the scaling is dithered, which does not cause a difference in image quality.

The real facts are that the vast majority of games played on the Xbox 360 and PS3 are upscaled in real-world situations. The vast majority of games render at 1280x720 resolution, and there are more or less no HDTVs that actually have that pixel count. I've only encountered a few screens that actually have that pixel count, and they're all computer (very much) older model computer monitors with that native resolution.

Instead, "720p native" TVs are almost always actually 1366x768. 1080p TVs are always 1920x1080.

So what happens is that (for most games) the game sends a 1280x720 image frame to the output on a 1080p TV.

On the 360, if you're using a 1080p signal, the 360 Xenos chip will take the time (a few milliseconds) to stretch that image 1.5 times before sending it down the wire to the TV/receiver.
On the PS3, if the TV supports 720p input, the game will stay in 720p and pass the wire to the TV/receiver, whereby that hardware handles the same process, in pretty much the same amount of time (a few milliseconds), and in pretty much exactly the same fashion.

And it actually works WORSE if you're using a 720p TV that accepts 1080p input:

On the 360, the game sends a 1280x720 image to the output. The hardware intercepts it and stretches it to 1920x1080. THEN it gets to your TV and now the TV hardware kicks in and shrinks the image back down to 1366x768.

On the PS3, the 1280x768 image gets send down the wire, and the TV does its usual thing to stretch it to 1366x768.

Moral of the story: If your TV isn't actually 1920x1080, do NOT use 1080p output from your console.


Icemage