Every year, QuakeCon is John Carmack’s celebration of his technology and the games that the entire id Software team creates within it.
Tom’s Games had the chance to sit down with Carmack for a brief chat regarding Rage, id Software’s upcoming game slated for PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
Console fanboys will undoubtedly find lots of firepower in what Carmack had to share, who made it clear that designing for the Xbox 360 was more of a joy than arduously optimizing for the more complicated PS3.
Developer friendliness aside, Carmack did acknowledge that the PS3 version will look slightly better due to more storage space for high-resolution textures, thanks to Blu-ray Disc’s 50GB capacity. “All of the key scenes, the things anyone is going to take a screenshot of are going to look exactly the same on both platforms. They’ll get the high quality compression,” said Carmack. “But if you go into some areas in the wasteland, like behind a fence where nobody will typically go and explore, this is where the 360 version may look a little blurry compared to the PS3.”
While spanning the game over multiple discs could solve the issue, id Software revealed that the associated royalties to Microsoft for more than two discs would become economically unfavourable. “We’re pretty much resigned to the fact that we’re going to make it fit onto two DVDs on the 360. Plus there would be a lot of disc switching if we went to three DVDs, and since the game is split between two different wasteland environments, two DVDs should work well,” he explained. “That’s the only thing the PS3 has going for it over the 360 - more gigs.”
Hmm, well in the article it pretty much says that they will be identical in the main game that most people will see. He said the only time Blu-Ray will come into effect is when you leave the normal bounds of gameplay, where they still have the disc space to use high-res textures. He's basically saying, since the 360 is limited to only a couple of DVD 9's, you won't get to see as many high-res textures overall.
It also sounds like it won't really affect any main area's of gameplay. He's not really endorsing the PS3 for Blu-Ray, he's just stating a simple advantage that it has, which is more gigs of storage due to blu-ray.
Well I remember the RAM upgrade significantly improved textures in games on the N64. More storage just typically allows longer games, more voice and video. Its amazing what you can do when limited by storage with a well written game.
My installation of Diablo II takes the same 2GB as my installation of Doom III and the graphics are a bit better in Doom III. Also Crysis has a smaller install directory than most of my other recent games, but it definitely looks better.
I agree it can be a factor, I'm just saying its not nearly as important as the lack of RAM both of those systems come with. Each console has it advantages I suppose.
Extremely impressive for a system with most games being only 64-256megabits(8-32MB) in size. To be honest I thought it look far better then PS1(ran better too) even though it has a capacity of 650MB(or did they make it to 700) per CD(most of it was used for music) vs 64MB(512megabit) for N64.
Why use compression at all on the PS3 version? It's clearly not needed.
Whilst the official line is "they look the same in most areas", that is to keep both Sony and Microsoft happy, by not offically confirming one over the other. However, I suspect it's like Biosshock or Madden 09, where if you speak to the developers and QA testers on the ground, you hear the actual story, not the "keep them sweet" version. Both of those games are looking far better on PS3 this season...
Carmack has a good point that Microsoft is harming there console by charging per disc instead of by game. These fees are why ill be sticking with a license free software on the PC that I can get updates and added content as a bonus.
Hmm...Well Mark, it seems that the statements you make aren't true:
http://www.joystiq.com/2008/07/22/bioshocks-ps3-graphics-identical-to-xbox-360/
And as far as I've seen, the comparison vids of Madden 09 on YouTube show the 360 having more defined, more detailed, and cleaner images, imho.
"Thou shalt not spread fanboi-ism."
Most games are not even 20% dx10 they only use a few features on the pc.
Besides the amount of rpg/rts on consoles is almost non-existent, i have a ps3 collecting dust because they don't make the kind of games i like rpg/rts so it will continue to collect dust till final fantasy is out for the ps3 or an rts is released.
As I said I agree storage capacity plays a factor but not as much as gpu power and RAM. No need to be an jerk about it. I got off track and my main point was this felt like a sales bit for PS3 and Blu_ray. We all know the PC version will look the best and that's because the game will have access to more power and more memory.
They may be able to fit uncompressed textures on the disc, but any texture you see will have to be compression to fit in the limited amount of RAM the consoles offer.
Yay more fodder for the 360 fanboys.