Al3x_n90 wrote: "@Dr_Yassam, well blu ray may be slower than normal dvd but it can store a hell more of data" Er, isn't that what I've been saying all along? ;)

Amulbocus, you say you have a degree in Computer Science? That's great, congratulations. I have a degree too, so I know how hard you have to work to get it (well Computing, Mathematics and Statistics degree to be exact), and I've worked in the computing industry for 20 years this September. However, given your degree, it's very disappointing and rather surprising to see you've chosen to go by your gut feelings and opinions of the consoles rather than the facts. :| For example, you said "", then it's disappointing to see that coming from a Computer Science graduate who really should know better imo. Hence I do hope you consider some of the points I've raised here, especially where I've provided proof (i.e. Blu-ray/DVD speeds, 1080p on 360), but I do apologize for making this such a l-o-n-g post. :)

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gamewhat wrote: "Maybe I missed something there buddy but do you have a link about insomniac pushing the PS3 to its limits. Would be an intersting read me thinks." Resistance runs at 30fps. Why not 60fps? Resistance runs at 720p. Why not 1080p? The point is, THOSE were the limits of what they could achieve on the PS3 with their game at that time! Hence every game which pushes the console is pushing it too it's limits (otherwise there will be no slowdown and all will be locked at 60fps!). The PS3 hardware could not run Resistance, GT5 Prologue, GTA4 or even Lair any better than it had, just as the 360 couldn't run GeOW, Halo 3 or GTA4 etc any better than it does. Instead to get more out of the consoles, devs have to change the code and design to better suit the hardware, i.e. optimize it to get more out of the same machine. So when Epic said they pushed the 360 to the limit, it's not to be taken literally (as some gamers have), since they are not saying GeOW represents the 360's limit. That's what I meant gamewhat. :)

Hey Shoinko, take it easy. :) Anyway Al3x_n90, that's the size of the FULL image of the disk, it's not the size of the data ON the disk. Way back at E3 2005, Insomniac, Team Ninja, and a few other devs had early versions of their games up and running on PS3 devkits. Epic showed a realtime cinematic running on UE3 during Sony's press conference, EA demonstrated Fight Night 3 running in realtime, and Polyphony demonstrated GT-HD. So it's not as if all these devs were sitting around doing nothing Alex. Also, later that same year (September 2005), Konami showed the first trailer for MGS4 running on the PS3, in realtime (later they proved it was realtime by moving the camera and changing the lighting). The point is, devs have had as much time on both consoles for game development, the difference is the progress of the tools they use on each matured earlier on the 360 because it was the first to launch, but just the same, there is not a 1 year gap between 360 and PS3 game development, so the launch dates are not relevent. Also, why should the 360 have better graphics, isn't the PS3 more powerful overall, or have I missed something here? ;) As for who leads graphically, well that's a matter of opinion, but those games have as much to do with the talents and resources of the devs as it does the hardware, hence I have no doubt that if Polyphony, Konami and Naughty Dog were working on the 360 instead, they would have achieved equally impressive results.

Al3x_n90 wrote: "anyway Dr_Yassam do you honestly think that mgs4 will come to the 360?in what...like 7 discs? i seriously doubt that " Yeah, yeah, very funny my friend. :) But no, not 7 disks. From what I've seen online, MGS4 is actually less than 30GB (about the same size as Blue Dragon), with MGO about 3GB (although I'm waiting for confirmation from elsewhere). [url=http://forums.highdefdigest.com/showthread.php?t=57865&page=17]Link[/url] [url=http://pocketnews.cocolog-nifty.com/pkns/2008/06/metal_gear_soli_9cba.html]Link to pocketnews[/url] So assuming this is correct, then if MGS4 was to come to the 360, and given that the cut-scenes get longer as you progress through the game, my guess would be as follows; Disk 1 - Acts 1 & 2 Disk 2 - Acts 3 & 4 Disk 3 - Act 5 Disk 4 - Epilogue & MGO Or something like that. :) Regarding HDD installs, I'm not saying it's a bad thing, just that it's required because of the relatively slow speed of Blu-ray on the PS3. If the Blu-ray drive was faster, say 3x, 4x or more, then fewer PS3 games would require a HDD install, and those that do would probably have it as an option only. "Anyway about GeOW2 that game runs on the unreal engine and they said that engine was optimized for the 360 so basically it squeezes a lot out of it" Correct, but it is also optimized for the PS3 and PC too. In otherwords, they optimize the engine for each platform (which is great). Graphically, I do feel it will be better than MGS4 for , but for cutscenes, it may be better technically, just not artistically. "Anyway remember that the ps3 has been on the market for almost 2 years whereas 360 for almost 3 years, and the ps3 is already showing what it's capable of." Hmmm, I don't really see the relevance of how long they've been in the market to be honest. The PS3 was delayed by 6-9 months remember (game development didn't stop during this period), therefore there's only really 4-6 month gap between them technically. ....And yeah, I know, I'm argumentative. :D

amulbocus wrote: "Dr Yassam - Fair points there mate. Its important to note that the metal gear franchise has always and always will be a playstation brand. But you cant just say "it seems to be a superb game"..." Well yes, since I haven't played it. Who am I to say how good or bad a game is that I haven't played. ;) And yes, MGS is associated with the Playstation, but there were rumours (and denials) of MGS2 for the XBox too. Then the rumours said MGS2 was coming to the XBox and will be called MGSX, which were also denied. Then Konami confirmed MGSX but denied it was MGS2, so the rumours suggested it was an updated version of the first MGS on the Playstation. Eventually, MGSX was officially names MGS2: Substance, which was MGS2 plus the VR missions. So much for all the denials then.... MGS4:Substance anyone? :-) I know you'll say it will never happen, but those are just our opinions, we can only wait and see. "Dont insult the PS3 by saying Resistance pushed the PS3 to its its limits as thats a joke, no one has even heard of insomniac games for a start, how do theyre devs know what the ps3s limits are." Resistance was first known as I8 at E3 2005, and was originally going to be 1080p, even after the name change. This remained the case until a month or two before release, when Insomniac realised that 1080p was too much, and therefore dropped the resolution to 720p! And no-one heard of Insomniac back then? Seems you must be new to gaming, because Insomniac are , therefore 360 games have to rely on multiple disks and/or more compression for games larger than 7GB. Like I said, MGS4 is perfectly suited to multiple disks. Remember, before release, no-one knew (or even guessed) there will be a 2-4 minute wait between each act on the PS3 version, everyone just assumed there would be an initial HDD install and that's all, like many other PS3 games. So imo, it is no coincidence that besides all the rumours, MGS4 seems to be divided up conveniently into DVD sized chunks. We'll see. :)

amulbocus wrote: "MGS4 eats every game alive and spits them out, inc games like GOW2." It's great you enjoyed MGS4, it seems to be a superb game, however GOW2 hasn't been released yet. :) "MGS4 should be the first game ever to be put forward for an Oscar!!. How much improved will GOW2 really be from GOW, no that much mate, as GOW pushed the xbox360 to its absolute limits as quoted by Epic." Epic did not say GOW was the 360's limit, they said they pushed the 360 as far as they could at THAT time, which is true for MOST top games on consoles, in otherwords the limit of what they could achieve on the console. For example, Resistance on the PS3 was as good as the devs could make it at THAT time, hence they pushed the PS3 to it's absolute limit too, but Resistance 2 will go further thanks to knowledge and experience gained from their first game leading to improvements in the game engine for the next game. After GOW, Epic improved Unreal Engine 3.0 and therefore was able to get great results with UT3 on the PS3 (and soon the 360), they have since improved their engine even further and therefore will get even better results for GOW2 (as demonstrated by the tech demo shown a few months back, including 100 characters on screen). "How much extra HD content will you get on a DVD, not much. Better to wait for GOW2 on the PC me thinks" Firstly, this is not about PC gaming, secondly, DVD is not a problem for HD content, hence even MGS4 could easily be brought to the 360 via multiple disks (*if* the rumours are true that is ;)). Oh and, before you dismiss the idea, the structure of the game makes it perfectly suited to multiple DVDs, where instead of 2-4 minutes loading between acts as seen on the PS3 version, 360 gamers will simply change disks every 1 or 2 acts.

Well, I wouldn't say the graphics suck gamewhat. True they're not the best around, but for what it's doing (i.e. the huge scale of the environment) and the time it was originally released (early 2006), I think the graphics are very accomplished for it's time. My only issue with the Elder Scrolls series has always been it's art style, which I find uninspiring and lacking finesse. Regarding Bioshock, it's great to see it's coming to the PS3 too, and yes it would be good to see the devs making improvements to the PS3 version, but since the graphics were already of a high standard, I guess it wouldn't matter too much if they remain the same. The next graphics comparison feature should be very interesting. :)

amulbocus wrote: "Dr yassam - regular updates are released for the xbox360 for Oblivion" Not the graphics engine. They had plans on doing that for both the 360 and the PC, but in the end, they didn't bother to implement the shader changes for either version. This is what the devs had to say about this issue; [url=http://www.shacknews.com/featuredarticle.x?id=236]Interview: Bethesda Softworks' Pete Hines[/url] "Shack: Can you offer any insight into how much of that was made possible by the PS3 hardware versus simply the additional development time? Pete Hines: , it's actually something we were considering doing for the other platforms as well. We specifically did it here because we had some time and one of our graphics programmers said he could do it. Things like that are in the PS3 version, but everything else is just things that make the game load faster and run faster, so it runs as well if not better than the PC or 360 version. That was our goal all along. We felt like we were going to take however long it took until the PS3 version looked and played as well as it could." So I'm not saying you're a PS3 fanboy, you're perfectly entitled to your opinion of the PS3, however the improvements seen in the PS3 version of Oblivion were due to the extra development time, not extra power.