BlackAce said, "The 360 has the better graphics card and the PS3 has the better Blu-Ray player. lol!! Nuff said." There it is. Nicely said. Let's all go home now.

It's worth clarifying once again that Madden 08 runs at 30fps on the PS3 and 60fps on the 360. EA's John Riccitello has stated that the cause for this is the complexity of developing for the PS3. In addition, people also cite the fact that Orange Box was done by Valve on the 360 and EA on the PS3. The reason for this is most likely because Gabe Newell has been quoted saying, "I think [PS3 is] a waste of everybody's time. Investing in the Cell, investing in the SPE gives you no long-term benefits." and "You're not going to gain anything except a hatred of the architecture they've created. I don't think they're going to make money off their box. I don't think it's a good solution." That's a strong indicator of why EA was delegated the responsibility of doing the port. I think what confounds me the most is the difference in power and graphics last generation when the Xbox released a year after the PS2. The Xbox was at least double in power in CPU and GPU power. It was released a year after the PS2. That means it was much more powerful. There is a weird contradiction that because the PS3 came out a later, it's somehow SUPPOSED to be weaker and take more time to have better graphics, which is absurd. One guy said it best, Sony sacrificed their gaming dominance to win the movie format war. The PS3 is a trojan horse for BluRay, not a true gaming console. If Sony would have excluded the BluRay drive and their asymmetrical Cell CPU which are both very costly, and opted for standard DVD and symmetrical CPU, and instead devoted that money to a powerful GPU then the PS3 would have blown the 360 out of the water. They cared more about movies and assumed the fans would be too ignorant to notice the lack of quality in games. Game systems are for games.

The PS3 is almost equal to the 360 in quality now. There still seems to be that problem with flat, uniform lighting. Kind of a washed out look. There is almost no difference between the two, but still It's pretty clear that rounds 1,2, and 3 have gone to the 360. Almost two years into the PS3's life-cycle and it still has not overcome the 360, even though it was released a year later. No real surprise as graphics are generally GPU bound, not CPU. Yawn.

Halo 3 looks as good as they showed in the preview screenshots. Looking realistic isn't always a developer's goal. Halo 3 maintains the same "Halo" look, but with juiced graphics and resolution. I think they did a good job of deflecting the inevitable "graphics comparisons" that could have come from too much focus on looks. Halo is all about running people over with big vehicles and blasting/meleeing fanboys with extreme prejudice. On a plasma @ 1080p it looks better than any game except Gears. Not too bad I'd say.