PS2 redeemed - Full scene AA :)

[thirdkind]

The people who attacked the PS2 at its Japanese launch seemed to rally around the "jagginess" of games like Tekken Tag Tournament. Those of us who called these problems mere growing pains were in fact correct after all

This Daily Radar article shows screenshots of the new and improved Tekken.

Just a few more weeks

 

[Sephiroth_IX]

OOh we can put all that AA data in all that MEMORY it has..

 

[thirdkind]

Well Namco figured out how to do it. Apparently it can be done.

Consoles are about compromises. You can't have everything. And, as always, clever programming can overcome even the largest hardware obstacles.

 

[Sephiroth_IX]

<< Consoles are about compromises. You can't have everything. >>

With the Xbox you can.

 

[Mr.IncrediblyBored]

Clever programming can overcome only 4 megs of video RAM?

Sure the RAM is incredibly fast (and thus supposedly acts more like a texture cache then storage), but only 4 megs of RAM is 4 megs of RAM.

Does the PS2 have any type of texture compression? I've always wondered that. I sure hope it does, but it seems it doesn't. Could somebody shed some light please?

 

[Raspewtin]

They are developing some way to &quot;stream&quot; textures off the CD/DVD player. I don't know how or if it's viable, but the 4 MB VRAM thing is not looking good. Maybe they'll add more RAM with the expansion Hard Drive/Modem.

 

[CyberSax]

The more I hear about these newfangled Japanese consoles, the more I think the X-Box is going to put the smack down on all of them.

 

[Pocatello]

Smack smack. Let the slapping begins!

 

[thirdkind]

For all of you touting the greatness of the X-Box, I have a little piece of information you might be overlooking...

The hardware doesn't even exist yet. It's vaporware. Dev kits have gone out to some game houses, but the system itself is still a figment of Microsoft's imagination. Tech demos don't make a console reality.

I'm amazed at how people can see a beautiful game in action, and still say the hardware just doesn't cut it. How can you be so blind? Stop concentrating on specs for once and look at what the system can pump out.

 

[dawks]

The jaggies are still there. Just looks like their a little blurred to lessin' their impact. Some cheap AA method? Probably.

 

[Sephiroth_IX]

No, its this simple Third. I could care less about the demos - the hardware WORKS. And in two generations i know damned well Nvidia will have a nice chip for the X-Box, so im not worried. With 64mb of ram (they are looking at 128, btw) to Gamecube's 40 and... how much on the playstation? like 28? they have a winnner on their hands. Never before has anyone had these kind of resources to play with. Add it to capable hardware, and you have a gaming machine that will blow away everyone - i promise.

 

[JohnGalt]

yeah microsoft means business... they have so much money to make it a godlike machine.

 

[piku]

The best machine is nothing without the best games.

 

[kami]

My money is on the XBox too.

 

[geno]

Put your money on the XBox - you can have it in like a year and a half - I'll take my PS2 now - thank you =)

 

[Sephiroth_IX]

<< The best machine is nothing without the best games. >>

YES, HOWEVER, as we cannot *PLAY WITH* the systems right now, we do not have games to look at. SO, THEREFORE, we are forced to go by hardware specifications, and X-BOX is the runaway leader in that department.

GADRLNKANFKLFNLK i hate that statement. I should put the above in my sig.

 

[kami]

screenshot
ROFL - what is he reaching for???

 

[thirdkind]

<< I could care less about the demos - the hardware WORKS. >>



Seeing as it doesn't exist, I don't think that's possible.

As far as Nvidia is concerned, I have great faith in their ability to overhype their products and come in way under the bar. I doubt the chip they bring to Microsoft's table is going to be any different. Good, to be sure, but not the groundbreaking piece of hardware you're describing.

And the rest of the X-Box is basically comprised of off-the-shelf parts, not the highly optimized proprietary stuff you see in &quot;real&quot; consoles. Look at the Sega Genesis and the Saturn for examples of what this leads to. Luckily the games for the Genesis were good; other than that, the hardware really blew. Hell, they originally intended only one Hitachi processor for the Saturn, but when performance fell short, they just slapped in another. The X-Box is falling victim to the same thing--an optimized GPU with some other junk piled on top. The hardware can't do nearly as much as something that's been engineered from the ground up to play games.

I'm not arguing that the X-Box won't be a good console. I just think that you're falling victim to the same kind of hype machine that Sony created when they said the PS2 would redefine console gaming. Yeah, the X-Box might be the best console ever to hit the market. But name a console that came out a year after its major competitors that didn't outdo them technologically. That's no feat. It's progress.

I could easily argue that PS3 will destroy the X-Box, which is probably true. But it won't be out for several more years, so who really cares?

 

[thirdkind]

kami, that has to be the most interesting screenshot I've ever seen

 

[piku]

<< HOWEVER, as we cannot *PLAY WITH* the systems right now >>



Your right, we can't play any X-Box games right now - there are none.

However there are plently of Dreamcast and Playstation 2 games to play, and with Nintendo and its second parties behind the Game Cube, you know exactly what games there will be.

We know barley a thing about the X-Box's games. Sure Japanese developers have signed on, but who knows if they will even make a game for it. Alot of companies own development kits for consoles they wont use (for example, Square has N64 dev kits), so just because they have them doesnt mean they will use them.

Also, the X-Box will have no &quot;money&quot; game, no system seller. Sega had NFL2K, Sonic, Soul Calibur and all the other Sega franchises, Sony has Square, Konami, Namco and EA, and Nintendo has all of its huge franchises. The X-Box has none. Other than Microsoft's own game division (which is little known outside of the PC gaming crowd) they dont have a &quot;killer&quot; game for their console. It wont garner much attention without a big, popular title launching with it.

So, like I said, it doesnt matter if you have the best hardware, you need to have key software there first. The Dreamcast proves my point perfectly.

 

[DataFly]

<< Other than Microsoft's own game division (which is little known outside of the PC gaming crowd) they dont have a &quot;killer&quot; game for their console. >>



One word: Halo

 

[piku]

Halo? Ask any console only gamer what Halo is and they will give you a blank stare. Ask any PC gamer and they will ramble on endlessly...

Which brings up my next point - if only PC gamers know about the game, what is the point of it being on a console? If the only people who know about it are PC gamers, wouldnt everyone just get it for the PC? I know I am. The nature of Halo isn't very well suited for console games - patching, saving lotsa info, the need of a keyboard, lots of mouse clicking menu goodness, it just wouldn't feel right on a console. Like Quake - half the fun is being able to run scripts and download maps and stuff - all of which is lost in the console translation.

I don't know why anyone with a PC capable of playing Halo wouldn't get it for the PC.

 

I have to admit that all the fancy GFX stuff does little if the game is no fun. I just picked up a Dreamcast after years of being anti-console. I have to admit that even though the GFX are nothing compared to what my PC can do, the games are a 100x more fun.

It seems that PC game developers are always concerned with pushing the hardware end of things. More textures, more RAM, bla bla bla. Console developers focus on gameplay over most of that stuff which just leads to better games. Heck, even Madden '91 on the Genesis (the last console game I liked) was a heck of a lot more fun than Microsoft NFL Fever 2000.

I am not saying that all PC games are bad, in fact many of them rock. It just seems that the focus of most PC developers is wrong. I think this mentality will carry over to the XBox.

Will the XBox be a success? Well, with a half a billion dollar advertising budget I would hope it would be. Without mass marketing however I think the PS2 would kick it's ass all over the place just on gameplay alone.

Who the hell needs 64 or 128M (what is it now anyway) of RAM in a console? They are clearly doing something wrong. Bloat, bloat, bloat. They can't even solidify the spec and the thing is due out in a year.

Fck'm the Xbox. It's just a PC crammed in a console case.

 

[SJ]

How do you know MS doesn't have any stand out games? They have a huge group of in house developers and several other developer creating games solely for Xbox... Im sure one of them will be a stand out game. The $500million is for development of Xbox, the making of xbox, internel development of games, and advertising.

 

[dawks]

Im all for X-Box too. If standard computer games are easily portable to it, which im sure they will be (both running versions of windows) they alreay have a huge game base to work with..