Graphics Whores!

[Souplex]

An interesting bit of trivia. Sony has lost more money on the PS3 than they made on the PS2. Why? Because it costs em' like $800 to produce a system they sell for less. Why does it cost so much to produce the PS3? Because expensive high end hardware is needed for such purdy graphics.

I unfortounately cannot recall where this information came from so if anyone could drop a link to make this post more legitimate please help out.

 

[searanox]

The Cell processor is decent for other game related computation, but not graphics. That's relegated to its Nvidia RSX...Which is about as powerful as Nvidia's cards from 3-4 years ago.

Although this is hardly a universally-applicable benchmark, my year-old GeForce 8800 GT is over twice as fast at crunching Folding@home work units as an entire PlayStation 3. Yes, just the graphics card, and that's a fairly outdated these days as well.

 

[Tartarga]

in my opinion anyone who judges a game by its graphics alone is an idiot, yes graphics are important in a game but just because the graphics are good doesnt mean the game will be good, you have to take other things into account, for example the story and gameplay elements, i mean look at movie based video games, most of them look great, but the controls and other gameplay elements however are usually crap!

 

[Gestapo Hunter]

When did gamer turn into elitist? i agree most kids wont even touch a game if the graphics are not god like

 

[searanox]

Indeed! I love how it was considered such big news when the PS3 was grinding out far more PPD than the traditional CPU clients and then...the two GPU clients (especially Nvidia's) completely steamrolled over the PS3's output.

By the way, you can do a mild overclock on your 8800GT with RivaTuner (assuming you aren't running 180.xx beta drivers) and pull at least 5500-6000 PPD with it

Make sure to monitor your temps!

According to the F@h website client stats: http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=osstats

The Nvidia cards alone are 4 times more powerful/efficient than the PS3 :lol:

I'd forgotten how big the gap was between the two, actually. It might not be the best test out there (the PlayStation 3's client runs while idle, and doesn't necessarily use 100% of the system's resources or capabilities), but it certainly destroys that fantasy of how consoles are able to output graphics on par with the PC.

 

[Samurai Goomba]

Graphics can only get so good, and then they're pretty much as good as they can be. And bloom lighting everywhere and glowing people don't qualify as "good graphics" in my book. I'd say once you hit the Bioshock, MGS3: Subsistence, Black, Burnout 3 and Virtua Fighter 5/Tekken 6 levels, you've gone about as far as you need to with pure graphics, now it's time to work on those little, unimportant things, like FRAMERATE, MUSIC, STORY, and a game that's ACTUALLY FUN TO PLAY.

Oh wait, maybe game devs should work on those little things first, eh?

And sometimes injecting games with character is more important than giving them "good graphics." Personally, I think Midnight Club 3 looks better than GT anything (what with all the glowing lights and blur effects,) Chrono Trigger looks better to me than Mass Effect, and Dragon Ball: Advance Adventure or Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land look better than GTA4. Again, to me. For me, it's all about character and world designs, and how well the intended look meshes with the story/gameplay/music to create a cohesive and plausible world.

For example, I don't want cel shading if it doesn't fit in with the theme of the world. And I really, REALLY don't want gritty, realistic graphics if the game isn't going to present everything else in a gritty and realistic (read: mature and responsible) manner.

 

[mooncalf]

A fun game is a fun game, no matter what it looks like or how old it is. (Audiosurf?)

Graphical beauty has the positive aspect of impressing us with fine detail or meaningful composition, but the negative aspect of being a tool whereby marketing will insist you scorn last year's product (fun or not) in favour if this year's fresh new thing, feeding the finances of the industry.

I do not think it is negative that the market grows and can subsequently invest more money in new releases, but the financial bent does seem to damage the Videogame's credibility as a source of artistic merit as opposed to a shovel made out of 1s and 0s.

Nice to see younger folk thinking about the bigger picture.

 

[Manbro]

I think a game looks a lot better and is fun to play when it has that polished look.

However, I don't limit myself to playing games with only good graphics, I DO take into account other things in a game. There are a lot of old games that I enjoy playing as well as the new ones.

I mean, even if a game does have brilliant graphics it could still be a giant horse turd of a game, it would just be a very pretty giant horse turd of a game.