http://i25.tinypic.com/2rxtzs4.jpg

This gen it’s all way too close and the more insecure gamers are having a great deal of difficulty dealing with it.

The Speccy vs C64 just seemed like a bit of silliness by comparison. If you venture even a slightly unpopular opinion anywhere, you get jumped on.

This whole PS3 vs 360 thing seems to have attracted a generally more rabid and nastier breed of fan boy though. You just have to take a look at the GTA thread on Eurogamer, and the Xbots are genuinely quite rabid, whilst that comment from N4G posted by Hero, is so bereft of any sort of intelligence, it just defies belief that the poster is mentally capable enough to get online in the first place.

Of course the internet has certainly played a huge role in fanning the flames, but still, the tone seems to be nastier than I remember it ever being in the past.

….or am I just getting old?

Indeed. Someone from N4G commented on a blog post I made about this very subject the other day saying that to my eyes, the 360 version looked slightly sharper, but that the pop-up seemed less noticeable on the PS3. But that it didn’t matter because GTA wasn’t all about the graphics and you should buy it and play it rather than arguing about which version is better.

This is the reply, quoted verbatim:

“ps3 version is better. chris, u r a fag because do u realy think if the ps3 version upscalles it but the 360’s version will even though about 2 weeks a ago rockstar stated that bot version would (grafficly) be the same.
so in conclusion i hate u chris”

God bless the internet.

360 has sharper graphics definitely, but I wouldn’t say they were better. PS3 supposedly has a larger draw distance and less pop-in, but I never noticed it.

I won’t argue that it’s a reasonable well put together article but the motivation behind it is fucking moronic.

Still - I’m sure Eurogamer will enjoy the advertising revenue it brings in. I’d rather read something worthwhile about games instead. Eurogamer should take a leaf out of Game Set Watch to see how to make genuinely interesting and enlightening articles on topics that actually matter.

This is meant to be journalism? Fuck off.

Absolutely, I agree completely. When I put it down to human nature I’m merely trying to account for the popularity of such features.

The logical response is to buy the best games for the best consoles, but not everyone can afford to do that which leads to choosing one format, particularly amongst younger gamers. That of course breeds partizanship, hence fanboys.

Mine’s better that yours! Such is life…

I think it’s neither.

Most of these comparisons, if not all, are just website traffic generators where people congregate to try and gang-bash any opposition to their champion.

I’d tend to think that human nature usually leans more towards “the truth is with us!!” rather than “which way to the truth!?”

The way I see it is, I’m a gamer. I want to play the best games.

If they’re on PS3, I’ll get a PS3.

If they’re on 360, I’ll get a 360.

I bought a PS1 for Tekken 3, an N64 for Ocarina of time, and other consoles for what I thought were killer apps.

Surely this is the way gamers should think?

Yet you get PS3 lovers slagging off Halo and 360 lovers slagging off MGS.

I think all this ‘get the console that I have and hate the console that I hate’ is all a bit too lynch-mob-ignorant for me…

I personally find these articles interesting as they helps to cut through all the tech PR talk of cell processors this and anti-aliasing that and actually show you, in pretty much layman’s terms which machine plays games the best. I think it benefits more as a curiosity experiment rather than a straight buying guide.

Oh dear, oh dear.”

It’s true though. Same as if the next one was 360 exclusive. It’s been proved time and time again that porting your game from 360 to PS3 is going to be a tough job. If the next one was PS3 exclusive, it would perform much better than the ported-from-360 GTAIV. Not that I think the next version should be exclusive to any platform, but that’s just the way it is.

“Sooo, what’s the conclusion on EG? It’s blocked at work. Apparently I’m to do things other than looking on gaming websites… I mean, really!”

PS3 version looks marginally better, 360 version performs marginally better. Although you probably won’t notice a difference either way. I played the PS3 version, and the framerate seems identical to me. As for looks, that’s just a personal opinion. The 360 version seems to have much crisper edges, but I don’t always think that’s a good thing, as the “softer” look of the PS3 version can sometimes works to its advantage. Having played both, I conclude that they’re, for all intents and purposes, identical.

In the heat of a gunfight, it’s the latter that would bug me more.

And at the end of it all they didn’t even mention the single-most important difference between the two versions - the online stuff.

/gets off soap box

After almost two thousands words of technical discussion, the bottom line is that it’s clear that Rockstar had some issues matching the basic performance of the Xbox 360 game on the PS3 hardware. Lower resolution, zero anti-aliasing support and a more variable frame-rate are the bottom line.

On the one hand, it’s a touch disappointing that Rockstar’s USD 100 million budget couldn’t extend to optimising the experience to match Xbox 360, especially when you look at a game like Burnout Paradise that doesn’t require a mandatory installation, has a basically rock solid frame-rate, and is technically identical cross-platform.

/tin foil hat
/hides in cupboard

Oh dear, oh dear.