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[Redneckerz]

Introduction:
Inspired by this thread which determines whether or not the OG Switch is a 8th or a 9th gen system, i felt that, now that we are in the XSX/PS5 era, to look back at the PS360U era.

The main question would be: Do its visuals still hold up in 2025 to consider for a ultra low gaming system? After all, we are talking at 720p30 at best, with many of its games easily being better running at 1080p or higher on even the simplest of Intel/AMD IGP's.

However, to me atleast, i feel the systems still hold up. When you go from the PS360U generation, with its reliance on innovative visuals and gameplay mechanics to the PS4/XBO generation and now the current-gen, the diminishing returns become readily apparent. The PS4/XBO's primary visual uplift was the introduction of physically based rendering, and aside from a few current-gen exclusives, i feel there aren't that many current-gen titles out there that actually push the hardware.

Yet we already see talk of a PS6 and beyond. That's for another day. The main question: Are PS360U visuals still okay for you in 2025? And as a sub-question: Would you still play the PS360U as a serious gaming system in current year?

Supporting footage (Courtesy Digital Foundry, direct framegrabs, rescaled for thread):

 

[Hashassin]

Yes. I still play snes games. Because I like to play games.

 

[yet_another_alt]

Yes? I was playing Motorstorm just now, nothing else quite like it on current systems.

 

[Jack Videogames]

Good graphics are a nice bonus but I ultimately play what tickles my fancy.

 

[Astray]

Honestly no, and I think anyone who says otherwise needs an eye test.

Just look at the blurry textures in the screencaps and how they cheapen the scenes.

 

[PeteBull]

I recently played skyrim for over 500h, so in theory u could consider it ps360 visuals/game, the thing is i played the anniversary edition in 4k60 stable, maxed, which requires pc stronger than ps5/xsx:

 

[Parazels]

Castlevania Symphony of the Night
(Xbox 360) still looks gorgeous.

3d games look awful.

 

[Jakk]

I don't really mind the way those games look, it's just that the resolution is terrible for 2025. When I tried playing some PS3 games on a 4K TV, it wasn't much enjoyable to me, aside from the nostalgia.

 

[S0ULZB0URNE]

On PC they are.

 

[Lucifers Beard]

I have a PS3 that I picked up last year and let me tell you that it's quite hard to go back to playing those games at framerates that dip well below 30fps.

However, with that being said I have no problem playing games that have that level of detail. In fact some of them still look great but would benefit massively from being rendered in 1440p or 4K. If games still looked like that but we're higher resolution and framerate, I would be very happy. I'd rather that than some of the UE5 stuttery bullshit we get these days.

 

[Chuck Berry]

Yup. I still hook up my 360 a couple times a year. Most recently to fuck around with Godfather: The Game.

I wish I had a PS3. I wanna replay Killzone 3 and Puppeteer so bad

 

[Judge Magister]

I don't really mind the way those games look, it's just that the resolution is terrible for 2025. When I tried playing some PS3 games on a 4K TV, it wasn't much enjoyable to me, aside from the nostalgia.

Did you set the console display settings to 720p? it will look less blurry at least in most games.

 

[scoobidoo112]

I have a PS3 that I picked up last year and let me tell you that it's quite hard to go back to playing those games at framerates that dip well below 30fps.

However, with that being said I have no problem playing games that have that level of detail. In fact some of them still look great but would benefit massively from being rendered in 1440p or 4K. If games still looked like that but we're higher resolution and framerate, I would be very happy. I'd rather that than some of the UE5 stuttery bullshit we get these days.

Yeah I encounter that a lot too, but it varies a lot.

For example, I played through Resistance 1/2/3, and every game got worse in terms of performance, to the point where a lot of it was just a stuttering mess.

I also played through Modern Warfare 1/2/3, and those games have aged much better, and run relatively smooth by comparison, whilst still looking pretty good.

Some games just pushed graphics too far on the PS3/360, and it's really difficult to enjoy those nowadays.

 

[ReBurn]

I play games on my PS3 all the time. It's not like gameplay has really evolved much since those days.

 

[phant0m]

TBH if you can run them at higher res via emulation they're really not bad. The biggest problem with that gen is the 720p (or often much less) rendering.

 

[crackajack]

PS360 looks rough but kinda okay, sometimes even still good. I am currently playing Tomb Raider Legend, PS2 Port on PS5. That looks just terrible. On PC especially with resolution dialed up to modern limits it looks nice, but that port is not that, not at all. Not sure if it is 480 or european 576 but either certainly can not look great with 4k (or 1080), I think it might actually be one of these and no resolution bump at all, anything that would be easily multiplied to current displays.

 

[Tiago Rodrigues]

Every generation still "works for me". I care about good games. That's all. We got those in every gen.

 

[GHG]

Only when emulated on PC.

On their original hardware on modern 4k displays they look horrible.

 

[hououinkyouma00]

I've been playing a lot of Xbox 360 and PS3 titles yesterday as nothing current is really grabbing me and I think a lot of it still holds up quite well IMO despite stuff like low resolution.

Yes? I was playing Motorstorm just now, nothing else quite like it on current systems.

I was just playing Motorstorm Apocalypse the other day and it's super impressive especially considering the generation.

 

[spookyfish]

Yes. I still play snes games. Because I like to play games.

This is the answer. I have MANY Arcade1Up cabs, because ... I like games of all eras.

 

[SkylineRKR]

Yeah I've had my PS3 hooked up for the better part of this half year. Its okay. The resolution isn't so jarring to me (i'm on 55 inch), in fact some games still look surprisingly good but it depends on the game. I played a lot of Motorstorm 2, Driver SF, VT3, Dirt 3, Heavenly Sword, NBA Street etc. All of these are lookers, you can see that these consoles punched above their weight. This is why 4k/60 emulations of these games look amazing. In terms of gameplay, its barely evolved today. You'll adjust to a lower perf and fps soon enough.

You just can't get those experiences on PS5. There is nothing like Motorstorm, NBA Street, Afterburner or Outrun 2 SP.

 

[Breakfast at Noon]

Yes. I still play snes games. Because I like to play games.

The fact we could have that original concept "advert" as an actual game now and no one is making it pains me to my core.

 

[nkarafo]

Anything above 8bit NES/Master System works for me always.

 

[SkylineRKR]

I have a PS3 that I picked up last year and let me tell you that it's quite hard to go back to playing those games at framerates that dip well below 30fps.

However, with that being said I have no problem playing games that have that level of detail. In fact some of them still look great but would benefit massively from being rendered in 1440p or 4K. If games still looked like that but we're higher resolution and framerate, I would be very happy. I'd rather that than some of the UE5 stuttery bullshit we get these days.

There is lots of footage of Resistance 3, KZ2 in 4K, or Sonic Unleashed recompiled. They look stunning and I rather play those than many new games.

 

[swaffles23]

I love the way games from that gen look. My PS3 stays hooked up and I just did a complete playthrough of FFXIII earlier this year and it still looks gorgeous

 

[Mr Hyde]

Absolutely. Played through a ton of PS3 games on PC recently and they still look great (and runs good too now with more powerful hardware). Lots of goodies games from that era. One of my favorite gens.

 

[Kupfer]

I still enjoy playing on the PS3 from time to time. Recently, I replayed all the Battlefield war-game campaigns on it.
Sure, the resolution and framerate are all over the place, but the games are still pure fun and chaotic in the best way.
Same goes for GTA IV - I love returning to Liberty City. The vehicle handling, damage system, ragdoll physics, Euphoria engine - the physics-based gameplay in general - it's just timeless.
It really feels like devs and games grew up in PS360 era and a ton of games are still fun as fuck.
Looking forward to replay Killzone 2 & 3 and I also have the two Medal of Honor reboot campaigns on my list.

 

[Zathalus]

When the res is boosted it can look good. But even then a lot of those Unreal Engine 3 games did not age well at all.

 

[adamsapple]

Visuals are not the biggest problem, performance is. A lot of 360/PS3 games ran like shit, often below their 30fps target.

Playing some of those games with double the performance feels perfectly fine to me even today.

Hell, I just played Binary Domain yesterday. 720p with X360 visuals, but running at 60fps makes it a very enjoyable game.

 

[Trogdor1123]

PS3 visuals are fine if you get at least 60 fps with them. I loved that generation

 

[James0007]

Max Payne 3 on Steam Deck is

But honestly - graphics really don't bother me, it's what you do with it that counts. Art Style > Graphics all day every day.

The push into heavily diminishing returns territory for greater fidelity is part of what's got the industry into the state it's in now. Just make great games, I'm not interested in anything else.

 

[Parazels]

I don't have fond memories about that gen despite spending hundreds of hours in some games (Battlefield, PES, GoW, Dead Space, Half Life 2 etc).

The past and current gens are great though!

 

[Landr300]

i would die for an new dead space, even on that graphics or worse

 

[Jakk]

Did you set the console display settings to 720p? it will look less blurry at least in most games.

Yeah, of course. I was just playing around with my old PS3, if I wanted to seriously play some of those games, I would probably emulate them on PC.

 

[Soodanim]

I share the mindset of quite a few others. If you beef up the framerates many games from this era are perfectly serviceable. On PC they can be a bit iffy from this era because it was the earlier days of things like Xinput and solid PC ports, but if you're willing to put up with some initial setup there are some solid games to be enjoyed. Luckily just throwing DXVK in is enough for games like Assassin's Creed 2 to run well.

If PS3 era visuals and gameplay aren't enough for anyone they have ridiculous standards. Although, in fairness, there was a hell of a lot of bloom and far more brown than was necessary at times.

 

[Schmendrick]

Nope.
Any nostalgia I have immediately evaporates once I see the low-poly mess that the games of that era are.
There might be some cases where the art style saves it, but I'm not motivated to dig through old stuff when there is always so much new to play.

 

[analog_future]

720p 20-30fps visuals just don't even come close to cutting it in 2025.

I'd much rather play SNES games than Xbox 360 games on base hardware.

 

[Kindjal]

I like EDF games. There's your answer.

 

[ResilientBanana]

Good games will always be good games. Honestly, if we went back to this era, RT would be a lot smoother and you would get a lot great outcomes. I always loved Halo 3's lighting and detail mapping. Sometimes you can have a great presentation with the right mix of effects without the need to put too many polygons on screen. If Halo 3 had higher resolution textures and ray-tracing, I bet it would stand up to a lot of today's games visually and run well doing so.

 

[Liopleurodon]

They do; games look especially great on emulator nowadays.

That being said, I do think enough time had passed for that generation to start receiving remakes.

 

[DAHGAMING]

Yes, but I find it hard playing games on the 360 and PS3, If there on PC maxed with higher res, or on a newer console with an update then im good to go.

 

[Longcat]

On PC, I play games from any era and it's honestly perfectly fine as long as you can up the resolution.
Don't care about texture size, asset quality, polygon count. Game good? Pixels not blurry? Me happy.

 

[Fbh]

Going back to them on original hardware can be a bit rough IMO because they usually run at pretty low resolutions and many of them struggle to even run at a consistent 30fps.
But playing them on PC (or console remasters) I think a lot of the games holds up very well.

Games like Vanquish, God of War 3, Max Payne 3, the Uncharted games, most stuff on MT Framework 2.0, the gears of war trilogy, FFXIII, Mass Effect2-3, Bioshock 1-Infinite, etc, etc look and play great on modern hardware.

 

[daninthemix]

Modern games basically are PS360 visuals at higher res / frame rates. Any improvements over and above that have been kind of incremental. Ray tracing notwithstanding.

 

[cireza]

Current games don't look much better than what we had back then. Just high res and 60fps.

 

[deeptech]

Played Spec Ops TL recently and thought it looked great for a 360 game, although on PC. Still some games from the gen look good to me, while some didn't look good even then I guess.

 

[scoobidoo112]

Games like Vanquish, God of War 3, Max Payne 3, the Uncharted games, most stuff on MT Framework 2.0, the gears of war trilogy, FFXIII, Mass Effect2-3, Bioshock 1-Infinite, etc, etc look and play great on modern hardware.

Having completed it recently, Vanquish runs surprisingly smooth on PS3, to the point where I was asking myself if it was running at 60fps.

 

[analog_future]

I recently played skyrim for over 500h, so in theory u could consider it ps360 visuals/game, the thing is i played the anniversary edition in 4k60 stable, maxed, which requires pc stronger than ps5/xsx:

On PC they are.

I have a PS3 that I picked up last year and let me tell you that it's quite hard to go back to playing those games at framerates that dip well below 30fps.

However, with that being said I have no problem playing games that have that level of detail. In fact some of them still look great but would benefit massively from being rendered in 1440p or 4K. If games still looked like that but we're higher resolution and framerate, I would be very happy. I'd rather that than some of the UE5 stuttery bullshit we get these days.

TBH if you can run them at higher res via emulation they're really not bad. The biggest problem with that gen is the 720p (or often much less) rendering.

Only when emulated on PC.

On their original hardware on modern 4k displays they look horrible.

There is lots of footage of Resistance 3, KZ2 in 4K, or Sonic Unleashed recompiled. They look stunning and I rather play those than many new games.

Absolutely. Played through a ton of PS3 games on PC recently and they still look great (and runs good too now with more powerful hardware). Lots of goodies games from that era. One of my favorite gens.

When the res is boosted it can look good. But even then a lot of those Unreal Engine 3 games did not age well at all.

I share the mindset of quite a few others. If you beef up the framerates many games from this era are perfectly serviceable. On PC they can be a bit iffy from this era because it was the earlier days of things like Xinput and solid PC ports, but if you're willing to put up with some initial setup there are some solid games to be enjoyed. Luckily just throwing DXVK in is enough for games like Assassin's Creed 2 to run well.

If PS3 era visuals and gameplay aren't enough for anyone they have ridiculous standards. Although, in fairness, there was a hell of a lot of bloom and far more brown than was necessary at times.

They do; games look especially great on emulator nowadays.

That being said, I do think enough time had passed for that generation to start receiving remakes.

Yes, but I find it hard playing games on the 360 and PS3, If there on PC maxed with higher res, or on a newer console with an update then im good to go.

On PC, I play games from any era and it's honestly perfectly fine as long as you can up the resolution.
Don't care about texture size, asset quality, polygon count. Game good? Pixels not blurry? Me happy.

Going back to them on original hardware can be a bit rough IMO because they usually run at pretty low resolutions and many of them struggle to even run at a consistent 30fps.
But playing them on PC (or console remasters) I think a lot of the games holds up very well.

Games like Vanquish, God of War 3, Max Payne 3, the Uncharted games, most stuff on MT Framework 2.0, the gears of war trilogy, FFXIII, Mass Effect2-3, Bioshock 1-Infinite, etc, etc look and play great on modern hardware.

Modern games basically are PS360 visuals at higher res / frame rates. Any improvements over and above that have been kind of incremental. Ray tracing notwithstanding.

I get the point everyone is making here and I agree.... but also, you aren't playing PS3/360 games if you're playing at 4x or more of the resolution and 2x or more of the framerate. You're pretty much playing DIY remasters that of course could never come close to being able to run on PS3/360 hardware.


I just think it's an important distinction, especially nowadays when people have their rose-tinted glasses on and say things like "this new game looks like a PS3 game!".... No, no it doesn't.

 

[PeteBull]

I get the point everyone is making here and I agree.... but also, you aren't playing PS3/360 games if you're playing at 4x or more of the resolution and 2x or more of the framerate. You're pretty much playing DIY remasters that of course could never come close to being able to run on PS3/360 hardware.


I just think it's an important distinction, especially nowadays when people have their rose-tinted glasses on and say things like "this new game looks like a PS3 game!".... No, no it doesn't.

Thats what we saying tho, game's quality from ps360 is good enough if maxed out/remaster/definitive edition, ofc it doesnt come close to proper current gen visuals but its ok enough to not look at it with disgust, considering many of those games were really amazing gameplay/game systems wise.

If u asked us if we are ok playing on ps3/360 in 99% cases it would be profound "NO".
Even game like tekken 6 that runs at stable 60 on ps3 and doesnt look like pixelated mess- isnt good enough unfortunately when looked at it with 2025 eyes/standards:


It cant be helped after we already saw stuff far beyond that, like here:

 

[Lucifers Beard]

There is lots of footage of Resistance 3, KZ2 in 4K, or Sonic Unleashed recompiled. They look stunning and I rather play those than many new games.

Absolutely with you on that one. I still play a ton of games from that era and it's part of the reason I grabbed a PS3. It's also why I wish Sony would remaster some of them. I don't care if the assets are exactly the same, just give me a resolution bump and push the framerate higher.

I know a lot more work is typically involved since those games were programmed to run on the PS3 hardware and getting them over to the PS5 API is likely to be a pain in the ass.