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[Scotty W]

I didn’t own one at launch, but Sonic and Blue Stinger made my eyes water when I saw the screenshots.

I have long got the impression that Sega would have done a lot better if they had kept Bernie around.

 

[loktaiextatus]

Yeah but the Dreamcast is also a cult favorite. I doubt 90% of those votes even know why the Dreamcast failed or anything technical about the system. Just "I like dreamcast." I anticipated it would around 80% positive, most everybody loved it.

Its all these "Dreamcast feels" that became prevalent on the internet. People are naturally going to cheer for the underdog, and also people
will naturally feel nostalgic or should I say SENTIMENTAL about something that wasnt 'given a chance". You dont get that as much with things
like the PS2 where it was given every chance, and it was so popular it was sickening. You couldnt get AWAY from it for a second.

Dreamcast came out and did its best. There was nothing out at the same time in the console world where you could give it a real comparison.
And even thankfully some of the first games on PS2 were DC ports (or ports of games the DC had an advantage running like DOA2- designed for Naomi)
and showed favorably for the Dreamcast even though immediately the PS2 was showing off improved lighting and effects....

As soon as the market had something to compare it to....

Console "Generations" make it tough... because even in the PSX and Saturn era developers were trying to put their games on multiple platforms
whenever possible and people began to actually take notice of which was better. In the Genesis/SNES era youd have a game come out say
tied in with a movie and youd have Jurassic park on each system be a totally different game. That changed and now you get the same game
or as close as it can be done, across multiple systems. SO the differences becomes super clear.

What happened unfortunately for Dreamcast at the time when the PS2 and the DC came out ... and this is the reason I resented Sony...
The PS2 is very .... intricate to milk every bit of power out of. Just look at some of its launch titles. It isnt due to lack of power.

Because of this and because the industry knew it would be the best selling which its launch confirmed and caused Sega to give in....
Developers would be releasing a lot of exclusive games or long time exclusive games which were designed from the ground up for PS2.

While you will see MANY Dreamcast games ported to PS2 usually with decent results (because the DC is a simpler system and what you do there
translates OK to the PS2- but wont give you the best results if you expect the PS2 to do textures the way DC does, it doesnt, it needs to stream them)
you dont see instances where a game designed for the PS2 ports to Dreamcast- because the DC sort of went away- but it would have been a lot harder.
Even PS2 games that came to XBOX later do not exactly show what the XBOX can do, because they were designed around the PS2.

That put the final nail in the coffin for the Dreamcast.

Though as an anecdote the last time I heard a developer talking about Dreamcast VS PS2 in development in favor of Dreamcast was when
Soul Reaver 2 was in development on both and they said the DC was keeping up with the PS2 - and given the sort of game that is I totally believe that.
I think the DC was much easier to port PC games from ,even with the RISC cpu the system just was not as much of a bizarre black box.

 

[Naibel]

For a small, 29 000 yen machine in 1998, the Dreamcast was simply as powerful as it got. Sega just couldn't do better than that, considering they had to rely on "off-the-shelf" components. Its form factor reminds me of the PC Engine back in 1987, another small yet powerful machine for its day.

The problem is, technology moved at such a rapid pace at the time, that 3 years later, the Dreamcast wouldn't have been able to compete with the new Xbox and Gamecube. So of course, the Dreamcast ended up being the least powerful machine of its generation. But in 1998, AT LAUNCH, Dreamcast, in terms of power/price/size ratio, was completely unmatched. It really was.

 

[loktaiextatus]

Whilst the PS2 was undoubtedly more powerful, its video output was utterly appalling, like having 3 layers of vaseline smeared over every interlaced pixel compared to the Dreamcast's crisp, razor sharp output.

..even today running games at 4K internal res via PCSX2, some games still look like utter dogshit.

I dont know if this is going to start a fight so take this in good humor but....

Did you play PS2 on a CRT back in its day? Because the reason the output looks pretty bad screenshots, on modern TVs and usually doesnt look great in Emulation
is because it was designed around the CRT interlacing effect. Sony went out of their way to basically give themselves a sort of free anti - aliasing.

That said if a game looks like utter dog shit in emulation it either relied REALLY heavily on that- or was just a shitty looking game. There are a lot of shitty looking games
all around. Crisp output or not some of the Dreamcast launch games look like someone was screwing around in a level editor (7th cross evolution for example).

For example I did not like how Eternal Ring looked , if its the game Im remembering correctly, I didnt own it, I saw that game running someplace and was like "Gross".

 

[loktaiextatus]

For a small, 29 000 yen machine in 1998, the Dreamcast was simply as powerful as it got. Sega just couldn't do better than that, considering they had to rely on "off-the-shelf" components. Its form factor reminds me of the PC Engine back in 1987, another small yet powerful machine for its day.

The problem is, technology moved at such a rapid pace at the time, that 3 years later, the Dreamcast wouldn't have been able to compete with the new Xbox and Gamecube. So of course, the Dreamcast ended up being the least powerful machine of its generation. But in 1998, AT LAUNCH, Dreamcast, in terms of power/price/size ratio, was completely unmatched. It really was.

If youre factoring in its size, and its price yes. Raw power compared to a PC at the time, or an arcade machine was not exactly impressive but wasnt what
you might call "powerful" (as I interpret it). Thats all.

I can bend a little and say Ok. for 199, for 1998, for something no bigger than a Saturn , Ok. It was a great value proposition.
Compared to what existed, objectively for PC hardware, gaming hardware, rendering hardware, what was being developed for
release a year later by Sony, or by the measure of what it may have been if Dreamcast had used the Matrox chip originally intended...
I dont know if I would say its powerful . Its in THIS context I am reluctant to call it powerful. In full context and in retrospect.

 

[Stilton Disco]

Power was never its problem, it was just a bit rubbish, regardless of the rose tinted lenses of the few that owned it and the cult like, almost urban legend reputation it's garnered in the decades since.

 

[diffusionx]

If youre factoring in its size, and its price yes. Raw power compared to a PC at the time, or an arcade machine was not exactly impressive but wasnt what
you might call "powerful" (as I interpret it). Thats all.

I can bend a little and say Ok. for 199, for 1998, for something no bigger than a Saturn , Ok. It was a great value proposition.
Compared to what existed, objectively for PC hardware, gaming hardware, rendering hardware, what was being developed for
release a year later by Sony, or by the measure of what it may have been if Dreamcast had used the Matrox chip originally intended...
I dont know if I would say its powerful . Its in THIS context I am reluctant to call it powerful. In full context and in retrospect.

IIRC there were two Dreamcasts in development, Black Belt and Katana, and Sega went with Katana for whatever reasons, I don’t think there was intent to go with one or the other.

There is no objective measurement of “powerful.” Obviously the Dreamcast is extremely weak by today’s standards. The question is that it was a major leap over what was on the market and even looked solid next to early PS2 games. It was very impressive and people were generally satisfied with it. NFL 2K looked like a true next generation upgrade over Madden PS1, and stuff like Sonic was doing things that the older consoles didn’t, and it was obvious. Second gen titles like Soul Calibur pushed it even farther. It was also a true step forward in terms of connectivity and service which was great. I was a LPB on PC at the time and still enjoyed playing stuff like PSO and Chu Chu Rocket on console online.

Let’s say the PS2 never existed and the DC was the only console - would people have been happy with that systems output going forward? I think so.

 

[loktaiextatus]

Power was never its problem, it was just a bit rubbish, regardless of the rose tinted lenses of the few that owned it and the cult like, almost urban legend reputation it's garnered in the decades since.

Well thats more of a matter of opinion but it lacked a lot of 3rd party support and didnt get later, polished games in many instances.

I dont think it was a bad machine. I think it ran well, it was reliable, it had good arcade ports in general with only a couple exceptions...
The controller worked really well.

I wouldnt go out on a limb to call it a powerhouse but I played a ton of project justice, third strike, phantasy star online, Jet set radio
and others and didnt think the experience was rubbish at all.... of course there was a lot of CRAP as well but look at PSX if you want to
see a bunch of shovelware garbage. If you judged the PSX by its worst 20% youd end up with what is basically the worst system ever.

 

[loktaiextatus]

IIRC there were two Dreamcasts in development, Black Belt and Katana, and Sega went with Katana for whatever reasons, I don’t think there was intent to go with one or the other.

There is no objective measurement of “powerful.” Obviously the Dreamcast is extremely weak by today’s standards. The question is that it was a major leap over what was on the market and even looked solid next to early PS2 games. It was very impressive and people were generally satisfied with it. NFL 2K looked like a true next generation upgrade over Madden PS1, and stuff like Sonic was doing things that the older consoles didn’t, and it was obvious. Second gen titles like Soul Calibur pushed it even farther.

Let’s say the PS2 never existed and the DC was the only console - would people have been happy with that systems output going forward? I think so.

Well, people would be happy with whatever is available, objectively powerful or not. People are happy with Switch today, very happy.

The issue was things like... Madden shows up on PS2 and the HELMETS are rounder and more reflective and that is what made everyone
piss their pants. Little things like that you could do more easily with PS2.

As far as the Blackbelt and Katana- Now I cant say 100 percent but my understanding was early on Matrox had a literal contract, and it was cancelled
because Matrox breached it by announcing the partnership and Sega just said F it. I believe the second console mentioned may have been rumored
to be 3dfx powered but- you know its really hard to get all that info without having been a fly on the wall in one of those rooms or even multiple rooms
back in mid 90s.

Either way - I have no ISSUE with Dreamcasts capabilities but even when it came out I did not consider it to be powerful- I understand that may be
subjective but since I have the context to say it was not powerful for me, I consider anyone without that context to be making a call based on
emotion or limited knowledge of what was happening, available ,and going on under the hood of systems at that time,- And I am not faulting them
I am just saying, the DREAMCAST didnt just run everything that was thrown at it smoothly, it was struggling a little with some arcade ports and having to
make compromises to get them running, it was not able to run just anything that was on PC at the time, and if it did it was taking a lot of work and cuts
to get it there or a ton of trimming and making things load more often to get it into ram, and depending on how you LOOK at power, .... and a year later
it was outclassed by another console we all knew was coming . I am not saying PS2 WAS powerful, in fact the opposite, I think NEITHER one was that
powerful. The PC was powerful, the workstations and graphics workstations were powerful, and the raw components available that COULD have been in
there were more powerful at the time of its release.

I concede that- At the time of its release, as CONSOLES go, it was the most powerful for a year until PS2 came out. At the time it was released it was
great at texturing, and I maintain the Texturing was fantastic. You could see a harsh line where the texture filtering transitions to a lower fidelity one in most games
but most of the time that is not terribly distracting- but you can see there it has a limitation of what it can do with those textures. It already was hitting a limitation
but it was powerful enough to give us really bright, crisp textures, limited geometry but serviceable, but it gave a ton of DC games a weird "wallpapered" kind of look.

 

[JareBear: Remastered]

Virtua Fighter 3 was not a launch dreamcast game. And Soul Calibur was not a launch game for the system itself- The system was out in japan for a while which someone
reminded me of on this thread, we were not getting worldwide releases yet.

I didnt take any jabs at Dreamcast- its the weakest of the generation.

I also didnt praise PS3 at all, I praised its generation. I pointed out the PS3 because it had the biggest graphical showcases. You're drawing some kind of
lines between the systems I mentioned in a context I did not bring them up in. I brought them up to demonstrate "generational leap". the 360 is part of that
generation, I didnt claim the PS3 was a generational leap over the 360, I claimed the PS360 generation was in fact as big of, if not a bigger generational leap
than the dreamcast was over the N64/Psx. Thats literally it. That it was a one generation difference and we went from Evolution, Timestalkers, Power Stone and
such as being average examples of Dreamcast games to games like Motorstorm.

If you want to compare Apples to Apples compare a dreamcast launch title like Flag to Flag ( was it launch? I think so, if not I think its close enough)
to a PSX launch era title like Ridge Racer or Wipeout- Perfectly good leap. But compare Flag to Flag to for instance ,Ridge Racer 7 , Motorstorm.
I think the generational leap is pretty big if youre counting just whats on Dreamcast.

And LOL at trying to say PS3 was intended to be a generational leap over the 360! Literally nobody even said anything like that.
The 360 had a year head start but by the end of the generation the PS3s games were graphically much better- thats why I brought that up.

I could have made the same argument effectively just using examples from the XBOX 360 though to say that the leap from Dreamcast to its next generation
was decent compared to the previous.

By the way the PS3 was pretty impressive when it came out compared to the 360... I know a lot of people dont recall it correctly but imagine that about one year
after your console comes out the competition comes out with a machine that had: HDMI, Bluetooth wireless including controllers as standard, a bigger hard disk that is also
easily up-gradable, Standard Wi-fi, a BLURAY drive and those players cost over 500 on their own at the time, FREE online play, motion controls,
full backward compatibility to 2 generations, and Im not going to nit pick about its other connectivity or anything but the 360 had to play catch up....
And this is before the scope of the RROD was even apparent. I would say the PS3 is very impressive if you stick a launch PS3 next to the XBOX 360 as it existed at that moment.

I don’t remember a single multi-plat game that performed or looked better on PS3. 360 dominated the multi-plats. The PS3 may have had neat hardware but clearly it was not easy to develop for. Some PS3 ports/versions of a multi plat game were straight up disasters

By the end of the gen, the PS3 had some stellar and breathtaking first party games, sure, but for me the 360 dominated my playtime last generation, much like the PS4 dominates my playtime this gen. I never had a 360 RR on me and my 250gb 360 Slim is one of my top 5 favorite consoles ever.

PS3 had noisy fans too, from what I remember. At least my launch model. PS3 Slim seemed a lot better

 

[Romulus]

.

I don’t remember a single multi-plat game that performed or looked better on PS3.

There were at least 8-12, and some of them were high profile games. Which isnt saying much over the span of hundreds of games.

 

[loktaiextatus]

I don’t remember a single multi-plat game that performed or looked better on PS3. 360 dominated the multi-plats. The PS3 may have had neat hardware but clearly it was not easy to develop for.

By the end of the gen, the PS3 had some stellar and breathtaking first party games, sure, but for me the 360 dominated my playtime last generation, much like the PS4 dominates my playtime this gen. I never had a 360 RR on me and my 250gb 360 Slim is one of my top 5 favorite consoles ever.

PS3 had noisy fans too, from what I remember. At least my launch model. PS3 Slim seemed a lot better

PS3 could get noisy especially if the thermal paste went weird on, or UNDER the heat spreaders/lids of the CPU and GPU.

Later games did often make them SCREAM.

Personal experiences side, the 360 had a really bad failure rate. the PS3s failure rate later was misattributed to being the same as the failure
on the 360 (solder) but more recently its been found most are due to bad capacitors ... I have a few spools of those capactors I keep for
repairing the fat PS3s when I come across them (BC models) simply because they are useful to have and people want them.

The 360 and PS3 were weird like that. I wont speak to the multiplats as I know tons worked better on 360 and Ive said so...
But PS3 exclusives when they actually milked the system were beautiful. They could really get in there and take what they could
from the machine in a way that could surprise people all the way up until the next generation with games like Uncharted 3 and TLOU.

 

[shoplifter]

"Outperformed" is underselling how large the gaps were back then - DC->XBox was a 10x jump in most things that mattered

There was a *three year gap* between the DC and Xbox launches. There should have been a large gap at that point.

 

[loktaiextatus]

There was a *three year gap* between the DC and Xbox launches. There should have been a large gap at that point.

This is true. Given the 4 year gap between Playstation and Dreamcast produced what it did. Also considering the XBOX was
aimed at high performance from the beginning, everything from the included HDD to the choice in graphics hardware was
aimed at being able to run PC ports and outshine the existing machines.

 

[godhandiscen]

The Dreamcast was a great leap from 32 bit consoles, but Sony's PS2 marketing was full of bullshit screenshots and trailers that made the console seem way more powerful than it really was, and we all believed in them. It was the early days back then. Nobody knew you could apply AA to screenshots, and that game reviewers were bought with swag. You would look at games on EGM and think "HOLY SHIT THIS IS THE FUTURE" and then get a pixelated garbage with frame-rate in the ~20fps and lengthy load times every 5 minutes.

It was the typical PR cycle that has become so standard nowadays. Sony showed trailers for games that never materialized, or showed up towards the end of the generation when nobody gave a shit anymore and the graphics were nothing special (ex: The Getaway).

With the Xbox and GameCube being more powerful than the PS2, multi platform support was dropped for the Dreamcast as the minimum barrier of entry in terms of power for the generation became the PS2.

PS: I lived through those days with the naiveness of a young fanboy who had just pledged allegiance to Sony. I was drinking the kool-aid until I got a taste of Halo iirc. In retrospect, I have lived through so many decades of unfulfilled promises by videogame manufacturers that I just can't get excited anymore for announcements.

 

[JareBear: Remastered]

.

There were at least 8-12, and some of them were high profile games. Which isnt saying much over the span of hundreds of games.

What?

 

[Romulus]

What?

Are you asking me to go find which games were better on PS3 or what?

 

[JareBear: Remastered]

Are you asking me to go find which games were better on PS3 or what?

um. Okay, man

sure

 

[Romulus]

um. Okay, man

sure

I'm being serious, what were you asking?

 

[godhandiscen]

.

There were at least 8-12, and some of them were high profile games. Which isnt saying much over the span of hundreds of games.

Bring them up dude. Don't rewrite history. I want to see those 8-12 high profile games.

LOL at "high profile games". The PS3 got an inferior version of Vanquish, Mass Effect (1-3), Bayonetta, Red Dead Redemption, GTA4, etc, etc. Those days the tears of Sony fanboys were plentiful.

 

[Romulus]

Bring them up dude. Don't rewrite history. I want to see those 8-12 high profile games.

LOL at "high profile games". The PS3 got an inferior version of Vanquish, Mass Effect (1-3), Bayonetta, Red Dead Redemption, GTA4, etc, etc. Those days the tears of Sony fanboys were plentiful.

Read what you quoted. I never said 8-12 were high profile. Never. I said some were high profile. Just off memory Bioshock,, Infinite, GTA5, Battlefield 3, Portal 2, Dragon Age(both versions) LA Noire, Oblivion, Far Cry 3, FFXIII Tomb Raider 2013. That's just without really digging. Lots were toss ups, but again 360 mostly won.



And Vanquish?

Eurogamer verdict

If you own both machines and are wondering which to buy, it's a tough one to call overall but in my view, the v-sync implementation has to give the PS3 version the edge.

 

[loktaiextatus]

PS: I lived through those days with the naiveness of a young fanboy who had just pledged allegiance to Sony. I was drinking the kool-aid until I got a taste of Halo iirc. In retrospect, I have lived through so many decades of unfulfilled promises by videogame manufacturers that I just can't get excited anymore for announcements.

This is kind of funny. I had a sort of opposite experience. I had a PC and a Saturn and got a Dreamcast at launch. I was full in on the Dreamcast and PC and
disliked anything to do with Sony basically. I didnt actively HATE it but I was just indignantly disinterested and blamed them for killing Dreamcast.

Even when I had a 2nd job working at a games store one holiday when the Xbox and Gamecube and PS2 were all out at the same time and the DC games
were in the bargain bin I just refused to acknowledge the PS2. I would rather sell 100 purple gamecubes than a PS2. I would rather play Bloodwake.

Around that time I was in college, I had an XBOX and I ended up actually selling my XBOX to my friend, his XBOX was having major issues with the
sound chip (His was made in Mexico and mine was made in Hungary, and the Mexican xbox was known to have issues with surround sound) and so I
didnt have a games console for a while, and I used the money toward a car, I needed one since my mazdas engine threw a rod. So I got a used Saab 9000
drove it for 6 months illicitly with a bad inspection sticker and when I fixed my mazda, I sold the Saab to a friend. He ended up having no money and instead
he gave me his PS2 and some games. I reluctantly took something I would never have purchased. I tried a couple of the games he had, which
I did not like, and I put the system out of my mind.

A friend I made at school heard in conversation I had a PS2 and he got excited, he loaned me two games based on the kinds of things he knew I liked.
Games I had no idea existed because I had not been paying any attention to the PS2. The first one was DISGAEA . I ended up putting 100 hours into
disgaea, my grades even suffered and I didnt even play the other game because I thought the cover art looked dumb, I didn't know what it was.

The other game was Shadow Hearts. When I was thoroughly done with Disgaea, I played shadow hearts for the first time and felt DUMB AS HELL for not
playing it earlier.

I went from thinking the PS2 was overrated garbage that killed the Dreamcast for no reason and was a useless hunk of shit in the age of PC gaming
and XBOX, to playing a bunch of games I could only get on PS2, including shin megami tensei /persona games and other things you just couldnt get on Xbox or PC.

Those games basically shut me the hell up, and I have been a fan of Playstation since then. I played PSX in the 90s mostly RPGs and I did like it but I was not like
ever a big fan, and being a PC gamer I felt it was crappy graphically. I had a saturn for arcade ports really.... fighters. Which were better on Saturn.

I was still an Xbox fan, I mean Lost Odyssey, blue dragon and stuff are awesome so I have to give huge honorable mention to those.
And on the original xbox games like Enclave, KOTOR, Halo 1 and 2, PSO V2, Moto GP, Ninja Gaiden etc, I mean, I could keep going but those made me love
the original XBOX, If not for the place I was in and having other priorities at the time, I would never have parted with the xbox but I had so little free time.
After school I was able to actually play again but OG XBOX was winding down by then and I didnt buy another since I had a PS2.

But to say that Sony was the only one marketing things weirdly might not be accurate.
Remember the Dreamcast commercials, where they would show really idealized versions of in-game models interacting with each other for instance?
Or claiming the system was thinking or there was something more going on inside the machine? It wasnt quite blast processing but Sega was never
one to be super accurate with their marketing. Sony was BAD about showing CG in commercials during the PSX era though, really bad. FF7 for instance.

 

[godhandiscen]

Read what you quoted. I never said 8-12 were high profile. Never. I said some were high profile. Just off memory Bioshock,, Infinite, GTA5, Battlefield 3, Portal 2, Dragon Age(both versions) LA Noire, Oblivion, Far Cry 3, FFXIII Tomb Raider 2013. That's just without really digging. Lots were toss ups, but again 360 mostly won.



And Vanquish?

Eurogamer verdict

Your memory is wrong.

Bioshock was better on 360. PS3 got their port a year late too.

Page 2 | Xbox 360 vs. PS3 Face-Off: Round 15

Eurogamer's dogged, relentless coverage of the latest in cross-platform console development continues into this mammoth…

www.eurogamer.net

Don't get me wrong, PS3 BioShock isn't a bad game - with content as strong as the original release's preserved 100 per cent intact, it's never going to be - but the actual quality of the conversion itself is obviously and quantifiably sub-par.

Bioshock Infinite was a tossup.

Both versions of the game aim for a 30 frames per second update, but Xbox 360 virtually eliminates tearing with more of an adherence to v-sync while PlayStation 3 uses the usual Unreal Engine 3 approach: v-sync at 30FPS, tear underneath. The result is smoother performance on PS3 at the expense of more screen-tear. Read our full comparison analysis:

Battlefield 3 is another tossup. In fact the PS3 is praised for coming as close as it has never been before on a DICE game to the 360/PC.

The good news is that overall frame-rate is remarkably consistent in these scenes - the only real differentiating factor comes down to the screen-tear, where we see that some scenes operate with an advantage on Xbox 360, while others clearly perform better on the PlayStation 3 - as good a sign as any that DICE has aggressively optimised for the strengths of each platform.

You'll note that much of the tearing takes the form of individual, or small groups of frames at the top of the screen - particularly on the PlayStation3. In these situations it's highly unlikely that you'll actually notice them at all. In other cases, the tearing is much more obvious, and based on our experience with the game, if we had to guess, we'd say that lighting causes more issues for Xbox 360 performance while transparencies are more challenging to the PlayStation 3's RSX.

However, in truth, there are so many rendering technologies in play at virtually any given point that engine load must be immensely variable - it's absolutely remarkable that it's as consistent as it is. For that reason, cueing up like-for-like gameplay isn't so easy: engine stress levels can adjust radically within a split-second, but we should be able to draw some general conclusions from clips snipped from various points within the campaign.

I am not going to look up the other games. Even assuming you are right, I think you remember things differently because the PS3 ports became better over time, but the 360 version was still the reference version until the end.

 

[polybius80]

Bring them up dude. Don't rewrite history. I want to see those 8-12 high profile games.

LOL at "high profile games". The PS3 got an inferior version of Vanquish, Mass Effect (1-3), Bayonetta, Red Dead Redemption, GTA4, etc, etc. Those days the tears of Sony fanboys were plentiful.

I remember GTAV, BattlefieldV and FAR Cry 3 and its spin off blood dragon, there was a FF game I think was 13 I also remember about Soul Calibur 5 wich was almost identical but was a tiny bit better in PS3

Internal resolution is the same between PS3 and 360 too: a clean-cut 1280x720 with post processing anti-aliasing. However, even in cut-scenes the 360's textures appear smoothed over, while PS3's remain comparably sharp.

 

[polybius80]

Your memory is wrong.

Bioshock was better on 360. PS3 got their port a year late too.

Page 2 | Xbox 360 vs. PS3 Face-Off: Round 15

Eurogamer's dogged, relentless coverage of the latest in cross-platform console development continues into this mammoth…

www.eurogamer.net

Bioshock Infinite was a tossup.

The bottom line is that the 360 game enjoys a higher level of visual integrity, but in comparison to the PlayStation 3 version it takes a hit in terms of smoothness and response. This is most apparent in areas of the game that feature open parts of the enviroment with long draw distances and also during alpha-heavy scenes where explosions and other similar effect are used. In less demanding scenes featuring fewer enemies and effects there is little to separate the two at all: a constant 30FPS is regularly maintained in reasonably intense battles located in more enclosed indoor areas of the game. Likewise, heavily scripted sequences featuring destructible environments don't appear to cause any issues, as long as draw distances are kept short and there isn't an abundance of particle effects or multiple light sources in play. Overall, it's clear that both approaches have their strengths and weaknesses. Those more susceptible to screen-tearing may well prefer the more consistent look of the 360 game, although, in our estimation, the smoother frame-rates on PS3 mean that it feels slightly better to play.

 

[Romulus]

Your memory is wrong.

Bioshock was better on 360. PS3 got their port a year late too.

Page 2 | Xbox 360 vs. PS3 Face-Off: Round 15

Eurogamer's dogged, relentless coverage of the latest in cross-platform console development continues into this mammoth…

www.eurogamer.net

Bioshock Infinite was a tossup.





Battlefield 3 is another tossup. In fact the PS3 is praised for coming as close as it has never been before on a DICE game to the 360/PC.



I am not going to look up the other games. Even assuming you are right, I think you remember things differently because the PS3 ports became better over time, but the 360 version was still the reference version until the end.

The only one I looked up for you was Vanquish and it was wrong lol

 

[godhandiscen]

The only one I looked up for you was Vanquish and it was wrong lol

Vanquish was a personal preference from the author. But we can give that one to the PS3. I would argue a smooth frame rate was required to Vanquish. For example, the same argument but in the opposite direction is used to call Bioshock the better port even though it drops resolution from 720p (x360) to 680p (PS3) in favor of frame rate.

 

[Fat Frog]

Please go home with your sad comparisons. All of you.

PS360 multi wars:

"Look at the ass texture ! It's obviously cleaner on PS3"(Xbox version on the left, playstation on the right)

Snes vs genesis Wars:

But let's go back to the subject, shall we.

The Dreamcast was a power house at launch (never seen so many people gathering at virgin megastore to admire a video game. It was Soul Calibur).
End of thread

 

[Alexios]

Can anyone point to any games (on console or PC) which could match these Dreamcast titles at the time?

Virtua Fighter 3, November 98:

Sonic Adventure December 98:

Soul Calibur, August 99:

NFL 2K, September 99:

Ferrari 355 Challenge, October 99:

Shenmue, December 99:

Jet Set Radio, June 00

Ecoo: Defender of the Future, June 00:

It was definitely a big technical leap. I just regret that I was too into PC strategy gaming at the time to notice

Lmao, I can't believe that guy brought up Thief: The Dark Project to counter these examples, I adore the game and it's always installed on my PC with its sequel but a technical masterpiece or looker it isn't, it's an amazing game and game design showpiece worth mentioning in that context alone (charming as I find it that's the design, not the asset complexity or even quality in cases). Similarly for Half-Life, it got ported to Dreamcast decently anyway (if only it was completed and released, the unfinished state is still not bad as in the video I posted on the real hardware, here's another) and it's where the enhanced Blueshift models pack fixing the butt ugliness of the originals (even for their time) came from too. Obviously those would come later but they still use Dreamcast's launch power, it didn't somehow get more powerful, lol. As for Unreal, Dreamcast did get an UT port, on the same engine, and a later game. And before that a Quake 3 port. With mouse controls and online play. Granted they didn't peform great (then again my local net cafe's PCs ran UT horribly) but again they weren't designed for the hardware and it was probably the first time the engines and games got ported on other platforms, though an Unreal port was being worked on for N64 (DD) at one point or something like that, by formerly PC-centric developers. They didn't do too bad. Gonna reiterate the numbers since people seem to have missed them and keep conflating aesthetics preference.

It's certainly really close. I doubt most people could tell the difference without a side by side back then.


I think it's a matter of VF3 itself being an older 1996 game without as matured modeling methods that meant the amount of polygons didn't reflect on screen in the way seen in more modern games that followed the DC launch.


Kind of like I mentioned for Saturn's Virtua Fighter port's bad rep back in its day (though the cuts on that were much more evident). SoulCalibur is just a more stylish game for most people's sensibilities even if it clearly lacks the 3D environments for the most part.

For a comparison, the character models in the PS2 port of Virtua Fighter 4 are ~7000 triangles, Aoi (and all others) on the DC version of VF3tb is on the same level (7500) but they've used up 4300 of them on just her head. Clearly modeling matured since 1996.

SoulCalibur full character models are in the range of Aoi's head or less! Mitsurugi is 3876! The game just oozes style and grace, not just raw power.

For posterity the arcade version of Virtua Fighter 4 uses up to 20k polygons per character. Which is probably why people think it couldn't be ported to Dreamcast, unaware with proper care models can be reduced and still look pretty (as on the PS2, imagine that in sharp 480p with better textures).

Dead or Alive 2 DC character polygons range from 8416 to 9246 so a similar amount that looks better as that game wasn't made in 1996. Sega was pioneering with the likes of VF1, 2 and 3 so things that came later could improve. Still they weren't gonna remake the games for the Dreamcast port like Namco did, so they just cut down the existing models and what not until the game could run well on Dreamcast, which meant forms suffered a bit, it's one thing to cut down a model and another to make it on that budget from step 1 or work harder/smarter to ensure the high quality results.

"In the Dreamcast version of Dead or Alive 2, the backgrounds display 30,748 to 51,894 polygons per scene, while the characters display 8416 to 9246 polygons each. This was the highest character polygon count in any video game at the time, surpassing Virtua Fighter 3 (about 7500 polygons per character), and it was significantly higher than the polygon counts in games for other consoles and PC at the time. In comparison, the highest polygon counts for PC games at the time were up to 15,000 polygons per scene (Quake III Arena) and 2500 polygons per character (Half-Life).[10] The polygon count of Dead or Alive 2 was surpassed by the Dreamcast game Shenmue, released several months after the arcade release of Dead or Alive 2."

"The NAOMI 2 arcade version of Virtua Fighter 4 uses up to 20,000 polygons for each character, while each background uses over 50,000 polygons, with up to 16 hardware light sources per polygon, at 60 frames per second. This was the highest character polygon count and lights per polygon for a video game up until 2001, giving it the most detailed character graphics and lighting effects of its time (such as dynamic search lights).[6] In comparison, the same year, Dead or Alive 3 on the Xbox used 10,000 to 15,000 polygons for the characters. Virtua Fighter 4's character polygon count was unsurpassed until Virtua Fighter 5 in 2005.[7] In terms of textures, the game uses 128 MB of texture data for the characters.[8]"

"The PlayStation 2 version of Virtua Fighter 4, due to hardware limitations, reduced the polygon count down to 7,000 polygons for the characters and had much fewer light sources. The texture details were also reduced for the PlayStation 2 version.[9]"

Seems like most people can't tell art style/design vs tech specs. Most numbers by Sega Retro.

To complete the numbers Tekken Tag Tournament fighters (which the devs said were overkill and reduced in Tekken 4/5 leaving room for other things, they too utilized less polygons better in time) sit between 6000 and over 7500 polygons, so they topped SoulCalibur by a lot but not all the others.

Seeing these I'm kind of miffed they didn't release VF4 on DC as some kind of final love letter to fans, lol.

 

[Physiognomonics]

I don’t remember a single multi-plat game that performed or looked better on PS3. 360 dominated the multi-plats. The PS3 may have had neat hardware but clearly it was not easy to develop for. Some PS3 ports/versions of a multi plat game were straight up disasters

By the end of the gen, the PS3 had some stellar and breathtaking first party games, sure, but for me the 360 dominated my playtime last generation, much like the PS4 dominates my playtime this gen. I never had a 360 RR on me and my 250gb 360 Slim is one of my top 5 favorite consoles ever.

PS3 had noisy fans too, from what I remember. At least my launch model. PS3 Slim seemed a lot better

GTA5 was for DF a little better on PS3 because of better texture filtering on the ground.

 

[polybius80]

Seeing these I'm kind of miffed they didn't release VF4 on DC as some kind of final love letter to fans, lol.

DC is good console for display a fair amount of triangles but vertex processing is a bit limited as everything has to be done in the CPU, just because another game has similar amounts of polygons as virtua fighter doesn't automatically means it can handle VF4 geometry, transformation and effects, I am not saying it cannot handle VF4(Idont know) but you cannot take it for granted just looking at polycounts between games, if we are going to take polycounts as metric only looking at blue stinger and master chief models we can say dreamcast can run halo just as xbox and that is not the case


also notice that having the polygons of a level in memory is not the same as displaying them

 

[Alexios]

I mean, VF4 is on Naomi (2), reducing complexity (levels, fighters, lighting, effects) down to Dreamcast seems plausible, I mention the polygons because originally on arcade the characters have way too many but the PS2 port shows skilled modellers could reduce them so they still look nice.

I did mostly compare fighters which don't tend to have many calculations and game logic to account for, of course it's not the same to compare wholly different games like Blue Stinger and Halo. Though I'm sure DC could have had some nice FPS of its own was anybody inclined to develop one.

Like I mentioned earlier myself it could hold its own with games suited to its own strengths that still looked and played nice. So no you couldn't realistically port Metal Gear Solid 2, but you could have nice modern feeling games all the same on it and it had loads that hold up during its short life.

 

[Dr.D00p]

Did you play PS2 on a CRT back in its day? Because the reason the output looks pretty bad screenshots, on modern TVs and usually doesnt look great in Emulation
is because it was designed around the CRT interlacing effect. Sony went out of their way to basically give themselves a sort of free anti - aliasing.

Back in the day, I played both the Dreamcast & PS2 on a top of the line Panasonic 32in Widescreen CRT, all 55Kg of it! and DC games looke so much crisper and brighter than any PS2 game, whose video output was murky & games nearly always suffered from that horrible shimmering because of the interlaced mode that the PS2 relied on.

 

[polybius80]

I did mostly compare fighters which don't tend to have many calculations and game logic to account for, of course it's not the same to compare wholly different games like Blue Stinger and Halo. Though I'm sure DC could have had some nice FPS of its own was anybody inclined to develop one.

some ligh effects can be tricky specially in DC

I dont know much about VF4 but it looks to have a nice deforming surface(snow for example) and interactive small things(leafs for example) I am not sure how problematic that can be for DC, polygons are a difficult comparison even in similar games you can have high amount of triangles in characters and be ok but the moment you want to make hundred of quads to move independently performance suffers despite being a few polygons, from that generation PS2 and Xbox had a way to deal with such things more gracefully


here are FPS(and TPS) for DC

 

[phil_t98]

funny reading some of the posts as to why the dreamcast failed, some saying it was under powered some saying it was lack of third party support. the reason it failed is its copy protection was broke within months of it releasing and no chip needed to play copied games. people had a shed load of games because they were easy to copy and play. third party abandoned the console because they knew there software wouldn't sell as it was gonna be pirated so much

 

[Alexios]

Yes, in the line before the quoted I said reducing everything like that, levels, lighting, etc., would be necessary (as it was for the PS2 port also). Also in some ways the levels/logic are less complex than VF3's since people disliked uneven fighting surfaces so they went back to flat fighting floors.

I wouldn't mind if they had to cut the snow in that one area or the full stage or replace it with another like a summer edition or whatever, it's just one or two environments with that sort of thing for effect, not the bulk of the game or the point of it, just cool shit they could add on top, and did

And yes, I know of those games on DC, I even had Hidden & Dangerous myself. I meant something action adventurish like Halo that you mentioned and not a PC port. Like if Lobotomy hadn't gone under the previous generation and we would see Powerslave 2 (or 3) on Dreamcast or something.

With the budget/developer skill to match in that way (as Lobotomy would). Not like random releases like MakenX could realistically hold a candle to the best of the genre and didn't just because of Dreamcast. Same for PC ports, made for very different systems they didn't utilize DC the best.

From those in the videos I'm partial to Outrigger, it's such a weird Quake-as-an-arcade-game thing, haha (plus it's 60fps, blocky as it looks). Also Propeller Arena for similar reasons, shame it didn't come out officially. Gundam is a pretty good game too, I didn't consider it an FPS but yeah.

funny reading some of the posts as to why the dreamcast failed, some saying it was under powered some saying it was lack of third party support. the reason it failed is its copy protection was broke within months of it releasing and no chip needed to play copied games. people had a shed load of games because they were easy to copy and play. third party abandoned the console because they knew there software wouldn't sell as it was gonna be pirated so much

I mean, that happened with PS1 (and Wii) too, everybody here had pirated stuff, but clearly it did great. It varies by region/area and is not the sole reason alone. So, put yourself among the many others claiming what was that one fabled cause of failure with little other than anecdotal evidence.

 

[Panajev2001a]

GTA5 was for DF a little better on PS3 because of better texture filtering on the ground.

Oblivion too, better LOD on distant objects.

 

[phil_t98]

Yes, in the line before the quoted I said reducing everything like that, levels, lighting, etc., would be necessary (as it was for the PS2 port also). Also in some ways the levels/logic are less complex than VF3's since people disliked uneven fighting surfaces so they went back to flat fighting floors.

I wouldn't mind if they had to cut the snowin that one area or the full stage or replace it with another like a summer edition or whatever

And yes, I know of those games on DC, I even had Hidden & Dangerous myself. I meant something action adventurish like Halo that you mentioned and not a PC port. Like if Lobotomy hadn't gone under the previous generation and we would see Powerslave 2 (or 3) on Dreamcast or something.

And the quality/dev caliber of course to match in that way (as Lobotomy would). Not like random releases like MakenX could realistically hold a candle to the best of the genre and didn't just because of Dreamcast.

From those in that video I'm partial to Outrigger, it's such a weird Quake-as-an-arcade-game thing, haha (plus it's 60fps, blocky as it looks). Also Propeller Arena, shame it didn't come out officially. That video doesn't include Rainbow Six.


I mean, that happened with PS1 (and Wii) too, everybody here had pirated stuff, but clearly it did great. It varies by region/area and is not the sole reason alone. So, put yourself among the many others claiming what was that one fabled cause of failure with little other than anecdotal evidence.

not in the same way as it happened on the dreamcast. the ps1 you had to get it chipped the wii u never sold well any way and had little third party support.the dreamcast was 100% because third party abandoned the console due to easy pirating. did u ever have a dreamcast?

 

[Alexios]

not in the same way as it happened on the dreamcast. the ps1 you had to get it chipped the wii u never sold well any way and had little third party support.the dreamcast was 100% because third party abandoned the console due to easy pirating. did u ever have a dreamcast?

I said Wii, not Wii U, what are you on about, lol. It sold amazingly both hardware and software in droves with an attach rate matching the best of any system to that point, contrary to popular belief. Yes, you had to get the PS1 chipped, and everyone inclined to pirate did. Yes I had a Dreamcast, what does that have to do with anything, do you want photos? The system is stored somewhere and barely functioned but I have Shenmue 1 & 2 around here. The same people who pirated DC games pirated PS1 games the years before (and during).

 

[polybius80]

I mean, that happened with PS1 (and Wii) too, everybody here had pirated stuff, but clearly it did great. It varies by region/area and is not the sole reason alone. So, put yourself among the many others claiming what was that one fabled cause of failure with little other than anecdotal evidence.

to be fair, PS1 and Wii were also the most popular consoles of their generation, I am not saying piracy destroyed DC but certainly affected it more than the others

DC was released in a very good moment, before PS2 was perfect timing but I think nobody expected PSX/PSone to last that much, Wii was very popular but towards the end of the generation lost momentum very fast, PSX was still a very atractive system even in 2000

 

[Alexios]

I didn't say it didn't affect it, just that it's not proof that was the one reason it died as he said. Others say piracy was part of the reason PS1 did that well. It's hard to pin it on any one reason. The odds certainly stacked against SEGA in many ways despite doing pretty good right out the gate.

 

[Team Andromeda]

Whilst the PS2 was undoubtedly more powerful, its video output was utterly appalling, like having 3 layers of vaseline smeared over every interlaced pixel compared to the Dreamcast's crisp, razor sharp output.

..even today running games at 4K internal res via PCSX2, some games still look like utter dogshit.

Well said, never mind the PS2 screen res was in many cases below that of most DC games.

 

[phil_t98]

I said Wii, not Wii U, what are you on about, lol. It sold amazingly both hardware and software in droves with an attach rate matching the best of any system to that point, contrary to popular belief. Yes, you had to get the PS1 chipped, and everyone inclined to pirate did. Yes I had a Dreamcast, what does that have to do with anything, do you want photos? The system is stored somewhere and barely functioned but I have Shenmue 1 & 2 around here. The same people who pirated DC games pirated PS1 games the years before (and during).

stop getting so defensive lol did u have a dreamcast back when it launched? I mean the relative ease of pirating was massive compared to other consoles at the time. everybody I knew had a dreamcast and had easily 100 games pirated on it. I still have my dreamcast and have my 2 favourite games. Sega rally and metropolis street racer. the console was ahead of its time with online gaming for the first time on a console if I remember right? also had keyboard and mouse support.

 

[Alexios]

Well said, never mind the PS2 screen res was in many cases below that of most DC games.

I'm running VF4 Evo at 1440p and don't understand why it looks fuzzy when DOA2 Limited Edition (updated Japanese version) on Flycast is super sharp, I'll chalk it up to PCSX2 being not great

 

[Team Andromeda]

I didn't say it didn't affect it, just that it's not proof that was the one reason it died as he said. Others say piracy was part of the reason PS1 did that well. It's hard to pin it on any one reason. The odds certainly stacked against SEGA in many ways despite doing pretty good right out the gate.

Of course, Piracy helped with PS sales so many people bought one over it. But the PS also had enough families buying games each week, that it didn't matter and it sill sold tons of hardware.

What killed the DC was even the Hardware sales were quite a poor outside of the USA and so 3rd party support wasn't great. TBH that E3 2000 MSG2 trailer was a killer for DC momentum. Until that moment most DC games looked on par with the PS2 games.
MGS2 was so far above what the DC could do and it looked so amazing that even I wanted a PS2

It really was a game-changing moment for the PS2 and a killer blow for the DC

 

[Alexios]

I'll never get why SEGA didn't somehow try to make a proper football (soccer) game with the Virtua Striker engine/assets for dat European appeal. That game looked pretty sweet but wasn't what people into Fifa/Pro wanted. And Worldwide soccer just looked eh that generation.


Losing EA (Sports) was another blow for mainstream appeal for sure, SEGA made great sports titles itself (I hear, I'm not into that) but they weren't gonna compete with that behemoth in mindshare and EA didn't wanna compete with another big/quality sports brand like SEGA Sports.

 

[Dr.D00p]

I'm running VF4 Evo at 1440p and don't understand why it looks fuzzy when DOA2 Limited Edition (updated Japanese version) on Flycast is super sharp, I'll chalk it up to PCSX2 being not great

It's nothing to do with PCSX2, it's all to do with the PS2's native video output and the interlaced video modes it employed to reduce bandwidth requirements at higher resolutions on the GPU.

 

[bronzodiriace]

It was stronger than Model 3...at home...for $199! That was enough for me.

stronger and weaker I guess

 

[Alexios]

It's nothing to do with PCSX2, it's all to do with the PS2's native video output and the interlaced video modes it employed to reduce bandwidth requirements at higher resolutions on the GPU.

Yeah but why doesn't PCSX2 have a way to properly make it full res? SSF for Saturn has a proper (not just wobble or whatever) deinterlacing option that makes Virtua Fighter 2 etc. full res. Then again it's the only emu that does that, Mednafen/beetle don't either. But interlacing is big on PS2 so.

 

[Team Andromeda]

I'm running VF4 Evo at 1440p and don't understand why it looks fuzzy when DOA2 Limited Edition (updated Japanese version) on Flycast is super sharp, I'll chalk it up to PCSX2 being not great

Most PS2 games couldn't even match the DC 640x480. Which makes laugh a little, with the irony of PS4 fans making fun of Xbox One screen res.