November 29, 2006

The Wrong Comparison

Games developed at the same time for similar platforms are not a valid basis of comparison when it comes to image quality.

If I'm developing a game for the 360 and for the PS3 at the same time, I'm going to use the same assets. I'm going to be using the same shaders where possible. I'm not going to bust ass to uprez any of my assets. If anything, I'm going to drop the resolution of assets to get them to fit in memory or on the media if there is a problem. But if they're being developed at the same time, the assets are being tuned to the lowest common denominator as part of their creation.

This comparison is like putting the same ingredients into two seperate sausages, cooking them seperately, then comparing the tastes. What's the point?

1 comment:

Andrew Timson said...

The point is that it's the only way to get a fair comparison between the two cooks. If they both make different dishes, ones that aren't available in the other's restaurant, you can't say that one is "better" than the other without wandering into subjective territory (well, okay, even more subjective territory than taste/visual quality).

Not all companies automatically target the lowest denominator. The Splinter Cell games, for example; they target Xbox/PC (or now Xbox 360/PC), then downres the assets for the other consoles. But the Xbox/PC assets were generated first, and weren't compromised even though they knew they'd be porting to the other systems.