Worse than my loading times? :mellow: I'm assuming you weren't a fan of the Lucky 38 being a home?

Anyway, thanks. That makes me feel better. The thought of paying more money for a platform to not get DLC and have a game that doesn't even look/perform as well as the 360 version was making me regret my choice a bit. I know this is getting off-topic and we know nothing about this, but for the next generation of consoles, do you think sticking by Microsoft's side would be a safer choice?

On the topic of the screenshot, I still don't see why people seem to need to justify it by blaming it on 360 graphics. I still think it looks great.

The nice thing about PCs is, they're expandable and scalable. You can make a game today using bleeding-edge hardware, where most people would have to turn the quality down to medium (though still look very good for the hardware it's running on).. however, this is not static. Over the years, people will upgrade their computers, then they can turn the quality settings up, making the game look nicer and nicer years after the original release.


The PS3 is designed very differently than other systems. Many deveopers don't bother learning the proper way to code for it, or are stuck with a code base that can't be well adapted to it. This makes the game less optimized for the system, so even though it's more capable, games aren't using its full capabilities.

Logic would have it that getting the latter console, will leave you with a technically superior console: N64 over PS1, PS2 over Dreamcast, X-box over PS2, etc. The latter console usually has better equipment, but it seems that this isn't the case anymore. Now the latter console has to make up for lost time and developing preferences and even marketing tactics like exclusives. Another Playstation will probably come out before another M$ console. I predict the same thing happening that did with this generation, only reversed. The "PS4" will be easier to develop on since it will be out first, it will get the initial market and head start.

I thought the favoring was due to Microsoft buying developers, in a sense?

Thats part of marketing tactics, but yes, its that and coding "ease" when it comes to superior developing on the 360.

If both companies know of what you said and Microsoft has the older console, wouldn't it be more likely for Microsoft to attempt to release a new console earlier than Sony?

They take turns, I remember articles about this when the 360 was announced. Apparently they've agreed to take turns when it comes to console releases. They predicted the opposite though, that the latter console would be superior out of the gate.

Many games have been released on all 3 platforms. PC game usually look better than their console counterparts. Most developers do not gimp the PC version graphic wise just because a console cannot show that level of graphic intensity. There are many games that are on all 3 consoles and have DX 11 support such as Just Cause 2 and BF:BC2. I have a mid/high end PC (able to play all current games on highest settings ) and a PS3 and both have their advantages.

Actually. As it stands with the whole Sony leaving the keys to the system in the PS3, it seems more likely Sony will release a new console sooner.


As for as the PS3 and 360 goes, they are relatively on par with one another. The PS3 has some advantages and the 360 has so. There was a very well written article on this a while back, I will see if I can find it.

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My computer right now, after I bought $1500 worth of upgrades a few days ago, now has about a worth of $4600 and will be able to play every game that comes out for the next 5 years at least (well I will probably have to switch out graphics cards in a couple years). But the reason my computer costs so much is that it's a laptop. I bought an Alienware m17x RE case and built it myself by buying the parts I wanted in my laptop and building it myself. Laptops are inherently more expensive than a comparable power desktop. For the same power as my laptop, you can probably make a gaming computer for $1600-$1800 IF you build it yourself. I would recommend that you spend the money on a desktop. You will be able to play the game with superior graphics and it's upgradable for the future of games where consoles are not.

As for the complaining. I never complained about the graphics, in fact I was making sure that no one got hostile about it since the mag came out. The graphics on the PC will look vastly better than the console version, that's what I was saying. The graphics on the console are still good looking but the PC is where Skyrim has the ability to rank as one of the best looking games of all time. PC is just the battleground for the graphics war.

I wasn't referring to you when I mentioned complaining. I was just wondering what the problem with the screenshot was.

Ah, well the problem that some pc gamers will have is the lack of high quality shadows in the screenshot and also the rock textures were softened, because the poly count has to be within a certain threshold for the consoles so they don't begin to struggle with playing the game. I think it still looks great but what really makes me happy is that the graphics will look even better on PC :celebration:

$~800-1100 from newegg.



Kinda low rez, but the rest is fine. Nothing insanely special, but pretty good.

I do!

Gameplay>graphics...Skyrim could look like Oblivion, I could care less.

Yes, but you can't forsake great graphics for gameplay. I don't know where people get the idea that to get one, you have to sacrifice in another. That's not true at all, especially with over 100 people working on a game.

Just because gameplay is more important doesn't mean that graphics can't help improve the game and aren't at all important. Why settle for looking like Oblivion? Lets go all text!

I'd say good running condition>graphics. Oblivion stutters too much for me. I'd rather have Skyrim look very much like Oblivion but run smooth as silk than have it look like Skyrim and run like Oblivion.

Well, considering they've probably improved upon each game engine they've done, I can assume they have much better scene management in this game than any other, as Fallout 3 was a huge improvement over Oblivion in that regard. They introduced basic object culling, for one. What a lot of people don't know/understand is that graphics cards can render things even if we don't end up seeing them. In Oblivion, for example, if you were looking at a wall, but the entire rest of the city was behind the wall, the whole city would be rendered to the GPU (that was in the view frustum). So the entire scene had to deal with all kinds of viewing angles, and as such the general response was to scale down the quality (polygon count and texture resolution) of the models.

What they did in Fallout 3 was implement at least some basic form of culling (Oblivion already did backface and frustum culling at least) that immediately improved the performance of the game.

So what's good about this is if we assume they've done a better job at only showing what is needed on the screen, then PC modders could get away with actually creating not only higher-res textures, but higher poly meshes. That would be very hard to do in Oblivion since you had to make it work for many more objects being rendered at once. (Except for the fact that nowadays GPUs can push 2-4-8x the polys than when Oblivion came out)

So that also means that even on Xbox the mesh quality should be higher than it was in Oblivion, since it was rendering so much hidden geometry. I could be wrong about the consoles though, maybe they implemented better culling for the 360 version, but it's doubtful. Since it looked and performed worse than on PC.

Other than that, even the non-graphics part of the engine seemed terribly unoptimized in Oblivion. Which underwent considerable revamping in FO3, and is probably in some form the new engine today. (Complete rewrites are rare if not non-existent)



See above in this post for at least a partial explanation. I can assume we're getting both better looking and better running. Fallout 3 was both, technically, but the art direction was certainly different.

Sure, why not. Lets make it a choose your own adventure RPG book.

Both are really important, I would really be mad if it looked the same as Oblivion, since thats just nonsense that they couldn't improve that in 5 years, but from the screens we've seen, I'd say they definitely have come a loong way.

Ah, thanks!
While everyone assumes that the PC will have better graphics, I'd just like some confirmation from the devs, whether it's about higher resolution textures, dx11 support or any other information they can tease us with.
Sadly, Pete Hines doesn't want to answer about dx11 on twitter.

Do I win a prize now? :liplick: