PS3 Thoughts

I recently was thinking about all the real-world and media hype surrounding this week's launch of the PS3 and wondered that all important question-what about the games? That is, after all, the primary reason why one would want one- watching HD movies being secondary.

Admittingly I haven't been following the console game industry for quite some time, but at first glance it seems the best games that showcase what the PS3 can do right now are Resistance: Fall of Man and Ridge Racer 7, both exclusive to the PlayStation 3.

Here are some screens courtesy of IGN showing them in action:

I think the graphics are pretty impressive but at the same time to be expected after a long six years since Sony's PS2 release. Games like Half-Life 2 on my PC with a GeForce 7800 card look no less impressive though and I'm sure games using Nvidia's next gen GeForce 8 cards with DirectX 10 will look even better.

I'm a little disappointed with the anti-aliasing quality of Ridge Racer however. Even though the PS3 is using Nvidia graphics technology, I expected to see no jaggies considering that the Sony PS2 had zero anti-aliasing features while Microsoft's XBox, which was released a year later, did. Hopefully that's an issue that game developers can finesse on their end rather than being based in hardware.

On a separate note, I felt Sony should have stuck to their guns with the "Boomerang" controller introduced in the prototypes. I thought the look of it was slick and futuristic but apparently hardcore gamers felt otherwise, prompting Sony to replace it with the more traditional (and boring) looking controller.

So while I have no strong feelings one way or another for the PS3 itself, I do like the commercials. Sure some of them (like the creepy baby) don't make sense but still cool none-the-less.

Watch them here at YouTube of course. They remind me of the Cornell Box which is a famous test in the 3D graphics community.