Is Gears of War as good as it gets?

Wow. You Pussies need to pull your panties out of your collective assholes and enjoy the quality of the games that are available to you. Quit defending any particular console like it was your blow up doll.

@96 "The Playstation 3 has 234 Million transistors on its CPU, by comparison the Xbox 360 has 165 Million transistors on its CPU."

For perspective, an Intel Core 2 Duo uses 291 million transistors for only two cores! The Cell's SPEs are only about 20 million transistors each. They're like baby CPUs! So, don't expect much out of those little SPEs.

I already see the "GoW broke my 360" comments comming!

Evan its not about what they can do sperately, Its about what they can do working together.

ALL OF YOU need to read correctly.

The question is
"So does that mean PlayStation 3 COULDN'T handle the game?" When asked, Preston skillfully dodged the question, but implied the answer was "no."

He is NOT saying that the PS3 couldn't handle it. Every response is reading what was typed wrong.

Okay, as someone who doesn't own either a PS3 or a 360, and doesn't plan to, all I'm gonna say is that I just rewatched some Resistence footage and compared them to Gears of War footage. Simply put, GoW blows it away. I don't know why people are even bothering to claim that Resistence looks as good as Gears. I'm certainly not saying the PS3 COULDN'T have a game as visually impressive, but I AM saying it doesn't, yet. And, in my totally unofficial, uneducated opinion, even if the X360 topped out at Gears (which seems unlikely) it would still be amazing. What are people comparing Gears to that leaves them so disappointed? Crysis?

Can't believe the posts keep growing. Hey Joystiq, how about something that matters, rather than speculation to get all of the fanboys up in arms.

("4. and uhh, one more thing. If this is as good as the 360 gets, then the ps3 will surpass it by far, since launch ps3 games look better than it already.")

What you should be aware of with PS3 is that they have movie makers to make their trailers so picture quality is great, this IS NOT a replication of what the game plays.
With Xbox, they use in game footage on all trailers so you know what you are seeing s the real deal!!

People, consider the source of this quote.....
"Gears of War QA manager Preston Thorne" - you really think a QA manager is in the best position to comment on the tech ability of a PS3? If it had been a rep from their tech department sure, I'd have listened up...

Ha! What he said is so true. The PS3 just can't handle GOW. What's even funnier is all the Sony whores trying to rationalise Sony's terrible decision to go with only 256 meg graphics ram, hoping the programmers will be able to cludge the two types of memory together. Look kiddies you are just deluding yourselves. Resistance (supposedly the flagship PS3 shooter) that is supposed to work around all these design flaws in the PS3 looks embarrasingly poor compared to GOW, and GOW isn't even Halo.

Game over kids... Sony's going bankrupt within a year.

hi fokes the ps3 has 256mb ram MAX for the cpu and 256mb Max for the graphics card so if you think about it ps3 only has 256mb ram and as they say its 256mb +256mb = 512mb ram in system its not its like me having a 1gb ram in my pc and 256mb grapics card it dont make it 1256mb of ram i have in my pc its rubish.

The xbox 360 has 512mb ram in system. and its dedicated meaning if a game requires more ram for cpu it shares it to that. if you need more ram for graphics it give ram to that. so its better for you

ps3 has a cell at 3.2ghz with 7 spe (developing threads) not cores !! The 360 has 3x core each running at 3.2ghz with i think its 6 theads it think ill have to check. i think that the 360 will be better to run this game also with ts ai engine that ps3 havnt really got. so you aint getting the dummies like on ps2 e.g smackdown vs raw 2006 you get smacked out and get pinned while the ai stands there staring into space lol. i think gears of war ill blow us all away.

Yeeesh you guys are such girls, its just a fucking game! Play it and enjoy it, you know your bitch ass is gonna get a 360 regardless to play Gears of War anyways. Stop being such byast and grow up.

1) Most console games push a hardware to it's limit. As time goes on, the code becomes more efficient, so that same amount of power is spent better. The Hardware doesn't miagically improve and devs don't leave power unused for 1st gen games.

2) PS3 only has 256 VRam compared to 360's 512.

3) This is nowhere near news. ALL Devs would say this.

"What are you talking about? One of the first demos on the PS3 was of the Unreal 3 engine. Stick to the facts."

DBX00, sure UE3 was running on a PS3 dev kit, but the engine had to modified to work with OpenGL and that took a performance hit, because at heart, UE3 is a DirectX based engine, it was built from the ground up on DirectX and we all know that DirectX based engines (ie. Half-Life 2) run better on ATI GPUs.
Mark Rein himself speaks of UE3 performing poorly on the PS3, developers want to know if they'll ever get it to run as fast as it does on the 360.
Mark Rein: "We have a couple of worried customers" regarding the PlayStation 3 and UE3, who are asking: "How are we going to get it to perform as well as the Xbox 360"?
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=11102
Dig a bit deeper with your so called facts ;)

Firstly, taking "console" sides is stupid. I've got a 360, I'll be buying a PS3, and a Wii. If you like games, then screw taking sides. Secondly, Gears of War may look super sweet, but if you have any inkling of game design, you'd see that GOW is a game on rails, and thus they can pack more detail into visual sequences. Resistance is a FPS, thus must sacrifice detail for "openness". Apples and oranges folks. Lets stay focused on bullcrap microtransactions, and not on "my date is prettier than yours" posts.

"BMWM3P"

Seriously, your name there tells us near all we need to know about how valuable your comments are on this subject. A car? Really? Like to feel special much?

At least the PS3 will be all curvy and shiny!

If you guys want to seem amazing graphics and gameplay right now, watch clips of Lost Planet, or better yet, if you have a 360, get the demo off of xbox live. simply amazing.

"2 weeks."

(Mark Rein inside joke).

then it all boils down to pure console power, not to sound like a sony fanboy but, truly the PS3 does destroy
the Xbox 360, being a 360 owner, im lookign foward to play GoW, and it looks great, but i feel that this war will edge towards Sony, in the Ram department, the overall ram og the 360 is shared trhough video Ect.
the PS2 ram is set to each part of the console for an equal amount of memory. in the CPU part of the console
the ps3 is the clear winner, the 360 runs 3 cores, which is a beast of a machine, but the ps3 has the Cell Broadband processer, which is actually 8 Cores in one
so by power standards the ps3 is almost 3 times mor epowerfull then the 360.

So i will not belive that the ps3 cannot play GoW, but i can belive that GoW is maxing out the 360, it is belivable, but it might be another Marketing plan.
either way, GoW looks great but i wont belive that the PS3 cant handle it.

woops to many Mistypes in that last post... you guys get what i mean

look at RE4 for gamecube, Capcom said that they used every resource the gamecube offered, now look at Zelda, those graphics almost look next gen.

Gears of War is only the first wave of great looking games on the 360, that can compare to the PS3 games. As a matter of fact the only difference in a 360 game and a PS3 game is the performance rate (thats if the developer spends enough time on the system instead of just spending a few months on the game,little money and innovation on the game)These are games that will take the 360 to the best of the systems ablititys.


1ST: Gears of War
2nd: Lost Planet
3rd: Too Human
4th: Mass Effect
5th: Fable 2 (maybe)
6th: Splinter Cell 5
7th: Halo 3 (because we all know that Bungie will take all the time in the world to let there Flagship Game stand above the rest.) As I recall they said a couple of years ago that Halo 2 was coming out in March 2004. Well look how that turned out!!

Guys learn this i game on pc and sharing 512 mb of ram sucks really bad its like gaming on a integrated graphics chip ps3 uses different sectors of Ram 256 mb of V ram is PLENTY look at how good pc games look then look at the recommended specs u only need a 256 mb vcard ram for maxed settings, and btw when u go higher than 256 the slower the memory bus speed so that ,just so u know my 256 mb x1900GT pc is faster than a 512 MBx1900 which i built for 564 bucks can pump ps3 quality graphics any day u guys get so hyped for something thats been out for so long. PC is HD

To John,

The truth is that people are going to have to wait until the PS3 comes out on Nov. 17,2006 or the 19th?
But what are you saying is true about the Unreal Engine 3 running poorly on the PS3? Come on now, if Sony can get a game like "Ninja Gaiden" on the PS3, chances are that developers will get UE3 running smoothly on the PS3. It's not like going to get one cause,Sony is out of their GODDAMN MINDS and think that a $600 dollar system with one or two great games is going to get rid of the 360 like the PS2 got rid of the Dreamcast :( But if that happens I'm going straight to the Nintendo WII (the Revolution was and still is a better name for the system)

As with all "software", it's currently "maxed" out with this version of it. Don't forget, there are improvements that M$ will make to their compiler and functions/classes over the years that will increase the speed/performance of a game. But you won't get the improvement on an old game because the software will need to be re-compiled. That's why we see new game (same title) that have increased graphics and performance. I think what Epic is saying, is that with the current state of the software/compiler only the Xbox 360 can do the job. I would expect over time that PS3 will be able to handle the task. And if I was Epic, I'd be working on it since they'll be able to make a lot of money releasing Gears of War on the P3 with little development effort (game design, engine, graphics, sound, maps, etc. are already done).

OK, so let's say the still publicly unproven PS3 IS better than the PS3...Betamax anyone?

Price is going to be the deciding factor in the console war.

Gears of war is the best looking game on any system ...period. Hands down nothing is showing the potential of a system than this game.

The best that the Ps3 has to offer is "Resistance" which runs on the Half Life 2 engine, which is basically direcX8 with some directX9. Which means 95% of all shadowing is drawn in. Resistance looks good with alot of characters because the system dosent have to render hardly any complex shadowing. GOW dosent render a 100% shadowing either, but it does render about 65% of it.

Complex shadowing is what taxes a system, not one launch game for the PS3 uses much complex shadowing.

We all know that the gpu renders the graphic no matter how powerful the cpu is ..so that means graphic wise the 360 has the advantage....with its edram on the gpu, capable of 250gb a second bandwidth. Something the nvidia gpu for the PS3 dosent have.

Now, anyone whoe belives the Ps3 cannot run GOW is just caught up in the hype or fooling themselves. Because if the 360 can do it, then the PS3 can also. And vice versa. The difference between these two system isnt much, they both have there advantages in there own way, but through programing the advantages are minimal.The differences between the two systems inst like the PS2 and the Xbox ...a game like the Chronicles of Riddick, the only game showing off the Xbox true power, could never be done on the Ps2 given its more complx shadowing.

For the people saying 256MB is a bottleneck in VRAM... ummm... how much VRAM is the 360 using in GoW? A shared memory architecture is generally frowned upon.

So... assuming GoW uses more than 256MB of VRAM, then we can safely say that it has LESS than 256MB of system ram, so can't handle the extra in-game asset data that the PS3 could.

It's all a ridiculous argument really. I have GoW and the PS3 w/ R:FoM preordered (along with a Wii), so I guess that about covers it.

I was at E3 06' and I can tell you that initially the PS3 was far from stunning. Fall of man was an 'okay' show of power, but didn't touch the GOW preview. But to be fair, it was very apparent at the show the PS3 was nowhere near market ready (which is why I'm not very trusting of the launch titles, or the hardware itself for that matter). The PS3 showing was about what I would expect if the console was still 12-18 months from release, and it was very disappointing.

I do NOT see PS3 having any serious advantages in the marketplace over 360.

Technicaly, the 360 doesn't have the 'horsepower' in the CPU area as Sony. But then again, the Sony cell is far from a proven technology, and has had a number of difficulties, including a very poor manufacturing failure rate thus far.

The 360 has ample HP for gaming for the the next 6+ years.

You need to understand the ram pipeline AND the unified shader architecture on the 360 to understand why the PS3 simply can not out perform the 360 from a graphical standpoint. You need to do some research if you think otherwise. Sony really goofed up here. The video capabilities are largely set back a generation because of the shaders, unfortunately, and a lot of the 'additional HP' (if there is any) will likely be to compensate for this in the future.

All this being said, I'm confident the developers for both platforms will be able to exploit the strengths in both systems, but one being the 'top notch' graphical winner over the other- highly doubt it. With middleware becoming the norm (such as UE3), you can bet your bottom dollar you won't see major graphical differences in the software between the two.

My 2 cents. =)

oh, and DBX00 - EA aquired renderware (competing middleware platform), so while they will be using some UE3 technology, look for this to shift in the next 12-24 months to their now owned property, Renderware.

btw- MS releasing the XNA is quite possibly the smartest move ever done by a console manufacturer.

Don't discount this as a HUGE leap for MS.

hehe... woah, finally read through all that... though most of it went quick... gotta say, at times it was as if I were watching the View... damn you fanboys need to get over yourselves... the comment over "bill gates' penis" ok thats funny... Im still chuckling about that one. Ive noticed that from bill saying that halo 3 would come out with ps3 and now its coming a while after... he has little to no say about what the video game developers are and arent going to do...

and yes... it does kind of sound like the chevy-ford debate... hehe... ford stands for "Found On Road Dead" damn thats witty...(please note the sarcasm)

So does that mean PlayStation 3 couldn't handle the game? When asked, Preston skillfully dodged the question, but implied the answer was "no."

THIS MEANS THAT THE PS3 CAN HANDLE IT!
arrgh! you all suck at english...

Big whoop, XBOX360 has 512MB of RAM, that doesn't matter, the game needs system RAM as well as VRAM. Therefore GOW doesn't need 512MB VRAM....

http://www.hardgame2.com/img/noticias/PS3/misc/rsx01.jpg

PS3 512Mb Of Graphics Render Memory. Now please stfu, and stop listening to these Fanboys, even people at 1 up are fanboys or they wouldnt be changing statements around and feeding you BS.

Ps3 looks better then gears of war? Are you on crack? Every single human being who has functional eyes says Gears of War is the best game graphically ever created. And If the 360 is maxed out(which is isn't)? Fine with me. Can't get much better then gears. Halo3 will be another stepping stone is blowing away expectations. 360 has this contest won.