You should go read it, or at very least look at all the great cases I took pictures of.

For me the draw of achievement for their replay value and having a standardized and well integrated online experience are huge selling points for me to get a game on the 360 over another platform. I would even go so far as to suffer inferior graphics and sound for the benefits to replay value and ease of use that achievements and Xbox Live offer. So at least in my opinion a Playstation 3 title would have to do something quite spectacular to draw my purchase over the same title on the Xbox 360. The article piqued my interest because I was curious exactly what the Playstation 3 offered that would make these games stand out so head and shoulders above their Xbox 360 counterparts.

After reading the article I was left scratching my head. It seemed to me that the arguments presented in the article didn’t at all match the heavily reported conclusion at the end. Not only did the article not support it’s final claim that the PS3 titles were the superior lot, but the arguments for the PS3 version were on a whole very weak, and based almost entirely on minor and inconsequential factors.

Most of the comments I’ve read from those who were to lazy to read the article themselves assumed that the PS3 was started to eek out superior graphics to the 360, unfortunately that’s not the case. According to the actual article only two of the four games had a noticeable difference in graphics and with both of those game the journalist noted that the Xbox 360 version had the advantage (albeit slight) over their PS3 counterparts.

If there was no real difference in graphics then what was the difference you might ask? Apparently DMC4 was a “clear winner” on PS3 because they thought the controller layout was better… yup, according to GamePro the face buttons on the PS3 controller were easier to hit than the 360 controller. I don’t know how that’s possible really, and personally I don’t care what the journalist says about the controllers I find the PS controller design to be incredibly uncomfortable no matter what game I’m playing.

COD4 was “better on PS3″ because of “dedicated servers” which is untrue, COD4 does not have dedicated servers on PS3, this was such a important point to the article that they even made some huge graphics to hit the point home that the 360 sucks because it didn’t have dedicated servers.

Both COD4 and Burnout revenge were “better on PS3″ because the match making interface was slightly faster and easier to use. Really? is that a worth while selling point? I can see how some x-plat games will have a more streamlined online interface on non-360 platforms because the developers can roll their own, but the 360 is standardized and better than average across the board which, in my opinion, is much better than having a few good online interfaces and a lot of crappy ones. Not to mention, if I’m buying a game based on multiplayer, I’m going to buy the one for the platform that all of my friends own (playing with strangers is overrated), and right now, none of my friends own PS3s.

Most troubling is that, the article completely neglected what I consider to be the two most influential factors when making the decision of which console to buy the game for, Achievements and Xbox Live. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who picked up this gross oversight as Microsoft themselves released a statement in rebuttal.

For multiplatform console owners, Achievements and Gamerscore have to be listed as an influencing factor to purchase the Xbox 360 version,” said Penello in an email to GamePro on Tuesday. “Their success and popularity is undeniable.

Of course GamePro responded to this defending their position:

This feature isn’t about which platform is better, but which version of these four games is better. Achievements, rumble, and Xbox Live are specific to the console, not in-game features. This is why I used graphics, loading times, controls, and online integration as the criteria.

So apparently achievements aren’t in-game features anymore, that’s news to me. While they are integrated with the console and the Live service itself they are still, at their core, features of the game. There is no reason developers could not have added a similar feature on the PS3 counterpart to help boost the replay value. Sony even has a trophy system that will be integrated with home that offers a similar benefit to achievements but again none of the developers opted to use it.

Part of why those features are so important and so popular on the 360 is that they’re supported across the board, when you buy a 360 games, no matter what it is you know for certain that there are achievements to earn, and that it will have Xbox Live integration. There is no reason the PS3 can’t do the same thing except they opt not to and why that shouldn’t be taken into consideration when comparing cross-platform titles is beyond me.

On a whole after reading the article the impression I got was that the author knew what he wanted for the outcome and then wrote the article to support his desired result. I think the PS3 is a capable platform but I think it’s benefits are continually squandered by short sighted development. People continually question what makes a game “next gen” and since the release of the 360 I’ve held strong that it’s a tight integration with the console and a high level of standardization across all games for the platform. Next Gen to me is Achievements, it’s knowing that all games will be released with a list of important features standard, and an online service that builds a community beyond the console itself.

Ignoring the importance of these features and condoning the efforts of developers who neglect to incorporate them into non 360 releases does not do the industry any favors. I want developers to give a good reason to buy a PS3 title over a 360 title and I certainly don’t appreciate journalists who write fanboy articles with the intent to quell buyer’s remorse.

For those of you who don’t know Rez is one of my top 5 favorite games of all time. I have a copy for Dreamcast and before now I would play through it about once a month. Now it’s on XBLA in HD with 5.1 surround sound, achievements and a few new game modes. It’s the first time in a long time that I’ve been really excited about an XBLA title. Now if only they could re-release the other 4 games on my list in the same fashion.

• Killer Instinct 2 (Arcade Version)
• Flashback
• Sonic Spinball
• Space Channel 5 Part 2 (in the original Japanese)

Space Channel 5 Part 2
SC5P2 might be a stretch, especially in the original Japanese. They did release it for Gamecube and PS2 in the States, I have the Japanese Dreamcast version. The English Voice acting is grating and where it’s a game with singing the translation just doesn’t work. Even still it’s got all the stuff that would make a great XBLA title. I’d be dreaming if I thought this would ever arrive on XBLA in this configuration. First of all the SC5 series was not a very popular game, I’m actually impressed they made a sequel at all. Secondly because of the amount of music and voice acting and CG cut-scenes the game would either take up a whole lot of space (possibly beyond what is allowed for an XBLA game) or they would have to spend a lot re-producing those cut-scenes with in game graphics. Considering the space constraints and the fact that no one in the US would likely want to listen to Japanese voice actors it’s a safe bet that they wouldn’t use them. I suppose my only hope for this game is that if they decided to release it in the Japanese XBLA, but that might be pushing it too considering how abysmal Xbox 360 sales are in Japan.

Sonic Spinball
Sonic Spinball has a much better chance than SC5, but still not a very strong one. In my personal opinion Sonic Spinball is the best videogame based pinball game ever made. The reason I feel this way is because 99% of all pinball video games out there simply try to emulate the feeling of playing a real pinball machine, and that’s a failing battle.

The allure, at least for me, of playing pinball is partly due to the fact that you’re directly interacting with a rube-goldberg-esque hunk of electro mechanics. The unique sound each solenoid makes with the slight jitter of machine on each ball bump. Maybe I’m jaded because I worked in an arcade repairing machines for 3 years and my favorite part was always stripping down a pinball machine, cleaning and waxing the board, replacing all of the rubber bumpers and lights, and then play testing it with the glass off… but I’m getting off-topic now.

The reason Sonic Spinball is so great while all of these other pinball games fail is because it doesn’t try to be something it’s not. No matter how accurate the rumble, how crisp the graphics and how well recorded the sounds, a video pinball game will never compare to the real deal. Sonic Spinball embraced the fact that it wasn’t a real pinball machine and added unique gameplay elements that made it a cross genre between a platformer and a pinball game. It did something real pinball machines could never do. As far as I know it’s the only game to embrace it’s medium and use it to it’s advantage and result makes it one of my all time favorite games.

The chances of this coming to XBLA are fairly low, again because the game wasn’t all that popular, but also it’s been released on the Wii’s Virtual Console service. If they brought it to the 360 they would definitely have to update the music I think. My least favorite part of the game was the over-distorted-midi music that plagued most Genesis games of the time. Updating to HD sprites or full 3D would be cool too, but not necessary. As long as the gameplay remained the same I would buy it in a heartbeat.

Flashback
If you’ve never played Flashback you need to find an abandon-ware website and grab it. The game was originally on PC, SNES, and Genesis. It’s an adventure game with an awesome Blade Runner meets Running Man meets Fifth Element Sci-Fi story. You wake up on some Jungle Planet with no idea who you are or what you’re doing. You find a holo-cube with a message you’ve left for yourself with some vague instructions and you work your way back to discovering how and why you lost your memory while a greater plot unfolds in the world around you. Graphically the game used some really crafty techniques to create pseudo-3D cut scenes and the result is a really great stylized look and feel to the whole game, the actual gameplay was in 2D but with super smooth animation. The game was ahead of it’s time and deserves some attention from the modern gaming world.

I think a remake of Flashback would need to be in HD but it would also need to continue to use 2D sprites just like the original, including the cut-scenes. I say this because they had re-released the game some years later on Sega CD with the Sprite-based cutscenes stripped out and replaced with pre-rendered FMV and the game was much much worse for it. It lost it’s charm. They released a sequel titled “Fade to Black” in full 3D some years later and that ruined what could have been a great franchise. I think this game would do well on the XBLA, it may not have been popular in it’s day but the concept is still quite fresh and the gameplay is still unique. Even a straight port would have graphics and sound of a high enough quality to sell well, but I’d still like to see it get some special treatment.

Killer Instinct 2
I’m a fan of fighting games, and while these days I play Soul Calibur and Dead or Alive my all time favorite fighting game is Killer Instinct 2, the arcade version. I specify the Arcade version because they released console versions for SNES and Nintendo 64 and quite frankly those versions of the game were complete garbage compared to the Arcade. Killer Instinct in it’s day got pegged a generic 2D fighter that knocked off gameplay elements from other popular fighters of the time. While that’s partly true but I view it more along the lines of taking the best parts of other fighting games and making them work together. It took fatalities from Mortal Kombat, it took basic controls and special move motions from Street Fighter, but in addition to that it innovated in the graphical style, it innovated in the combo system and it innovated by redefining “rounds”, not only that but together there was some synergy between these elements, nothing felt slapped together, it was a solid and well balanced fighting game.

Out of all the games in this list KI2 has the highest probability of reaching the Xbox Live Arcade. It was a game originally developed by Rare and Microsoft now owns Rare. Further more is that the fighting game market is pretty stale these days, and MS has this ace up their sleeve not only to use as a re-release of a classic but also to continue carrying on the franchise. My biggest question is: Why haven’t they done it yet?

Someone recently asked me about resolutions on 360 games and I started thinking about it and then I started digging since I recalled a few other less notable games running at lower resolutions. I eventually found an interesting French fellow who is dedicated to finding all of the next gen games that aren’t as HD as they claim to be.

Quaz51 of the Beyond 3D forums has an interesting setup he’s got an HDMI enabled 360 and PS3, and a native 1080p display capable of mapping the incoming graphics at a 1:1 ratio. He then uses the built in pause feature of the display to extract a single frame from the game’s actual gameplay. At this point he’s got a pure unadulterated snapshot of the game on his display as it was output from the console. He then takes a photograph of the image at resolutions many times higher using his digital camera and analysis it on his computer. Using basic geometric maths and and a very strong understanding of image scaling and anti-aliasing functions he’s able to determine what the original rendered resolution was and how much AA was used. The process is repeated from several screenshots within the game to ensure accuracy.

His results range from interesting to shocking. You’d be surprised how many games don’t actually support the “guaranteed” minimum requires set by MS, more so, you’ll be surprised which ones they are.

Xbox 360

• Not True 720p

• Call of Duty 3 - 1040×624 - 2xMSAA
• Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - 1024×600 - 2xMSAA
• Conan (demo) - 1024×576 - no AA
• Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - 1024×600 - 2xMSAA
• FIFA 2006: Road to FIFA World Cup (demo) - 1024×576 - 2xMSAA
• FIFA 2007 (demo) - 1200×675 - no AA
• Halo 3 - 1152×640 - no AA
• in photo mode - 8064×4448 - no AA
• Lara Croft: Tomb Raider Legend (demo) - 1024×600 - 2xMSAA
• NCAA Football 08 (demo) - 1024×600 - 2xMSAA
• Perfect Dark Zero (demo) - 1152×640 - no AA
• Pro Evo Soccer 6 (demo) - 1024×576 - 2xMSAA
• Project Gotham Racing 3 (demo) - 1024×600 - 2xMSAA
• Ridge Racer 6 (demo) - 1440×810 - no AA
• Tony Hawk’s Project 8 - 1024×576 - 2xMSAA
• Virtua Fighter 5 (demo) - 1024×1024 - 2xMSAA

• 720p with Reduced AA

• Assassin’s Creed - 1280×720 - 2xMSAA
• Bioshock - 1280×720 - no AA
• Burnout Paradise (demo) - 1280×720 - 2xMSAA
• Forza Motorsports 2 - 1280×720 - 2xMSAA
• FIFA 08 - 1280×720 - 2xMSAA
• Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 - 1280×720 - 2xMSAA
• Half Life2: The Orange Box (demo) - 1280×720 - no AA
• Project Gotham Racing 4 - 1280×720 - 2xMSAA
• Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground - 1280×720 - no AA
• Viva Pinata - 1280×720 - 2xMSAA

• True 1080p Games

• NBA Street Homecourt (demo) - 1920×1080 - 4xMSAA
• Virtua Tennis 3 - 1920×1080 - 2xMSAA

While some of these numbers were generated from market place demos the list is far more expansive than one would have expected. Most interesting is the wide use of the 1024×600 resolution with 2xMSAA. Apparently that resolution is popular due to the size of the Xbox 360’s frame buffer it can be generated without tiling the frames (rendering sections at a time) which makes life easier for the developers. At 2xMSAA the 1024×600 resolution fits perfectly to accomplish this task. Clearly this is popular option for those who feel that their game game would benefit more from 2xMSAA than true 720p and lacking the optimization for both or better. Clearly this resolution isn’t as bad as some make it out to be considering notable games such as Oblivion and Call of Duty 4 were able to sneak it in without anyone so much as sneezing doubt over their graphical prowess.

Another Interesting discovery is that Halo 3’s special overlaid 640p resolution isn’t anything new, because the same technique was utilized on the 360’s first major in house shooter, Perfect Dark Zero. Of course photo-mode in Halo 3 provides massive super-sampling (SSAA) by way of rendering to a 8064×4448 and scaling down. This essentially tiles the image across the frame buffer 7 times. It can afford to do this of course because it’s not rendering in real time.

Anything not listed above can be assumed running full 720p at 4xMSAA, Quaz51 has tested a vast majority of the Xbox 360’s catalog including XBLA titles. The 360 isn’t the only console that’s getting his treatment though, he’s also going over Playstation 3 titles and finding similar results.

Playstation 3

• Not True 720p

• Call of Duty 3 - 1088×624 - 2xMSAA
• Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - 1024×600 - 2xMSAA
• Conan (demo) - 1024×576 - no AA
• Def Jam Icon - 1152×648 - no AA
• Jericho (demo) - 996×560 - no AA
• MX vs ATV (demo) - 1024×576 - no AA
• Pirates of the Caribbean - 960×720 - no AA
• The Darkness (demo) - 1024×576 - no AA
• Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground (demo) - 1024×576 -no AA
• Virtua Figther 5 - 1024×1024 - no AA

• Not True 1080p

• GTHD - 1440×1080 - no AA
• in Vehicle Selection - 1920×1080 - no AA
• GT5 Prologue (demo) - 1280×1080 2xMSAA
• in garage/pit/showroom - 1280×720 4xMSAA or 1920×1080 no AA
• Pirates of the Caribbean - 768×1080 - no AA
• Rub’a'dub - 1600×1080 - no AA
• Transformers - 960×1080 - no AA
• Virtua Figther 5 - 1024×768 - no AA

• True 1080p

• Blast Factor - 1920×1080 - no AA
• Calling All Cars - 1920×1080 - 4xMSAA
• Full Auto 2 (demo) - 1920×1080 - 4xMSAA
• Go Puzzle - 1920×1080
• Locoroco Cocoreccho - 1920×1080 - 2xMSAA
• Marvel: Ultimate Alliance - 1920×1080 - no AA
• NBA07 (demo) - 1920×1080 - no AA
• NBA08 (demo) - 1920×1080 - no AA
• NBA Street Home court = 1920×1080 - no AA
• Pixel Junk Racers - 1920×1080
• Ridge Racer 7 (demo) = 1920×1080 - no AA
• Stardust HD - 1280×1080 - no AA
• Sudoku - 1920×1080
• Tekken 5 Dark Resurrection - 1920×1080 - no AA
• Virtua Tennis 3 (demo) - 1920×1080 - 2xMSAA

The PS3 renders a few games in native 1080p, though half of them are Playstation Network games it’s still a better showing than the Xbox 360 for the resolution. The Less than 720p group sees pretty much the same cross platform games that were in the Xbox 360 list. Perhaps most interesting here is that the Gran Turismo series, isn’t rendering in True 1080p, similar to Halo 3 it does actually reach it’s proper resolution when in the menus and areas where fast processing isn’t required.

While it’s interesting to look at what the actual resolutions of these games are I think it more proves the point over how over valued the resolution battle is. No one questioned Oblivion, or Call of Duty 4, or Tomb Raider because those games look amazing, and are often used as shining exmaples of the best graphics the 360 and PS3 have to offer. How is it then that the most graphically impressive games have apparently underwhelming resolutions?

The answer is simple, and that is there is much much more to what makes good graphics than resolution. Arguably the horsepower required to pump out those extra pixels could be detrimental to other aspects of the image’s quality. Surely the creators of Halo 3, Gran Turismo, and Call of Duty 4 realized that they could produce an overall more impressive image if they allowed the resolution to suffer a bit. On the other end of the fence games like Ridge Racer 7 and NBA Street Homecourt are lacking a lot of detail and run at much lower frame-rates in comparison to their 720p-ish brethren.

Often tell people that 1080p could actually HURT the quality of their graphics and that they need to stop drinking the Sony “Full-HD” Koolaide. If seeing that list and thinking about how good those games actually look doesn’t convince you then nothing will.

All of this seemed to change abruptly, as if a switch had been flipped, when Microsoft announced that they would be extending their console’s warranty a full 3 years for RROD errors. I started to see people start quoting that turn around times were going from 1-2 weeks to 8-9 weeks. That’s rather dramatic, though it seemed that maybe it was only growing pains from the hoards of new complains from those that had just been added back under warranty coverage.

My opinion changed when I read an article posted up on Achieve360points.com. Speaker Ender, a moderator there, posted, in detail, his experience with Microsoft’s 1-800-4-MY-XBOX support line. A horrific Ordeal indeed. What followed was an onslaught of others posting their similar experiences with the “new” Microsoft support plan.

What I find most interesting is not just the incompetence on the part of Microsoft but the outright abuse coupled with deliberate organized and widespread “run-around” tactic doled out by the higher level staff. Quite frankly it’s appalling. Even more scary is if even a fraction of these consumers record their experiences it would be perfect fodder for a class-action lawsuit. I realize Microsoft extended their warranty to help prevent such a scenario but in order to prevent it they actually have to make good on their proposal.

I’m posting this here because I like the guys at a360p, and I’d like to see Speaker Ender’s issues resolved. More importantly though, I would like to see this issue resolved for everyone that has seen these kinds of problems when dealing with Microsoft Customer Support. As well as the DRM issues that arise with Xbox Live content when moving to a new console.

As consumers the only way we’ll ever see change is if we make our voices heard. I encourage you to share your experiences with Microsoft Customer Support and spread this message along to anyone you can.