One of Sony,s arguments for consumers to buy the PS3 regards its inherent ability to play 1080 HD images. On the other hand, Microsoft,s Xbox 360 can only play 720p images, an apparent step down in graphics quality. But Microsoft begs to differ (surprise) and is saying that 1080p isn,t a selling point at all because there is basically no difference between 720 and 1080.
Andre Vrignaud, director of Technical Strategy for Xbox Live, made comments to this effect in his blog on Ozmandias.com. According to Vrignaud:
"There’s been a lot of interest in the PS3 due to its stated 1080p output for both games and movies. What’s interesting is that a lot of folks don’t realize how meaningless 1080p actually is in this generation."
"The PS3 has roughly the same pixel-pushing capabilities as the Xbox 360. Don’t need to take my word for it, it’ll be obvious soon enough over the next year. Even if this wasn’t the case, consider we now live in a multi-platform development world, and that the current sweet spot developers are targeting is 720p due to the extremely similar system specifications. Simply put, a developer who is planning to release their game for both the Xbox 360 and the PS3 will aim for a common attainable ground. In fact, I’ll stick my neck out and predict that that you won’t see any 1080’x’ games for the PS3 this year."
Vrignaud warned that the higher definition 1080p output is extremely overrated as far as games were concerned. “…99% of PS3 titles will natively render at 720p; the few that come out with 1080’x’ support are either going to be simple classic arcade ports that don’t need to render complex scenes… or will give up a lot of in-game visual effects and simply won’t look very good… To sum up, don’t get sucked into all the 1080p hype. Just make sure you have a recent HDTV that de-interlaces 1080i signals correctly and you’ll be just fine."
