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How Important is Gears of War for Microsoft?
In todays Opposable Thumbs column at Ars Technica, Ben Kuchera wonders out loud on the importance Microsoft is placing on Gears of War . Despite assurances that 360 games will look better, it's still a toss-up over whether Microsoft or Sony will emerge as the graphical powerhouse of the seventh generation. With ad copy flying fast and only a few weeks until the game's launch, this is Microsoft's last chance to persuade any on-the-fence PS3 fans. From the article: "The question is: does Sony need to beat it? It's not important right now--Sony is delivering what amounts to a paper launch this year; a few people will get systems but the vast majority will be waiting until supplies get a little heavier. It is clear that Sony is going to have to show those early adopters something strong and at least as good as Gears of War in terms of graphics: even thought it's a second generation game against first generation titles, the $200 price difference means people want to see better than 360 quality, and unless we get it now there will be some grumbly early adopters."
Sony needs to do so for a variety of reasons. They need to justify their high pricetag. They need to justify their hype. Perhaps most importantly they need to justify their architecture. I think, and I'm not alone, that Cell is going to turn out to be a dog just like the Emotion Engine, Holding back a performance starved architecture. They may be able to cover up for it a bit by having ditched the Cell in favor of an Nvidia graphics chip, so what they have will probably look alright, but I'm not convinced they'll be able to deliver immersive environments capable of competeing with later gen 360 titles due to performance starved physics processing.
They're not hitting the limits of the hardware by any means just not coding to the hardware because the maturity of the developers, sdk and frameworks haven't been there. That is why "2nd/3rd" gen games always rock and first gen games have the symptoms you notice.
"As for Gears Of War. I don't think a 3rd person shooter will have the power to persuade, especially since you'll be able to buy it on the PC." Not before Xmas you won't. In fact, almost nothing has been said about the PC release for months AFAIK. It will probably still happen, but MS will keep it 360 "exclusive" for a while.
The game is exclusive, not the engine. There's plenty of PS3 projects using it.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.