As much as I would like to agree with the statement that "you can get the latest and greatest graphics on a PC", I believe it too be somewhat misleading.
Yes, you may be able to buy a Geforce 4 Ti 4600, or an ATI 9700, or (insert card of choice here), but how many games actually take advantage of said card. Unfortunately there is a _long_ lead time between features being available in a card and them actually being used. So, in that sense, PCs are on a very similar technology slope to the consoles - since all the programs for them are for _older_ generations.
Example: 8 bit stencil buffers became available many years ago, but how long was it before games started using them? I've only recently seen games that actually started to use them to their full capacity. Yes, Quake III had support for stencil volume shadows, but they were very simple, only supported a single light source at a time, etc etc. Unreal hacked a few vendor specific versions that supported them, but again we're _vendor_ specific.
A more recent example is Doom 3. What are the main visual features that stand out about this game? Per-pixel bumpmapping and cube map support (and realtime shadows etc etc). And these were available in.... the Geforce 256, but they have only _just_ become mainstream. John Carmack even mentioned this problem in his recent QuakeWorld speech - buy the time a piece of hardward is fully utilised by a game, the hardcore gamers have upgraded past that many times over.
Consoles may be a generation behind at release (debatable, but beyond the scope of this reply), but they have very specific capabilities that you can target immediately. You can code for them directly _now_, without a shadow of doubt that it'll will be consistent for every gamer. Something that, at present, is beyond the realms of the PC with it's ever-shifting horizon of technology.
Of course, most of this is business driven. It would be financial suicide at present to release a game that would only run on a Geforce 3+ or ATI 9700, since you'd be eliminating about 95+% of your market.
All that said, I only use PCs (well, mostly, the occasionaly console sessions at a friends aside). I only code for my PC. And all of my work (film post-production) is done on Linux workstations. But it can be very frustrating when you know that you have a pile of very impressive hardware specs - that you simply _can't_ take advantage of, since not everybody has upgraded to them yet (and likely won't for a long while).
Of course, I'd like to see this change. HLSLs which allow you to specify an arbitrary number of passes is A Good Thing(tm) for PC hardware.
True, the facial animation in FF was fairly poor (unless Human emotions only range from "Angst ridden" to "Stoic" and "Agressive" to "Angry". The only time that I remember a character smiling (Dr. Cid) it looked more like he was having a facial spasm.
However, the body motion was leagues ahead of Shrek. The body movement of the characters (humans especially) was downright frustrating in Shrek. The princess especially - given that she's a main character I expected much more. Even if they were going for a cartoon look, instead of realism, it still came across badly.
That said, I still enjoyed Shrek more - although I don't believe that it was good as most people have made out. FF just didn't have a very well realised plot. At best it was cliched, at worst it was ridiculous and/or ambigious (although it tried to pass these off as "mystical"). I'm all for films that make you think, but this one just was badly scripted. Essentially it came across as being written by a game studio, rather than a film company. I kept expecting the characters to move onto the next puzzle.
"OK, we have to deal with the alien menance. But first let's get past this jumping sequence with moving platforms!".
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As much as I would like to agree with the statement that "you can get the latest and greatest graphics on a PC", I believe it too be somewhat misleading.
Yes, you may be able to buy a Geforce 4 Ti 4600, or an ATI 9700, or (insert card of choice here), but how many games actually take advantage of said card. Unfortunately there is a _long_ lead time between features being available in a card and them actually being used. So, in that sense, PCs are on a very similar technology slope to the consoles - since all the programs for them are for _older_ generations.
Example: 8 bit stencil buffers became available many years ago, but how long was it before games started using them? I've only recently seen games that actually started to use them to their full capacity. Yes, Quake III had support for stencil volume shadows, but they were very simple, only supported a single light source at a time, etc etc. Unreal hacked a few vendor specific versions that supported them, but again we're _vendor_ specific.
A more recent example is Doom 3. What are the main visual features that stand out about this game? Per-pixel bumpmapping and cube map support (and realtime shadows etc etc). And these were available in.... the Geforce 256, but they have only _just_ become mainstream. John Carmack even mentioned this problem in his recent QuakeWorld speech - buy the time a piece of hardward is fully utilised by a game, the hardcore gamers have upgraded past that many times over.
Consoles may be a generation behind at release (debatable, but beyond the scope of this reply), but they have very specific capabilities that you can target immediately. You can code for them directly _now_, without a shadow of doubt that it'll will be consistent for every gamer. Something that, at present, is beyond the realms of the PC with it's ever-shifting horizon of technology.
Of course, most of this is business driven. It would be financial suicide at present to release a game that would only run on a Geforce 3+ or ATI 9700, since you'd be eliminating about 95+% of your market.
All that said, I only use PCs (well, mostly, the occasionaly console sessions at a friends aside). I only code for my PC. And all of my work (film post-production) is done on Linux workstations. But it can be very frustrating when you know that you have a pile of very impressive hardware specs - that you simply _can't_ take advantage of, since not everybody has upgraded to them yet (and likely won't for a long while). Of course, I'd like to see this change. HLSLs which allow you to specify an arbitrary number of passes is A Good Thing(tm) for PC hardware.
True, the facial animation in FF was fairly poor (unless Human emotions only range from "Angst ridden" to "Stoic" and "Agressive" to "Angry". The only time that I remember a character smiling (Dr. Cid) it looked more like he was having a facial spasm. However, the body motion was leagues ahead of Shrek. The body movement of the characters (humans especially) was downright frustrating in Shrek. The princess especially - given that she's a main character I expected much more. Even if they were going for a cartoon look, instead of realism, it still came across badly. That said, I still enjoyed Shrek more - although I don't believe that it was good as most people have made out. FF just didn't have a very well realised plot. At best it was cliched, at worst it was ridiculous and/or ambigious (although it tried to pass these off as "mystical"). I'm all for films that make you think, but this one just was badly scripted. Essentially it came across as being written by a game studio, rather than a film company. I kept expecting the characters to move onto the next puzzle. "OK, we have to deal with the alien menance. But first let's get past this jumping sequence with moving platforms!".