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X360 vs. PS3 Face-Off: Round 12

Quake Wars, GRID, LEGO Indy Jones, Overlord, Euro 2008.

Richard Leadbetter avatar
Face-off by Richard Leadbetter Technology Editor, Digital Foundry
Updated on
313 comments

It's that time again. Eurogamer's ongoing coverage of the latest developments in cross-platform gaming continues apace, as five brand new releases are put to the sword. The aim here is simple: to supplement existing review coverage with additional commentary based on any technical and gameplay differences we might happen to find. An exhaustive range of HD screenshots supplement the piece, derived from HD video of each game. Where 1080p is supported (either natively or via scaling), additional galleries are included - so that'll be just one this time, in the form of LEGO Indiana Jones.

As readers of the epoch-making Grand Theft Auto IV Ultra Face-Off will know, we've recently added video to our comparison analyses; the difference being that it's video that actually works, based on an ultra-quality workflow. Each game is captured at lossless 24-bit precision from the HDMI ports of the respective consoles using the now obligatory Digital Foundry TrueHD capture kit, ensuring that literally every piece of video information sent from the source at our mercy, to do with as we will.

From there, we're free to extract shots from the streams and create videos (maintaining the lossless workflow) before exporting them to ultra-high quality h.264, nicely streamable courtesy of Eurogamer TV. The action is slowed down to 50 or 25 percent for two reasons. Firstly, slower movement allows for precision video playback. Secondly, it's the only way to make sure that the entire 60fps stream is viewable. Plus of course, actually seeing the differences is a hell of a lot easier.

One pixel in the EGTV player is equivalent to one pixel on your HDTV, and more than that, two versions of the video are available for your perusal. Videos embedded into the piece let you get to the action quickly, while clickthroughs to higher quality versions on EGTV show 40 percent more resolution.

Onto the games them, and an excellent selection this time with plenty of discussion points.

There's plenty more face-off material in the pipeline, so look out for the lowdown on Top Spin 3, The Bourne Conspiracy, Battlefield: Bad Company and many more in the near future.

Previous Face-Offs