May 16th, 2012
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Welcome back for another exciting Head2Head! This week Rockstar Games sends Max Payne back into action with Max Payne 3 for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. This is the first game in the series since 2003′s The Fall of Max Payne, so fans are certainly pumped for this one, but which console version LOOKS to be the version to own? Have a peek below.
UPDATE: Head2Head Video has been added below.
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150 comments from members, join the discussion in the forum >>>Pages: 1 2
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I just came back to respond to all the haters that were giving me crap for saying that Max Payne 3 uses videos to hide the loading screens.
Digital Foundry did an analysis and found that it does indeed uses high quality low compression bink video to hide the loading during cutscenes.
So that’s why a lot of the cutscenes look identical. Nobody listens to me.
Yeah okay. You were right about that.
But dead wrong on everything else.
Lol at the ps3 fanboys who feel the need to make excuses for the 360 version getting the win
(especially on eurogamer)
That lot could convince themselves that red dead redemption wasn’t any worse on ps3.
Never fear, despite the ps3 max payne 3 suffering far more technical issues, it at least has better reflections
Better reflections. Sharper image. One disk.
For a Rockstar game, this is awfully close. Better be afraid, xbots. :3
Its not “Far more” technicaly issues. Its rather minor.
Ok, so I have both consoles, I don’t really have a preference for either console (although I have more 360 games ‘cos I’ve had that console longer), I really just want to know which version of the game to buy.
Considering the screen shots from both look pretty much identical, I think the decider has to be frame-rate, but I haven’t been able to find any information on that… anyone know which has the higher frame-rate?
I have been greatly disappointed with the frame-rate of some PS3 games (compared to the 360 versions) – especially considering the PS3 hardware is (theoretically, no one shoot me please) more powerful than the 360.
My 2 cents on the differences between the console screen-shots:
1) I believe the PS3 version runs at 720P, whereas all 360 games are required by MS to be able to run at 1080P (last I heard), so there is bound to be some slight differences there. Does this translate to better frame-rate on the PS3 though?
I must admit, on my 32inch screens, I can’t often tell the difference between 720P or 1080P… actually, 720p looks better for some games as the TV is adding a layer of AA while it up-scales the image to its native resolution.
2) The pictures posted here are about 600×330, which is much, much less than 1080p or even 720p, so how can anyone see which has better resolution or is clearer/more blurry in the re-sized images?
3) Some comments reckon they can see J/MPEG artefacts in the images and that this proves they came from pre-rendered cut scenes. I don’t doubt the artefacts are there, but they may have been introduced at any stage -> like just about every image on a web-page, the screen-shots on this page are compressed using JPEG…. I mention this because I remember reading the Microsoft Quality requirements for 360 games back in 2006, and they set out that there weren’t allowed to be pre-rendered cut scenes. Most games step around this by pre-rendering texture streams and playing that over the mesh (thus avoiding the need to calculate lighting), making it look very polished and spiffy whilst still technically rendering on the fly.
I think there was a proviso that any pre-rendered video had to be rendered using the game engine. Anyone else remember those requirements? are they still in play?
I just noticed that you can get a full sized pic of some of the screen shots, so I am withdrawing my own comment that you can’t see differences due to the resized images.
Both versions are 720p. 1080p just means it’s being upscaled but really doesn’t make a difference.
Go for the PS3 version. The Convenience of one disc and an overall sharper image outweighs a slightly higher framerate on the 360. But the only reason the 360 has a higher average framerate is thanks to it being unlocked. It can range from 35 to 20 which is just too inconsistent compared to a capped frame rate of 30fps.
:3
Definitely get the 360 version SRB,, it has the overall higher framerate and better visuals.
There’s also parts of the ps3 version that can drop to 12fps which is funny.
Despite all that it still manages to be one of the better ps3 multiplatform efforts, but if you have the choice(as you do), then the 360 version is the one to get.
So with the 360 commanding a slight advantage on the visual front, how do they actually perform by comparison?
The over-riding impression during these action set-pieces is that the 360 can handle a marginally more consistent frame-rate. It’s the Bullet Time sequences that hit hardest, in tandem with one too many characters on-screen that cuts into the responsiveness of the PS3 version. This makes for some especially jarring 12FPS (!) motion during one particular shoot-out in the club stage.
There’s digital foundry’s findings, better visuals, better framerate on 360
So less sharp image is better visuals? Then there’s plenty of ps3 versions of games that have win head 2 heads here lol
There’s also a single instance of a 12fps on ps3 version and I have to say uncapped frame rates get criticised on eg elsewhere for their varying frame rate and how you notice the varying responsiveness of controls, yet here they go quiet on this. If we are consistent, and I know you’re not Android lol, then based on your previous comments on this particular issue, you’d have to poco ps3 version for frame rate overall.
I would really like to know how much Microsoft is paying for numerous developers to make games to be much much better and prettier on Xbox 360 than PS3. But, developers under big and bad Sony’s command, they can create so many and SO MUCH PRETTIER GAMES ONLY FOR PS3, so I don’t mind at all, if multiplatform games is better on Xbox 360. They are not the reason to buy any console. Exclusive games are only reason to buy console, if not…you’re fooling yourself.
I don’t think Microsoft secretly pays developers to make the 360 versions of games better. If they are, then I would ask why Sony doesn’t just do the same thing.
I think the cause is the architecture of the systems, and the developer tools available. Also, I think that MS has stricter quality controls placed on games than Sony does.
The 360 has 3 very powerful general-purpose execution cores, (running about 3.2GHz) the graphics card has a unified shader architecture and 360 games are developed with the aid of Visual Studio.
Having the general-purpose cores means that the same code runs equally well on any of them, and there are no special tricks required to get full use out of them – having only three cores makes the task of divvying up the work between them reasonably easy, enabling full utilization of the systems processing power. The unified shader architecture allows all the shaders to be written in HLSL (High Level Shader Language) which makes the task of writing cool pixel and vertex shaders easier. Visual Studio is also an excellent IDE.
The PS3 on the other hand has the Cell processor to work with. On paper, this is capable of nearly twice the 360′s full processing power. Instead of 3 big cores, the Cell processor has 1 general purpose and 8 less powerful, but clever vector processors within it. The vector processors are able to process several pieces of data at a time with a single instruction. However, because the processing is more parallel (more cores, but individual cores are less powerful), the programming model becomes more complicated, and it is much more time consuming and expensive to get at that processing power.
Most developers cheap out and just use the single general purpose processor, which by itself is quite powerful, but has less processing power than the 3 cores in the 360.
The tooling for developing PS3 games is the Sony Debug Kit, which is not as user-friendly as Visual Studio, and was initially full of bugs.
This (along with the 1 year head start) is why lots of titles are developed on the 360, and then cheaply ported to the PS3.
It is also why there are a few big-budget PS3 only titles (Uncharted, Killzone, God Of War etc) that have mind-blowing graphics and really show what the platform is capable of.
I play a lot more multiplaform games. so I sold that piece of whit ps3 and got a 360 and I am so happy. the ps3 Exclusive are so over hyped.
There’s virtually no difference in terms of graphics, just the 360 one looks darker. I think PS3 is on one disk where 360 is two, which may be a concern for some
little better on xbox, but the 2 dvds of the 360 uff, i buy ps3 or pc
Very close. Very close.
Good on Rockstar. Always have an issue when a certain version of the game, as far as the consoles go, have a real noticeable advantage over another.
Also, to my surprise, the pc version is damn impressive. They really put a lot of work into this one.
Now they just need to realize that a Max Payne game shouldn’t be two-thirds cutscene.
finally an epic game with epic grapichs and epic tie betwen the console version (and not an embarrasment like mp2 for ps2)
Actually in some of the screenshots they look identical but there are also some screenshots that shows that the XBOX 360 version had sharper textures and much better colours. They are almost identical though