IGN Reviews Madden NFL 08' for the Playstation 3

Maddens Raiders - 866 days 18 hours ago

I really feel castrated by EA since they brought out this short-bus version of the game for the PS3. Look like my NFL Sunday ticket and College Gameplan subsriptions are getting extra - heavy useage this year. I see people qeueing around town for it, but I won't be one of them. First time I'm doing this w/ Madden -- EVER.

ESPN is hyping the 360 version right now like it's the last game on planet earth. Go figure. I'm not bitter with the 360 version at all...the framerate issue is not the only thing thats bothering me. If all I wanted were new animations on the 2008 version and some new "stick techniques" then wth did I buy a nex-gen system. I had shytloads of fun with Madden on the PS2 so it's not all about graphics.

I was going to write a whole bunch of other crap, but it's just as well. Bottom line...I'm sitting this one out.

Since I am a Football fan to the core. I have to stick a jab in there for the hell of it at my rivals...he, he....

Looks like with all of the people lining up for Madden there will be a lot of 360's undergoing a virtual stress test...I hope the old man can take it out there!!!...the gridiron's HOTTTT BOYYY [[[[Blue 22, Blue 22, Red 80, Red 80....setttt..... Huttt, Huttt, Huttt!!!]]]]

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sticky doja - 866 days 17 hours ago

Killer pic man. UT for the national championship! Colt McCoy for heisman!

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Jenzo - 866 days 15 hours ago

That was a lot of excuses in one comment, Maddens. I hope you convinced yourself. I'm going with the better version for this one. Not a hard choice really. The game looks excellent and has gotten very high reviews.

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bluebrad1974 - 866 days 13 hours ago

The Cell processor is simply not as good at running games as the 360's cpu. It should be pretty obvious to everyone by now.

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nobizlikesnowbiz - 866 days 9 hours ago

Sure- don't support one of the PS3's biggest titles.

I sure hope not all PS3 owners are doing the same, for Sony's sake.

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Dareaver1 - 866 days 7 hours ago

if you don't believe, here's why.... and if you disagree, please support your disagree with a valid REBUTTAL.

since you want to talk about speed here is info on the daughter di on the 360 which helps with rendering...

In order for this to be possible developers would need to setup their rendering engine to take advantage of both the EDRAM and the available onboard 3D logic. If anyone is confused why the 32GB/s is being multiplied by 8 its because once data travels over the 32GB/s bus it is able to be processed 8 times by the EDRAM logic to the EDRAM memory at a rate of 256GB/s so for every 32GB/s you send over 256GB/s gets processed. This results in RSX being at a bandwidth disadvantage in comparison to Xenos. Needless to say the 360 not only has an overabundance of video memory bandwidth, but it also has amazing memory saving features. For example to get 720P with 4XFSAA on traditional architecture would require 28MB worth of memory. On the 360 only 16MB is required. There are also features in the 360's Direct3D API where developers are able to fit 2 128x128 textures into the same space required for one, for example. So even with all the memory and all the memory bandwidth, they are still very mindful of how it’s used.

With the capability to fetch from anywhere in memory, perform arbitrary ALU operations and write the results back to memory, in conjunction with the raw floating point performance of the large shader ALU array, the MEMEXPORT facility does have the capability to achieve a wide range of fairly complex and general purpose operations; basically any operation that can be mapped to a wide SIMD array can be fairly efficiently achieved and in comparison to previous graphics pipelines it is achieved in fewer cycles and with lower latencies. For instance, this is probably the first time that general purpose physics calculation would be achievable, with a reasonable degree of success, on a graphics processor and is a big step towards the graphics processor becoming much more like a vector co-processor to the CPU.

here's a tidbit about why the 360 would be better at AI...

The 360 CPU however, due to its 3 symmetric General Purpose Cores, is not only much easier to program for than the cell, but having 3 PPE capable of handling things such as AI also means the 360’s CPU will be the better of the 2 CPUs when it comes to AI code. Either way we can look forward to great things from both CPUs in the future.

Here's the bit about memory useage and advantages...

It’s highly doubtful that Blu-Ray will lead to better graphics because the PS3, due to split memory pools containing 256MB worth of GDDR3 memory and 256MB worth of XDR memory can at best dedicate 256MB worth of ram to textures at any given moment whereas the 360 uses unified memory for a total of 512MB. That alone is a major limiting factor to Blu-Ray’s space advantage.
There are however methods to gain use of more ram as from e-mail exchanges with developers I found out that it’s possible for the PS3’s GPU (RSX) to texture from the XDR, but there is a penalty for texturing from the XDR ram because in order to do so it would need to travel over the cell’s FlexiO , which some developers have actually done. There is also another way of going about doing this which is by copying from the XDR to the GDDR3 memory kind of like a fast cache and just proceed to stream in the content. Even with such methods available, the Xbox 360 just has more memory to work with.

Xbox 360 has 278.4 GB/s of memory system bandwidth. The PS3 has less than one-fifth of Xbox 360's (48 GB/s) of total memory system bandwidth. When you break down the numbers, Xbox 360 has provably more performance than PS3.

Bandwidth
The PS3 has 22.4 GB/s of GDDR3 bandwidth and 25.6 GB/s of RDRAM bandwidth for a total system bandwidth of 48 GB/s.

The Xbox 360 has 22.4 GB/s of GDDR3 bandwidth and a 256 GB/s of EDRAM bandwidth for a total of 278.4 GB/s total system bandwidth.

Why does the Xbox 360 have such an extreme amount of bandwidth? Even the simplest calculations show that a large amount of bandwidth is consumed by the frame buffer. For example, with simple color rendering and Z testing at 550 MHz the frame buffer alone requires 52.8 GB/s at 8 pixels per clock. The PS3's memory bandwidth is insufficient to maintain its GPU's peak rendering speed, even without texture and vertex fetches.

The PS3 uses Z and color compression to try to compensate for the lack of memory bandwidth. The problem with Z and color compression is that the compression breaks down quickly when rendering complex next-generation 3D scenes.

HDR, alpha-blending, and anti-aliasing require even more memory bandwidth. This is why Xbox 360 has 256 GB/s bandwidth reserved just for the frame buffer. This allows the Xbox 360 GPU to do Z testing, HDR, and alpha blended color rendering with 4X MSAA at full rate and still have the entire main bus bandwidth of 22.4 GB/s left over for textures and vertices.

well i hope it helps you see where i drew my conclusion from.

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Hatchetforce - 866 days ago

Branching AI:

http://www.ps3fanboy.com/20...

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WoundedMoon - 865 days 22 hours ago

If EA wants to produce a sub-par product for the PS3 owners, they can't keep their product, and I'll keep my money.

The PS3 is better. But, even IF the 360 was a little bit better, any non-lazy developer is going to be able to get a game running ALMOST as well on the PS3, IF the 360 is better. The fact that there is such a lag in the Madden version is a negative reflection on EA, and as stated, they'll not be receiving any of my money for this one.

Interestingly, all the PS3 titles I own are exclusives, and I still think it was worth a weeks pay.

LOL, I'll lose bubbles for this one. :D

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PATRIOTS 27 - 866 days 9 hours ago

its not EA's fault that the PS3 is so hard to program for and the CELL just was not made for running games, U need to talk to SONY about this one its their system not EA's!!!!

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WoundedMoon - 865 days 22 hours ago

In the meantime you can call Bungie and complain about your 360 that's now being used as a night-light, because it's incapable of doing anything besides producing a red ring of light.

If Sony is responsible for the slow framerate in Madden, then Bungie is responsible for the 360's high failure rate.

If the system that is easier to program for is always the better, then I argue that my 15 year old computer running DOS text based games is far superior to your XBox 360, due to the ease of programming. Nobody want to go though the trouble to make these "graphics" you feel so strongly about; you watch, those graphics will pass like every other fad in the industry has!

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Bloodmask - 866 days 20 hours ago

So many developers still finding it hard to code games on to the PS3 with a average 60 frame rate per second. EA talks about the Army of Two displaying on the PS3 at 30fps, while the 360 at 60 fps.
An EA developer has called in to let us know that he believes the Xbox 360 will triumph over the PS3 due to its better performance and more rounded support. These claims come on the revelation that development of Army of Two on the Xbox 360 manages to yield a maximum of 60fps while the PS3 version struggles to reach 30fps currently. Army of Two is expected to hit retail shelves during November.

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TheExecutive - 866 days 19 hours ago

Well I see what he is saying about the 360 being easy to develop for and they definitely give developers more support. However, as with the ps2 (if you remember correctly) developers said the same thing about the dreamcast and how easy that was to develop for and how HARD the ps2 was to develop for.

Now I know this is different generations with different players, but the 360 will never outsell the ps brand this generation. there are three simple and glaring reasons for this:

1. MS has done nothing to take the user base away from Sony and the playstation brand. they are about the same for what they did with the first xbox. They have about 10 million consoles out there in almost two years... thats not great by anyones standards. thats about 20 million in four years. Saying this we see, if these selling trends continue, that MS has done nothing to rob sony of its user base. I think that this gen has started a little early. We see this because of the lack of people moving over from last gen (roughly 150 million). When they finally decide to do so (late next year) what console will they buy? One who has a life span of about another year maybe two or one that just taking off? They will stick with the ps brand for the same reasons they chose the ps1 and ps2... the diversity of games and the knowledge that sony will back their console.

2. This brings me to my next point. The 360 (as we know it, they could always add things to the 360, however at some point its just a new console) will have a shelf life of a little over 4 years. This short life alone will make it sell less than the ps3.

3. MS doesnt have worldwide support. Although they do have strong support in the states they lack sells in the rest of the world. FOr this reason they will never sell as many consoles as sony.

SO you see EA developers can say whatever they want, because in the end the ps brand will beat out the 360 in sells and then they will praise and praise the sony brand for making them rich.

Im not sure what this has to do with the madden game but i thought that I should say this in response to your post.

I do think however that the 360 as of right now is the superior console... but by this time next year (right in time for last gen casual users to flood over) the ps3 will have its heavy hitters out and in full force.

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sticky doja - 866 days 17 hours ago

How did you get the game an hour before it was released, and play it for a long enough period of time to figure out that your game doesnt lag. I wanna shop for my games where you get yours so I can get my games the day before they come out as well. [Sarcasm]

You don't have to lie to kick it bro.

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sticky doja - 866 days 17 hours ago

and you want me to boycott it? No thanks.

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reaperxciv - 866 days 11 hours ago

series instead

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game-over - 866 days 20 hours ago

the superbowl is the most watched telecast

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Funky Town_TX - 866 days 20 hours ago

TV rating. World Cup baby.

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Maddens Raiders - 866 days 18 hours ago

You're not from here. Please leave. (((now)))

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sticky doja - 866 days 17 hours ago

If funky town was from texas he would get his arss whooped for saying something so ignorant. Unless your a border jumper like half my neigbors.

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gta_cb - 866 days 12 hours ago

football (soccer) is great, not saying its better or worse then american football but its still great, and for the person saying for the other one to leave ((now)) a huge amount of people on this website are not from the USA so make us leave lol.

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VaeVictus - 866 days 10 hours ago

Soccor sucks ass. Real men play football. Ask David Beckham.

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Skizelli - 866 days 9 hours ago

And 28 people think you suck. Different culture, different games. You'd have to be American to really love American football, just as us Americans would have to be European to love rugby. I won't be retarded like you and say rugby sucks, but it certainly is weird to me, just as American football is probably weird to you. Don't be ignorant.

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DarkArcani - 866 days 19 hours ago

most people have in their mind which console they are going to buy from the get go. Therefore, madden will move systems, but for both consoles. Anyone who goes on these sites has their mind made up, and I highly doubt anyone of us would switch systems for the better madden game.
Also, a lot people don't look at reviews, which is the reason why crappy movie games get bought. (not saying madden is crappy).

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Ice - 866 days 18 hours ago

also most people whether they we online viewer want to admit it or not don't check reviews. Most people play games at friends houses and decide what they want. We online faithful are the minorities nowadays in the gaming world. Just look at the Wii and it's casual following. I owned all 3 consoles at one point and sold my 360 because I thought that its future potential with games was sad (don't like halo 3 and bioshock will come to ps3 whether anyone wants to admit it or not, but i wish i could still have mass effect). Anyways everyone knows whether or not they want to admit it that the ps3 is more powerful. Maybe not as powerful as Sony wants people to believe, but I think at least as more powerful as xbox was as ps2 and considering the minute lead 360 has on ps3 I don't think it should keep it past 9/08. Wii on the other hand is a gimmick console. Companies can't release their "big guns" on it because as everyone knows only Nintendo games sell well. In the end I think Sony will beat Nintendo, but not by much and Microsoft will stick in the console war, but change their strategy drastically. Agree or Disagree, I don't care, but this is my opinion.

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DarkArcani - 866 days 17 hours ago

I agree totally. Plus most analysts say that the wii will come out with HD in two years or so, personally that would piss me off if I just bough it.
And about PS3 so called "power." I think it is like a Porsche GT3.
Porsche makes the car flawless and powerful. They squeeze so much hp out of that naturally aspirated 3.6l six cylinder. Costumers (developers) decide whether they are going to just drive it around the city or whether they are going to take it to the track and use all the potential the car has. It's not easy to go to the track to win races, but if you put enough time and effort into it, you get the checkered flag.

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gta_cb - 866 days 12 hours ago

i do agree, but remember that alot of the football fans wont bother finding the ratings, and so if they own just one of the systems they will still buy it for that rather then buying a brand new system for a game. but yeh if they have both and know one has been given a better score will prob get it (the better one)

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BLACKJACK VII - 866 days 20 hours ago

Man... Those closing comments are pretty Harsh !

"It is a shadow of its cousin on 360...the drop to an unstable 30fps hurts considerably. The visuals and the gameplay suffer... It just doesn't run very well."

LOL !!! Hey Nasim & Bill Gates, YOU READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL ???

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Jenzo - 866 days 15 hours ago

You are so right. IGN is biased toward the 360 and hate the PS3. EA has lazy developers. The Cell is more powerful than Xenon. You can't see any difference between 30fps and 60fps. I don't need Madden 08 anyways cuz it's crap!

Did I miss any lame excuses without proof?

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Double-Edged - 866 days 20 hours ago

you need a tissue?

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Jenzo - 866 days 14 hours ago

If the PS3 has more power than the 360, how come it has no games to prove it? It's all empty talk about specs here and there and blablabla.

"If you look at it this way the PS3 has a lot more power..blabla floating memory...blabla developers need to learn how to utilize the cell..blablabla."

Show me the games to prove it! What use is a console if the games can't utilize it's power?

"Well, my car actually has 550 bhp, but it has'nt learned how to utilize more than 300 of them yet..."

Go stand in the corner, Iron baby!

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The Real Joker - 866 days 9 hours ago

What? Are you fu@king stupid?

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