Why are most multiplatform games 720p on PS3 and 1080p on 360?

I've been playing a lot of multiplatform games on my PS3 as of late and I've come to realize that most of them output at a maximum of 720p. Games like L.A. Noire, Enslaved, Assassin's Creed: Revelations, Saints Row the Third, and Kingdoms of Amalur. Even a lot of the HD collections only output as high as 720p.

Most (if not all) of these games output at 1080p on 360 and in some cases look better. I thought the PS3 was capable of rendering and outputting at 1080p and it's the more powerful of the two. Why is this?

No 360 games run at 1080p.

When a game says it outputs at 1080p on the 360, it means it scales to 1080p, not that it's rendered natively at 1080p. The vast majority of games on both platforms are rendered naively at 720p or lower and then upscaled to 1080p. Don't trust what it says on the back of the box.

@oatz said:

No 360 games run at 1080p.

Except for Virtual Tennis 3.

very very very few 360 games are actually 1080p. I think you are confusing uprezzing with actual 1080p rendering. As to the uprezzing abilities of the 360 and ps3, I don't really know the difference between the two, but I guess it is possible one is better than the other if a particular game had a lead platform (and a lot of times the 360 is the lead platform).

Sounds like somebody's been listening to the clerks at the Gamestop.

90% of the time its 1080p upscaled. 1080 on consoles is very rare. PC however can do 1080p fairly easy.

@spazmaster666: I'm not. My TV shows what resolution a game is running at when it boots up. Kings of Amalur is 720 on PS3 and 1080 on 360. I guess the upscaling makes a difference because it looks better on 360. It also doesn't have the pop in and framerate issues the PS3 version has.

PS3 has more 1080p native titles, most of them being PSN titles though.

Some games only output at 720p because the PS3s internal scaler isn't that great compared to the 360s. But there are only like two 1080 native titles on the 360.

PS3 has more 1080p native titles, most of them being PSN titles though.

Xbox 360 has a better scaler and any "1080p" besides a rare few are being upscaled.

@PlasmaBeam44 said:

@spazmaster666: I'm not. My TV shows what resolution a game is running at when it boots up. Kings of Amalur is 720 on PS3 and 1080 on 360. I guess the upscaling makes a difference because it looks better on 360. It also doesn't have the pop in and framerate issues the PS3 version has.

Is you PS3 set to output in 1080p?

@MrKlorox said:

Sounds like somebody's been listening to the clerks at the Gamestop.

My thoughts exactly.

1080p sells better

@MrKlorox said:

Sounds like somebody's been listening to the clerks at the Gamestop.

Haha, this is great!

@PlasmaBeam44: Upscaling dude. If you'll put in a DVD it would also say that it's at 1080p. Does it mean that it's on 1080p? No. If you wanna know more about it then try this site.

@PlasmaBeam44:

Most full-retail games on Xbox 360 are upscaled from 720p to 1080p. But the games aren't outputting a native 1080p signal. It's sort of like how a blu-ray player will upscale a DVD to 1080p but it won't look as good as blu-ray even though they are outputting the same resolution on your TV because a blu-ray has a native 1080p resolution and a DVD doesn't. PS3 doesn't often upscale retail games with a few exceptions (MGS 4 for example runs in 1080p).

However, you can force the PS3 to upscale to 1080p from time to time by changing the available resolution settings in the video menu option (un-click all of the boxes besides 1080p) but the performance is hit or miss. For example, Uncharted 2 and 3 work great in 1080p and look much better. But Killzone 2's frames per second performance drops dramatically in 1080p. Another example is Infamous and Little Big Planet which will default to 480p (or 480i I don't remember for sure) if you try this trick. So I usually try the trick to see what happens and go from there because upscaling the games does make the games look sharper and lowers jaggedness (at least on my TV).

Anyway, hope that answers some of your questions.

@Demoskinos: A PC can do 7680x1600 if it wanted to.

@ShaunassNZ said:

@Demoskinos: A PC can do 7680x1600 if it wanted to.

Congrats on your 2000th post.

Also, your mom could do 7680x1600 if she wanted to.

Does it really even make all that much of a difference at a certain point? Unless your TV is 70 inches I doubt you will see the difference between 1080 and 720. But then again maybe you have a monster big TV and you are now just waiting for all games to come out in 4K.

@Akeldama said:

@ShaunassNZ said:

@Demoskinos: A PC can do 7680x1600 if it wanted to.

Congrats on your 2000th post.

Also, your mom could do 7680x1600 if she wanted to.

Congrats on your 2000th mom.

Also, your post could do 7680x1600 if it wanted to.

Yes, to echo every one else's statements the Xbox is basically lying to you. It has a scaler built into the hardware that allows every game to be scaled to 1080p from whatever the original resolution was with practically zero performance cost. The PS3 however does all of it's scaling in software which is slower and less efficient. So you can force your PS3 games to play in 1080p in the display settings but most of them will suffer from framerate issues.

Also, don't a large majority of XBLA titles run in 1080p? I could just be talking out my arse here but I thought that was the case.

Also, don't a large majority of XBLA titles run in 1080p? I could just be talking out my arse here but I thought that was the case.

@CannonGoose said:

Also, don't a large majority of XBLA titles run in 1080p? I could just be talking out my arse here but I thought that was the case.

According to Beyond3DBoogie Bunnies and Virtua Tennis 3 are the only 1080P native games on the Xbox 360. The list is incomplete though.

xbox just upscales(stretches image, thus a little blurry and not as crisp as native resolution) to 1080p, i doubt that most games are really native in 1080p. PS3 can do the same if you disable 720p, it'll upscale games to 1080 if supported by the game.

@oatz said:

No 360 games run at 1080p.

Quite a few arcade games are, mostly the 2D ones, but you're right that very few 3D titles run at 1080P natively.

@PlasmaBeam44 said:

@spazmaster666: I'm not. My TV shows what resolution a game is running at when it boots up. Kings of Amalur is 720 on PS3 and 1080 on 360. I guess the upscaling makes a difference because it looks better on 360. It also doesn't have the pop in and framerate issues the PS3 version has.

More likely because Kings of Amalur is inferior on PS3. I'm guessing it's just a sub-par port.

@CannonGoose said:

Yes, to echo every one else's statements the Xbox is basically lying to you. It has a scaler built into the hardware that allows every game to be scaled to 1080p from whatever the original resolution was with practically zero performance cost. The PS3 however does all of it's scaling in software which is slower and less efficient. So you can force your PS3 games to play in 1080p in the display settings but most of them will suffer from framerate issues.

Also, don't a large majority of XBLA titles run in 1080p? I could just be talking out my arse here but I thought that was the case.

It's impossible to force a console to render at 1080P, e.g. 1920x1080, not upscaled. If they allowed this imagine how many idiots would force it and then complain about frame rate problems? Games already run below the resolution of most TVs, since a 'HD ready' TV will be 1360x768 or a 'full HD' TV will be 1920x1080, console games render at 1280x720, if they let you force it up to 1920x1080 then 90% of games are going to become slideshows. The hardware would totally buckle.

Some games on the PS3 scale and will run in 1080P (upcaled) but if you force 1080P in video settings and uncheck 720P then a lot of games will run in SD resolution instead. I believe most games have scaling now but this was the case in the past, and likely still is the case for a few games. You can force 1080i on the PS3 usually, but that's pretty much pointless and used to cause issues in some games, I believe The Darkness didn't play nice with 1080i and Rainbow Six: Vegas suffered the same fate. (I think)

TL;DR: The 360 has system wide scaling and is only really useful if you have a bad TV that can't scale very well on its own. 1080P likely never means 1920x1080, only 1280x720 being upscaled.

Just set your ps3 to output at 1080p and the same will happen.

Yea 90% are just 720p upscaled But the 360 has a dope internal scaler I found that it tends to look a little better for certain games also upscaled DVDs on the 360 tend to look pretty nice.

@PlasmaBeam44 said:

it's the more powerful of the two.

The PS3's power is debatable, and even if it is more powerful than the 360, it isn't much.

Anyway, everyone else has already really answered your question. The PS3 displays in 720P natively and doesn't uprez, whereas the 360 just uprezzes everything to 1080P and that's what the TV sees.

@Sooty said:

@oatz said:

It's impossible to force a console to render at 1080P, e.g. 1920x1080, not upscaled. If they allowed this imagine how many idiots would force it and then complain about frame rate problems? Games already run below the resolution of most TVs, since a 'HD ready' TV will be 1360x768 or a 'full HD' TV will be 1920x1080, console games render at 1280x720, if they let you force it up to 1920x1080 then 90% of games are going to become slideshows. The hardware would totally buckle.

What's with the HD-Ready stuff on Giant Bomb? 1280x720 is a full HD resolution. A 1366x768 resolution exceeds 720p, and therefore is considered an HD resolution. A display that is 1368x768 however, is most likely a legacy display with roots in a PC monitor and therefore is not manufactured with the hardware necessary to decode an HD broadcast signal. Since these displays are without a tuner, they cannot be marketed as an HDTV. These displays however, will work perfectly as a TV if an external tuner, like a cable box is connected to it, hence it is "ready" for HD TV. Full HD is a silly buzz word. Right up there with Extreme HD and Ultra-HD.

The 1366x768 does not play nice with PCs, 1366 does not divide into 8 very nicely, but 768 us a legacy height that a lot of UI's consider the minimum height. You'll find HD displays in offices and having 48 pixels lopped off kinda sucks.

It wouldn't be impossible to have a console game render natively at 1920x1080, but the game would need to be designed for that resolution first and foremost for a playable frame rate. But, a game designed to be played at 30fps at 720p, or in a lot of cases 600p, or in some cases 960x544 (CoD on the PS3), yeah, those games will be single digit slide shows if there was an option to simply force the console to render it at 1920x1080p.

A handful of games cheat when it comes to resolution as well. MGS4 is rendered at 1024x768. That image is then stretched out like film is in the theater to give you the 16:9 aspect ratio. The same is true with a game like Gran Turismo, which while does render at 1080 pixels high, renders a horizontal resolution that's much smaller than 1920. That image is then stretched out to fill the display.

The only game I can think of that's on consoles, is 3d, and natively rendered in 1920x1080p is Wipeout HD.

@Zelyre said:

@Sooty said:

@oatz said:

It's impossible to force a console to render at 1080P, e.g. 1920x1080, not upscaled. If they allowed this imagine how many idiots would force it and then complain about frame rate problems? Games already run below the resolution of most TVs, since a 'HD ready' TV will be 1360x768 or a 'full HD' TV will be 1920x1080, console games render at 1280x720, if they let you force it up to 1920x1080 then 90% of games are going to become slideshows. The hardware would totally buckle.

What's with the HD-Ready stuff on Giant Bomb? 1280x720 is a full HD resolution. A 1366x768 resolution exceeds 720p, and therefore is considered an HD resolution. A display that is 1368x768 however, is most likely a legacy display with roots in a PC monitor and therefore is not manufactured with the hardware necessary to decode an HD broadcast signal. Since these displays are without a tuner, they cannot be marketed as an HDTV. These displays however, will work perfectly as a TV if an external tuner, like a cable box is connected to it, hence it is "ready" for HD TV. Full HD is a silly buzz word. Right up there with Extreme HD and Ultra-HD.

Oh yeah I know. I don't like the silly 'HD/Full HD Ready' crap. That's why I used inverted commas around it.

What makes 'HD Ready' even more silly to me is that PC monitors have been 'HD Ready' since 1999 or something. I remember going around to a friends house when I was like 9 years old and playing Quake III at 1280x1024.

All "1080p" Xbox games are actually 720p or less upscaled to 1080p. 
 
There's only a few PS3 titles that run 1080p native. 
 
 1080p will be the standard come next gen though.

@WilltheMagicAsian said:

PS3 has more 1080p native titles, most of them being PSN titles though.

Some games only output at 720p because the PS3s internal scaler isn't that great compared to the 360s. But there are only like two 1080 native titles on the 360.

Its scaler is amazing for DVDs and PSone though. I think it doesn't do any scaling at all for its own games though, probably leaving it to the TV to handle, dunno if that's to save resources.

My Xbox 360 shows 720p on the TV most of the time though.

the only TRUE 1080 game!

http://www.giantbomb.com/1080-snowboarding/62-758/

@CakeBomb: Yeah the PS3 is damn good for PS1 games with minimal lag (I think PS1 and PS2 is around two frames, which is highly acceptable.)

I think I'd still prefer an XRGB3 though for retro gaming on LCDs.

@WilltheMagicAsian: I wouldn't use LCDs at all, Plasmas have a much better image, and no input lag.

stop complaining

my eyes still only do 640x480 ... I need go upgrade my graphix organs or at least try the new firmware.

@DocPorpoise said:

the only TRUE 1080 game!

http://www.giantbomb.com/1080-snowboarding/62-758/

This guy just won at life.

@ShaunassNZ said:

@Akeldama said:

@ShaunassNZ said:

@Demoskinos: A PC can do 7680x1600 if it wanted to.

Congrats on your 2000th post.

Also, your mom could do 7680x1600 if she wanted to.

Congrats on your 2000th mom.

Also, your post could do 7680x1600 if it wanted to.

Congrats on your 7680X 1600th.

Also, your post could do your mom if it wanted to.

@YoThatLimp said:

@ShaunassNZ said:

@Akeldama said:

@ShaunassNZ said:

@Demoskinos: A PC can do 7680x1600 if it wanted to.

Congrats on your 2000th post.

Also, your mom could do 7680x1600 if she wanted to.

Congrats on your 2000th mom.

Also, your post could do 7680x1600 if it wanted to.

Congrats on your 7680X 1600th.

Also, your post could o your mom if it wanted to,

That didn't really go your way, did it?

@YoThatLimp said:

@ShaunassNZ said:

@Akeldama said:

@ShaunassNZ said:

@Demoskinos: A PC can do 7680x1600 if it wanted to.

Congrats on your 2000th post.

Also, your mom could do 7680x1600 if she wanted to.

Congrats on your 2000th mom.

Also, your post could do 7680x1600 if it wanted to.

Congrats on your 7680X 1600th.

Also, your post couldd o your mom if it wanted to.

Still didn't, bummer.

@ShaunassNZ said:

@YoThatLimp said:

@ShaunassNZ said:

@Akeldama said:

@ShaunassNZ said:

@Demoskinos: A PC can do 7680x1600 if it wanted to.

Congrats on your 2000th post.

Also, your mom could do 7680x1600 if she wanted to.

Congrats on your 2000th mom.

Also, your post could do 7680x1600 if it wanted to.

Congrats on your 7680X 1600th.

Also, your post couldd o your mom if it wanted to.

Still didn't, bummer.

I don't know why you keep adding typos to the quote in your replies.... ahem.

@YoThatLimp said:

@ShaunassNZ said:

@YoThatLimp said:

@ShaunassNZ said:

@Akeldama said:

@ShaunassNZ said:

@Demoskinos: A PC can do 7680x1600 if it wanted to.

Congrats on your 2000th post.

Also, your mom could do 7680x1600 if she wanted to.

Congrats on your 2000th mom.

Also, your post could do 7680x1600 if it wanted to.

Congrats on your 7680X 1600th.

Also, your post couldd o your mom if it wanted to.

Still didn't, bummer.

I don't know why you keep adding typos to the quote in your replies.... ahem.

Oh shut up :P

I can't speak to the other titles but Assassin's Creed Revelations totally runs at 1080p on PS3. You sure your TV is not set to 720p?

Crysis 3 on the Xbox 360 runs at 1152×720 (SMAA T2X), while the PS3 version of Crysis 3 runs at only 1024×720.

it something small like this /then your up scaling.

plus game maker where getting more out of 360 GPU