So, what could possibly be the cause of this? On the face of it, the tech side of things presents clear advantages to the 360: the unified 512MB of RAM is more developer-friendly than the two split pools of 256MB in the PS3.
Shorn of a third of the raw texture data, the Xbox 360 version of New Vegas has many, many examples of lower quality art compared to the PS3 and PC versions. Other differences are apparent - shadow filtering is really poor on PS3, while the specular texture elements on 360 are still noticeably inferior to the PS3 counterparts. They're not especially noticeable in the wastelands scenes, but within the towns and inside various buildings they stand out easily. Every version of the game - including the PC - suffers to some extent from some low-quality artwork, but there's no doubt about it, it's the 360 version that has obviously pared-back visuals compared to both the PS3 and PC games. In the original Fallout 3 Face-Off we pointed out that while the 360 game had the performance advantage, it was the PS3 game where art assets had more in common with the "master" PC game, and we posted some obvious examples of how the textures and specular effects had been downgraded or omitted entirely on the 360 version (though they were improved a touch in a later patch).Įxactly the same situation can be seen in New Vegas, only it seems to be the case that the downscaled textures are that much more obvious this time around. While the Xbox 360 version of Fallout: New Vegas can be said to be the smoother-looking, smoother-moving game, other technical deficiencies inherited from Fallout 3 manifest in the sequel, again demonstrating that little if any work has gone into improving the core technology. Thankfully, the inclusion of the VATS combat mechanic ensures that this doesn't really affect the quality of the gameplay as much as you would imagine, although VATS itself seems to suffer from some pretty awful input lag, particularly in moving between targets.
Fallout 3 may well be a graphical adventure game, but in many ways it's an action shooter too and when it comes to it, the game falls short here with sometimes=crippling performance issues. Both versions drop frames consistently, and the tearing in the 360 game becomes more of an issue. In combat scenes, the situation changes somewhat.
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