February 07, 2007 - Xbox players were pretty darned happy when GTA: San Andreas finally became available for their consoles after having watched their buddies play it on PS2 for over a year. No doubt, a lot of PS3 owners will feel similarly about the arrival of Oblivion to their platform. GTA: San Andreas did a good job of utilizing the Xbox hardware to provide a complete experience. Will the full Oblivion (plus Knights) on PS3 be as rich an experience as it was for PC and Xbox 360 players?

We sat down and chose to start running through Knights of the Nine, looking closely at the graphics to see if there were obvious differences. As with the Xbox 360 version, the PS3 version will run in 720p, not 1080p. (Of course, we were hoping for 1080p—if for nothing else, than to provide us with another excuse to upgrade to a 1080p TV.). We noticed that the frame rate was quick and smooth—as good or better than the Xbox 360 to our eyes—and load times seemed on par or better as well.

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The rendering quality looked very smooth, and in some spots it seemed richer than the Xbox 360 version. Pete Hines, our host from Bethesda, attributed this to a new shader the developers are using that blends higher-quality close textures with the lower-quality distant textures. Effects looked smooth when we had our mage cast a volley of fire bolts across the star-filled night sky above the Imperial City. Later on, we picked up on a small hitch where some horizontal seams appeared about an inch apart when we looked closely at a hillside. However, the problem only seemed to happen at this particular location and we could not duplicate it elsewhere.

Control-wise, since the PS3 SIXAXIS has pretty much the same complement of controls as the Xbox 360 controller, things mapped very closely with the exception of the bumpers and triggers, which appeared to be switched. The D-pad on the PS3 controller seemed a little bit easier to handle hotkeys than the Xbox 360's rocker-style D-pad.

Overall, it looks as if PS3 players can expect the full Oblivion experience to be on par with the Xbox 360 outside of a few minor variations. And, in fact, it may keep getting better: Hines confirmed that Bethesda wants to bring Shivering Isles to the PS3 at a later date.