'Two or three years' till PS3 graphics better than 360

Full potential of PS3 Cell not yet realised, says Saints Row 2 producer.

No developer has achieved the full potential of the PS3's Cell processor, a producer on upcoming open world gangster game Saints Row 2 has told VideoGamer.com.

During a hands-on event for the game in London, Volition Inc associate producer Dan Sutton told us that it will be "two or three years" before better games appear on the PS3 compared with the Xbox 360.

Saints Row 2 is scheduled for release this October for both the Xbox 360 and the PS3, as well as the PC. The PS3 version has been under a degree of scrutiny during its development. The PS3 version of the first Saints Row game was canned soon after it was announced.

When asked why PS3 versions of multiplatform games tend to look the same or worse than Xbox 360 versions, despite the assumption that it is the more powerful games console in terms of graphics, Sutton replied: "Graphically, in itself it's a very very powerful machine. I think the problem is you have to teach programmers how to do that. We have very very amazing programmers on our Xbox team who when they get the PS3 in front of them, it takes them forever, because of the multi-threading they do with the Cell processor. It's just how complex the Cell processor is. As people get their heads around that it gets better and you get more parity coming out, but code has to be written in a certain way for that and it's a lot more complicated than it is for the Xbox."

Sutton added that he didn't think PS3 versions of multiplatform games will look better than their 360 counterparts for "two or three years", and that no-one has currently taken the PS3 Cell processor to its full potential.

"I think you're seeing development teams now ramp up. You get people who are dedicated to the PS3 and that's why you're getting equal graphics. You see some stuff on the PS3, like Metal Gear Solid, that push it very very firmly graphically, and I'm sure Resistance 2 is going to do that as well. I think you're going to see games that are developed for each console specifically, the exclusives, really push it that way still. I think the Xbox, even though it doesn't have as much hard drive space, is not Blu-ray, you still see that it's a very very powerful machine. I think that's why games like Final Fantasy are coming over to the Xbox. It's still, in essence, as powerful, and people have their heads around that. Maybe two, three years from now when they're very much into the PlayStation cycle you may see better games come out. We don't know. I don't think anyone's really taken the Cell processor to its full potential yet."

You can check out the full interview with Volition's Dan Sutton right here, and our hands-on preview of the PS3 version of Saints Row 2 here.