For decades, an endless debate has raged concerning which platform is the nominal choice for high-quality, graphic-intensive games: the PC, or the console. Amidst a plethora of marketing propaganda, clock cycles, memory bandwidths, and polygon counts, it's a wonder anyone ever manages to choose a system that plays well by their standards, while still satisfying their pocket books. "My PC's processor can run circles around your specs," "Your system doesn't even push HALF as many polys as MINE!" and "But, that's unshaded and unlit polys, not real gameplay figures!" are phrases we've all seen, had typed 'at' us in all caps, or perhaps even said ourselves on occasion. Yet somehow, we all manage to choose a system-be it PC, console, or both-that satisfies us. And isn't that really the point? OUR satisfaction? Sure, we can argue that one system's specs can outperform another until we're blue in the face...but if Joe Schmo from the chat room you frequent still loves his Commodore 64, will anything we say convince him that it's not worth his time? Probably not. Nor should it.

So, clearly, when the developers of a game as anticipated and acclaimed as TES 3: Morrowind announced that it would bring this genre-altering masterpiece to a CONSOLE...it did more than raise a few eyebrows. But even when you take away all the arguing, all the rhetoric, all the 'yours and mine' issues, one question remains, and deserves an answer: how well will, and CAN, a game of this magnitude fare on a console? I can't stop people from having their own opinions. All I can do is respect theirs, and hope that people will have the courtesy to allow us to play our game on our system, without summarily judging it any more than we would judge the PC version's greatness. Both versions are true masterpieces, and examples of gaming's finest at work. What I CAN do, is allay the fears of my fellow Xboxers with regard to Morrowind's potential, and performance on a console. My friends, I submit to you that we have nothing to fear, and I'm about to tell you why, in common and clearly understandable terms.

It is extremely important to this matter that people come to understand the fundamental differences between a console and a PC. A PC has system resources which must be met. No matter how many 'background' activities one deactivates, there will always be some percentage of memory bandwidth allocated to the most fundamental of these resources. If this were not the case, the computer could not function. This is because, even though you may be playing a game on a PC right now, at any moment the PC must allow you to switch to another application, program, utility, etc. at your whim. A PC is many things. One of those things IS indeed, an extremely powerful gaming machine. But it is not, nor can it ever be, ONLY a gaming machine. It will always be a personal computer, capable of (whether we use it for them or not) multiple uses.

On the flip-side, a console has only one purpose, and one function. It's sole reason for existing is to play games. The way it allocates resources, the way it operates, the way it is used, and the way it is designed, are all for the purpose of games, and games ALONE. It does not provide a desktop environment from which to launch games and other items; it simply launches any game it detects. It does not provide a way to check email while playing games; it can use a browser to do so, but not at the same time as it is playing a game. And while a PC user does not HAVE to use all of these functions, the fact that they are available to them means that a console will always, as a rule (unless something profound happens in the development of future systems, which it probably one day will) allocate resources in a more game-efficient fashion than can a PC.

Having said all of this, one might assume I consider consoles the superior of the two where games are concerned. That isn't the case at all. A high-end PC that is above a certain caliber will always have the capability to outperform a console graphically, and if you are an avid-mouse or trackball user, or you have a PC controller you are comfortable with, arguably, interface-wise. That doesn't mean it always will, however. And this is where the Xbox comes in. Let's face it...while allot of people clearly do, the vast majority of PC users do not have Pentium 4 2.2/Athlon XP 2000+, GeForce Ti 4600/Radeon systems. Most people have lower-powered rigs, which are just as capable of excellent graphics and frame rates, but with a bit less flash and less overhead for extremely resource intensive products. The majority of those who have purchased (and continue to purchase) the PC version of Morrowind have high-mid to low-high end systems; many have even less powerful PCs. Because of this, SafeDisc header validation, coupled with the many customizable graphical effects present in Morrowind, have resulted in some pretty shabby frame rate numbers. However, by carefully adjusting these options to more efficiently work with their specific set-ups, most people have been able to make the game more than playable, if not achieving smooth FPS numbers. Note that most of these people have a total memory bandwidth of roughly 4 to 5 GB per second. (That can translate to as much as 10GB per second or more using DDR-double data rate-memory. Keep this in mind, as it will become important shortly.)

Bethesda Softworks obviously tested and retested this game extensively, on a wide range of systems, checking for both conflicts, and overall performance. They have strived to make this game playable on as many PCs as was possible, and to a large extent they have succeeded. However, doing this requires allot of options, and allot of user tweaking to make the game playable on each individual system. This means that while clearly the game is as optimized as possible, allot of that optimization must be implemented by us. That, and the variety of PCs in use with this game, are the reasons for the huge differences in performance we are seeing from person to person.

Now comes the good part. Remember what I said before about total memory bandwidth? The Xbox has a bandwidth of 6.4 GB per second. And yes...it is DDR RAM. While it shares this bandwidth with video because it does not have independent video RAM, it does so in an extremely efficient and non-consuming fashion, thanks to Xbox's clever use of a streamlined Windows 2000 kernel which handles memory in a VERY efficient way when compared to the full Win2000 OS, and arguably even more so when compared to Windows XP. There is much debate surrounding that last point, so I will not go into it much. But suffice to say that the Xbox handles memory resources in a very efficient and streamlined manor. Again, this is also because it exists to play games, and ONLY to play games, in addition to the streamlined Win2000 architecture. Now, combine all of this with the fact that the textures in the Xbox version are of a slightly lower detail level than those in the PC version. While much of the perceived detail loss is actually only due to file compression, and taking the screens we've seen from a television screen to a PC monitor, it is also a fact that the texture files will infact be a bit smaller than in the PC version. (File size due to slight texture detail reduction, not perceptible size). This means that less total data is being swapped in and out of memory, as well. Add that to the 6.4 GB per second memory bandwidth, and you have yourself the makings of some very fine performance.

Lastly, most PC users do not have a GeForce 4 Ti card, and while some have faster cards, most still have high-end GeForce 3 cards. And yet by adjusting some settings, they can achieve quite good frame rates. The Xbox GeForce 3 card is not merely a modified or streamlined version of it's PC counterpart. It possesses twice the capacity for vertex processing as a standard GeForce 3. Furthermore, the same settings which each individual PC user must alter in order to maintain solid performance, have been made for us already in the Xbox version. The game has been fully optimized to make use of the Xbox hardware in the best looking, AND best playing ways possible.

In conclusion, I expect that the frame rates in Morrowind will be more than smooth. The only loading times we are likely to see are very brief pauses when entering and leaving indoor areas, such as those encountered while playing Halo at certain points...and if you recall, those were hardly even noticeable. And Halo's textures and physics were arguably more resource-intensive than those in Morrowind will be (although the world of Morrowind is many times larger than even a single level of Halo, and the factor by which the number of character models in motion at any given time outnumber those in Halo may number in the high hundreds if not thousands). Furthermore, the SafeDisc header validation pauses will not be present in the Xbox version. Friends, provided they eliminate the glitches, bugs, and other minor annoyances (if any are even left in the version we presume was sent to MS), I anticipate we will all be more than pleasantly surprised when the Xbox version of Morrowind is released. I still don't think either version of the game is better than another, and I respect everyone's choices and opinions...but I know which version is best for me. I think we have allot to be excited about!

And if you don't want to listen to ME, listen to Bethesda Softworks! (Actual quotes from the devs):

"...the clipping fog is set to the maximum of what the PC would use. I took careful notice of it when playing today and it looked that way to me at least. I could be mistaken, but mot by much."

"...Of course, we don't want the game to run like a slide show either, and it doesn't. Not on the Xbox or high end PCs."

"...I wont give system specs for my dev system at work, but the Xbox was faster than that even."

See the "Interview on PC/Xbox differences" link above and on your left, for more!

-Ben (aka bensf81) BACK