[We'd previously seen PlayStation 3 in "realtime" action in three demonstrations - the stunning Metal Gear Solid 4 trailer taken into a simulation to show off game engine and graphics, Sonic the Hedgehog's realtime demo at TGS, and also a realtime demo of Sega's Fifth Phantom Saga, also at TGS (all available to watch below). Based on what we've now played for ourselves, we can answer a question we all asked back at E3 2005. Does PS3 really look like the Killzone trailer? No way. Does it look like Metal Gear Solid 4? Sure, near enough, although now that it's on near-final hardware, things just need a little polishing to look as complete as what was shown by Kojima-san in September. 
 
Killing Day and Fifth Phantom Saga are what actual PS3 games look like today. MGS4 won't be a problem either...

What we played was still extremely early, but we've been able to build a healthier picture of things. Another point of reference is the aforementioned Fifth Phantom Saga realtime demo from TGS, which we daresay is a slightly more honest representation of today's exact PS3 graphics status, and closer to current playable content than anything fuelling PS3's notoriety since E3 last year.

The difference in physics, detail and scene complexity between the Killzone or MotorStorm trailers and MGS4's realtime demo is quite severely obvious, and it's now abundantly clear to us that everyone's early PS3 gaming experiences will be a whole lot more like the latter, but that's not exactly a bad thing. We'll have dynamic range and depth of field optics, maybe even a 'solid' sixty frames. But MGS4 stands on its own as the single most impressive thing anyone has seen on a sufficiently convincingly box to date. Based on what we've seen and played, launch software will look like nice Xbox 360 material - Dead or Alive 4, Gears of War. The main issue now is when is this "launch" actually going to happen? ]

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