Digital Home Thoughts: 1080p Meaningless This Generation

"There's been a lot of interest in the PS3 due to its stated 1080p output for both games and movies (via Blu-ray). What's interesting is that a lot of folks don't realize how meaningless 1080p actually is in this generation. Let's take games first. The PS3 has roughly the same pixel-pushing capabilities as the Xbox 360. Don't need to take my word for it, it'll be obvious soon enough over the next year. Even if this wasn't the case, consider we now live in a multi-platform development world, and that the current sweet spot developers are targeting is 720p due to the extremely similar system specifications. Simply put, a developer who is planning to release their game for both the Xbox 360 and the PS3 will aim for a common attainable ground. In fact, I'll stick my neck out and predict that that you won't see any 1080"x" games for the PS3 this year."

The article then goes onto describe why 1080p is meaningless for TV as well, i.e. due to the number of frames and the amount of data available to push out to the screen. Hmm, while I understand the arguments, I am not sold yet. Or rather, I have already been sold on the 1080p TV thing. I am hoping the the PS3 will be able to help me prove some critics wrong in a few months. Moreover, I do believe that a TV is an investment so one might as well buy one for the long run rather than something that would make you want to buy a new one in a couple of years to take advantage of that next new technology. So for those of you that have bought one already, don't fret yet.