Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion – PC or 360?

IGN has published a new two-page feature that takes a closer look at the differences between the the PC and Xbox 360 versions of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Here’s a bit to start you off:

…the PC version of the game is definitely going to need a burly machine to play well on high detail at high resolutions. What I played at the event ran pretty well with only a couple of hiccups in performance when there were a lot of characters on screen, but even then it wasn’t unplayable by any means. That said, Bethesda told me that the specs of the machine I was playing on and it was a 3.2 GHz processor with 2.0 GB of RAM and an X1900 video card. That’s a nice machine and it’s all we’ve had the chance to play the game on. Who knows how the game will look or run on a machine with the minimum requirements? It’s just something we’re going to have to wait and see I guess.

But like you said, when it comes to performance, what we saw of both versions was strikingly similar. Load times were very quick (on PC to the point that I barely even noticed them and probably wouldn’t have if it wasn’t for the draw distance pop in) and frame rate was absolutely decent. Visually it’s only a smidgeon better on PC if you look really hard like you said in the preview. Yeah, the PC has sliders for graphics capabilities, but that’s not going to matter to high end users to which the 360 is most comparable. The only thing that’ll make a difference to hardcore PC fans is that resolutions can be raised up to a level the Xbox 360 can’t display.