RoboFu
One of the green rats
You mean.. the world
. lol but I voted Dreamcast though it's not a fair comparison. Dreamcast had a much smaller amount of games compared to the other 2 but most of those games were great to outstanding.
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Between the Dreamcast, GameCube, and Xbox, which console do you think was the best?
You mean.. the world
. lol but I voted Dreamcast though it's not a fair comparison. Dreamcast had a much smaller amount of games compared to the other 2 but most of those games were great to outstanding.
Unknown?
Member
The best PC shooter was only on PS2 though, Tribes Aerial Assault which was Tribes 2.
fart town usa
Member
I'd say DC just because of Phantasy Star Online but it went to GCN and Xbox as well, so Xbox is my choice.
fart town usa
Member
OG XBOX is a legitimate banger of a console. Just as good of a console in regard to how people view DC and GCN, XBOX just gets passed over by many because it's XBOX.
CherryFalls
Banned
Gamecube is still the best console of all time, and the controller is still the best controller of all time.
deriks
4-Time GIF/Meme God
The Dreamcast still brings my mind to a simpler era when games were just what it is, and Sonic was back. Game Cube took a slow start, and even thou at the end was great, worked more as a novelty love than a console that you're in love. Xbox I never saw as a real console because of the Bill Gates speech about being a multimedia machine, but basically every game on it was better, so playing Splinter Cell or Midnight Club 3, it was the way to go
Grildon Tundy
Member
Subjectively:
1) Dreamcast
2) GameCube
3) Xbox
Objectively:
1) Dreamcast
2) GameCube
3) Xbox
1) Dreamcast
2) GameCube
3) Xbox
Objectively:
1) Dreamcast
2) GameCube
3) Xbox
Gambit2483
Member
Again, Gamecube eventually got like 80% of DC's best exclusives. The only major Exclusives it didn't get were JSR, Marvel vs Capcom 2, Shenmue and Power Stone.You mean.. the world
lol but I voted Dreamcast though it's not a fair comparison. Dreamcast had a much smaller amount of games compared to the other 2 but most of those games were great to outstanding.
D
Deleted member 1159
Unconfirmed Member
I loved my Dreamcast but GameCube definitely had more bangers I want to play today. Xbox…ehh? I had a PC, which always seems to make that ecosystem a bit moot. 16 player Halo LAN parties were fuckin bomb though
In conclusion: Nintendo, bitch
In conclusion: Nintendo, bitch
Archaic101
Member
The revisionist history around GameCube these days runs pretty parallel to the internet's new consensus that the Star Wars prequels were actually good.
Gambit2483
Member
The Gamecube library easily had the bigger and better number of exclusives though. You could go off of the 1st party alone, and that's before putting in the Capcom exclusives, including the RE titles or the enhanced Dreamcast ports and great SEGA support. Not sure what you are on about.
Havoc2049
Member
I think most gamers consider that the Xbox got the best of the Sega love post DC. Many of the Sega games on the Xbox had Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound, 480p, 16:9 and a few games like Sega GT Online displayed in 16:9/720p.
I'll give the GameCube the Sonic Adventure games and Skies of Arcadia Legends, as they were great.
Panzer Dragoon Orta, GunValkyrie, Sega GT 2002, Sega GT Online, enhanced Shenmue 2 (came with Shenmue The Movie), Jet Set Radio Future, Otogi I&II, Outrun 2 and Outrun 2006 were all amazing.
The Xbox launched with two DC sequels, Project Gotham Racing and Dead or Alive 3. Enhanced versions of Dead or Alive (Saturn) and DOA2 (DC) were also released as Dead or Alive Ultimate and included online fighting. Project Gotham Racing 2 is arguably the best racing game of the gen.
The XB port of PSO EP. I&II was superior to the DC and GC as well, as it added voice chat and Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound.
The House of the Dead 3 on the Xbox also included The House of the Dead 2 from the DC.
The port of Crazy Taxi to the GameCube and PS2 was just a strait port done by Acclaim. Crazy Taxi 3 on the Xbox was done by Hitmaker/Sega, included enhanced versions of Crazy Taxi and the Small Apple from Crazy Taxi 2, along with the new Las Vegas map from Crazy Taxi 3.
Swagballs717
Member
I like how the PS2 wasn't included because that console's in such a distant first place that everyone else is fighting for second place lol
CS Lurker
Member
That gen I only got the gamecube, and I still have it btw. From the 1st party titles, I only loved Metroid Prime. Also RARE wasn't there anymore (aside from star fox adventures). I had a lot more fun with the N64, even though its library was a lot smaller. From 3rds, I loved Star Wars Squadrons 2/3. I still play it on my gamecube with a 5.1 HT. It's amazing. Big F for Factor 5
Anyway, I think Xbox was better overall, so that's my vote.
Anyway, I think Xbox was better overall, so that's my vote.
Mr Reasonable
Completely Unreasonable
A real 50:50 for me on Xbox/GameCube.
GameCube took forever to have a decent selection of games, but now looking back at the entire list, there's a good selection of really significant titles.
But when I got an Xbox, the online aspect was a really big deal and that probably pips it.
Younger people won't be able to grasp how significant it was, but here's something that I'm going to paraphrase from another forum. Playing online was so ridiculous an idea that someone in a post-game Halo 2 Lobby asked people in the game to talk to his friend who was sitting next to him while he played the game, but didn't believe him that the other players onscreen were real people playing with him.
The idea that you could play an fps with real people, actually talk to them, was so implausible to a normal, average person, that it had to be demonstrated with proof. That's an almost impossible thing to imagine now, but at the time, it was really new.
And it worked. I made friends on Halo that I played with most days, would stay in touch with for decades, across time zones and continents. It was a really big deal. Xbox was a revolutionary console in that respect.
I had a Dreamcast, got hand cramp from the controller, never really liked any of the games. I know some people think it was the greatest, but it never did it for me.
GameCube took forever to have a decent selection of games, but now looking back at the entire list, there's a good selection of really significant titles.
But when I got an Xbox, the online aspect was a really big deal and that probably pips it.
Younger people won't be able to grasp how significant it was, but here's something that I'm going to paraphrase from another forum. Playing online was so ridiculous an idea that someone in a post-game Halo 2 Lobby asked people in the game to talk to his friend who was sitting next to him while he played the game, but didn't believe him that the other players onscreen were real people playing with him.
The idea that you could play an fps with real people, actually talk to them, was so implausible to a normal, average person, that it had to be demonstrated with proof. That's an almost impossible thing to imagine now, but at the time, it was really new.
And it worked. I made friends on Halo that I played with most days, would stay in touch with for decades, across time zones and continents. It was a really big deal. Xbox was a revolutionary console in that respect.
I had a Dreamcast, got hand cramp from the controller, never really liked any of the games. I know some people think it was the greatest, but it never did it for me.
Mownoc
Member
Xbox had a lot of bangers, Kotor, Morrowind, Halo 1+2, PGR2, Jet Set Radio Future, Fable. GameCube also missed out on Battlefront, GTA, Burnout 3/Revenge...
GameCube had a better first party lineup but the Xbox had better hardware, Xbox live, better third party support. If I was only going to have one console during that time period, out of those three it would be the Xbox.
GameCube had a better first party lineup but the Xbox had better hardware, Xbox live, better third party support. If I was only going to have one console during that time period, out of those three it would be the Xbox.
Boy bawang
Member
The Dreamcast was short lived but it's the console I enjoyed the most during this generation, PS2 included.
Second would be the GameCube, I guess.
Second would be the GameCube, I guess.
Corporal.Hicks
Member
The Xbox has a very special place in my heart.
- Halo 1-2 is one of the best FPS games I have ever played and I was really impressed with the graphics back then, even coming from the PC. Large levels with different vehicles to drive was something new to me back then. Half Life 1 was amazing, but nit nearly as impressive as halo. Halo alsi used DX8 features to the extreme (bump mapping and shaders effects were used everywhere in this game).
PGR2 - One of the best arcade racing games ever. The graphics were amazing too. I think this game could pass as an early x360 title.
Fable - Fable was more appealing to me than Zelda.
Splinter Cell 1-4 - I liked the Splinter Cell series as much as the MGS series, and the graphics were just shockingly impressive back then. GC and PS2 versions were a joke, almost a different game.
Ralli Sport Challenge 2 - one of the best rally racing games I have ever played.
Riddick - This game looked like a movie to me. Only doom 3 had similar graphics back then.
-Conker
-FarCry Instincts / Predator,
-Dino Crisis 3 (not the Dino Crisis 2 sequel people wanted, but still a good game)
-Panzer Dragoon Orta
-Enclave (one of the most underrated games I have ever played)
-Jet Set Radio Future
-KOTOR 1-2
-Crimson skies
-Brute Force
-Ninja Gaiden,
-DOA 3 and Ultimate
-Forza
-Breakdown
-Jade Empire
-Morrowind
-Voodoo Vince
The graphics in all these games blew my mind and the first Xbox was also the multiplatform king (Ghost Recon 2 or GTA 3 / VC looked much better on the Xbox). When I bought the Xbox, I played games on it almost every day for the next few years until 2007, when I bought a new PC and PS3. The combination of great exclusives (especially for adult audiences) and next-gen graphics (thanks to DX8 and shaders) really appealed to me back then.
- Halo 1-2 is one of the best FPS games I have ever played and I was really impressed with the graphics back then, even coming from the PC. Large levels with different vehicles to drive was something new to me back then. Half Life 1 was amazing, but nit nearly as impressive as halo. Halo alsi used DX8 features to the extreme (bump mapping and shaders effects were used everywhere in this game).
PGR2 - One of the best arcade racing games ever. The graphics were amazing too. I think this game could pass as an early x360 title.
Fable - Fable was more appealing to me than Zelda.
Splinter Cell 1-4 - I liked the Splinter Cell series as much as the MGS series, and the graphics were just shockingly impressive back then. GC and PS2 versions were a joke, almost a different game.
Ralli Sport Challenge 2 - one of the best rally racing games I have ever played.
Riddick - This game looked like a movie to me. Only doom 3 had similar graphics back then.
-Conker
-FarCry Instincts / Predator,
-Dino Crisis 3 (not the Dino Crisis 2 sequel people wanted, but still a good game)
-Panzer Dragoon Orta
-Enclave (one of the most underrated games I have ever played)
-Jet Set Radio Future
-KOTOR 1-2
-Crimson skies
-Brute Force
-Ninja Gaiden,
-DOA 3 and Ultimate
-Forza
-Breakdown
-Jade Empire
-Morrowind
-Voodoo Vince
The graphics in all these games blew my mind and the first Xbox was also the multiplatform king (Ghost Recon 2 or GTA 3 / VC looked much better on the Xbox). When I bought the Xbox, I played games on it almost every day for the next few years until 2007, when I bought a new PC and PS3. The combination of great exclusives (especially for adult audiences) and next-gen graphics (thanks to DX8 and shaders) really appealed to me back then.
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Corporal.Hicks
Member
Have you played the Splinter Cell series or Ghost Reacon 2 on PS2? They were almost different games, that's how drastically the graphics were downgraded. Xbox was the multiplatform king back then. Except for MGS2, all the games ran and looked better on the Microsoft console. GTA 3 and VC were even remastered on the Xbox because that console was so much more powerful compared to the PS2.
Halo 1 came out on PC years later and it had very high requirements despite graphics downgrade (some effects were missing), so I really doubt you had a better experience on PC.
the_master
Member
Xbox
Dreamcast
Gamecube
Xbox: my all time favourite console. Came with incredible power when it still mattered and enabled games not possible in other platforms and spent a lot of money to get great games made.
Dreamcast: first next gen after the 3D era. An incredible amount of great unique games. I have fantastic memories.
Gamecube: it didn’t have much space for me between dreamcast and xbox, but it was a great system with some unique games. It marks the end of an era for Nintendo that I missed later.
Dreamcast
Gamecube
Xbox: my all time favourite console. Came with incredible power when it still mattered and enabled games not possible in other platforms and spent a lot of money to get great games made.
Dreamcast: first next gen after the 3D era. An incredible amount of great unique games. I have fantastic memories.
Gamecube: it didn’t have much space for me between dreamcast and xbox, but it was a great system with some unique games. It marks the end of an era for Nintendo that I missed later.
BlackTron
Member
Don't forget PSP vs Game Gear
Stefan.North
Member
GameCube by just one milimeter over Dreamcast.
OG XBox was also very good, it was just an awesome generation
OG XBox was also very good, it was just an awesome generation
Sojiro
Member
It did come out nearly two years later which is slightly longer than I thought it was, however it had mouse and keyboard support and most importantly online multiplayer, so yes to me those two aspects make it the definitive version. I really don't remember system requirements being "high", the Staples PC I had at the time could run the game just fine. I don't recall what GPU I had put into that machine, but it wasn't the most expensive option available at the place I bought it so likely it was a mid range card at best.
Corporal.Hicks
Member
Sojiro
Member
Well alright Staples, they must have been selling the highest end HP PCs for less than a thousand bucks back in the day lol. I wish I could remember what card I put into it, but I just don't recall, that was before I felt comfortable putting together a machine on my own.PC version was very demanding, here's how the game ran on Geforce 4 Ti 4600.
diffusionx
Gold Member
At the time, probably Xbox, it was the most featured, powerful, and had a strong lineup of games.
These days, GameCube, Nintendo operated at an extremely high level, they branched out to working with 3rd parties in a very smart way, tons of amazing games, system's graphics hold up, etc. There is a reason Dolphin is such a popular emulator.
These days, GameCube, Nintendo operated at an extremely high level, they branched out to working with 3rd parties in a very smart way, tons of amazing games, system's graphics hold up, etc. There is a reason Dolphin is such a popular emulator.
I had all 3 of these consoles... I went with Gamecube based on overall game quality when it was said and done.
However, Xbox will always be groundbreaking with the hard drive and Halo and Fable.
The Dreamcast was odd. I loved the console, but would it was missing something. The 2K sports games were revolutionary, in particular the NBA and NFL. The only thing that soured me was that I had invested in the Sega Saturn before that and really felt like I didnt get what I paid for. Maybe it was the rush release or lack of games at the start.. and of course playstation.
However, Xbox will always be groundbreaking with the hard drive and Halo and Fable.
The Dreamcast was odd. I loved the console, but would it was missing something. The 2K sports games were revolutionary, in particular the NBA and NFL. The only thing that soured me was that I had invested in the Sega Saturn before that and really felt like I didnt get what I paid for. Maybe it was the rush release or lack of games at the start.. and of course playstation.
clarky
Gold Member
The reason Dolphin is so popular because it works with Wii games as well as Gamecube games. Great catalogue when combined.
PaintTinJr
Member
For low effort multiplatform games it was the multiplatform king, but it wasn't more powerful, it just had more RAM, and a HDD, which massively mattered and development could be dialled in as mid range PC with little effort.
Graphically it was inferior capability hardware at a time when fill-rate and GPU features really mattered for advanced stuff like Shadows of the Colossus visuals, but many games of the time were RAM starved on PS2 and without a HDD couldn't even page out to disk like Xbox could with its HDD, so lots of iDtech 1 and 2 and UE1 styled games end up looking rubbish on PS2 and compromised on Cube compared to the Xbox OG, despite none of them being advanced graphics.
Corporal.Hicks
Member
I know from developers that the PS2 could draw fillrate intensive effects much faster (grsss in Colin Mcrae 3, rain in MGS2 or GTA3) but xbox was much stronger when it comes to polygons, textures budget (S3TC, more RAM + HDD for data streaming) and graphics features (shaders and shadow buffer for real time shadows). Xbox could run PS2 ports even at 720p.
Xbox games such as Riddick, Splinter Cell 3, PGR2, Ghost Recon 2, Conker could have passed for early x360 games. The difference in graphical fidelity between the PS2 and the Xbox was simply unimaginable by today's standards, so when an Xbox game like Splinter Cell was ported to the PS2, it looked almost unrecognisable.
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PaintTinJr
Member
You've got it all back to front, in terms of the GPU capabilities; especially when PS2 can do geometry shaders, long before that was even on PC, and even in that video, most of the Xbox stuff is just using the extra RAM and HDD, to substitute realtime lighting with iDtech lightmap baked lighting and faked projected shadows. Carmack himself in his discussion with Nvidia about the Carmack's reversal shadow mapping used in Doom 3 (on PC) mentioned that the algorithm was well suited to the PS2 hardware capabilities, and we know Doom3 on Xbox had that feature cut.
I'm not trying to argue that the xbox games on multiplats didn't typically look more pleasing at higher resolution, but fx wasn't on par with the PS2 on games that pushed both systems hard, and SotC and GT4 were beyond the GPU capabilities of the Xbox even with the RAM and HDD advantages.
Companion Cube
Member
Gamecube was the best party console.
Corporal.Hicks
Member
The PS2 hardware could render some nice graphics effects, but only in very limited scope because of limited RAM resources. Xbox games like Riddick / Doom 3 / Splinter Cell 3 / Halo / Far Cry / PGR2 had DX8 effects everywhere (dynamic shadows, shaders on water on bump mapping on textures), while on PS2 I only saw similar effects from time to time. Can you make a list of games that used bump mapping on PS2, or water effects that could match pixel shader water in splinter cell 1, or far cry? If I remember correctly, tekken 4 had nice looking water, and I also saw some bump mapping burnout 2 (road texture), but these are only two games.
PaintTinJr
Member
Limited RAM and lack of pagefile (temporary RAM storage) has no bearing on the versatility and performance of the Reality Synthesizer and Emotion Engine capabilities with polygons and shaders in the PS2 to render the fx in Shadows of the Colossus.
The fur rendering in Xbox Conker is pretty sparse and even looks like pre-calculated textured alpha planes compared to the fullscreen fur rendering in on closeup Colossi gameplay in SotC on PS2
Lots of the real-time shadow mapping you think the Xbox OG did was either static shadow map lookup, because the shadow remains the same position to the car like in PGR, regardless of the relationship of the car and the sun light source, or are LoD reduced orthographic geometry projections in shadow colour, to look like a real shadow as was common on the Dreamcast, and the reason for that is that fillrate and zbuffer bandwidth that shadowmaps soak up just wasn't there on Xbox, like it was on PS2.
Codes 208
Member
For me thats easily gamecube followed by xbox.
Halo 2 sold me on xbox and converted me from my childhood Nintendo-fanboy days so it definitely deserves credit for that.
Dreamcast i dont have too many fond memories of, a lot of games i would like to play on it (like sonic adventure 1 and 2) would eventually find their way to gamecube, so…
Halo 2 sold me on xbox and converted me from my childhood Nintendo-fanboy days so it definitely deserves credit for that.
Dreamcast i dont have too many fond memories of, a lot of games i would like to play on it (like sonic adventure 1 and 2) would eventually find their way to gamecube, so…
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Corporal.Hicks
Member
All those nice-looking effects like bump mapping and shaders required more RAM. Even if the PS2 had more capable GPU and easy to implement DX8 features, developers would still not use these features on the PS2 because of limited VRAM.
Xbox had 2x as much RAM and it also had S3TC compression + HDD for data streaming, so developers had enough resources to use all DX8 features and it made a big difference. Xbox games had much higher resolution textures, much bigger levels with more detailed objects, and of course plenty of DX8 effects (shadow buffer dynamic shadows, bump mapping and shaders). I love my PS2 console, but I always thought the graphics on the Xbox were on a completely different level.
I was never impressed by the graphics of Shadow of the Colossus (blurry image, not even 480i, flat lighting and wide open levels with little to no detail) so I have no idea why you mention that game. Perhaps the fur rendering was better compared to other games as you say, but it was not something that stood out to me. I think the PS2 has much better looking games than Shadow of the collosus. For example Silent Hill 3 has simpressed me much more back then (dynamic shadows, detailed character models, sharp textures and some even with bump mapping).
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onnextflix5
Member
That’s a hard one, all 3 were good but had lots of flaws
Ev1L AuRoN
Member
Cube then Xbox, I like the Dreamcast but I don't think it is on the same league of any of the consoles from the 6th gen.
PaintTinJr
Member
Some of the rendering features of the PS2 weren't available even on PC until Opengl 2.1 or DirectX10, of which SotC did use those geometry shader techniques to do the procedural geometry that some of the Colossi were render with, along with the extensive fur rendering via geometry and the advance quaternion animation blending for Argo's extensive controllable animations that exceeds the AC ones on PS3/360, and then there's Wander's cloth rendering, so obviously the off the peg DX8 cheap techniques and fake shadow maps were nothing in that context.
As for s3tc, it was an ASIC extension feature available to all on PC, and could have been easily implemented on the Reality Synth via Shader assembly had Sony bought a patent license from new owner Nvidia, ironically, the PS2 today could implement the much newer modern Block compression formats used by Oodle/Kraken that are supersets of S3TC, so it wasn't a performance issue why PS2 didn't use S3TC.
REDRZA MWS
Member
The OG X ox can’t be touched by the other 2. Launches with Halo, had and Ethernet port built in standard for true online gaming service, and a standard HDD.
StereoVsn
Gold Member
It depends on the library that you like. Dreamcast has a ton of very cool Japanese titles that are Japan only, for example.
But yeah, Xbox OG was a very interesting console when it came out and especially so after it got cracked.
the_master
Member
I really didn’t know there was anyone on this planet who thought the PS2 had better gpu capabilities than the xbox..
Just Halo and Wreckless, launch titles on xbox had better graphics than any ps2 game ever released. Including sotc and gt4, I mean, by far.
The lighting, the bump mapping, the shadows, several shaders and effects … was almost one generation ahead.
And that Doom 3 that was better suited for PS2 didn’t even came out on ps2…
PaintTinJr
Member
Your confusing easy to use with capabilities. PS2 didn't have a high level shader language like GLSL or HLSL or Cg so most of the advantages of its capabilities were against an increasing difficulty backdrop, so it is no surprise it was only the likes of Japan Studio and Konami that got the best out of it.
Let me simplify the performance of Xbox OG GPU vs PS2 to a question.
It was common that output native resolutions on Xbox OG games were typically higher, than PS2, and yet it was well known that zbuffer/stencil buffer performance and fillrate (blending/lighting fragment shading) on PS2 was a lot higher on PS2.
So how could Xbox games output at a higher resolution and match the PS2 for fillrate per pixel for rendering fx if it had more work to do by resolution and less capability to do it?
Is the maths not obviously contradictory - unless Xbox wasn't doing the same work and falling back on baked textures, disabling depth cuing fog and skipping other fx ?
Doom 3 didn't come out on PS2, but then again Carmack hadn't developed a game for any PlayStation until Rage on PS3 AFAIK, but there was a whole dev paper on the technique(more than one IIRC) and he did mention the PS2 stencilling and emotion engine capabilities that was perfectly suited to polygon edge counting in a stencil buffer algorithm which was very high bandwidth intensive. I still recall the Doom 3 Alpha running at single digits on an ATI 8500 I had at the time - which was more advanced than the Xbox OG GPU - and the released game still needing at least a ATI 9700 which was Xbox 360 stencil bandwidth to do 640x480
edit:
For reference of what I was saying
Copilot:
"what did carmack write in emails to nvidia about shadow volume on playstation 2 hardware"
Answer:
"John Carmack, the renowned game developer, wrote an email to Mark Kilgard of Nvidia discussing the derivation of the depth-fail shadow volume implementation, which later became known as "Carmack's Reverse"¹. This method was independently discovered by Carmack and is used to create more realistic shadows in 3D graphics.
The email detailed how this technique could be implemented on various hardware, including the PlayStation 2. The depth-fail method involves rendering shadows by considering the depth of objects in a scene, which helps in creating more accurate and visually appealing shadows¹.
If you're interested in the technical details or have any other questions about graphics programming, feel free to ask!
Source: Conversation with Copilot, 17/08/2024
(1) Patent on Carmack's Reverse - Doom 3 - Doomworld. https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/18026-patent-on-carmacks-reverse/.
(2) Chapter 11. Efficient and Robust Shadow Volumes - NVIDIA Developer. https://developer.nvidia.com/gpugem...-11-efficient-and-robust-shadow-volumes-using.
(3) Shadow volume - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_volume.
Source: Conversation with Copilot, 17/08/2024
(1) Patent on Carmack's Reverse - Doom 3 - Doomworld. https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/18026-patent-on-carmacks-reverse/.
(2) Chapter 11. Efficient and Robust Shadow Volumes - NVIDIA Developer. https://developer.nvidia.com/gpugem...-11-efficient-and-robust-shadow-volumes-using.
(3) Shadow volume - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_volume.
*
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Corporal.Hicks
Member
Xbox had 20 giga FLOPS while the PS2 had 6.2 giga FLOPS, so on paper the xbox GPU was faster. I remember reading comments from one developer who worked on all 6'th gen consoles that xbox was so powerful they could run PS2 games without much optimization and they still had room (performance to spare) for using some additional effects. I don't know how many developers have taken this lazy approach, but it seems that the Xbox hardware has been under-utilised when it comes to multiplatform games. Some PS2 ports run at 720p on xbox (for example Tony Hawk's pro skater 4), so it shows how much faster the xbox was.
Xbox NV2A was Geforce 3 / 4 hybrid. It had 2x vertex shaders and had memory bandwidth improvements from Geforce 4. With advanced DX8 effects and T&L engine it was also much more efficient. That GPU was state of the art back then, but MS has gimped it's performance for cost saving reasons. Geforce 4 on PC could run Quake 3 engine games at 60fps even at 1080p, while NV2A was so bandwidth starved that it had to run 480p.
Maybe the PS2 GPU could render the same effects as xbox GPU in software (developers proved many times they can invent some clever workarounds), but not as fast as hardware accelerated DX8 effects on xbox GPU. The PS2 was however a fillrate monster, so it could draw things like 2D grass or rain effects faster. The PS2 could render more grass, while xbox could render more detailed models.
Developers never achieved similar graphics fidelity on the PS2. No game on the PS2 looked nearly as good as Riddick or Splinter Cell 3, or even Halo 1 (one of the first xbox games).
It was possible to port even fillrate intensive PS2 games on xbox with relatively small quality loss (fog in Silent Hill 2 wasnt so dense), however it was totally impossible to port Xbox games to PS2 without extreme downgrade (Ghost Recon 2, or Splinter Cell 3).
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