Actually, that’s probably been true since Doom 3. But now that that level of technology has caught up with the rest of the industry, we’re seeing more and more screenshots of games using rendering techniques that are tuned for motion looking very bad in a screenshot.

Consider, for example, Motor Storm. This is a good-looking game, but check out this screenshot of a truck’s tire (cribbed from Gamersreports)

It’s good to see the poop monster from Conker is still getting work. I think he might have a chance of getting a laugh this time.

Let’s not even discuss whether or not the target of the “target render” shown as Motorstorm at E3 2005 was hit. But just in case you forgot what that looked like, here’s Sony’s screenshot of a tire from that:

That’s beside the point. The point is that when the game is running, that tire in the first screenshot doesn’t look so much like a solid brown cheese wheel covered with random bumpmapping.

So, as an inexhaustible font of industry wisdom, I suggest that what publishers need to do instead of releasing passels of these awkward looking screenshots, is to figure out a way to standardize a single second of full resolution video and give them a completely stupid marketing name like, say, “metashots”. Give them downsized GIF thumbnails and presto— now you have to find a new way to embarass yourselves.

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