Watch Impress posted an interesting technical article about Onimusha3 (PS2), that shows that the good old PS2 has (almost) nothing to envy to the latest ATI cards (there is a very similar demo on ATI's website...).

In particular, atmosheric effects (Light scattering) and soft shadows are demonstrated. Apparently this was presented to Siggraph this year (but we didn't spot it unfortunately). It seems that most of the best games ever made (Zelda64, FZeroGX/AX, Metal Gear Solid,..) have used Softimage somewhere in the process... [PixelJunk: and some of the worst games too I bet]