I've noticed that current-generation consoles have fully native support for widescreen aspect televisions. In most cases, the in-game menus and other graphical assets all seem to be specifically designed with a widescreen resolution in mind. I'm wondering if these games function on older, 4:3 aspect sets. If so, how exactly would the image look? I mean, would the in-game menus look all squashed, or do games actually arrange assets around to fit different ratios?

That's an excellent question, and unfortunately one I can't answer too accurately because I own zero consoles. Almost all the computer games I've play simply stretch their title screens or menus to fit my widescreen or non-widescreen monitors, then render 3D with a slightly higher FoV on my widescreen monitors over my non-widescreen monitors.

I've noticed that the background is cropped when in 4:3 and the menu is overlaid as usual. Fixed to the left, indented or what-have-they. I'm eager to pay attention and find out now myself.

I have access to a 16:9 & a 4:3 TV, so I'll have to try this out!

I have A older 4:3 tv here in 480p and a xbox I will check for you hold on...

EDIT: here is a photo of the cell phone on gt4 TBoGT notice how the text is crushed because the game is build for wide screen.

heres 4:3: http://i53.tinypic.com/23uzset.jpg

Here is what it should look like:

https://xfsepg.bay.livefilestore.com/y1m8oBhCscw_DVKwUHDevR5ITU7dZKWvAP928jaj8BFV3bNGeYNZvpJ6PQ97z_nzw6q6jGLav1JSVWhvmr7DK8bTyc5VaDl3yeoIIPkjsBnSNXUsh8fiM29bA-egurkvWxcexC-KwP0mjHQRJNkP16nrg/SDC13441.jpg

Enjoy! hope I helped.

Very nice, I'm also curious to know how cross-platform (such as it is) game designers design their games to be. Maybe the APIs for the consoles have something built-in for this kind of thing?

I would also be curious to know how PAL vs. NTSC works with current games. Since both types of sets use different frequencies, trying to display one on the other would cause problems. I've heard that newer television sets (that is, widescreen, HDTV, LCD, etc.) are pretty uniform in terms of video standards, and no longer have these differences imposed upon them. Assuming that's the case, would newer games still retain some kind of support for PAL and NTSC sets? Would this support strictly depend on which region the game is released in? That is, if I imported a PlayStation 3 game from Europe and tried to play it on an NTSC American TV, would it actually play?

Modern consoles (at least xbox) have the option to display on a NTSC or PAL you can choose. It will play but a region of the screen may be chopped I have no idea how xbox360 can tell but it shrinks the dash to fit my screen leaving some of the background chopped!
were as on my friends wide screen 1080p computer screen it fits perfect but the text is in a different spot for example on the mw2 tactical dash bored theme the my xbox text is close to the M in modern ware fare were as on his wider screen it is stretched across the O.

Edit: sorry for any misspellings

It may also auto adjust. I have no idea try contacting play station or xbox support and have a go

I bet BenRyves would be able to answer that question; he's from Britain and has hardware hacking experience with NTSC and PAL.

@Ted: That makes sense, thanks!

I do get the impression that us Europeans are luckier than the USA when it comes to TVs; we have RGB as standard via SCART, for example (which does away with the PAL/NTSC colour encoding differences over composite or S-video) and most sets I've used support both PAL and NTSC resolutions and timing. As such I'd be happy to say that both PAL and NTSC are viable options in Blighty, but I'm not sure whether that holds true in the USA.

I'd say you're more likely to run into conventional region lock-out issues with imported games than video standard ones.

Mmmm, that makes sense, thanks Ben. I also get the impression that US sets can support both, but I don't have a big enough sample size to make any generalized claims on my own.