I need to point out most of the demos Sony gave out were CG's (Pre-rendered, you arent getting that in the real game) while most of the xbox ones were actully what the gameplay would be like in the game (ex, gears of war, godlike)
Some of the xbox games shown were unimpressive, imo. Its still early in development, and the same can be said for ps3's games. However, ps3 is not yet capable of the killzone graphics: it has been confirmed to be only a "what we hope to be able to achieve" from the company that made the game.
This next comment may make me sound like a xbox fanboy, but I was actully saying to myself "im getting a freaken PS next time", when sega killed my dreamcast.
Sony has a record of promising great magical things, and giving you less (still good, just.. not the godly magical unicorn of doom it puts itself out to be)
"Their original competitor, Sega, withered in the face of a blitz of fancy imagery and “more power” claims laid out on impressive-looking spec sheets. The truth was that Sony launch titles looked barely better - or in some cases worse - than Dreamcast titles, in spite of what was supposed to be a significant power edge, but Sony had successfully sold “more power”, and gamers bought into it. Sega, practically broke and with no third-party support, couldn’t afford any significant advertising to counter the Sony hype machine. Much later, it was found that the 75 million polygons per second that Sony had claimed for the PS2 on their original spec sheet was actually closer to 7 million in actual applications, but by then, everyone already had a PS2 and no one cared they had stretched the truth."
If you want to read more about that, to either rip it apart, or know more about it, the link was provided for you. I have to say: with the hard drive not standard, and the once-promised router ability gone... I can really see more going as time passes by.
Although I was orginally going to get PS... hell, I waited from sega's bankruptcy notice to egm's xbox360 edition for it... xbox seems more appealing to me this time around. Before anyone starts attacking me on this, let me explain:
1) The games - Yes, I admit, playstation has a track record of games. Not JUST games, quality games. These are often produced by 3rd parties, they actully move around from console time to time (these include franchaises like GTA, Final Fantasy (already developing for xbox360), and hell, not that they are moving, but even the developers of killzone COULD move, if microsoft were to offer them a huge wad of cash.
So Ive just said "woohoo, ps has more games!" that being said, this time around, xbox has grasped a large developer base, and will be comparable to the ps3. Backwards compatability isnt a concern to me, it may be for some people, but personally, I wouldnt buy a new system to play old games. Novelty, at best, imo. For example, my cousin, a big sony fanboy, has not touched a single ps1 disc since getting ps2.
ONLINE PLAY. Thats the real selling point to me in terms of games. I understand that playstation will be able to have online games as well, but it will not be implemented as well. Im sorry I dont have the exact interview on hand, but sony said online play wasnt a big factor in this generation for them basically. Xbox live isnt really a big investment: prehaps to people who play pirated games, 50 dollars a year is a bit hard to swallow: HOWEVER, most real online games come with a 1 or 2 month suscription to xbox live... you shouldnt really be paying alot :) [that was based on my own experiance with stickers on bestbuy stuff]
Xbox live will let you play with the type of people you want. For example, Im a more "play for fun and to unwind" kinda guy, so I wont get paired up with your typical "lolololol I was with your mom" people, and I wont be paried with the people with godlike skill... unless of course, I set that I want to. Stuff like that is important to me - if its important to you too, you may want to consider looking at the xbox a little bit. You'll be trading off a bit of games, but youll have online play for most games, as well as a centralized place to have a community: kinda like if Steam worked with every single game, had video confrencing, phone calls, HDtv, and stat monitering. Gamewise, itll lack the huge japanese support, but take a look guys: it wont hurt you to be more informed, whether it means you may convert over to xbox, or you have new things to talk bad about the system with.
2)Price - Xbox is predicted to be 300 at launch: half a year later, you can expect 30-50$ price drops. Reasonable, history has shown that. PS3 on the other hand, will be much more expensive: in responce to predictions of 499, sony said they wanted people to say "ill work harder, ill put in more hours for it" Which is a strong indication it may be true... or even more.
When it comes down to it, you can argue the price is becasue the ps3 is a stronger system. You need to think about the facts right now. For this, I urge everyone to ignore all demos they saw, both xbox and ps3. The xbox ones are pre-release, its not fair that they are compared to "what the developers of the game HOPE to do"
3) Controllers - Im not here to ramble about the ps3 controller. There are enough people who throw that argument. Im just here to talk about how some people precieve bluetooth controllers to be better than microsoft's own technology. Honestly, the two are pretty much the same: bluetooth is just a name when it comes down to it. Microsoft's technology may even be more impressive, considering the frequency jumping they can do to keep a signal in case of problems or something. Battery life was reported to be bad for the bluetooth controllers, but I sure as hell am not going to be basing a decision on something like that: let alone the fact microsoft's could be just as bad. Guys, no real advantage here, seriously.
Ps3 can handle 7 controllers. May be good for some party games, but I havent seen a cool party game for ps as of yet. Nintendo seems to be the kickass party game maker. In any case, its an advantage over xbox. How often will you REALLY need 7 controllers is beyond me... but if you frequently do... and in those situations, no one can bring another PS in as well =/ Seems unlikley to me, but hey, its your life, not mine. Do what suits your life the most. I just have no use for it, doesnt mean its not handy
4) Fresh (promising) titles - Xbox is coming up with a whole list of new games (not *gamename* *version 2/3/4/5*) and many of them look promising. I sure will appreciate this: the same old brands are getting old... and I only have a dreamcast as my current gen console... even the amount of those games at friend's houses make them old. Of course, sequels are cool too. Ps will have its killzone and gundam battle assult that lure me... but i really am not swayed by this enough. Mircrosoft is putting out lots of good games, has a great rpg lineup (hehe, gotta dig deep to find em though) and their traditional strong points.
4) "But mircrosoft is an evil corporate giant!"
The xbox is developed in some out of nowhere suburbs in a crappy location. They are not like the traditional microsoft offices. the xbox is hardly the evil giant that bullies others: read developer comments, they have nothing but praise for the amount of support microsoft is giving them. The xbox is supporting 3rd party devices into the design: even the ipod (if you work in microsoft WMP sectors and are seen at work with an ipod, you are fired, apperently.) Thats some real commitment to work nicely with everyone, and not just microsoft friendly things, isnt it? :)
Just looking at it from a purely marketing and hostorical standpoint (summary is at the bottom for those unwilling to real all I have to say):
One thing to note; rarely have console makers lasted 3 console generations.
Sega had the Genesis, the Saturn (which hardly sold), and Dreamcast was a joke for sales.
Nintendo for all intents and purposes is the only console creator that has lasted longer then any other console producer, although their ability to stay in the set-top box console market is suspect. I would expect that Nintendo will move exclusively to the DS, which means all your mario and zelda games wont be set-top box console releases anymore.
In the case of Sega, they promised the moon, and delayed the DC for almost a year, and that killed the Dreamcast. Sony is promising the moon (much more exotic technology), and could possibly delay the release of the PS3, or strip it down for a US release, like it did with the PS2. (since there is only a vague date for its release, its more likely then Microsoft delaying the 360, since its tech is pretty much finished)
Microsoft on the other hand has had a brilliant, although bizaarre marketing strategy, and they should last one maybe two console generations.
I'm going ot make a bold statement, just looking at history, the PS3 will be the last major console put out by Sony and if history is right, the PS4 will be a huge disaster.
Now before you call me a MS fan, Microsoft wont be in the game much longer either. I can see them exiting the console market soon after sony. What will follow will be fully integrated systems, where there wont be just one or two manufacturers of consoles, but hundreds; all built on one standard.
In the end, consoles will be more like HTPCs, and less like consoles. What we are seeing is the convergence of the two mediums. Overall when Microsoft decided to enter the console market, it wasnt entering to make money off of video games, theres not enough profit. What its doing is growing its market base for Windows. I think with the Ps3 your seeing that microsoft for whats its worth, has dragged Sony right where they want them, onto Microsoft's own turf. Its really uite interesting to take a look and see how its all shaping out. If consoles become more like HTPCs, microsoft can get increasingly more profit from selling its OS to people like sony, and other PC makers and could abandon the console market entirely, which it wont until Xbox 4 anyway.
The PC will pull out the unlikely win for entertainment dollars, not by technology, but by being so similar to consoles that the idea of a seperate gaming machine is obsolete, the only problem is that PCs will have a unified structure with little to no deviation. So you wont be upgrading parts of your PC nearly as much, and all hardware will be stagnant for years at a time with no real innovation or change. This will result in games that will be more polished, and be made more efficient.
To summarize:
Sony has one more console after PS3
Microsoft has two after 360
Nintendo is likely done after the Revolution
Sega lived for 3 console generations (semi-4, if you include the lackluster master system)
Microsoft is putting Sony right where they want them, not to kill the PS3, but to elevate the HTPC as a unified center of entertainment and productivity for the home, which is one of the PS3's main goals.
Im not a big fan of any console, I just am looking at history here, and some interesting marketing strategies.
First off I must admit I'm an xbox360 supporter, mainly because I've had countless bad experiences with sonys support. Like others, I too hate sonys proprietory stuff and have a general dislike to their shobby business practice.
Now onto #108, You can't just go around saying that "WITHOUT DOUBT the PS3 has the bigger/faster engine overall. FACT!".
FACT! It's impossible to physically compare both systems at this stage so therefore it's no fact, it's you're opinion now isn't it? Also since you brought up the whole the ps3 has 2 teraflops and the xbox only has 1 myth...
Nvidia uses separate Vertex and Pixel Shaders, ATI uses a Unified Shader which does both Vertex and Pixel Shading using the same Shader. When Nvidia calculates performance, it totals both Vertex and Pixel Shaders running at peak efficiency. When ATI calculates performance, it totals the performance of the single unified shader (composed of both Pixel and Vertex shaders) at peak efficiency. So this means that in order to compare ATI's performance to Nvidia's, you would double the rated performance.
PS3:
CPU=0.25 TFlops
GPU=1.80 TFlops for both Pixel and Vertex Shaders
XBOX360:
CPU=0.18 TFlops
GPU=0.88 TFlops for Unified Shaders=1.75 TFlops for combined Pixel and Vertex Shaders
So the PS3 has a total theoretical of about 2 TFlops and XBox 360 has about 1.9 TFlops (counting Pixel and Vertex shaders separately, as the PS3 does).
I hope this clears things up a bit, the PS3 really isn't all that and xbox360 is basically neck and neck. To be honest in some ways the xbox360 has the potential to be more powerful than the PS3 in terms of gaming experience, but lets not get onto that shall we!
Glad some people are just stating the obvious reason why they support which console. Even though only the MS ones have spoken up, it's still refreshing to see that the techno babble has wound down now....
#117
That is correct, and both Sony and MS are doing that. Why do you think there is no child labor laws in China, and the South East Asian Countries??.....Good ole Cheap Child Labor.....
Children and their families benefit by getting food on their tables with their meager salary of $1.00 an hour while we enjoy the products of their relentless labor. What a WORLD we live in!!!
After reading #106's view I tend to agree with him. I'd say that I'm an MS supporter and here's my reasons why.
I hate Sony to the core for making us buy all their overpriced proprietory stuff, their shoddy products which break down way too easily and their refusal to support compatibility with their competitors.
Also I hate Sony because I swear all the Japanese game developers are sleeping with them. It's a fact that national pride is all important for the Japanese. While you Americans are outsourcing everything to foreign countries, the Japanese will never allow a foreigner to supercede themselves.
As for MS, unlike Sony products where I can actually refuse to buy any of, I don't have a choice when it comes to operating systems..
"The 1080p output of the PS3 isn't that big of a deal for me. Given that basically the entire installed base of HDTVs right now only support 1080i, I seriously doubt we'll see a push to 1080p only all that quickly."
1080p is hitting the market now and with the surge of new HDTV channels this coming year you will see much more 1920x1080p screens in home's by the release of PS3.
Just remember the difference 480P DVD's made over 480i content. Imagine that now in a Hi Def picture. :) Can't wait.
Last note, coming from 640x480 up to 1280x720p is going to be a VERY nice upgrade in consoles. Can't wait for my favorite racing games on the new consoles.
thank god for someone like you who sees what's going on. at least on this site, a lotta people are technically knowledgable and know what they're talking about... unlike most game sites where idiot fan boys argue non-stop without a clue in the world what's going on.
i can't side with sony... i've hated them with a passion due to their lies and business practices and arrogance and proprietary formats... so i'm not getting a ps3 for the sony name alone, as with all their other products as well. but that's just me.
xbox 360 vs ps3? please... gotta wait til next year's e3 before any real debate is worthwhile. either way... both sony and microsoft are gonna rule this generation... about equal control of the market. both winners i know that much. i think xbox live will play a huge roll in where games are going...
I guess in some ways the next generation of consoles are catching up with PC's. At this time I prefer PC's. Until they can make a console in a nice neat package that does everything my computer can do I aint interested. The console is a gaming machine and I am sure the next generation ones will do it well but it looks like you will need to buy a HDTV in order to enjoy it. In the long run it is gonna cost you no matter how you look at it. I would say the better choice is the PS3 since it plays the older games and those can be had for a song. Spend your money wisely a fool and his money is soon parted. I used to own an ATARI 2600 and you know how that ended.
"ATI did clarify that although Microsoft isn't targetting 1080p (1920 x 1080) as a resolution for games, their GPU would be able to handle the resolution with 4X AA enabled at no performance penalty."
I think 1080p games will be rare. How many 720p Xbox games have you played? I'll be happy to get 720p in all 360 games.
It´s of course gameplay thats most important, but if the machine is faster AND have a good gameplay, it WILL be better??
From the specs, Microsoft and SONY have been pretty open until now, and this is what they say:
Macrosoft XBox360 a little over a Teraflop total
SONY PS3: Around 2 Teraflops
It IS a matter of good development tools and good programmers, which will B better in the end but WITHOUT DOUBT the PS3 has the bigger/faster engine overall. FACT!
So we just have to wait, to see the right stuuf, and NOT some LAME XBox360 demo on NON XBox hardware - Buhhh Macrosoft. Wait if U can´t show....
Didn't the Cell clocked at 4.8GHz?
I think it's very likely that the SPEs are underclocked and one of them was "turned off" just temorary.
Just like PSP running on 222MHz out of the possible 333MHz, I bet the PS3 has some of it's potential locked at the moment. And having 3.2x7 upped to 4.8x8 may be useful one day.
With regard to the dual HDTV, I don't know if you noticed but there was a suggestion (not on the side) that it may be used with "pannels"... I'm not aware of similar technology avial. at this moment, but this may be very useful for custom-sized video walls, and then you will be able to enjoy the super-wide feature directly.
I've been reading all the hundred or so comments posted, and the majority of the posts seems to be trying to defend which console, XBox 360 or PS3, is better than the other. But none is actually saying the real reason why they are defending their choice except by spouting out unnesscessary techono babble that no one person will really care.
If both MS and Sony are not exaggerating their specs, both their consoles are pretty on par with each other. It is just like a 500 HP car vs a 510 HP car...there is not much difference. Sure they both used different technologies, XBox 360 with 3 "General" CPUs and PS3 with ONE Cell CPU. XBox with ATI's GPU with the 10MB mem on the GPU and Nvidia's GPU with all its mysterious capabilities. But in the end, it doesn't matter what tech they uses....they are essentially both powerful consoles. So why are people still trying to best another saying one console will be better than the other?
The real reason why people are defending their choices by spouting techno babble without giving the real reason is because they don't want to admit that they are influenced by consumer loyalty. That's RIGHT!!! These people are either loyal to Gates' MS or the Japanese's Sony. I'm not afraid to admit it....I'm a loyal Sony consumer, so whatever opinion I have with these consoles, I will say the PS3 rocks XBox 360s World!!!
But why would I say that? When I was but a wee eighth grader, I was with my friends in the playground just doing nothing. Then suddenly one of my friends started talking about Nintendo and Sony PS1. We started talking about which was better. I was then a loyal Nintendo consumer, so my obvious reaction was that Nintendo was much better. Even though PS1 was better in tech than the SNES, and N64 was still rumored to be created. I still defended Nintendo by stating all these facts about the new Rumored console Nintendo was going to make. To make things short... I left the conversation still a Loyal Nintendolite. So a few years went by and N64 came out, but the hype was not as great as people thought. The reason is because Nintendo took too long to make N64 and thereby lost the majority of Game contracts with the good game companies. So most of the N64 games were all "kiddie" games and not that appealing to High School + people...which I was now. It was around the time when PS2 first came out....I think I played Onimusha 1 or something and I got hooked to the PS2 and spent all my money....400 BUCKS to buy one. But I still didn't yet become a loyal Sony Consumer...it was when I got into college around 2003 that I played FFX that I got hooked. I then started to play FFVII FFVIII FFIX and FFX-2....that I was so hooked to the FF series that I dl the emulations of them....and we all know that the FF series will probably not stray to XBOX...at least that's my opinion. And since there were other games I liked from the old PS1, I then became a strong supporter PS2.
Now Because both PS3 and XBox 360 are so on par with each other technologically, the only thing that is affecting my choice is because I want a console that can play my old PS1 and soon to be old PS2 games with one machine with the possibility that there will be games that are only for PS3 that are fun the same as my old ones are. So I don't care about the technology...I care about SONY and PS3.....
PS3 ROCKS.......so does XBox 360...but I don't care about MS......
How many people are going to buy the console for the games and not bother with the specs? I have been waiting for the sequal to perfect dark since it was first realised, and I really enjoyed Halo/2.
Anywho the problem I am seeing is what will happen if either company changes the specs even a mear 50mhz so ATIs chip 'runs' at the same speed of Nvidias, it could through the perfectly adapted games to fast. When ppl started to sell modified xbox boards with 1.4ghz chips and 128m ram, the games would run twice as fast, literaly, 2 seconds previously, became a second (in game play).
Really, both sound sweet, both are (lots)more powerful, my question is, why do you care for the specs so much? Its the game play im after.
I have no doubt that the xbox will have no problem running at 1080p. It is listed as running at 1080i so we need to understand the difference between 1080p and 1080i. First off both 1080p and 1080i run at a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels. The p represents progressive and the I represents interlaced. So the difference between the 2 is that interlaced renders every other horizontal line and then the next frame it will only render the ones it missed in the last frame, while the progressive will render all horizontal lines every frame. So what we end up with while running on a ntsc system at 60hz is that the 1080i will have a resolution of 1920x1080 at 30 fps and the 1080p will run at 1920x1080 at 60fps. (pal systems will run at 25fps and 50 fps)
So now we need to compare the xbox 360 with current technology to determine if it has the power to run 1080p. If we look at the ATI X850 and see what resolution that card is capable of running at, we can see that it can run at the 1920x1080 resolution at 120hz and the max resolution is 2048x1536@ 85hz. Now the x850 is significantly less powerful then the gpu of the xbox 360 so it is very safe to assume that it will have plenty of power to run at the 1080p resolution.
@98
Just thought (you seem like a tech-head) you may be interested in this article. It reports of a possible revolution in PC architecture due to certain advantages of the cell processor (I honestly believed all the Micro$oft hype that you would never see a cell processor in a PC). This throws a little light on the matter;
http://www.blachford.info/computer/Cells/Cell0.htm...
[19/05/05 03:52]
People think they're sampling Xbox 360, but they're not – can you guess what they're really playing?
Entering the Microsoft E3 stand is a wonderful experience – green and full of Xbox 360 activity. Activity we will be covering with some kind of ninja passion over the next few days – and you won't want to miss any of it, regardless of what PlayStation 3 fanboys are telling you on web forums.
However, all is not as it seems.
Despite the reassuring presence of an actual Xbox 360 unit locked away in a visible compartment in the demo stations, and despite the games being playable using an Xbox 360 pad, it's not an Xbox 360 people are playing.
Poking our noses around the side of the demo station and peering through the vaguely camouflaging air grills revealed the shocking truth: behind the Xbox 360 unit sat two Apple G5 computers.
So, are alpha-stage Xbox 360 games really so powerful they need a combined effort from two G5 machines to properly run Xbox 360 software? Quite possibly.
And, we were told by a man demoing Kameo that the game was only running at 30% of Xbox 360's capacity! Kameo featured pleasantly detailed next-gen graphics and, more impressively, hundreds of on-screen characters, all displaying individual AI routines – all at 30%.
It takes two Apple G5s to power a 30% capacity Xbox 360 demo? This may well be the case and if it's true then this console's only just started – this is just the beginning. Its games, once developers have sat down and spent a decent amount of time with full development kits, will just get better and better.
So, it seems there are a few more rounds to fight in the PS3 vs Xbox 360 match-up before the winner can lift up its gloves with any true confidence after all.
"With built in blu-ray, I think the PS3 will have a huge advantage over the Xbox 360 as it should be able to act as a HD-DVD video player"
This quote is a bit off. I understand you were trying to say HD video but using "HD-DVD" gives it a totally different meaning. Unless they come to an agreement soon, the PS3 will play Blu-Ray only, and NOT HD-DVD.
It also looks to be entirely possible to stream hi-def video from WinXP with Xbox360...I think that's a huge selling point.
There sure seems to be a lot of hostility around something that I think is very exciting. On the other hand I probably see things a bit differently than do most.
First off I have no biases at all as I own an XBox, PSP, and a high end gaming PC. You will note that I only own what is technically the best of what was out there. I am an early adopter and have had an HDTV for 5 years so I only bought the console that supported HDTV and looked good to decent on my TV. The PS2 was not even an option for me as it plainly looked like crap on my 65" HDTV. My PC is an AMD Athalon64 3400+ with 1GB RAM 6800 Ultra and a 20" flat pannel. I mention the specs of my PC to make a couple of points: first is to show that I have a very capable machine and I still play Xbox, and second is to point out that my PC is a year old and is still a high end gaming machine in today's market. And yes I got one of the first very hard to find 6800 ultras and paid a premium.
The point I am making about the PC is that prior to my last upgrade I would typically upgrade my PC every 6-8 months to keep it current. However, with the latest Processor only about 15%-20% faster a year later and I have the top of the line Graphics card still minus going SLI, I just don't see the point in upgrading. There are only a few games that challenge my system and I can run them at 1600x1200 with everything on and still get good performance. With that in mind I am not sure you will see the performance of the proposed next generation consoles on the PC in 6 months (XBox 360 release) to a year (PS3 release). I have no doubts that we will have the GPU but I don't see us having the processor power at a reasonable price (Resonable for a CPU is less than $800 to me) with the supporting OS and games. Why? Well currently a dual core Opteron 2.2GHz is $1300 and AMD and Intels road map says we will not see this on the desktop until quarter 3 to quarter 4. And in my mind it will take the next gen quad cores from AMD and Intel to pass the tri-core 360 CPU and the PS3 Cell processor in performance which is not due out until post 2nd quarter 2006. Then, I would be surprised if you have the OS and software to support it until 2007. This will all have to be benchmarked to be proven out but remember a dedicated gaming machine with the same performance is always more capable than a generic PC. Try running Doom 3 on a P3 700 and a Geforce3. I just wanted to point something out for all of you to ponder a bit.
This is the way I see it going forward for me: I will buy the 360 this Winter for the Xbox live features and their exclusives like Halo3, DOL and probably online games when available. I think it will be better positioned as my multi-media device as well. I will then buy the PS3 in the Spring of next year for what I believe will be the better box technically that will have great games and features with a Blue Ray DVD player as a bonus. I think this may give Sony the edge in the HD-DVD world because everyone with a PS3 will have a Blue Ray DVD to play HD-DVD…..great idea and if it brings me HD-DVD faster, I am very happy. Then once I see the multi-core processor being taken advantage of in the gaming world I will upgrade my PC to the latest in greatest. As for Nintendo, I think they missed the boat and will die. I read the Revolution is barely an evolution in terms of performance compared to the 360 and PS3. Wake up Nintendo or die. But hey maybe they will wake up and if they have something worth adding to my collection I will have it too, but I am not holding my breath….
Also to the guy that thinks that investing $350 - $500 into one of the next generation consoles is a waste of money needs to have his head examined. Hell I spent more than that on my 6800 ultra alone. Yes I can upgrade my PC again but it will cost MORE THANT DOUBLE THE TOTAL COST OF A CONSOLE! The console has caught up and my bet is that it will take at least a year or more for the developers to even learn how to fully utilize the power in the next generation console.
Nothing to argue about this is going to be a great generation for us gamers!
Are you trying to be an expert here? If you were really interested, you should study a little bit more and be quiet, when you dont know things. You said "there are basically no HDTVs on the market that will accept 1080p input stream".
Yes, there are some tvs that can accept 1080p.
No you dont need a Sony set. You can go, for example, to Sharp site and buy one (Sharp’s LC-45GD4U is a breathtaking 45" widescreen). Yes it is expensive, but we are not discussing price here.
I dont care which one will be the more powerful console, but it seems you never played anything in 1600x1200, 1920x1080 in a pc monitor and know nothing about 1080p and 1080i. We all know, and Sony too, that 1080p is not common or you think you are the only one? Sony is thinking ahead. Do you think that bluetooh is useless too?
Learn a bit more and get a life!
By 2006 you'll definitely see a big drop in the price of CRT HD sets. Particularly from Samsung who is working on CRTs that are more shallow. Now that Sony and Samsung have a cross-licensing agreement I'm sure this will be the norm. Hopefully the popularity of the next gen consoles will speed up this transition to HD.
Then perhaps we'll start seeing affordable TVs that can actually display 1080p. Otherwise it will be a luxury not many could afford.
I don't think the cost of HDTV's is that much of an issue, PS3 will output to PC monitor/s so a decent quality single (or dual) monitor setup would be a cheaper way of getting quality visuals (has to be better than the old 640x480 PAL crt I'm having to use my PS2 on at the mo).
I don't know if I'll have saved enough dosh for both a PS3 & a HDTV set, but the white PS3 would look soooo nice sitting next to my beautiful white BENQ !!!
I am interested in this issue of 1080i vs 1080p on the Xbox 360. That is a great point that there are basically no HDTVs on the market that will accept a 1080p input stream. Is Sony going to introduce some new TV sets around the same time as the release of the PS3 that will accept the PS3's 1080p output? Maybe they are hoping to drive purchases of these new 1080p-accepting Sony TV sets with the PS3.
On the other hand, Microsoft announced a partnership with Samsung for the Xbox 360. Samsung's new 1080p TV sets are not going to accept 1080p input streams initially. They will only upconvert other signals (720p, 1080i, etc.) before being displayed. Maybe this is why Microsoft did not say anything about 1080p for the XBox 360. The question is whether the Xbox 360 will be able to output 1080p at some time in the future to take advantage of TV sets that will accept 1080p input streams.
Well put. We're going to see more and more digital convergence in the living room. I think that's great because it is a more comfortable place to share technology with friends and family.
The inclusion of high def (FINALLY!) in nearly all future titles gives console gamers what PC gamers have had for a long time. The XBOX has done some good things but there just aren't enough 720p games out there.
Late 2001 when XBox was released:
XBox - 733 Mhz Pentium III (128kb L2 Cache), 64 MB Ram, GeForce 3 video
Good PC - 2000 Mhz Pentium IV (256kb L2 Cache), 256 Mb Ram, GeForce 3 video
As can be seen, the PC was already far ahead of the XBox hardware wise upon release.
Late 2005:
Xbox 360 - Triple core 3.2 Ghz PowerPC CPU, 512 MB Ram, Future video
Good PC - Dual core 4 Ghz Pentium?, 1024 Mb ram, Future Video
Now u should be able to see that Xbox 360 should stand toe to toe with the best hardware out there. But with its efficiency as a console, it will dominate the PC graphics wise for a while.
Guess what too. The best video card out when the Xbox 360 is released will cost MORE than the Xbox itself. The same goes for the CPU as well. That should dispell any myths about the PC being more cost efficient hardware wise. As well, it should enlighten people to the true capabilities of the new consoles. The developers just need time to harness this hardware and get effienct at using it. If the PS3 actually does turn out to be much more powerful than the Xbox 360... WOW... prepare for some even more AMAZING games.
The orginal XBox had some impressive hardware considering that it was a console. The next gen consoles have impressive hardware period.
Well put. I agree with all u said basically. Developers are relying on technology instead of gameplay. But it is also like the movies, it gets harder and harder to come up with new and innovative ideas when there are so many out there. Its like some kid starting to watch movies today, they aint seen all the old stuff so even though this new stuff is basically the same, its just as cool cuz they new to THEM.
He wasn't ragging on the guy, only making a point. He wasnt bragging either, just stating a fact of a difference. He didnt say for sure that he had a Porsche unlike you who is part of the "Gold" club. Ure the one who looks like a snob trying to come down to the everyday person's level by stating that u also own some "common" cars. Ure the one ragging and now im ragging on u. Get lost and keep ure "gold club porsche" comments to ure porsche car forums. Get lost.
Kill Zone 2 looks like pre quake 2 graphics? From the presentation it doesn't look like Quake 2 graphics it looks more like Battlefield 2 graphics.
I'm curious to those folks who say FarCry looks fricken awesome. I agree the game looks awesome, but the question is how much did you have to spend on your PC to make it look awesome? Seriously. Spill the cost of your PC. It's amazing the bashing of consoles and supremecy for PC's. They are two different price markets. Why even bother comparing the two?
#79 WoW! I think you mis-read what #77 was conveying. From what I read it is he was making a point that the people down playing consoles and glorifying PC's are people who will spend an arm and a leg to make PC games look stellar. Hence his Porsche vs Focus rant. I think you didn't read what he said and took it too literaly and didn't read between the lines of his rant.
Personally for me, I own a HD TV and have HD viewing via DirecTV. If the games can utilize 1080i and run extremely well. I'll take that over PC gaming anyday. Who wouldn't want to relax on the sofa with a wireless controller relaxing playing games? Sitting a foot from a monitor couped up in a chair... Well to each his own.
To #78:
What percentage of people have HDTV sets right now? Definitely not the majority. How many manufactuers are pumping out 1080p tv;s? Not many. 720p and 1080i will be the big sellers until the 1080p can be produced and then sold cheap enough. Trust me, that wont happen for another 2 to 4 years. And when they do start selling them, it will take a while before they make up a decent percent of the market. So with all that said, 1080p will take a MINIMUM of 4 years to even gain 20% of the market. U know what happens in that time? The X-Box 720 with 1080p resolution. 1080p has been thrown out by sony for marketing hype only. Don't be another sheep please.
"But from a person that has owned a number of consoles over the years (more than I would like to admit) At this point and time you can't beat the graphics on a PC."
Sorry to bust ure bubble but things are changing. When the XBox is released, hardware power alone, it will be better than 95% of the PC's that people buy. Now if you factor in the efficiency of the console it will be better for games than 99% or any system you can buy. If you could buy a system to reproduce what a console could do it would cost you 10x as much.
A good vid card will cost you 300. In two years you will have to buy another vid card for a PC to keep up with a console. After that you will most definitely have to upgrade other hardware such as cpu, ram, mobo... In the end, the PC will cost you a lot more, don't fool ureself. And why the harsh battle between the two. Its about the games fools. I like PC games better than console games so chose that more expensive route, big deal.
"the fact of the matter is that console development houses are very much of the write once, compile many mindset"
That's simply not true. Many development houses are devoted primarily to one platform.
Some are completely exclusive to one platform (Gran Turismo, Ratchet & Clank), others have the port work done by a completely separate development group (Halo), and others focus on one platform and handle porting after the fact (GTA, Silent Hill, Final Fantasy, ...).
Look mate, out of all of the games out for consoles right now, maybe about 5% (prolly less)of the games are console specific. Infact, I think you listed almost all of them. Developers do have a "Write Once/Complie Many" mentality and the proof is in the games that are out right now. Look at GTA3 & Vice City! They could have looked soooo much better on the Xbox but it didn't really.
It's the games that really matter and most of them are going to look exactly the same on both consoles as developers will always code for the console with the lesser specs. Since the games are going to be the same, the 360 wins it for me cos it's coming out 6 months earlier and Xbox Live kicks ass.
From what i can see, and what i have experienced in the past, to sell a product you have to create hype, and put one over your competitor. We dont know for sure if playstation 3's power is more than that of xbox360's, neither do we know the opposite. Only time will tell which is more powerful, but at this level does the slight difference in power even matter. Im not sure it does. Anyway all i can say is, cant wait till they are both released, and we get to see games we dreamed about.
The PS3 and Xbox360 will be the FIRST consoles in history to have equal or slightly better graphics then the PC at launch. Which will quickly vanish by the time these consoles are out after their first year, which will have very few next generation games as next gen games take much more development time and cost to develop. Remember every increase in graphics is usually costing gamers decrease in game originality and replay value of games. If you dont believe that, witness the amount of sequels and retreads of existing franchises for next-generation. As a long time gamer at heart next gen doesn't look as great to me for someone who's been gaming since 87 from his first 8-bit NES and seen countless games, from Nintendo, Sega, MS, and Sony and all the other third party developers over the years.
The fact is, other then graphics, gaming is stagnating in a big way. Very few games are truly innovative today, gameplay depth and game mechanics have taken a back seat to graphics and shorter games, or copious amounts of filler as in RPG's.
The only games I've been remotely blown away by as a longtime gamer were MGS3 and God of war and the original GTA3. Almost everything else has been retreading old paths, ad infinitum, how many fucking racing games do you need, how many shallow hack and slash RPG's? How many JAFPS (just another FPS?) like halo do we need? I mean really the level of HYPE coming out of the game industry compared to what it is delivering is growing. Graphics alone does not equate to a fun game.
But as long as new people are born who have no gaming history, there will always be new people to be enchanted an enraptured by what they have never experienced in prior video game history.
#77 No, sorry, Killzone 2 is more Quake 2-era graphics, and can't hold a candle to FarCry. There is a world of difference between low-res TV graphics of consoles and what a PC can deliver. Sure there is a price difference, but the quality difference is even greater.
lol ..
personal opinion people
don't argue over the freakin internet just coz u don't like some1 else's opinion.
Technologically, i think that Ps3 is gonna be better, although i don't knw nething about the stuff they talk about .. lol
yerh , my pC's kinda crappy .. out dated for 5 yrs or so ... similar to my PS2!! haha
i'd get a console over a PC neday .. i'd prefer it coz you don't have to mess around figuring out what's wrong with your computer, in the end it's a virus then u delete the virus which stuffs up ur computer
than it'll stuff up then u gotta format everything
.. too much things involved for playing games .. and it costs lest then a new computer!!!!!
To post #77 - As a Porsche owner and part of the Gold Coast Porsche Club of America (PCA) it's so rare that I come across other Porsche owners with such conceitedness as yours. If you really own a Porsche, you don't need to brag or boast owning one and that it cost much more than a Ford Focus. All cars are for all types of people with varying financial standings. I drive a Honda Accord and also a Minivan. The next time you are ragging on someone's car, you may not realize that he/she may have something in the garage, at home, that will blow yours away.
And by the way, real gamers play on both PCs and Consoles. Evidently you don't play on both hence you can't figure that on PCs you have a full keyboard and mouse for complete control. I like my console (PS2) as much as my PC but the PC definitely has the upper hand in overall performance while the PS2 is fun since you flick on the switch and just play. Two different things serving not two types of players but two types of moods...
Hey I have a feeling that these two machines are going to be HOT. Meaning temperature wise. In the PC world, we have cases with water cooling and fans that sound like a jet trying to cool the existing Athlon/Pentium processors and Nvidia/ATI gpus. Damn the Nvidia chip is going to have 300million transistors alone with more power than two 6800 ultras. How are they going to keep these suckers cool. Passively or actively? And what's my electric bill going to look like? My current gaming PC system is sucking 390 watts at max (my power supply is 550watts). If I were to build something like these two beasts for the PC, I'm thinking close to 600-700 watts. So how many watts are we looking at Anand? And what about long-term reliability due to the possible excessive heat and power requirement? I have a feeling that we are going to see a lot of toasted consoles on both sides. Maybe they will only suck 100 watts or so... and if so, how can this apply to the PC world??? I'm sick of the power requirements these days!!!
About HD and my personal choice: I have a feeling that most people writing about the HD formats don't even own a HD tuner for their HiDef TV and even worse, the folks who are yapping about it and don't own anything HD. Let's get it clear - from a qualatative stand-point (meaning what you actually see). My HD set and separate HD tuner will produce from 480p to 1080i. I can't solidly say one is better than the other considering that "i" or interlaced tends to be sharper but harder while "p" or progressive tends to be smoother and silkier. I personally think 720p looks the best since it has the smoothness (since we viewing the frames at full rate) while having enough resolution for big screens. 1080i is great if you have a large screen that requires space to filled. I'll take 1080p if it's offered since it would be the ultimate experience in both line resolution and the smoothness of progressive. Someone said the 360 can do 1080p internally but that means nothing since the output stage is one of the very most demanding and taxing processes. Even at this present moment there are $400 HD tuners and $4,000 HD tuners. The $400 HD tuner is fine but the $4,000 will give the best quality re-production and best image processing (ie. when you are watching a fast action scene or a fast camera pan, on higher-end HD boxes you will see less jaggies and pixelation - antialiasing).
Both boxes are going to be good for todays HD sets. But the Sony is going to have the edge to newer formats and 1080p is going to be a major format. I'm looking forward to it.
Ok so here's why I will buy the PS3: Reliability, more quality games, and known to be tested and tested and tested.
I won't buy an XBOX because: I had two friends with XBOXes and while each both work today, they run into occasional glitches which require powerup and down. Hmmm... sounds like Windows. It's a mini PC with serious mods. Duh! While I know that the 360 is a new breed, it would have to be really good and much better than the PS3 to win me over.
I've thought about buying one of the current XBOXes since they are pretty cheap nowadays but then I'd rather take $150 bucks and buy more PS2 games.
#67 has got to be the biggest moron on the face of this planet... This quote is complete bullshit:
"budget gaming machine together for like 500 bucks and the graphics eat the console alive"
Um... What about memory? What about the monitor? What a dumbass.
To number #74 the cost of the XBox was $349.00 when it debut. Not $500.00. I wish people would learn some facts before launching anything out here.
To #72... You obviously don't care about price. "FarCry is the greatest looking game". Um... Do you know how much you have to spend to make it look like the greatest game? Plus the fact you need a fast ass computer just to run it smooth? So your point is moot. Sorry but FarCry doesn't even compare to KillZone 2 in the graphics department.
Seriously folks. Don't say this game looks better or PC has better graphics. Get past the "hardware" and the games are what it matters. I can count on two hands the number of games that rule on PC. On a console I can count a ton of games that are awesome. I'm so sick and tired of people comparing PC to Consoles. They are marketed toward different audiences.
You know what I'm going to start bragging that my porsche beats your sorry ass focus. What? My porsche costs a ton more? Who cares. Because it seems like price doesn't matter at all when it comes to having good games. Pfffft.
AND - I really don´t understand all the talk about the PS3 being more difficult than the XBox360 (Did they steal that name from CNNs design360?? HaHa...) to program.
Actually I can see one SPE running Physics Code, another running the Sounds, a third doing Team 1, a fourth Team 2, and so on... Imagine!!!!
And also the XBoxer can do some simultanious stuff, but it does not have 7 specialized calculation engines at 128bit EACH. PERIOD!
Dom where are you from Mars? When Xbox came out its graphics were not better than any PC. Read some reviews and forurms. I guess you have never played an Xbox game and then switched over the the PC version. There is a big difference in the visual quality on a PC. I can't stand to play games on the Xbox because they look fuzzy. Even if I go back to my Hercules 3D Prophet 4500 running on my AMD 450 chip I got better picture quality on my monitor than you can get on a TV.Now if you want to spend 3000 buck on a HDTV with these new systems then ok sure they will look good maybe even better but the jury is still out on that atleast until 2006.Also you need to worry about burn in with some of those TVs using those consoles on plasma and LCD and projection TV's.In the mean time intell and AMD are producing dual core CPUS, the DDR memory is getting faster and so are the video cards. We shall see how much this thing costs when it comes out. I remember the Xbox costing about 500 when it first came out. My whole point about my video card is that it was an upgrade to an existing system which is cost effective. Sure it cost me 200 bucks but at 1200X1280 res you can't beat it. If I look back to 2001 when the Xbox came out I see the Radeon 8500 and the Geforce 3 and I can say with confidence that they produced much better graphics than the Xbox. I know the console and the computer are two different animals and there are advantages to both. But from a person that has owned a number of consoles over the years (more than I would like to admit) At this point and time you can't beat the graphics on a PC.
#67: No - not like two 6800s in SLI-mode (which´ll never reach the double power of one card anyway) BUT ACTUALLY faster than the double rendering power of One 6800U...
Hmm - TV does not look that bad, does it?????
I´d say NO current graphics card, even at a TVs low approx. 800x600 resolution, is capable of anything close to rendering the picture TV-Movie-like ....
Have I missed something or has all the Console fanboys not ever seen Farcry's graphics? I have yet to see another game that can even match Farcry's graphics. And looking from the Demos on the consoles I can tell you Farcry is many times better looking, and guess what it's for the PC and not for a console and probably never will be.
Be carefull of what the specs say. Sony has been notorious for creating hardware that has bottlenecks in them, therefore allowing competent developers to get better over the life of the machine. The sony hardware makes sence as does microsoft for their layout.
Sony claims to have 300m tannies in their processor in which a lot of that is cache. Also is the 8th redundant core included in this count?. At this count it would seem the the 7 cores are very small. However would you say that a PowerPC 604 running at 3.2 gigs with a decent branch prediction be powerful? It wouldn't have a hgh transistor count.
Nvidia was right to separate the graphics from main memory as the data request from 8 cores could slow down response times.
Microsofts 3 CPU system and shared memory architechure would seem to be a more accessible system to code. I expect that each core is more powerful than a PS3 core. IBM must have related the advantages an disadvantage of each system to both microsoft and sony.
I think that Microsofts hardware is easier to develop (due to it's simpler layout), so at the start the hardware will show promising results. I think this is a smart move by Microsoft as once GPU fillrate and CPU power has been fully unitilised, the developer will tantilise people with special effects through prefecting the use of the programmable vector and shader units.
Bottom line is that the GPUs will be the decider of these architectures. Nvida and ATI are both neck and neck companies in terms of GPU performance. Nvida is better at producing feature rich GPUs and ATI GPUs are generally better on paper but had poor driver support. This will not be as big as a problem for ATI on consoles as the APIs are custom.
Both architectures are scalable as you can add more cpu cores or make each core more powerful. Also the graphic companies double performance every 18 months, while maintaining backwards compatibility. This thorectically means that by the time the next console is due, ATI and Nvidia should have GPUs that are 16 - 20 times more powerfuland CPU cores to match than the ones going into the PS3 and Xbox 360.
Room for thought anyone?
PS. What the hell was Sony thinking with those controllers? Are either controllers feature vibration?
Others have been over this. Computers are geared for entirely different purposes than consoles. When Xbox came out it killed the graphics of any PC. When the next generation console's come out they will do the same - and now the resolution differences you talked about won't exist. We'll have full screen HD resolution gaming. Sure you need to upgrade your TV but this is new technology, and won't ONLY benifit your gaming experience.
"And no way do you pay 2000 for a computer only a dork would do that. You can put a budget gaming machine together for like 500 bucks and the graphics eat the console alive."
Ummm... not when xbox or ps2 was launched you couldn't. Even in the PC you yourself claim to own (the "budget" 2500+ with a 6800 GPU) - that has a graphics card costing more than half the price of an xbox at launch, and most likely more than half the price of the next-gen xbox360.
"Sony said that their graphics system is equal to two 6800 Ultras running on SLI well how much do you think that is gonna cost you?"
Not as much as even one 6800 ultra ALONE costs right now. I can't see them charging $450 for a console.
Well a computer has much better graphics than a console. MUCH BETTER! Ok Poo bad investment is a console! You can upgrade computers and they give you more years of enjoyment. As prices come down you can up grade much cheaper. And no way do you pay 2000 for a computer only a dork would do that. You can put a budget gaming machine together for like 500 bucks and the graphics eat the console alive. Example DOOM III on the colsole graphics will make your eyes bleed. Play it on a computer with just standard graphics and they are much better than a console. What kind of res do you get on a TV? 400x600?? or worse. I get 1280x1200 on my computer screen with AA and AF enabled and that is with a budget 2500+ amd system and 6800 graphics card and I still have room to upgrade. Sony said that their graphics system is equal to two 6800 Ultras running on SLI well how much do you think that is gonna cost you?And lets say consloes finally did catch up with the computers well if you want the best picture on your tv you will need a high definition TV or something that can equal a good monitor. HOW MUCH IS THAT GONNA COST YOU! Much more than a computer ever will! We shall see. Also computer games are cheaper and their prices drop sooner. Also you can add mods to them. And a lot of games are free! Etc. Etc. Etc. You get what you pay for!
Bahhh... computer games are only RTS and FPS i really like RTS but i do like another kid of games too thats why you should buy a VideoGame to play Devil May Cry, Dead or Alive and other, wake up people, games arent just HL2 The Sims and Doom :p
Xbox360 seems to have this issue nailed. Lack of decent (or any) AA on the PS3 could be a fatal flaw. Obviously, they're working on early development hardware at this point, but if the system had solid AA I believe they would have at least mentioned it, but the silence on this said volumes.
I suspect we'll hear a lot of speculation and some rumored "solutions" just like we did for the PS2, but in the end we'll be playing with jaggies.
Why are some of you ALWAYS comparing PC gaming to Consoles... Yeah I can see the comparison between a $350.00 dollar device to a $1600.00 dollar device. Some people are just plan stupid.
Bad investment. Well lets take a look on how much a computer cost. For a good computer its around 2000. and a console is 300. Now all the games that come out for the console work perfect. and the games that come out for the computer work for about 3 months until new games come out and you want a better computer. And about performance. look most computers cant run doom 3 with everything on high. but we have the XBox running it fine, and that is a 700 mhz processor with a geforce 3. Yes there is a smaller frame buffer. but with the new consoles and the specs its going to run extreamly fast for along time. So if your all about games get a console.
Don't waste your money! Just buy a good computer they beat the crap out of those consoles any day! At least you can upgrade your computer you can't do jack with a console. Bad investment.
#35 Sorry for the later response, but having multiple CPU's does not make threading any easier. You still have to split your execution into threads and you still have to synchronise those threads because even if a thread runs completely uninterupted on a partichular core (no task switching) branch mis-predictions, cache misses, etc will cause the threads to run at different speeds at different times and so you must still do the work to synchronise them (which is the hardest part of multithreading in my experience)
I think they MS wanted to announce first so Sony would feel it would have to obviously up them. I feel though that MS might have come to the table with some "Smaller" figures to make Sony think they are winning. MS and Sony have very smart maketing and strategists and who really knows right? But it just seems all too surreal that they'd be so very similar.
As I see it, PS3 is going to have Blu-Ray and
more power for physics calculations. Otherwise
the consoles are fairly evenly matched (even in transistor count). Actually, Xbox 360:s three symmetrical cores might be better for AI and gameplay (?) processing.
The number of controllers (probably) tells you nothing, it should be relatively easy to connect 20 wireless controllers. I would expect Microsoft to bump up some specs, like the number of controllers, 1080 p support (easy with HDMI/DVI, and the ATI chip should be ready for it), and possibly some megahertz more to the graphics processor (Sony has given a target, 550 MHz ?).
It seems to me that the graphics side of PS3 wasn't as it was originally imagined, otherwise I don't really understand why you would put two different very fast memory interfaces in it. When did NVidia come aboard? Seems to me NVidia didn't have time to design a chip for XDR. (Also dual HDMI is easy to do when dual outputs are in most graphics cards. I wouldn't expect any good usage for it.) Also, "The RSX can render pixels to any part of memory, giving it access to the full 512MB of memory of the PS3." sounds like not wanting to admit it has only 256MB of usable video ram.
Even Microsoft's one teraflops figure was overhyped, and now Sony comes with two teraflops. In real world, both should fall far, far behind that figure. (NV possibly has more math units in its shader pipes, but can you efficiently use them?) It may end up being very difficult to recognize the differences between X360 and PS3 games. And many times they should be exactly the same.
Sony should have enough time to redesign their controller if people complain too much about it. Looks strange, but for me the PS/PS2 controllers are uncomfortable too.
I might expect MS to catch sony somewhat in the market share this round (with Sony still leading), but Sony would have to mess up badly for MS to take the lead.
PS3 = very sexy.
controller = not hot, but remember Sony is in middle of dispute with controller company, so thats why thay could not show DualShock 3.
Please watch the PS3 live event video at gamespot. The specs are absolutly kikass and makes xbox360 look like xbox 1.5.
If youre to buy a similar spec PC in a year, it would cost 2500$, but could get ps3 for maybe $299!!
I defenetly like xbox360 live.
Whats up with 3 ethenet ports on ps3?
1080p will look kikass on my 24inch Dell 1920x1200!!
and ya.
no god but god
mohomad god messanger.
Mohammad was good man.
But dont forget moslems like Jesus and Moses as much as Mohammad. Moslems belive in Virgin Mary, Jesus's reserection etc. Did you know?
#49, Agreed! The XB360 vs. PS3 really boils down to an ATI vs. nVidia debate for hardware enthusiasts and we know which of the two companies is paying the bills here!
Just looking at the title of your PS3 article, "Sony introduced the Playstation 3 today...and wow..", shows your pro-nVidia bias. Where was the emotion in the XB360 article title?
So, I guess it's safe to assume your pro-nVidia bias spills into consoles now too?
#34
The PS3 has 256MB of vram & can use any part of the 256MB main memory (thru memory sharing of somesort).
360 - eDRAM 10MB + 512MB shared with main memory
PS3 - 256MB GDDR3 + 256MB XDR main memory shareable with GPU
not a big difference here it would seem. Obviously the way PS3 uses its memory is not neat & VERY costly, but it is effective.
BTW, if u wanna know how the Cell (PPE/SPE) works , just check www.research.scea.com
#45
Toshiba just announced a new 3-layer HD-DVD that's supposed to solve the capacity problems HD-DVD had vs Blu-Ray. Talks? ah.....WHAT TALKS?
www.toshiba.co.jp/about/press/2005_05/pr1002.htm
Is there any concern about the Blu-Ray drive's compatibility with next generation movie discs, since Sony and Toshiba were in talks about adjusting the format to a single format. I assume it will be compatible, but haven't heard anything.... any ideas/ thoughts about that?
Ok, I like the look of both consoles TBH, I have both PS2 & XBOX at the moment, thank goodness for the variety. I mean it does ultimately come down to game catalogue things like the "Halo" Factor on xbox, and games of equivalent quality on Playstation.
But the new PS3 Controller looks poor I have to say, I mean the original controller put a lot of people off the xbox at launch.
I think my concern is with these things, 2-3 years down the line when the optical drives fail like they on the current generation consoles, how easy/cheap is it going to be to source a replacement? Only time will tell
#34, PS3 has 512 MB total, 256 MB main memory + 256 MB video memory.
I don't think it's a bad deal, better have memory dedicated to video (just like on PCs), as it means video bandwidth won't eat into CPU bandwidth (and on a console, you'll quite certainly always be eating video bandwidth).
As for the size, it's already large enough, especially compared to the meager 32 and 64MB current console have. Remember that on consoles, you don't have to waste memory for the Windows OS, the .Net Framework, or other antivirus.
Just a little remark (especially 'bout PS3).
It's going to be out in 1 year. Do you know what kind of power we'll have in our PCs in 1 year ? What GPU ? What CPU ? What HDTV Desktop Set ? I don't. It's obvious that non only they have to tkink in advance, they also have to have in mind what the market will and what the market will ask for the next years (well, until next XBOX and Next PS) .
Oh, another note. Bluetooth PAD ? They will run out of charge in 4-5 Hours ? We'll have to re-charge them every night ? Naaah, bad move...
#27 problem is that with XBox360 you *have to* use multithreading in your code, which is complex. Time slicing isn't efficient performance-wise, with preemption each thread has to fight others for CPU time, I much prefer if they would cooperate.
If you have enough CPUs, each thread can reside on its own CPU, so no preemption, and no complex multithreading either.
The lack of branch prediction isn't really a minus, because we're comparing to an alternative that hasn't got branch prediction either, not to an Athlon or P4.
PS3 has only 256MB of RAM, while XBox has 512. Looking at PC games today I'd say both of these values are too small to handle a modern game. But XBox has an important edge here.
I'm not sure why everyone seems to think that the Xbox 360 has something like SPEs. It has 3 Altivec units, yes... and it looks like they're a variant of Altivec with more registers, but nowhere have I seen anything pointing to them being separate cores like the SPE. The PS3's PPE has Altivec as well, btw.
As for which one will perform better... I think we're going to have to wait and see. Either it'll be possible to split games into lots of specialized subtasks effectively (and the PS3 will win) or it won't (and the Xbox will win), or it'll be somewhere in between.
#28, touche. What *did* happen to the Saturn anyway? :) Didn't they have funny game things in the controllers themselves?
Software that's written for the Cell still has to be multithreaded, and the same synchronisation problems will still apply. Instead of having a bunch of homogeneous processors (like the Xbox360) there's going a bit more variety :) But I guess it does follow the traditional way...
#28 : Remember the Saturn. The saturn, given its parallel processor,is theoretically more powerful than PS1. But programming for efficiency in parallel processing is much more complex than on a single processing machine. MS, with 360, seems to choose the saturn way and Sony, with PS3, seems to choose the traditional way.
Taking advantage of more than one multi-purpose processing units means that the software (game) must be designed to run multi-threaded, and as a real time program, the developer must take care of the execution sync between the threads to make sure that the processing pipeline is balanced.
Taking advantage of multiple specialized processing units is already common practice today.
#27 true, you definately can't beat specialised silicon for these tasks - that's what DSPs are for!
But then again, from a programming point of view I think it'd be much easier to give the tasks you've listed to a few general-purpose CPUs than more DSP-like processors - that's what scheduling's all about! Once a task running on a CPU has had it's time slice, the next task just gets pre-empted...
It'll be harder to program the SPEs than regular CPUs as they lack certain important features, like branch prediction. And the main core on the Cell doesn't support out-of-order execution so it's going to take fancy programming/fancy compilers to get extract the full performance. Anyone who's ever programmed pixel shaders will know what I'm talking about here!
As you say both MS and Sony will have to make the multi-threaded nature of their hardware easy to access within their dev tools!
#21 Indeed!
There is only so much that is only efficiently performed on a general purpose CPU, and as far as games or video are concerned, a lot of tasks, from AI to physics only require brute force, and brute force is what specialized hardware excels at, practically, only scripting and some overall game logic really require a general purpose CPU, none of these too being performance critical.
An issue to have in mind is that keeping busy 3 general purpose CPUs won't be easy to do (programming-wise). One might think it would be worse with 7, but there is a difference: if you have a physics libraries that keeps busy 2 CPUs, an AI one that keeps busy 3 CPUs, a sound/voice one that take 1 CPU, etc. they will be much easier to reuse: they'll just take a "slot" (aka CPU), so you can assign each specialized library to a specialized CPU and be done with it.
On XBox 360, funnily enough, there aren't enough CPUs to have them dedicated to a specific task for a particular library, so libraries will have to share CPUs power (which means trouble, complexity and potential conflicts), while on PS3, you could go the dedicated route.
Real question becomes how MS and Sony will play that multi-CPU game in their development tools, MS may have more practice in that realm, but Sony has the best hardware potential.
#24, no he's right! What's the point in sending half-frames to a display that doesn't work in a naturally-interlaced format?
And I can't resist this - I'm starting work at Sony UK in August and I'm pretty sure I'm gonna be able to play with one of these things months before you guys :)
#24 - The 360 does full 1080p rendering internally. The issue is output, there are *no* consumer level HDTV sets that display that resolution, so therefore it wasn't hyped. Hyping a feature that has no real world use at this time is rediculous. I'm sure MS will update thier marketing to respond to Sony however.
#21: Actually as transister budgets have become less of an issue, everything is going towards general purpose processors. The limitation on general purpose CPU's/GPU's has always been transister counts, not how well something could do whatever. A general purpose CPU can do *everything* that a specialized core(like the SPE's) can do, plus a whole heck of a lot more. Its up to the programmer to take advantage of that power.
From a programming perspective I'd gladly take 3 full-fledged cores over any number of specialized SPE's. Those cores can be used for anything, not just certain situations that call upon functions that an SPE supports.
#23 - you're just crazy. :-) 1080p means 60 full 1920x1080 frames per second. 1080i means 60 1920x540 half-frame fields per second, i.e. the equivalent of 30 full frames per second, not 60.
Maybe I'm thinking completely wrong here, but from the GPU's standpoint, aren't 1080p and 1080i exactly the same? It's just the RAMDAC (or whatever finally does the D-A conversion, if a digital connection to the monitor is used) interleaving the lines -- the heavy lifting of actually rendering the image is the exact same.
It's not like the GPU can just render alternate lines and automatically double performance. The GPU still has to calculate all 1080 lines for every frame, and a 1080i output would just be a simple matter of discarding half of them.
The reason for the 1080i and 1080p TV specs is purely for bandwidth reasons, for TV broadcasts and the like -- pre-rendered media. It has nothing to do with video games or other rendered-on-the-fly video sources.
In fact, I have no idea how Sony, TI, Samsung or anybody else could make an LCD, DLP, or plasma screen that would support 1080i and not support 1080p. CRTs, maybe, but even that's questionable. Okay, so maybe the HDTV decoders in the TVs wouldn't support the high-bandwidth 1080p signal, but the LCD/DLP/etc. chips themselves wouldn't know the difference.
I'm not sure why so many people (not only here) are ripping on the controller when it's only been shown from the front/top. Sure it looks funny. Sure it might suck. But how can you tell from a picture? What are the chances that Sony might have actually tested the thing for useability and comfort? It's the primary input device for one of their flagship products after all...
>>I just keep hearing people going on about the Cell outclassing the 360. I have yet to hear a single technical reason as to why that is.<<
It's entirely possible that it's because general purpose is not always better than specifacly programed devices. Jack of all trades, master of none.
Consider why for the longest time (and even now) a console was the best device to play video games on with the possible exception of FPSs. Because consoles were dedicated hardware. On a device with decidedly less power than we put in our home machines consoles could perform on par for some of the same tasks meerely because those consoles were designed specifically for that task.
It's kind of why you have a seperate GPU as opposed to an extra Pentium in your computer despite the pentium being a more powerful chip overall.
Your coments about a more complete console make no sense. What makes a more "complete" console? 7 controllers? 2 HDMI connections? A router? 1080P? It seems to me like sony just went after everything that looked semi appealing instead of cutting out the useless things and focusing on whats most important like content support and how about a usefull controller.
One other note: The 360 can do FSAA/AF without any peformance hit at all. Thats what the 10MB of embedded memory is for. I think the PS3 will have jaggies regardless as devs have to face a choice: smooth things out or take a perf hit. That choice does not have to be made on the 360.
I am failing to see why Sony has the superior CPU here. Their core is roughly similiar to the core MS is using, and it only has one of them. The SPE's are nice, but they are 'helper' cores, not full general purpose CPU's. They can only be utilized for specific functions, not for everything. By comparison the 360 has three general purpose cores each with its own SPE-like Vector unit. The versatility here should allow far more of the 360's power be easily tapped than the Cell. A dev could easily run a physics engine on one, AI on another, and the core game on the third. That option dosen't really exist on Cell...
I just keep hearing people going on about the Cell outclassing the 360. I have yet to hear a single technical reason as to why that is.
Well, it sucks that NVidia and ATI are not into the PC video card industry anymore. I mean seriously, how is one to go out and buy eight hundred dollars worth of SLI cards while knowing that some kid will be able to trump that a few months from now at Walmart. PC is the best platform for games hands down... everything else is silly stupid.
Why can't NVidia or ATI release a half decent price point on their cutting edge technologies if they are willing to give it to Sony for fifteen dollars a unit. How quick they forget the hands that feed them... PC gamers and PC users alone.
I thought the article was pretty reasonable except for the perceived huge advantage of the Blu-Ray drive. Both the Xbox and the PS2 have pretty crappy DVD drives. So I have very low expectations for the Blu-Ray drive in the PS3. My guess is that anyone who is serious about movies will get a stand-alone Blu-Ray or HD-DVD player. But who knows? With the increased focus on the idea of the entertainment hub, maybe Sony will surprise me with a high quality product.
Anything about streaming content off computers? Video? Audio? Pictures? I havent seen a lot of info.
The GBe hub will be nice, as I only have two ethernet port near my TV, and I'll probably end up with 3 or 4 network capable devices (ps3, tivo, mac mini, something else). It'd be better if it was a GBe switch though.
1080P TVs arrive in July (Samsung). The downside? They cant accept 1080p via HDMI. In fact, there are some questions about how to get 1080P into the TV (720p, 1080i will be upconverted). (see AVS forums) I was planning on getting one but now am considering waiting until 1080P TVs come out that can actually have 1080P input into it.
The CF slot is nice, 1GB CF cards are cheap. The question is, can I save game data to the CF card (instead of the overpriced sony memory cards and sticks).
What I'd love to see is Sony make a cablecard2.0 tuner, and transmit the singals (encrypted) to the PS3. It can decode 12HD streams, imagine watching several HD shows at once... mmmm
ok, ps3 gets xbox360 technically. Yet its PS3 again thats gonna have the market full of games. Im waiting for Nintendo Rev. see what that is all about. Then I will buy my console for the next 6 years till 2010 heheheh. But Ps3 will go so well with my PSP. HMMMMMMMMMMMM..
I fully intend to get all three consoles. I would love to figure out a way to get them to talk to each other, some sort of frankenstein cluster of 360's and ps3's...
Im intrigued at the support for 7 controllers....if indeed a game supported 7 players, and the screen was large enough to accomodate them, is the ps3 truly capable of rendering 7 seperate sceens at high resolution (im thinking this is where the double screen tech comes into play), and is the 7 a dirct correlation to the number of cores? Also, is the GPU up to that kind of strain? It would make for an interesting tech demo (I'd love to see 7 player super smash brothers on the ps3...with master chief as a playable character...ok that was sick im sorry)
"the fact of the matter is that console development houses are very much of the write once, compile many mindset"
That's simply not true. Many development houses are devoted primarily to one platform.
Some are completely exclusive to one platform (Gran Turismo, Ratchet & Clank), others have the port work done by a completely separate development group (Halo), and others focus on one platform and handle porting after the fact (GTA, Silent Hill, Final Fantasy, ...).
You can clearly see that IBM handed both firms the same stuff. That will come out. MS choses to use 3
PPE and the equivalent of 3 SPU (that will at least be able to do double precision math.) The PPE's are
slightly larger and that explains the 7th core.
As for 1080P, you can bet the 360 can do it. And for your info MS has anounced BC. Further it is almost ignorant for you not to know that MS has an HD optical player built into 360- good for at leat 2hrs of 1080i. But its strat is focused on what ever goes into a PC and dowloadable content (it or the PC will PVR at some point) to prevent redundancy. You can bet that Apex or the Taiwanese will own this next gen DVD market untill the online stuff takes over (the sooner the better.) And as for Sony's firm ware security stuff- its very likely nothing more than TPM 1.2- just like all this stuff it just PCIe rehash.
Great post, but I only have one area that I do not agree with you in, the completeness of the hardware. Microsoft this evening had a working unit on hand at their press release. On top of that, I'm not sold on the "specs" that are out there for the PS3... they just seem "over the top". I'm curious at how much they think they can charge for this thing? With all of the hardware, I would easily say $400-$500... That is really excessive for the video game market. Only time will tell I suppose...
- Creathir
The demos I saw seemed to be CGI cut scenes for the most part. If they actually controlled a character then yeah I'd believe it, but its alot of hype I think.
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Alv - Friday, July 15, 2005 - link
I need to point out most of the demos Sony gave out were CG's (Pre-rendered, you arent getting that in the real game) while most of the xbox ones were actully what the gameplay would be like in the game (ex, gears of war, godlike)Some of the xbox games shown were unimpressive, imo. Its still early in development, and the same can be said for ps3's games. However, ps3 is not yet capable of the killzone graphics: it has been confirmed to be only a "what we hope to be able to achieve" from the company that made the game.
This next comment may make me sound like a xbox fanboy, but I was actully saying to myself "im getting a freaken PS next time", when sega killed my dreamcast.
Sony has a record of promising great magical things, and giving you less (still good, just.. not the godly magical unicorn of doom it puts itself out to be)
[from http://forums.g4tv.com/messageview.cfm?catid=8&...]
"Their original competitor, Sega, withered in the face of a blitz of fancy imagery and “more power” claims laid out on impressive-looking spec sheets. The truth was that Sony launch titles looked barely better - or in some cases worse - than Dreamcast titles, in spite of what was supposed to be a significant power edge, but Sony had successfully sold “more power”, and gamers bought into it. Sega, practically broke and with no third-party support, couldn’t afford any significant advertising to counter the Sony hype machine. Much later, it was found that the 75 million polygons per second that Sony had claimed for the PS2 on their original spec sheet was actually closer to 7 million in actual applications, but by then, everyone already had a PS2 and no one cared they had stretched the truth."
If you want to read more about that, to either rip it apart, or know more about it, the link was provided for you. I have to say: with the hard drive not standard, and the once-promised router ability gone... I can really see more going as time passes by.
Although I was orginally going to get PS... hell, I waited from sega's bankruptcy notice to egm's xbox360 edition for it... xbox seems more appealing to me this time around. Before anyone starts attacking me on this, let me explain:
1) The games - Yes, I admit, playstation has a track record of games. Not JUST games, quality games. These are often produced by 3rd parties, they actully move around from console time to time (these include franchaises like GTA, Final Fantasy (already developing for xbox360), and hell, not that they are moving, but even the developers of killzone COULD move, if microsoft were to offer them a huge wad of cash.
So Ive just said "woohoo, ps has more games!" that being said, this time around, xbox has grasped a large developer base, and will be comparable to the ps3. Backwards compatability isnt a concern to me, it may be for some people, but personally, I wouldnt buy a new system to play old games. Novelty, at best, imo. For example, my cousin, a big sony fanboy, has not touched a single ps1 disc since getting ps2.
ONLINE PLAY. Thats the real selling point to me in terms of games. I understand that playstation will be able to have online games as well, but it will not be implemented as well. Im sorry I dont have the exact interview on hand, but sony said online play wasnt a big factor in this generation for them basically. Xbox live isnt really a big investment: prehaps to people who play pirated games, 50 dollars a year is a bit hard to swallow: HOWEVER, most real online games come with a 1 or 2 month suscription to xbox live... you shouldnt really be paying alot :) [that was based on my own experiance with stickers on bestbuy stuff]
Xbox live will let you play with the type of people you want. For example, Im a more "play for fun and to unwind" kinda guy, so I wont get paired up with your typical "lolololol I was with your mom" people, and I wont be paried with the people with godlike skill... unless of course, I set that I want to. Stuff like that is important to me - if its important to you too, you may want to consider looking at the xbox a little bit. You'll be trading off a bit of games, but youll have online play for most games, as well as a centralized place to have a community: kinda like if Steam worked with every single game, had video confrencing, phone calls, HDtv, and stat monitering. Gamewise, itll lack the huge japanese support, but take a look guys: it wont hurt you to be more informed, whether it means you may convert over to xbox, or you have new things to talk bad about the system with.
2)Price - Xbox is predicted to be 300 at launch: half a year later, you can expect 30-50$ price drops. Reasonable, history has shown that. PS3 on the other hand, will be much more expensive: in responce to predictions of 499, sony said they wanted people to say "ill work harder, ill put in more hours for it" Which is a strong indication it may be true... or even more.
When it comes down to it, you can argue the price is becasue the ps3 is a stronger system. You need to think about the facts right now. For this, I urge everyone to ignore all demos they saw, both xbox and ps3. The xbox ones are pre-release, its not fair that they are compared to "what the developers of the game HOPE to do"
3) Controllers - Im not here to ramble about the ps3 controller. There are enough people who throw that argument. Im just here to talk about how some people precieve bluetooth controllers to be better than microsoft's own technology. Honestly, the two are pretty much the same: bluetooth is just a name when it comes down to it. Microsoft's technology may even be more impressive, considering the frequency jumping they can do to keep a signal in case of problems or something. Battery life was reported to be bad for the bluetooth controllers, but I sure as hell am not going to be basing a decision on something like that: let alone the fact microsoft's could be just as bad. Guys, no real advantage here, seriously.
Ps3 can handle 7 controllers. May be good for some party games, but I havent seen a cool party game for ps as of yet. Nintendo seems to be the kickass party game maker. In any case, its an advantage over xbox. How often will you REALLY need 7 controllers is beyond me... but if you frequently do... and in those situations, no one can bring another PS in as well =/ Seems unlikley to me, but hey, its your life, not mine. Do what suits your life the most. I just have no use for it, doesnt mean its not handy
4) Fresh (promising) titles - Xbox is coming up with a whole list of new games (not *gamename* *version 2/3/4/5*) and many of them look promising. I sure will appreciate this: the same old brands are getting old... and I only have a dreamcast as my current gen console... even the amount of those games at friend's houses make them old. Of course, sequels are cool too. Ps will have its killzone and gundam battle assult that lure me... but i really am not swayed by this enough. Mircrosoft is putting out lots of good games, has a great rpg lineup (hehe, gotta dig deep to find em though) and their traditional strong points.
4) "But mircrosoft is an evil corporate giant!"
The xbox is developed in some out of nowhere suburbs in a crappy location. They are not like the traditional microsoft offices. the xbox is hardly the evil giant that bullies others: read developer comments, they have nothing but praise for the amount of support microsoft is giving them. The xbox is supporting 3rd party devices into the design: even the ipod (if you work in microsoft WMP sectors and are seen at work with an ipod, you are fired, apperently.) Thats some real commitment to work nicely with everyone, and not just microsoft friendly things, isnt it? :)
Snoogit(.com) - Wednesday, June 8, 2005 - link
Just looking at it from a purely marketing and hostorical standpoint (summary is at the bottom for those unwilling to real all I have to say):One thing to note; rarely have console makers lasted 3 console generations.
Sega had the Genesis, the Saturn (which hardly sold), and Dreamcast was a joke for sales.
Nintendo for all intents and purposes is the only console creator that has lasted longer then any other console producer, although their ability to stay in the set-top box console market is suspect. I would expect that Nintendo will move exclusively to the DS, which means all your mario and zelda games wont be set-top box console releases anymore.
In the case of Sega, they promised the moon, and delayed the DC for almost a year, and that killed the Dreamcast. Sony is promising the moon (much more exotic technology), and could possibly delay the release of the PS3, or strip it down for a US release, like it did with the PS2. (since there is only a vague date for its release, its more likely then Microsoft delaying the 360, since its tech is pretty much finished)
Microsoft on the other hand has had a brilliant, although bizaarre marketing strategy, and they should last one maybe two console generations.
I'm going ot make a bold statement, just looking at history, the PS3 will be the last major console put out by Sony and if history is right, the PS4 will be a huge disaster.
Now before you call me a MS fan, Microsoft wont be in the game much longer either. I can see them exiting the console market soon after sony. What will follow will be fully integrated systems, where there wont be just one or two manufacturers of consoles, but hundreds; all built on one standard.
In the end, consoles will be more like HTPCs, and less like consoles. What we are seeing is the convergence of the two mediums. Overall when Microsoft decided to enter the console market, it wasnt entering to make money off of video games, theres not enough profit. What its doing is growing its market base for Windows. I think with the Ps3 your seeing that microsoft for whats its worth, has dragged Sony right where they want them, onto Microsoft's own turf. Its really uite interesting to take a look and see how its all shaping out. If consoles become more like HTPCs, microsoft can get increasingly more profit from selling its OS to people like sony, and other PC makers and could abandon the console market entirely, which it wont until Xbox 4 anyway.
The PC will pull out the unlikely win for entertainment dollars, not by technology, but by being so similar to consoles that the idea of a seperate gaming machine is obsolete, the only problem is that PCs will have a unified structure with little to no deviation. So you wont be upgrading parts of your PC nearly as much, and all hardware will be stagnant for years at a time with no real innovation or change. This will result in games that will be more polished, and be made more efficient.
To summarize:
Sony has one more console after PS3
Microsoft has two after 360
Nintendo is likely done after the Revolution
Sega lived for 3 console generations (semi-4, if you include the lackluster master system)
Microsoft is putting Sony right where they want them, not to kill the PS3, but to elevate the HTPC as a unified center of entertainment and productivity for the home, which is one of the PS3's main goals.
Im not a big fan of any console, I just am looking at history here, and some interesting marketing strategies.
Anonymous - Monday, June 6, 2005 - link
ps3 gfx already look movie quality...visually,imoAnonymous - Thursday, June 2, 2005 - link
I'm pnearly positive that the Cell processor has 7 SPE's with the 8th not "disabled" but used strictly for "redundancy".Anonymous - Thursday, June 2, 2005 - link
"Instead of having a bunch of homogeneous processors (like the Xbox360)"Don't be a homo! Get a PS3!!!
*If you don't realize I'm joking, you need help.
addit - Friday, May 27, 2005 - link
First off I must admit I'm an xbox360 supporter, mainly because I've had countless bad experiences with sonys support. Like others, I too hate sonys proprietory stuff and have a general dislike to their shobby business practice.Now onto #108, You can't just go around saying that "WITHOUT DOUBT the PS3 has the bigger/faster engine overall. FACT!".
FACT! It's impossible to physically compare both systems at this stage so therefore it's no fact, it's you're opinion now isn't it? Also since you brought up the whole the ps3 has 2 teraflops and the xbox only has 1 myth...
Nvidia uses separate Vertex and Pixel Shaders, ATI uses a Unified Shader which does both Vertex and Pixel Shading using the same Shader. When Nvidia calculates performance, it totals both Vertex and Pixel Shaders running at peak efficiency. When ATI calculates performance, it totals the performance of the single unified shader (composed of both Pixel and Vertex shaders) at peak efficiency. So this means that in order to compare ATI's performance to Nvidia's, you would double the rated performance.
PS3:
CPU=0.25 TFlops
GPU=1.80 TFlops for both Pixel and Vertex Shaders
XBOX360:
CPU=0.18 TFlops
GPU=0.88 TFlops for Unified Shaders=1.75 TFlops for combined Pixel and Vertex Shaders
So the PS3 has a total theoretical of about 2 TFlops and XBox 360 has about 1.9 TFlops (counting Pixel and Vertex shaders separately, as the PS3 does).
I hope this clears things up a bit, the PS3 really isn't all that and xbox360 is basically neck and neck. To be honest in some ways the xbox360 has the potential to be more powerful than the PS3 in terms of gaming experience, but lets not get onto that shall we!
Adam
Gemini - Thursday, May 26, 2005 - link
Glad some people are just stating the obvious reason why they support which console. Even though only the MS ones have spoken up, it's still refreshing to see that the techno babble has wound down now....Anonymous - Thursday, May 26, 2005 - link
#117That is correct, and both Sony and MS are doing that. Why do you think there is no child labor laws in China, and the South East Asian Countries??.....Good ole Cheap Child Labor.....
Children and their families benefit by getting food on their tables with their meager salary of $1.00 an hour while we enjoy the products of their relentless labor. What a WORLD we live in!!!
Clauzii - Wednesday, May 25, 2005 - link
#115: Outsourcing and superceeding is two different things.Outsourcing is about "invent home - produce in cheap country - earn more - supercede the others"
royskie - Wednesday, May 25, 2005 - link
i think that sony will still beat microsoft in this next gen console wars.justjoe - Tuesday, May 24, 2005 - link
After reading #106's view I tend to agree with him. I'd say that I'm an MS supporter and here's my reasons why.I hate Sony to the core for making us buy all their overpriced proprietory stuff, their shoddy products which break down way too easily and their refusal to support compatibility with their competitors.
Also I hate Sony because I swear all the Japanese game developers are sleeping with them. It's a fact that national pride is all important for the Japanese. While you Americans are outsourcing everything to foreign countries, the Japanese will never allow a foreigner to supercede themselves.
As for MS, unlike Sony products where I can actually refuse to buy any of, I don't have a choice when it comes to operating systems..
davidc538 - Monday, May 23, 2005 - link
Im gettin a ps3 at debuteno - Monday, May 23, 2005 - link
"The 1080p output of the PS3 isn't that big of a deal for me. Given that basically the entire installed base of HDTVs right now only support 1080i, I seriously doubt we'll see a push to 1080p only all that quickly."1080p is hitting the market now and with the surge of new HDTV channels this coming year you will see much more 1920x1080p screens in home's by the release of PS3.
Just remember the difference 480P DVD's made over 480i content. Imagine that now in a Hi Def picture. :) Can't wait.
Last note, coming from 640x480 up to 1280x720p is going to be a VERY nice upgrade in consoles. Can't wait for my favorite racing games on the new consoles.
dynamius - Monday, May 23, 2005 - link
#106 gemini...thank god for someone like you who sees what's going on. at least on this site, a lotta people are technically knowledgable and know what they're talking about... unlike most game sites where idiot fan boys argue non-stop without a clue in the world what's going on.
i can't side with sony... i've hated them with a passion due to their lies and business practices and arrogance and proprietary formats... so i'm not getting a ps3 for the sony name alone, as with all their other products as well. but that's just me.
xbox 360 vs ps3? please... gotta wait til next year's e3 before any real debate is worthwhile. either way... both sony and microsoft are gonna rule this generation... about equal control of the market. both winners i know that much. i think xbox live will play a huge roll in where games are going...
gizzard - Sunday, May 22, 2005 - link
I guess in some ways the next generation of consoles are catching up with PC's. At this time I prefer PC's. Until they can make a console in a nice neat package that does everything my computer can do I aint interested. The console is a gaming machine and I am sure the next generation ones will do it well but it looks like you will need to buy a HDTV in order to enjoy it. In the long run it is gonna cost you no matter how you look at it. I would say the better choice is the PS3 since it plays the older games and those can be had for a song. Spend your money wisely a fool and his money is soon parted. I used to own an ATARI 2600 and you know how that ended.clauzii - Saturday, May 21, 2005 - link
Having none of the consoles at all, I´m BTW in to the pure fact of raw horsepower...Anonymous - Friday, May 20, 2005 - link
#104"ATI did clarify that although Microsoft isn't targetting 1080p (1920 x 1080) as a resolution for games, their GPU would be able to handle the resolution with 4X AA enabled at no performance penalty."
I think 1080p games will be rare. How many 720p Xbox games have you played? I'll be happy to get 720p in all 360 games.
clauzii - Friday, May 20, 2005 - link
It´s of course gameplay thats most important, but if the machine is faster AND have a good gameplay, it WILL be better??From the specs, Microsoft and SONY have been pretty open until now, and this is what they say:
Macrosoft XBox360 a little over a Teraflop total
SONY PS3: Around 2 Teraflops
It IS a matter of good development tools and good programmers, which will B better in the end but WITHOUT DOUBT the PS3 has the bigger/faster engine overall. FACT!
So we just have to wait, to see the right stuuf, and NOT some LAME XBox360 demo on NON XBox hardware - Buhhh Macrosoft. Wait if U can´t show....
Neila - Friday, May 20, 2005 - link
Didn't the Cell clocked at 4.8GHz?I think it's very likely that the SPEs are underclocked and one of them was "turned off" just temorary.
Just like PSP running on 222MHz out of the possible 333MHz, I bet the PS3 has some of it's potential locked at the moment. And having 3.2x7 upped to 4.8x8 may be useful one day.
With regard to the dual HDTV, I don't know if you noticed but there was a suggestion (not on the side) that it may be used with "pannels"... I'm not aware of similar technology avial. at this moment, but this may be very useful for custom-sized video walls, and then you will be able to enjoy the super-wide feature directly.
Gemini - Friday, May 20, 2005 - link
I've been reading all the hundred or so comments posted, and the majority of the posts seems to be trying to defend which console, XBox 360 or PS3, is better than the other. But none is actually saying the real reason why they are defending their choice except by spouting out unnesscessary techono babble that no one person will really care.If both MS and Sony are not exaggerating their specs, both their consoles are pretty on par with each other. It is just like a 500 HP car vs a 510 HP car...there is not much difference. Sure they both used different technologies, XBox 360 with 3 "General" CPUs and PS3 with ONE Cell CPU. XBox with ATI's GPU with the 10MB mem on the GPU and Nvidia's GPU with all its mysterious capabilities. But in the end, it doesn't matter what tech they uses....they are essentially both powerful consoles. So why are people still trying to best another saying one console will be better than the other?
The real reason why people are defending their choices by spouting techno babble without giving the real reason is because they don't want to admit that they are influenced by consumer loyalty. That's RIGHT!!! These people are either loyal to Gates' MS or the Japanese's Sony. I'm not afraid to admit it....I'm a loyal Sony consumer, so whatever opinion I have with these consoles, I will say the PS3 rocks XBox 360s World!!!
But why would I say that? When I was but a wee eighth grader, I was with my friends in the playground just doing nothing. Then suddenly one of my friends started talking about Nintendo and Sony PS1. We started talking about which was better. I was then a loyal Nintendo consumer, so my obvious reaction was that Nintendo was much better. Even though PS1 was better in tech than the SNES, and N64 was still rumored to be created. I still defended Nintendo by stating all these facts about the new Rumored console Nintendo was going to make. To make things short... I left the conversation still a Loyal Nintendolite. So a few years went by and N64 came out, but the hype was not as great as people thought. The reason is because Nintendo took too long to make N64 and thereby lost the majority of Game contracts with the good game companies. So most of the N64 games were all "kiddie" games and not that appealing to High School + people...which I was now. It was around the time when PS2 first came out....I think I played Onimusha 1 or something and I got hooked to the PS2 and spent all my money....400 BUCKS to buy one. But I still didn't yet become a loyal Sony Consumer...it was when I got into college around 2003 that I played FFX that I got hooked. I then started to play FFVII FFVIII FFIX and FFX-2....that I was so hooked to the FF series that I dl the emulations of them....and we all know that the FF series will probably not stray to XBOX...at least that's my opinion. And since there were other games I liked from the old PS1, I then became a strong supporter PS2.
Now Because both PS3 and XBox 360 are so on par with each other technologically, the only thing that is affecting my choice is because I want a console that can play my old PS1 and soon to be old PS2 games with one machine with the possibility that there will be games that are only for PS3 that are fun the same as my old ones are. So I don't care about the technology...I care about SONY and PS3.....
PS3 ROCKS.......so does XBox 360...but I don't care about MS......
Ghost - Thursday, May 19, 2005 - link
How many people are going to buy the console for the games and not bother with the specs? I have been waiting for the sequal to perfect dark since it was first realised, and I really enjoyed Halo/2.Anywho the problem I am seeing is what will happen if either company changes the specs even a mear 50mhz so ATIs chip 'runs' at the same speed of Nvidias, it could through the perfectly adapted games to fast. When ppl started to sell modified xbox boards with 1.4ghz chips and 128m ram, the games would run twice as fast, literaly, 2 seconds previously, became a second (in game play).
Really, both sound sweet, both are (lots)more powerful, my question is, why do you care for the specs so much? Its the game play im after.
DBLDREW - Thursday, May 19, 2005 - link
I have no doubt that the xbox will have no problem running at 1080p. It is listed as running at 1080i so we need to understand the difference between 1080p and 1080i. First off both 1080p and 1080i run at a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels. The p represents progressive and the I represents interlaced. So the difference between the 2 is that interlaced renders every other horizontal line and then the next frame it will only render the ones it missed in the last frame, while the progressive will render all horizontal lines every frame. So what we end up with while running on a ntsc system at 60hz is that the 1080i will have a resolution of 1920x1080 at 30 fps and the 1080p will run at 1920x1080 at 60fps. (pal systems will run at 25fps and 50 fps)So now we need to compare the xbox 360 with current technology to determine if it has the power to run 1080p. If we look at the ATI X850 and see what resolution that card is capable of running at, we can see that it can run at the 1920x1080 resolution at 120hz and the max resolution is 2048x1536@ 85hz. Now the x850 is significantly less powerful then the gpu of the xbox 360 so it is very safe to assume that it will have plenty of power to run at the 1080p resolution.
davidc538 - Thursday, May 19, 2005 - link
#102 Any smart or nongay person has decided to get ps3 or nothing buy nowdavidc538 - Thursday, May 19, 2005 - link
x360 will be gay and noone smart will buy itJimi - Thursday, May 19, 2005 - link
@98Just thought (you seem like a tech-head) you may be interested in this article. It reports of a possible revolution in PC architecture due to certain advantages of the cell processor (I honestly believed all the Micro$oft hype that you would never see a cell processor in a PC). This throws a little light on the matter;
http://www.blachford.info/computer/Cells/Cell0.htm...
The great Xbox 360 E3 hoax - Thursday, May 19, 2005 - link
The great Xbox 360 E3 hoax:http://gamesradar.msn.co.uk/news/default.asp?paget...
bsectionid=1586
[19/05/05 03:52]
People think they're sampling Xbox 360, but they're not – can you guess what they're really playing?
Entering the Microsoft E3 stand is a wonderful experience – green and full of Xbox 360 activity. Activity we will be covering with some kind of ninja passion over the next few days – and you won't want to miss any of it, regardless of what PlayStation 3 fanboys are telling you on web forums.
However, all is not as it seems.
Despite the reassuring presence of an actual Xbox 360 unit locked away in a visible compartment in the demo stations, and despite the games being playable using an Xbox 360 pad, it's not an Xbox 360 people are playing.
Poking our noses around the side of the demo station and peering through the vaguely camouflaging air grills revealed the shocking truth: behind the Xbox 360 unit sat two Apple G5 computers.
So, are alpha-stage Xbox 360 games really so powerful they need a combined effort from two G5 machines to properly run Xbox 360 software? Quite possibly.
And, we were told by a man demoing Kameo that the game was only running at 30% of Xbox 360's capacity! Kameo featured pleasantly detailed next-gen graphics and, more impressively, hundreds of on-screen characters, all displaying individual AI routines – all at 30%.
It takes two Apple G5s to power a 30% capacity Xbox 360 demo? This may well be the case and if it's true then this console's only just started – this is just the beginning. Its games, once developers have sat down and spent a decent amount of time with full development kits, will just get better and better.
So, it seems there are a few more rounds to fight in the PS3 vs Xbox 360 match-up before the winner can lift up its gloves with any true confidence after all.
DCstewieG - Thursday, May 19, 2005 - link
"With built in blu-ray, I think the PS3 will have a huge advantage over the Xbox 360 as it should be able to act as a HD-DVD video player"This quote is a bit off. I understand you were trying to say HD video but using "HD-DVD" gives it a totally different meaning. Unless they come to an agreement soon, the PS3 will play Blu-Ray only, and NOT HD-DVD.
It also looks to be entirely possible to stream hi-def video from WinXP with Xbox360...I think that's a huge selling point.
acheleus - Wednesday, May 18, 2005 - link
There sure seems to be a lot of hostility around something that I think is very exciting. On the other hand I probably see things a bit differently than do most.First off I have no biases at all as I own an XBox, PSP, and a high end gaming PC. You will note that I only own what is technically the best of what was out there. I am an early adopter and have had an HDTV for 5 years so I only bought the console that supported HDTV and looked good to decent on my TV. The PS2 was not even an option for me as it plainly looked like crap on my 65" HDTV. My PC is an AMD Athalon64 3400+ with 1GB RAM 6800 Ultra and a 20" flat pannel. I mention the specs of my PC to make a couple of points: first is to show that I have a very capable machine and I still play Xbox, and second is to point out that my PC is a year old and is still a high end gaming machine in today's market. And yes I got one of the first very hard to find 6800 ultras and paid a premium.
The point I am making about the PC is that prior to my last upgrade I would typically upgrade my PC every 6-8 months to keep it current. However, with the latest Processor only about 15%-20% faster a year later and I have the top of the line Graphics card still minus going SLI, I just don't see the point in upgrading. There are only a few games that challenge my system and I can run them at 1600x1200 with everything on and still get good performance. With that in mind I am not sure you will see the performance of the proposed next generation consoles on the PC in 6 months (XBox 360 release) to a year (PS3 release). I have no doubts that we will have the GPU but I don't see us having the processor power at a reasonable price (Resonable for a CPU is less than $800 to me) with the supporting OS and games. Why? Well currently a dual core Opteron 2.2GHz is $1300 and AMD and Intels road map says we will not see this on the desktop until quarter 3 to quarter 4. And in my mind it will take the next gen quad cores from AMD and Intel to pass the tri-core 360 CPU and the PS3 Cell processor in performance which is not due out until post 2nd quarter 2006. Then, I would be surprised if you have the OS and software to support it until 2007. This will all have to be benchmarked to be proven out but remember a dedicated gaming machine with the same performance is always more capable than a generic PC. Try running Doom 3 on a P3 700 and a Geforce3. I just wanted to point something out for all of you to ponder a bit.
This is the way I see it going forward for me: I will buy the 360 this Winter for the Xbox live features and their exclusives like Halo3, DOL and probably online games when available. I think it will be better positioned as my multi-media device as well. I will then buy the PS3 in the Spring of next year for what I believe will be the better box technically that will have great games and features with a Blue Ray DVD player as a bonus. I think this may give Sony the edge in the HD-DVD world because everyone with a PS3 will have a Blue Ray DVD to play HD-DVD…..great idea and if it brings me HD-DVD faster, I am very happy. Then once I see the multi-core processor being taken advantage of in the gaming world I will upgrade my PC to the latest in greatest. As for Nintendo, I think they missed the boat and will die. I read the Revolution is barely an evolution in terms of performance compared to the 360 and PS3. Wake up Nintendo or die. But hey maybe they will wake up and if they have something worth adding to my collection I will have it too, but I am not holding my breath….
Also to the guy that thinks that investing $350 - $500 into one of the next generation consoles is a waste of money needs to have his head examined. Hell I spent more than that on my 6800 ultra alone. Yes I can upgrade my PC again but it will cost MORE THANT DOUBLE THE TOTAL COST OF A CONSOLE! The console has caught up and my bet is that it will take at least a year or more for the developers to even learn how to fully utilize the power in the next generation console.
Nothing to argue about this is going to be a great generation for us gamers!
Victor Jr. - Wednesday, May 18, 2005 - link
@94Are you trying to be an expert here? If you were really interested, you should study a little bit more and be quiet, when you dont know things. You said "there are basically no HDTVs on the market that will accept 1080p input stream".
Yes, there are some tvs that can accept 1080p.
No you dont need a Sony set. You can go, for example, to Sharp site and buy one (Sharp’s LC-45GD4U is a breathtaking 45" widescreen). Yes it is expensive, but we are not discussing price here.
I dont care which one will be the more powerful console, but it seems you never played anything in 1600x1200, 1920x1080 in a pc monitor and know nothing about 1080p and 1080i. We all know, and Sony too, that 1080p is not common or you think you are the only one? Sony is thinking ahead. Do you think that bluetooh is useless too?
Learn a bit more and get a life!
Anonymous - Wednesday, May 18, 2005 - link
By 2006 you'll definitely see a big drop in the price of CRT HD sets. Particularly from Samsung who is working on CRTs that are more shallow. Now that Sony and Samsung have a cross-licensing agreement I'm sure this will be the norm. Hopefully the popularity of the next gen consoles will speed up this transition to HD.Then perhaps we'll start seeing affordable TVs that can actually display 1080p. Otherwise it will be a luxury not many could afford.
Jimi - Wednesday, May 18, 2005 - link
I don't think the cost of HDTV's is that much of an issue, PS3 will output to PC monitor/s so a decent quality single (or dual) monitor setup would be a cheaper way of getting quality visuals (has to be better than the old 640x480 PAL crt I'm having to use my PS2 on at the mo).I don't know if I'll have saved enough dosh for both a PS3 & a HDTV set, but the white PS3 would look soooo nice sitting next to my beautiful white BENQ !!!
Minuteman - Wednesday, May 18, 2005 - link
I am interested in this issue of 1080i vs 1080p on the Xbox 360. That is a great point that there are basically no HDTVs on the market that will accept a 1080p input stream. Is Sony going to introduce some new TV sets around the same time as the release of the PS3 that will accept the PS3's 1080p output? Maybe they are hoping to drive purchases of these new 1080p-accepting Sony TV sets with the PS3.On the other hand, Microsoft announced a partnership with Samsung for the Xbox 360. Samsung's new 1080p TV sets are not going to accept 1080p input streams initially. They will only upconvert other signals (720p, 1080i, etc.) before being displayed. Maybe this is why Microsoft did not say anything about 1080p for the XBox 360. The question is whether the Xbox 360 will be able to output 1080p at some time in the future to take advantage of TV sets that will accept 1080p input streams.
john - Wednesday, May 18, 2005 - link
@64 "Well, imo the Doom3 on a PC looks better than the Doom3 on the XBOX. Better quality on PC - Compare the Screenshots ;)"an xbox is $149. how does doom 3 look on a $149 pc?
Anonymous - Wednesday, May 18, 2005 - link
#88Well put. We're going to see more and more digital convergence in the living room. I think that's great because it is a more comfortable place to share technology with friends and family.
The inclusion of high def (FINALLY!) in nearly all future titles gives console gamers what PC gamers have had for a long time. The XBOX has done some good things but there just aren't enough 720p games out there.
Wilson - Wednesday, May 18, 2005 - link
Hardware info comparision for the uninformed.Late 2001 when XBox was released:
XBox - 733 Mhz Pentium III (128kb L2 Cache), 64 MB Ram, GeForce 3 video
Good PC - 2000 Mhz Pentium IV (256kb L2 Cache), 256 Mb Ram, GeForce 3 video
As can be seen, the PC was already far ahead of the XBox hardware wise upon release.
Late 2005:
Xbox 360 - Triple core 3.2 Ghz PowerPC CPU, 512 MB Ram, Future video
Good PC - Dual core 4 Ghz Pentium?, 1024 Mb ram, Future Video
Now u should be able to see that Xbox 360 should stand toe to toe with the best hardware out there. But with its efficiency as a console, it will dominate the PC graphics wise for a while.
Guess what too. The best video card out when the Xbox 360 is released will cost MORE than the Xbox itself. The same goes for the CPU as well. That should dispell any myths about the PC being more cost efficient hardware wise. As well, it should enlighten people to the true capabilities of the new consoles. The developers just need time to harness this hardware and get effienct at using it. If the PS3 actually does turn out to be much more powerful than the Xbox 360... WOW... prepare for some even more AMAZING games.
The orginal XBox had some impressive hardware considering that it was a console. The next gen consoles have impressive hardware period.
Anonymous - Wednesday, May 18, 2005 - link
#82Well put. I agree with all u said basically. Developers are relying on technology instead of gameplay. But it is also like the movies, it gets harder and harder to come up with new and innovative ideas when there are so many out there. Its like some kid starting to watch movies today, they aint seen all the old stuff so even though this new stuff is basically the same, its just as cool cuz they new to THEM.
Wilson - Wednesday, May 18, 2005 - link
to #79: NicolasHe wasn't ragging on the guy, only making a point. He wasnt bragging either, just stating a fact of a difference. He didnt say for sure that he had a Porsche unlike you who is part of the "Gold" club. Ure the one who looks like a snob trying to come down to the everyday person's level by stating that u also own some "common" cars. Ure the one ragging and now im ragging on u. Get lost and keep ure "gold club porsche" comments to ure porsche car forums. Get lost.
Me - Wednesday, May 18, 2005 - link
#81Kill Zone 2 looks like pre quake 2 graphics? From the presentation it doesn't look like Quake 2 graphics it looks more like Battlefield 2 graphics.
I'm curious to those folks who say FarCry looks fricken awesome. I agree the game looks awesome, but the question is how much did you have to spend on your PC to make it look awesome? Seriously. Spill the cost of your PC. It's amazing the bashing of consoles and supremecy for PC's. They are two different price markets. Why even bother comparing the two?
#79 WoW! I think you mis-read what #77 was conveying. From what I read it is he was making a point that the people down playing consoles and glorifying PC's are people who will spend an arm and a leg to make PC games look stellar. Hence his Porsche vs Focus rant. I think you didn't read what he said and took it too literaly and didn't read between the lines of his rant.
Personally for me, I own a HD TV and have HD viewing via DirecTV. If the games can utilize 1080i and run extremely well. I'll take that over PC gaming anyday. Who wouldn't want to relax on the sofa with a wireless controller relaxing playing games? Sitting a foot from a monitor couped up in a chair... Well to each his own.
Jon - Wednesday, May 18, 2005 - link
Great commentary. 24 is Awesome! Thanks for the coverage on E3.Wilson - Wednesday, May 18, 2005 - link
To #78:What percentage of people have HDTV sets right now? Definitely not the majority. How many manufactuers are pumping out 1080p tv;s? Not many. 720p and 1080i will be the big sellers until the 1080p can be produced and then sold cheap enough. Trust me, that wont happen for another 2 to 4 years. And when they do start selling them, it will take a while before they make up a decent percent of the market. So with all that said, 1080p will take a MINIMUM of 4 years to even gain 20% of the market. U know what happens in that time? The X-Box 720 with 1080p resolution. 1080p has been thrown out by sony for marketing hype only. Don't be another sheep please.
Anonymous - Wednesday, May 18, 2005 - link
"But from a person that has owned a number of consoles over the years (more than I would like to admit) At this point and time you can't beat the graphics on a PC."Sorry to bust ure bubble but things are changing. When the XBox is released, hardware power alone, it will be better than 95% of the PC's that people buy. Now if you factor in the efficiency of the console it will be better for games than 99% or any system you can buy. If you could buy a system to reproduce what a console could do it would cost you 10x as much.
A good vid card will cost you 300. In two years you will have to buy another vid card for a PC to keep up with a console. After that you will most definitely have to upgrade other hardware such as cpu, ram, mobo... In the end, the PC will cost you a lot more, don't fool ureself. And why the harsh battle between the two. Its about the games fools. I like PC games better than console games so chose that more expensive route, big deal.
Brynn - Wednesday, May 18, 2005 - link
"the fact of the matter is that console development houses are very much of the write once, compile many mindset"That's simply not true. Many development houses are devoted primarily to one platform.
Some are completely exclusive to one platform (Gran Turismo, Ratchet & Clank), others have the port work done by a completely separate development group (Halo), and others focus on one platform and handle porting after the fact (GTA, Silent Hill, Final Fantasy, ...).
Look mate, out of all of the games out for consoles right now, maybe about 5% (prolly less)of the games are console specific. Infact, I think you listed almost all of them. Developers do have a "Write Once/Complie Many" mentality and the proof is in the games that are out right now. Look at GTA3 & Vice City! They could have looked soooo much better on the Xbox but it didn't really.
It's the games that really matter and most of them are going to look exactly the same on both consoles as developers will always code for the console with the lesser specs. Since the games are going to be the same, the 360 wins it for me cos it's coming out 6 months earlier and Xbox Live kicks ass.
Well, that's my 2 cents anyway...
TrueTrue - Wednesday, May 18, 2005 - link
From what i can see, and what i have experienced in the past, to sell a product you have to create hype, and put one over your competitor. We dont know for sure if playstation 3's power is more than that of xbox360's, neither do we know the opposite. Only time will tell which is more powerful, but at this level does the slight difference in power even matter. Im not sure it does. Anyway all i can say is, cant wait till they are both released, and we get to see games we dreamed about.Anonymous - Wednesday, May 18, 2005 - link
Wow the ignorance in this thread is astounding.Lets face facts please:
The PS3 and Xbox360 will be the FIRST consoles in history to have equal or slightly better graphics then the PC at launch. Which will quickly vanish by the time these consoles are out after their first year, which will have very few next generation games as next gen games take much more development time and cost to develop. Remember every increase in graphics is usually costing gamers decrease in game originality and replay value of games. If you dont believe that, witness the amount of sequels and retreads of existing franchises for next-generation. As a long time gamer at heart next gen doesn't look as great to me for someone who's been gaming since 87 from his first 8-bit NES and seen countless games, from Nintendo, Sega, MS, and Sony and all the other third party developers over the years.
The fact is, other then graphics, gaming is stagnating in a big way. Very few games are truly innovative today, gameplay depth and game mechanics have taken a back seat to graphics and shorter games, or copious amounts of filler as in RPG's.
The only games I've been remotely blown away by as a longtime gamer were MGS3 and God of war and the original GTA3. Almost everything else has been retreading old paths, ad infinitum, how many fucking racing games do you need, how many shallow hack and slash RPG's? How many JAFPS (just another FPS?) like halo do we need? I mean really the level of HYPE coming out of the game industry compared to what it is delivering is growing. Graphics alone does not equate to a fun game.
But as long as new people are born who have no gaming history, there will always be new people to be enchanted an enraptured by what they have never experienced in prior video game history.
Z - Wednesday, May 18, 2005 - link
#77 No, sorry, Killzone 2 is more Quake 2-era graphics, and can't hold a candle to FarCry. There is a world of difference between low-res TV graphics of consoles and what a PC can deliver. Sure there is a price difference, but the quality difference is even greater.Shinji - Wednesday, May 18, 2005 - link
lol ..personal opinion people
don't argue over the freakin internet just coz u don't like some1 else's opinion.
Technologically, i think that Ps3 is gonna be better, although i don't knw nething about the stuff they talk about .. lol
yerh , my pC's kinda crappy .. out dated for 5 yrs or so ... similar to my PS2!! haha
i'd get a console over a PC neday .. i'd prefer it coz you don't have to mess around figuring out what's wrong with your computer, in the end it's a virus then u delete the virus which stuffs up ur computer
than it'll stuff up then u gotta format everything
.. too much things involved for playing games .. and it costs lest then a new computer!!!!!
nicholas - Wednesday, May 18, 2005 - link
To post #77 - As a Porsche owner and part of the Gold Coast Porsche Club of America (PCA) it's so rare that I come across other Porsche owners with such conceitedness as yours. If you really own a Porsche, you don't need to brag or boast owning one and that it cost much more than a Ford Focus. All cars are for all types of people with varying financial standings. I drive a Honda Accord and also a Minivan. The next time you are ragging on someone's car, you may not realize that he/she may have something in the garage, at home, that will blow yours away.And by the way, real gamers play on both PCs and Consoles. Evidently you don't play on both hence you can't figure that on PCs you have a full keyboard and mouse for complete control. I like my console (PS2) as much as my PC but the PC definitely has the upper hand in overall performance while the PS2 is fun since you flick on the switch and just play. Two different things serving not two types of players but two types of moods...
nicholas - Wednesday, May 18, 2005 - link
Hey I have a feeling that these two machines are going to be HOT. Meaning temperature wise. In the PC world, we have cases with water cooling and fans that sound like a jet trying to cool the existing Athlon/Pentium processors and Nvidia/ATI gpus. Damn the Nvidia chip is going to have 300million transistors alone with more power than two 6800 ultras. How are they going to keep these suckers cool. Passively or actively? And what's my electric bill going to look like? My current gaming PC system is sucking 390 watts at max (my power supply is 550watts). If I were to build something like these two beasts for the PC, I'm thinking close to 600-700 watts. So how many watts are we looking at Anand? And what about long-term reliability due to the possible excessive heat and power requirement? I have a feeling that we are going to see a lot of toasted consoles on both sides. Maybe they will only suck 100 watts or so... and if so, how can this apply to the PC world??? I'm sick of the power requirements these days!!!About HD and my personal choice: I have a feeling that most people writing about the HD formats don't even own a HD tuner for their HiDef TV and even worse, the folks who are yapping about it and don't own anything HD. Let's get it clear - from a qualatative stand-point (meaning what you actually see). My HD set and separate HD tuner will produce from 480p to 1080i. I can't solidly say one is better than the other considering that "i" or interlaced tends to be sharper but harder while "p" or progressive tends to be smoother and silkier. I personally think 720p looks the best since it has the smoothness (since we viewing the frames at full rate) while having enough resolution for big screens. 1080i is great if you have a large screen that requires space to filled. I'll take 1080p if it's offered since it would be the ultimate experience in both line resolution and the smoothness of progressive. Someone said the 360 can do 1080p internally but that means nothing since the output stage is one of the very most demanding and taxing processes. Even at this present moment there are $400 HD tuners and $4,000 HD tuners. The $400 HD tuner is fine but the $4,000 will give the best quality re-production and best image processing (ie. when you are watching a fast action scene or a fast camera pan, on higher-end HD boxes you will see less jaggies and pixelation - antialiasing).
Both boxes are going to be good for todays HD sets. But the Sony is going to have the edge to newer formats and 1080p is going to be a major format. I'm looking forward to it.
Ok so here's why I will buy the PS3: Reliability, more quality games, and known to be tested and tested and tested.
I won't buy an XBOX because: I had two friends with XBOXes and while each both work today, they run into occasional glitches which require powerup and down. Hmmm... sounds like Windows. It's a mini PC with serious mods. Duh! While I know that the 360 is a new breed, it would have to be really good and much better than the PS3 to win me over.
I've thought about buying one of the current XBOXes since they are pretty cheap nowadays but then I'd rather take $150 bucks and buy more PS2 games.
Dom is dumb - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
#67 has got to be the biggest moron on the face of this planet... This quote is complete bullshit:"budget gaming machine together for like 500 bucks and the graphics eat the console alive"
Um... What about memory? What about the monitor? What a dumbass.
To number #74 the cost of the XBox was $349.00 when it debut. Not $500.00. I wish people would learn some facts before launching anything out here.
To #72... You obviously don't care about price. "FarCry is the greatest looking game". Um... Do you know how much you have to spend to make it look like the greatest game? Plus the fact you need a fast ass computer just to run it smooth? So your point is moot. Sorry but FarCry doesn't even compare to KillZone 2 in the graphics department.
Seriously folks. Don't say this game looks better or PC has better graphics. Get past the "hardware" and the games are what it matters. I can count on two hands the number of games that rule on PC. On a console I can count a ton of games that are awesome. I'm so sick and tired of people comparing PC to Consoles. They are marketed toward different audiences.
You know what I'm going to start bragging that my porsche beats your sorry ass focus. What? My porsche costs a ton more? Who cares. Because it seems like price doesn't matter at all when it comes to having good games. Pfffft.
Clauzii - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
AND - just look at the salesnumbers for consoles compared to PCs - interesting stuff....I remember that the PC game industry is in a little low at the moment, as they actually don´t sell that many games???
TOO MANY PIRATES?????
I don´t know, but a PCs normal main workload is NOT games.
So both Sony and Macrosoft will get their peace of the big cake....again...
Clauzii - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
AND - I really don´t understand all the talk about the PS3 being more difficult than the XBox360 (Did they steal that name from CNNs design360?? HaHa...) to program.Actually I can see one SPE running Physics Code, another running the Sounds, a third doing Team 1, a fourth Team 2, and so on... Imagine!!!!
And also the XBoxer can do some simultanious stuff, but it does not have 7 specialized calculation engines at 128bit EACH. PERIOD!
Fish - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
Dom where are you from Mars? When Xbox came out its graphics were not better than any PC. Read some reviews and forurms. I guess you have never played an Xbox game and then switched over the the PC version. There is a big difference in the visual quality on a PC. I can't stand to play games on the Xbox because they look fuzzy. Even if I go back to my Hercules 3D Prophet 4500 running on my AMD 450 chip I got better picture quality on my monitor than you can get on a TV.Now if you want to spend 3000 buck on a HDTV with these new systems then ok sure they will look good maybe even better but the jury is still out on that atleast until 2006.Also you need to worry about burn in with some of those TVs using those consoles on plasma and LCD and projection TV's.In the mean time intell and AMD are producing dual core CPUS, the DDR memory is getting faster and so are the video cards. We shall see how much this thing costs when it comes out. I remember the Xbox costing about 500 when it first came out. My whole point about my video card is that it was an upgrade to an existing system which is cost effective. Sure it cost me 200 bucks but at 1200X1280 res you can't beat it. If I look back to 2001 when the Xbox came out I see the Radeon 8500 and the Geforce 3 and I can say with confidence that they produced much better graphics than the Xbox. I know the console and the computer are two different animals and there are advantages to both. But from a person that has owned a number of consoles over the years (more than I would like to admit) At this point and time you can't beat the graphics on a PC.Clauzii - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
#67: No - not like two 6800s in SLI-mode (which´ll never reach the double power of one card anyway) BUT ACTUALLY faster than the double rendering power of One 6800U...Hmm - TV does not look that bad, does it?????
I´d say NO current graphics card, even at a TVs low approx. 800x600 resolution, is capable of anything close to rendering the picture TV-Movie-like ....
Anonymous - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
Have I missed something or has all the Console fanboys not ever seen Farcry's graphics? I have yet to see another game that can even match Farcry's graphics. And looking from the Demos on the consoles I can tell you Farcry is many times better looking, and guess what it's for the PC and not for a console and probably never will be.Shawn - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
Be carefull of what the specs say. Sony has been notorious for creating hardware that has bottlenecks in them, therefore allowing competent developers to get better over the life of the machine. The sony hardware makes sence as does microsoft for their layout.Sony claims to have 300m tannies in their processor in which a lot of that is cache. Also is the 8th redundant core included in this count?. At this count it would seem the the 7 cores are very small. However would you say that a PowerPC 604 running at 3.2 gigs with a decent branch prediction be powerful? It wouldn't have a hgh transistor count.
Nvidia was right to separate the graphics from main memory as the data request from 8 cores could slow down response times.
Microsofts 3 CPU system and shared memory architechure would seem to be a more accessible system to code. I expect that each core is more powerful than a PS3 core. IBM must have related the advantages an disadvantage of each system to both microsoft and sony.
I think that Microsofts hardware is easier to develop (due to it's simpler layout), so at the start the hardware will show promising results. I think this is a smart move by Microsoft as once GPU fillrate and CPU power has been fully unitilised, the developer will tantilise people with special effects through prefecting the use of the programmable vector and shader units.
Bottom line is that the GPUs will be the decider of these architectures. Nvida and ATI are both neck and neck companies in terms of GPU performance. Nvida is better at producing feature rich GPUs and ATI GPUs are generally better on paper but had poor driver support. This will not be as big as a problem for ATI on consoles as the APIs are custom.
Both architectures are scalable as you can add more cpu cores or make each core more powerful. Also the graphic companies double performance every 18 months, while maintaining backwards compatibility. This thorectically means that by the time the next console is due, ATI and Nvidia should have GPUs that are 16 - 20 times more powerfuland CPU cores to match than the ones going into the PS3 and Xbox 360.
Room for thought anyone?
PS. What the hell was Sony thinking with those controllers? Are either controllers feature vibration?
Anonymous - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
A world without Relgion, Peacefull?Theone - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
Yeah he floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee.I've never got an answer to this question.
Why when suicide bombers kill loads of ppl, and they say that cause they've asked to be forgiven there sins.
What kind of god would let them into heaven if such a place exists.
If u kill anyone, Down is the only way you'll be going.
Dom - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
#67Others have been over this. Computers are geared for entirely different purposes than consoles. When Xbox came out it killed the graphics of any PC. When the next generation console's come out they will do the same - and now the resolution differences you talked about won't exist. We'll have full screen HD resolution gaming. Sure you need to upgrade your TV but this is new technology, and won't ONLY benifit your gaming experience.
"And no way do you pay 2000 for a computer only a dork would do that. You can put a budget gaming machine together for like 500 bucks and the graphics eat the console alive."
Ummm... not when xbox or ps2 was launched you couldn't. Even in the PC you yourself claim to own (the "budget" 2500+ with a 6800 GPU) - that has a graphics card costing more than half the price of an xbox at launch, and most likely more than half the price of the next-gen xbox360.
"Sony said that their graphics system is equal to two 6800 Ultras running on SLI well how much do you think that is gonna cost you?"
Not as much as even one 6800 ultra ALONE costs right now. I can't see them charging $450 for a console.
Fizzle - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
Well a computer has much better graphics than a console. MUCH BETTER! Ok Poo bad investment is a console! You can upgrade computers and they give you more years of enjoyment. As prices come down you can up grade much cheaper. And no way do you pay 2000 for a computer only a dork would do that. You can put a budget gaming machine together for like 500 bucks and the graphics eat the console alive. Example DOOM III on the colsole graphics will make your eyes bleed. Play it on a computer with just standard graphics and they are much better than a console. What kind of res do you get on a TV? 400x600?? or worse. I get 1280x1200 on my computer screen with AA and AF enabled and that is with a budget 2500+ amd system and 6800 graphics card and I still have room to upgrade. Sony said that their graphics system is equal to two 6800 Ultras running on SLI well how much do you think that is gonna cost you?And lets say consloes finally did catch up with the computers well if you want the best picture on your tv you will need a high definition TV or something that can equal a good monitor. HOW MUCH IS THAT GONNA COST YOU! Much more than a computer ever will! We shall see. Also computer games are cheaper and their prices drop sooner. Also you can add mods to them. And a lot of games are free! Etc. Etc. Etc. You get what you pay for!Yasu - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
Bahhh... computer games are only RTS and FPS i really like RTS but i do like another kid of games too thats why you should buy a VideoGame to play Devil May Cry, Dead or Alive and other, wake up people, games arent just HL2 The Sims and Doom :pfor god sake!
Anonymous - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
we'd better not...No1 - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
@60Well, imo the Doom3 on a PC looks better than the Doom3 on the XBOX. Better quality on PC - Compare the Screenshots ;)
ChrisC - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
Thank you Anand for commenting on the lack of AA.Xbox360 seems to have this issue nailed. Lack of decent (or any) AA on the PS3 could be a fatal flaw. Obviously, they're working on early development hardware at this point, but if the system had solid AA I believe they would have at least mentioned it, but the silence on this said volumes.
I suspect we'll hear a lot of speculation and some rumored "solutions" just like we did for the PS2, but in the end we'll be playing with jaggies.
Blah - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
Why are some of you ALWAYS comparing PC gaming to Consoles... Yeah I can see the comparison between a $350.00 dollar device to a $1600.00 dollar device. Some people are just plan stupid.Buster - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
I hear that sony has teamed up with george forman and that the ps3 doubles as a forman grill!!!!Poo on Ps3 - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
Bad investment. Well lets take a look on how much a computer cost. For a good computer its around 2000. and a console is 300. Now all the games that come out for the console work perfect. and the games that come out for the computer work for about 3 months until new games come out and you want a better computer. And about performance. look most computers cant run doom 3 with everything on high. but we have the XBox running it fine, and that is a 700 mhz processor with a geforce 3. Yes there is a smaller frame buffer. but with the new consoles and the specs its going to run extreamly fast for along time. So if your all about games get a console.Poo on PS3 - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
That is one hideous system. http://ps3grill.ytmnd.com/Kramo - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
Don't waste your money! Just buy a good computer they beat the crap out of those consoles any day! At least you can upgrade your computer you can't do jack with a console. Bad investment.Tim - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
What exactly makes this a "More Complete Console"?? I cant see any justification for that statement at all.den - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
#35 Sorry for the later response, but having multiple CPU's does not make threading any easier. You still have to split your execution into threads and you still have to synchronise those threads because even if a thread runs completely uninterupted on a partichular core (no task switching) branch mis-predictions, cache misses, etc will cause the threads to run at different speeds at different times and so you must still do the work to synchronise them (which is the hardest part of multithreading in my experience)Chris - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
I think they MS wanted to announce first so Sony would feel it would have to obviously up them. I feel though that MS might have come to the table with some "Smaller" figures to make Sony think they are winning. MS and Sony have very smart maketing and strategists and who really knows right? But it just seems all too surreal that they'd be so very similar.Another comment - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
As I see it, PS3 is going to have Blu-Ray andmore power for physics calculations. Otherwise
the consoles are fairly evenly matched (even in transistor count). Actually, Xbox 360:s three symmetrical cores might be better for AI and gameplay (?) processing.
The number of controllers (probably) tells you nothing, it should be relatively easy to connect 20 wireless controllers. I would expect Microsoft to bump up some specs, like the number of controllers, 1080 p support (easy with HDMI/DVI, and the ATI chip should be ready for it), and possibly some megahertz more to the graphics processor (Sony has given a target, 550 MHz ?).
It seems to me that the graphics side of PS3 wasn't as it was originally imagined, otherwise I don't really understand why you would put two different very fast memory interfaces in it. When did NVidia come aboard? Seems to me NVidia didn't have time to design a chip for XDR. (Also dual HDMI is easy to do when dual outputs are in most graphics cards. I wouldn't expect any good usage for it.) Also, "The RSX can render pixels to any part of memory, giving it access to the full 512MB of memory of the PS3." sounds like not wanting to admit it has only 256MB of usable video ram.
Even Microsoft's one teraflops figure was overhyped, and now Sony comes with two teraflops. In real world, both should fall far, far behind that figure. (NV possibly has more math units in its shader pipes, but can you efficiently use them?) It may end up being very difficult to recognize the differences between X360 and PS3 games. And many times they should be exactly the same.
Sony should have enough time to redesign their controller if people complain too much about it. Looks strange, but for me the PS/PS2 controllers are uncomfortable too.
I might expect MS to catch sony somewhat in the market share this round (with Sony still leading), but Sony would have to mess up badly for MS to take the lead.
Anonymous - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
killzone and that mudracing game unbelieable.that nvida gpu is the most powerfull ever produced.
Faster then 2 x 6800 Ultra !!! 2006 is gona be good year
paiva - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
the images of killzone is in game people see them ..........................................................................amazingzeroPing - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
Well... What a show.PS3 = very sexy.
controller = not hot, but remember Sony is in middle of dispute with controller company, so thats why thay could not show DualShock 3.
Please watch the PS3 live event video at gamespot. The specs are absolutly kikass and makes xbox360 look like xbox 1.5.
If youre to buy a similar spec PC in a year, it would cost 2500$, but could get ps3 for maybe $299!!
I defenetly like xbox360 live.
Whats up with 3 ethenet ports on ps3?
1080p will look kikass on my 24inch Dell 1920x1200!!
and ya.
no god but god
mohomad god messanger.
Mohammad was good man.
But dont forget moslems like Jesus and Moses as much as Mohammad. Moslems belive in Virgin Mary, Jesus's reserection etc. Did you know?
Anonymous - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
#49, Agreed! The XB360 vs. PS3 really boils down to an ATI vs. nVidia debate for hardware enthusiasts and we know which of the two companies is paying the bills here!Anonymous - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
Anand:Just looking at the title of your PS3 article, "Sony introduced the Playstation 3 today...and wow..", shows your pro-nVidia bias. Where was the emotion in the XB360 article title?
So, I guess it's safe to assume your pro-nVidia bias spills into consoles now too?
RZaakir - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
I have two words about why 24 was off the chain last night...Mia Kirshner AKA Mandy
Masamura - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
wtf do god have to do with PS3?oh wait a minute...
PS3 IS GOD.
bluefish - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
#34The PS3 has 256MB of vram & can use any part of the 256MB main memory (thru memory sharing of somesort).
360 - eDRAM 10MB + 512MB shared with main memory
PS3 - 256MB GDDR3 + 256MB XDR main memory shareable with GPU
not a big difference here it would seem. Obviously the way PS3 uses its memory is not neat & VERY costly, but it is effective.
BTW, if u wanna know how the Cell (PPE/SPE) works , just check www.research.scea.com
#45
Toshiba just announced a new 3-layer HD-DVD that's supposed to solve the capacity problems HD-DVD had vs Blu-Ray. Talks? ah.....WHAT TALKS?
www.toshiba.co.jp/about/press/2005_05/pr1002.htm
sideshow23bob - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
Is there any concern about the Blu-Ray drive's compatibility with next generation movie discs, since Sony and Toshiba were in talks about adjusting the format to a single format. I assume it will be compatible, but haven't heard anything.... any ideas/ thoughts about that?rogatti - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
adorei o PS3 - creio que ele vai detonar o Xbox - imaginem ele rodando linux ou um OS feito pela Sony.abracos !
Rob - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
My God Loves His creation and wants to save it! Jesus Christ is King and you dont have to go to a website to talk with Him!rob - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
Mohammed was a good man so what, My God died on the cross!! But HE lives!Turnip - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
For some reason, I had been thinking that the PS3 was supposed to have THREE Cell processors. Did I dream that?adawr - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
i like a moslem in the worldno god but god
mohamed god Messenger
go to www.islamonline.net
and
www.alhandasa.net\forum
ali - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
i dont like a ps3 and xbox 360because they are very exepensive
?????
?????
?????
libya
george w bush boom
crunchtime - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
Ok, I like the look of both consoles TBH, I have both PS2 & XBOX at the moment, thank goodness for the variety. I mean it does ultimately come down to game catalogue things like the "Halo" Factor on xbox, and games of equivalent quality on Playstation.But the new PS3 Controller looks poor I have to say, I mean the original controller put a lot of people off the xbox at launch.
I think my concern is with these things, 2-3 years down the line when the optical drives fail like they on the current generation consoles, how easy/cheap is it going to be to source a replacement? Only time will tell
Z - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
#34, PS3 has 512 MB total, 256 MB main memory + 256 MB video memory.I don't think it's a bad deal, better have memory dedicated to video (just like on PCs), as it means video bandwidth won't eat into CPU bandwidth (and on a console, you'll quite certainly always be eating video bandwidth).
As for the size, it's already large enough, especially compared to the meager 32 and 64MB current console have. Remember that on consoles, you don't have to waste memory for the Windows OS, the .Net Framework, or other antivirus.
THEMAC - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
Just a little remark (especially 'bout PS3).It's going to be out in 1 year. Do you know what kind of power we'll have in our PCs in 1 year ? What GPU ? What CPU ? What HDTV Desktop Set ? I don't. It's obvious that non only they have to tkink in advance, they also have to have in mind what the market will and what the market will ask for the next years (well, until next XBOX and Next PS) .
Oh, another note. Bluetooth PAD ? They will run out of charge in 4-5 Hours ? We'll have to re-charge them every night ? Naaah, bad move...
TheMac
Z - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
#27 problem is that with XBox360 you *have to* use multithreading in your code, which is complex. Time slicing isn't efficient performance-wise, with preemption each thread has to fight others for CPU time, I much prefer if they would cooperate.If you have enough CPUs, each thread can reside on its own CPU, so no preemption, and no complex multithreading either.
The lack of branch prediction isn't really a minus, because we're comparing to an alternative that hasn't got branch prediction either, not to an Athlon or P4.
k - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
PS3 has only 256MB of RAM, while XBox has 512. Looking at PC games today I'd say both of these values are too small to handle a modern game. But XBox has an important edge here.Jud - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
Another 24 fan. :)So (before the big 2-hour finale) what d'you think of this season so far?
David Smith - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
I'm not sure why everyone seems to think that the Xbox 360 has something like SPEs. It has 3 Altivec units, yes... and it looks like they're a variant of Altivec with more registers, but nowhere have I seen anything pointing to them being separate cores like the SPE. The PS3's PPE has Altivec as well, btw.As for which one will perform better... I think we're going to have to wait and see. Either it'll be possible to split games into lots of specialized subtasks effectively (and the PS3 will win) or it won't (and the Xbox will win), or it'll be somewhere in between.
Anonymous - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
#29 even.OrphanBoy - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
#28, touche. What *did* happen to the Saturn anyway? :) Didn't they have funny game things in the controllers themselves?Software that's written for the Cell still has to be multithreaded, and the same synchronisation problems will still apply. Instead of having a bunch of homogeneous processors (like the Xbox360) there's going a bit more variety :) But I guess it does follow the traditional way...
But either way: man, those poor programmers!
ecwx - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
#28 : Remember the Saturn. The saturn, given its parallel processor,is theoretically more powerful than PS1. But programming for efficiency in parallel processing is much more complex than on a single processing machine. MS, with 360, seems to choose the saturn way and Sony, with PS3, seems to choose the traditional way.Taking advantage of more than one multi-purpose processing units means that the software (game) must be designed to run multi-threaded, and as a real time program, the developer must take care of the execution sync between the threads to make sure that the processing pipeline is balanced.
Taking advantage of multiple specialized processing units is already common practice today.
OrphanBoy - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
#27 true, you definately can't beat specialised silicon for these tasks - that's what DSPs are for!But then again, from a programming point of view I think it'd be much easier to give the tasks you've listed to a few general-purpose CPUs than more DSP-like processors - that's what scheduling's all about! Once a task running on a CPU has had it's time slice, the next task just gets pre-empted...
It'll be harder to program the SPEs than regular CPUs as they lack certain important features, like branch prediction. And the main core on the Cell doesn't support out-of-order execution so it's going to take fancy programming/fancy compilers to get extract the full performance. Anyone who's ever programmed pixel shaders will know what I'm talking about here!
As you say both MS and Sony will have to make the multi-threaded nature of their hardware easy to access within their dev tools!
Z - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
#21 Indeed!There is only so much that is only efficiently performed on a general purpose CPU, and as far as games or video are concerned, a lot of tasks, from AI to physics only require brute force, and brute force is what specialized hardware excels at, practically, only scripting and some overall game logic really require a general purpose CPU, none of these too being performance critical.
An issue to have in mind is that keeping busy 3 general purpose CPUs won't be easy to do (programming-wise). One might think it would be worse with 7, but there is a difference: if you have a physics libraries that keeps busy 2 CPUs, an AI one that keeps busy 3 CPUs, a sound/voice one that take 1 CPU, etc. they will be much easier to reuse: they'll just take a "slot" (aka CPU), so you can assign each specialized library to a specialized CPU and be done with it.
On XBox 360, funnily enough, there aren't enough CPUs to have them dedicated to a specific task for a particular library, so libraries will have to share CPUs power (which means trouble, complexity and potential conflicts), while on PS3, you could go the dedicated route.
Real question becomes how MS and Sony will play that multi-CPU game in their development tools, MS may have more practice in that realm, but Sony has the best hardware potential.
OrphanBoy - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
#24, no he's right! What's the point in sending half-frames to a display that doesn't work in a naturally-interlaced format?And I can't resist this - I'm starting work at Sony UK in August and I'm pretty sure I'm gonna be able to play with one of these things months before you guys :)
Reflex - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
#24 - The 360 does full 1080p rendering internally. The issue is output, there are *no* consumer level HDTV sets that display that resolution, so therefore it wasn't hyped. Hyping a feature that has no real world use at this time is rediculous. I'm sure MS will update thier marketing to respond to Sony however.#21: Actually as transister budgets have become less of an issue, everything is going towards general purpose processors. The limitation on general purpose CPU's/GPU's has always been transister counts, not how well something could do whatever. A general purpose CPU can do *everything* that a specialized core(like the SPE's) can do, plus a whole heck of a lot more. Its up to the programmer to take advantage of that power.
From a programming perspective I'd gladly take 3 full-fledged cores over any number of specialized SPE's. Those cores can be used for anything, not just certain situations that call upon functions that an SPE supports.
Anonymous - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
#23 - you're just crazy. :-) 1080p means 60 full 1920x1080 frames per second. 1080i means 60 1920x540 half-frame fields per second, i.e. the equivalent of 30 full frames per second, not 60.wbwither - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
Maybe I'm thinking completely wrong here, but from the GPU's standpoint, aren't 1080p and 1080i exactly the same? It's just the RAMDAC (or whatever finally does the D-A conversion, if a digital connection to the monitor is used) interleaving the lines -- the heavy lifting of actually rendering the image is the exact same.It's not like the GPU can just render alternate lines and automatically double performance. The GPU still has to calculate all 1080 lines for every frame, and a 1080i output would just be a simple matter of discarding half of them.
The reason for the 1080i and 1080p TV specs is purely for bandwidth reasons, for TV broadcasts and the like -- pre-rendered media. It has nothing to do with video games or other rendered-on-the-fly video sources.
In fact, I have no idea how Sony, TI, Samsung or anybody else could make an LCD, DLP, or plasma screen that would support 1080i and not support 1080p. CRTs, maybe, but even that's questionable. Okay, so maybe the HDTV decoders in the TVs wouldn't support the high-bandwidth 1080p signal, but the LCD/DLP/etc. chips themselves wouldn't know the difference.
Or am I just crazy?
Anon - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
I'm not sure why so many people (not only here) are ripping on the controller when it's only been shown from the front/top. Sure it looks funny. Sure it might suck. But how can you tell from a picture? What are the chances that Sony might have actually tested the thing for useability and comfort? It's the primary input device for one of their flagship products after all...T Money - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
>>I just keep hearing people going on about the Cell outclassing the 360. I have yet to hear a single technical reason as to why that is.<<It's entirely possible that it's because general purpose is not always better than specifacly programed devices. Jack of all trades, master of none.
Consider why for the longest time (and even now) a console was the best device to play video games on with the possible exception of FPSs. Because consoles were dedicated hardware. On a device with decidedly less power than we put in our home machines consoles could perform on par for some of the same tasks meerely because those consoles were designed specifically for that task.
It's kind of why you have a seperate GPU as opposed to an extra Pentium in your computer despite the pentium being a more powerful chip overall.
supert0nes - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
Your coments about a more complete console make no sense. What makes a more "complete" console? 7 controllers? 2 HDMI connections? A router? 1080P? It seems to me like sony just went after everything that looked semi appealing instead of cutting out the useless things and focusing on whats most important like content support and how about a usefull controller.Reflex - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
One other note: The 360 can do FSAA/AF without any peformance hit at all. Thats what the 10MB of embedded memory is for. I think the PS3 will have jaggies regardless as devs have to face a choice: smooth things out or take a perf hit. That choice does not have to be made on the 360.reflex - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
I am failing to see why Sony has the superior CPU here. Their core is roughly similiar to the core MS is using, and it only has one of them. The SPE's are nice, but they are 'helper' cores, not full general purpose CPU's. They can only be utilized for specific functions, not for everything. By comparison the 360 has three general purpose cores each with its own SPE-like Vector unit. The versatility here should allow far more of the 360's power be easily tapped than the Cell. A dev could easily run a physics engine on one, AI on another, and the core game on the third. That option dosen't really exist on Cell...I just keep hearing people going on about the Cell outclassing the 360. I have yet to hear a single technical reason as to why that is.
Chargot - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
Well, it sucks that NVidia and ATI are not into the PC video card industry anymore. I mean seriously, how is one to go out and buy eight hundred dollars worth of SLI cards while knowing that some kid will be able to trump that a few months from now at Walmart. PC is the best platform for games hands down... everything else is silly stupid.Why can't NVidia or ATI release a half decent price point on their cutting edge technologies if they are willing to give it to Sony for fifteen dollars a unit. How quick they forget the hands that feed them... PC gamers and PC users alone.
Anonymous - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
I thought the article was pretty reasonable except for the perceived huge advantage of the Blu-Ray drive. Both the Xbox and the PS2 have pretty crappy DVD drives. So I have very low expectations for the Blu-Ray drive in the PS3. My guess is that anyone who is serious about movies will get a stand-alone Blu-Ray or HD-DVD player. But who knows? With the increased focus on the idea of the entertainment hub, maybe Sony will surprise me with a high quality product.Anthony - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
Anything about streaming content off computers? Video? Audio? Pictures? I havent seen a lot of info.The GBe hub will be nice, as I only have two ethernet port near my TV, and I'll probably end up with 3 or 4 network capable devices (ps3, tivo, mac mini, something else). It'd be better if it was a GBe switch though.
1080P TVs arrive in July (Samsung). The downside? They cant accept 1080p via HDMI. In fact, there are some questions about how to get 1080P into the TV (720p, 1080i will be upconverted). (see AVS forums) I was planning on getting one but now am considering waiting until 1080P TVs come out that can actually have 1080P input into it.
The CF slot is nice, 1GB CF cards are cheap. The question is, can I save game data to the CF card (instead of the overpriced sony memory cards and sticks).
What I'd love to see is Sony make a cablecard2.0 tuner, and transmit the singals (encrypted) to the PS3. It can decode 12HD streams, imagine watching several HD shows at once... mmmm
jroofad - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
ok, ps3 gets xbox360 technically. Yet its PS3 again thats gonna have the market full of games. Im waiting for Nintendo Rev. see what that is all about. Then I will buy my console for the next 6 years till 2010 heheheh. But Ps3 will go so well with my PSP. HMMMMMMMMMMMM..Xenos - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
I fully intend to get all three consoles. I would love to figure out a way to get them to talk to each other, some sort of frankenstein cluster of 360's and ps3's...Xenos - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
Im intrigued at the support for 7 controllers....if indeed a game supported 7 players, and the screen was large enough to accomodate them, is the ps3 truly capable of rendering 7 seperate sceens at high resolution (im thinking this is where the double screen tech comes into play), and is the 7 a dirct correlation to the number of cores? Also, is the GPU up to that kind of strain? It would make for an interesting tech demo (I'd love to see 7 player super smash brothers on the ps3...with master chief as a playable character...ok that was sick im sorry)static1117 - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
Hey anand-Us west coast boys have no other choice...but we get by. I think it has something to do with the hot chicks. Yeah thats it
HAve fun man
RogerWilco - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
"the fact of the matter is that console development houses are very much of the write once, compile many mindset"That's simply not true. Many development houses are devoted primarily to one platform.
Some are completely exclusive to one platform (Gran Turismo, Ratchet & Clank), others have the port work done by a completely separate development group (Halo), and others focus on one platform and handle porting after the fact (GTA, Silent Hill, Final Fantasy, ...).
Ghandi - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
Anand,What is your take on using synthesized gpus?
Chin - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
I like PS3.AnandTech Fanboy - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
#6: And yes, you seem like bought and paid for Microsoft.Anonymous - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
anand you seem bought and paid for.You can clearly see that IBM handed both firms the same stuff. That will come out. MS choses to use 3
PPE and the equivalent of 3 SPU (that will at least be able to do double precision math.) The PPE's are
slightly larger and that explains the 7th core.
As for 1080P, you can bet the 360 can do it. And for your info MS has anounced BC. Further it is almost ignorant for you not to know that MS has an HD optical player built into 360- good for at leat 2hrs of 1080i. But its strat is focused on what ever goes into a PC and dowloadable content (it or the PC will PVR at some point) to prevent redundancy. You can bet that Apex or the Taiwanese will own this next gen DVD market untill the online stuff takes over (the sooner the better.) And as for Sony's firm ware security stuff- its very likely nothing more than TPM 1.2- just like all this stuff it just PCIe rehash.
Creathir - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
Great post, but I only have one area that I do not agree with you in, the completeness of the hardware. Microsoft this evening had a working unit on hand at their press release. On top of that, I'm not sold on the "specs" that are out there for the PS3... they just seem "over the top". I'm curious at how much they think they can charge for this thing? With all of the hardware, I would easily say $400-$500... That is really excessive for the video game market. Only time will tell I suppose...- Creathir
Santa - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
The demos I saw seemed to be CGI cut scenes for the most part. If they actually controlled a character then yeah I'd believe it, but its alot of hype I think.howiczit - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
I think your post is dead on! Great job!michael - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
Fantastic preview, Anand. I can't wait! This'll be my first Sony console since I returned my first-month PS1 for a second Saturn. It's been awhile.charles - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
do you think we'll see a lot of people buying both, getting a router/switch/wirless network going? that's my feeling.