Sony may lose grip in next game consoles war: Article [Archive]

Deepak

21-Nov-2005, 17:08

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051121/tc_nm/japan_sony_dc;_ylt=Aime1jWabyEbC41qj41ZMMdU.3QA;_y lu=X3oDMTA4ZnRnZjhkBHNlYwMxNjk1

TOKYO (Reuters) - Sony Corp. (6758.T), the maker of Playstation game consoles, may lose its iron grip on the market for game machines as rival Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT (http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/finance/nm/tc_nm/storytext/japan_sony_dc/17153252/*http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=msft&d=t) - news (http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/biz/nm/tc_nm/storytext/japan_sony_dc/17153252/*http://biz.yahoo.com/n/m/msft.html)) launches a new model just in time for the holiday season.

Analysts and game fans say PS3 is the sexier game machine with twice the processing speed of Xbox 360 :mrgreen:, next-generation DVD technology Blu-ray, and seven control pads that can connect wirelessly to the console.

Sony, the world's second-largest consumer electronics maker that dominates the console market with its Playstation 2 (PS2), may lose more than 20 percentage points of its 70 percent market share with much of that going to Microsoft.

"The risks are surprisingly higher than people think because unless they can replicate its 70 percent dominant market position, things are going to be very difficult for them going forward," said Hiroshi Kamide, a Tokyo-based game analyst for KBC Securities.

Wedbush Morgan Securities said in an industry report in July that it expected worldwide PS3 and Xbox 360 sales to be tied at 23 million units each in 2007.

Sony's game business accounts for about 12.6 percent of the group's total revenues, and it has sold 102.5 million Playstations and 96 million PS2 machines to date. :shock:

Qroach

21-Nov-2005, 17:21

"twice the processing speed of Xbox 360"

oh brother... sony's hype machine at work. I Can't say I didn't see this coming...

Alpha_Spartan

21-Nov-2005, 17:25

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051121/tc_nm/japan_sony_dc;_ylt=Aime1jWabyEbC41qj41ZMMdU.3QA;_y lu=X3oDMTA4ZnRnZjhkBHNlYwMxNjk1

TOKYO (Reuters) - Sony Corp. (6758.T), the maker of Playstation game consoles, may lose its iron grip on the market for game machines as rival Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT (http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/finance/nm/tc_nm/storytext/japan_sony_dc/17153252/*http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=msft&d=t) - news (http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/biz/nm/tc_nm/storytext/japan_sony_dc/17153252/*http://biz.yahoo.com/n/m/msft.html)) launches a new model just in time for the holiday season.

Analysts and game fans say PS3 is the sexier game machine with twice the marketing bullshit:mrgreen:, next-generation DVD technology Blu-ray, and seven control pads that can connect wirelessly to the console.
Ahhh...fixed. It's easier to read now.

Well they have twice the thoretical power? In flops.

Even if it went down 20% they would still have half of the market, I don't think 360 will have the whole other half.
Theoretical power more often than not are never achieved. Why is this? Because they are invented by a bunch of marketing guys in suits and not by real engineers.

Edit: And as always, some of you are still recklessly predicting that Sony will dominate this generation as well when analysts agree that Sony won't have as easy a time as they've had in the past.

weaksauce

21-Nov-2005, 17:26

"twice the processing speed of Xbox 360"

oh brother... sony's hype machine at work. I Can't say I didn't see this coming...

Well they have twice the thoretical power? In flops.

Even if it went down 20% they would still have half of the market, I don't think 360 will have the whole other half.

weaksauce

21-Nov-2005, 17:35

Theoretical power more often than not are never achieved. Why is this? Because they are invented by a bunch of marketing guys in suits and not by real engineers.

Edit: And as always, some of you are still recklessly predicting that Sony will dominate this generation as well when analysts agree that Sony won't have as easy a time as they've had in the past.

And the 118flps XO makes is also theoretical, isn't it?

Judgning from the forumpolls that I see sometimes, PS3 seems to be winner. :)

Deepak

21-Nov-2005, 17:39

Calm down people, no need to get excited. It is not if Sony has said that PS3 has twice the power of 360. They are article writer's words.

Can we have some fruitful discussions now? Anyway I think the position where Sony (PS2) is right now, they can only lose market share, it will be extremely difficult for them to increase marketshare further. Crucial thing is Rev here, no-one knows how well it will do, will it gain marketshare or lose.

Shifty Geezer

21-Nov-2005, 17:49

Not that we need another Analyst thread, but why is it assumed whenever an article mentions PS3 being better than XB360, it's Sony's unstoppable hype machine? Not every overblown comment is a result of Sony. Like the PS2 can render StarWars in realtime nonsense, which came from George Lucas. And can you really trust the average non-tech-savvy journalist to really know what the numbers mean and how to convey those meanings to the public?

Anyhow, this is another of those totally useless threads that serves no purpose. As the FAQ says, when you post an article or thread, you're supposed to have an idea of what constructive discussion comes from it, or what it adds to the forum knowledge. The OP ias also supposed to add opinions or interpretation, or ask intelligent questions based on an article's content. Here we see some analyst numbers, same as we've seen a dozen times before, and what constructive criticism? Only the same old beaten-to-death-zombie-points of Sony's hype, make-believe Cell Specs, Sony are going to lose market share/not going to lose market share. Don't you people get tired of saying the same old things over and over? We've heard it all before. There's no point to constantly reiterate you think Cell's numbers misleading or RSX won't match Xenos shader power or RSX has 2x Xenos shader power, when it's all been said before.

Regards the article, what useful constructive debate can be derived from it? It's the usual sum-up-the-entire-gaming-industry-in-one-article sweeping casual journalism that's got no more info than everything we already have. Unless it's bringing in some new numbers (in which case the thread ought to be 'New PS2 sales figures' or something honing in on the point being raised for discussion) is there any need to post it?

Powderkeg

21-Nov-2005, 17:55

Not that we need another Analyst thread, but why is it assumed whenever an article mentions PS3 being better than XB360, it's Sony's unstoppable hype machine?

Because the specific claims are unrealistic.

For instance, it it had said "The PS3 processor has twice the FLOP rating of the Xbox 360 CPU" I don't think too many people would have argued, but saying the processor is "Twice the processing speed" is absolute BS.

Both processors are 3.2 GHZ. Both have the same processing speed. One may be more efficient than the other, one may be able to process larger amounts of data per clock cycle than the other, but both are processing at the same speed.

It's an unjustified remark and the author could only ahve come to that conclusion if they got their figures from Sony.

Bobbler

21-Nov-2005, 18:01

What does Market share really matter as long as total sales continue to increase? If Sony sells more PS3's than PS2s and PS1s but lose some market share then is it really a bad thing? It just means MS/Nintendo have actually gained sales, but not necessarily at the loss of Sony -- I have a feeling this is what will be happening, to some extent at least.

I think PS3 will sell more than PS2 (or at least as much), but I also think X360/Rev will sell more than Xbox/GC -- every generation the market has seemingly expanded quite a bit, and I don't see why it won't happen this gen. This gen's total sales (including DC), up until now, has been around 150 million consoles, previous gen was around ~125 mil? and the one before that, around ~100 mil? -- next gen will probably be around 170-180mil, and if Sony pulls up ~half the market, like many predict, thats still ~equal to PS2's sales.

Bobbler

21-Nov-2005, 18:07

It's an unjustified remark and the author could only ahve come to that conclusion if they got their figures from Sony.

It's more likely that the author doesn't really understand the difference, not that Sony told them to say that. Regardless, it doesn't really matter -- people will misconstrue things for the positive and negative. Sony has gotten bad press already from people not knowing what they are talking about things (Router cut? Toy Story? Disabling rented/used games on PS3? etc, etc), its the way it works. Journalists often make mistakes.

Shifty Geezer

21-Nov-2005, 18:17

Because the specific claims are unrealistic.

For instance, it it had said "The PS3 processor has twice the FLOP rating of the Xbox 360 CPU" I don't think too many people would have argued, but saying the processor is "Twice the processing speed" is absolute BS.Firstly how do you know it's absolute BS when we haven't put the XeCPU and PS3 head to head? For all we know Cell is 2x the speed of XeCPU. :p

But more importantly, these journo's have all got the same peak-figures for the processors that IBM have given out and based on those figures alone, the journalist not knowing about potential bottlenecks, see PS3 is rated 2x XB360.
Both processors are 3.2 GHZ. One may be more efficient than the other, one may be able to process larger amounts of data per clock cycle than the other, but both are processing at the same speed.It says twice the processing speed, which means it processes 2x faster. It didn't say 2x the speed which could be interpretted as clock speed, and even if it did you're arguing symantecs. T the genral populace for whom the casual article is aimed, "Twice the speed" means just that...it's twice as fast, without qualifying where that speed is. That's the problem with casual journalism, not the figure providers.
It's an unjustified remark and the author could only ahve come to that conclusion if they got their figures from Sony.Or from IBM and MS's figures, or from gaming press that misunderstood or misrepresented the data. You paint a picture of Sony contacting journalists telling them how their machine is faster than their rivals! ;)

Powderkeg

21-Nov-2005, 18:20

It's more likely that the author doesn't really understand the difference, not that Sony told them to say that.

I didn't say Sony told them to say that, only that they got their numbers from Sony. MS hasn't released specs that say they have half the processing speed of Sony, so a journalist who came to such a conclusion must have used Sony's specs. (Specifically their FLOP comparison)

Part of being a great hype machine is to give out just enough information that others make assumptions (In your favor) and then announce their mistaken assumptions as facts.

Powderkeg

21-Nov-2005, 18:30

Firstly how do you know it's absolute BS when we haven't put the XeCPU and PS3 head to head? For all we know Cell is 2x the speed of XeCPU. :p

Impossible.

But more importantly, these journo's have all got the same peak-figures for the processors that IBM have given out and based on those figures alone, the journalist not knowing about potential bottlenecks, see PS3 is rated 2x XB360.

Funny, I don't recall IBM putting out info that said the PS3 is twice as powerful as the 360 CPU in MIPS. Care to show me that link?

It says twice the processing speed, which means it processes 2x faster.

And it doesn't.

"Twice the speed" means just that...it's twice as fast, without qualifying where that speed is. "

Not possible.

The only way you could come up with "twice the speed" is if you compared FLOP performance only.

Alpha_Spartan

21-Nov-2005, 18:47

And the 118flps XO makes is also theoretical, isn't it?

Judgning from the forumpolls that I see sometimes, PS3 seems to be winner. :)
Forum polls...right.

Edge

21-Nov-2005, 18:55

I love how the specs of one console, is described at BS, theoretical, or just plain "marketing talk", as if those specs had no reflections on reality.

Is it because those specifications are TWICE as powerful as the Xbox 360 CPU, or is it because of some other reason? If it was HALF as powerful as the Xbox 360 CPU, would we be downplaying those specs?

CELL has:
- More than twice the internal bandwidth
- More than twice the external bandwidth
- More than twice the number of processors
- More than twice the amount of on-chip memories
- More than twice the floating point rate
of the Xbox 360 CPU.

Hey, sounds twice as powerful to me!!! Hard to argue against reality.

Shifty Geezer

21-Nov-2005, 19:21

Impossible.Why?

Funny, I don't recall IBM putting out info that said the PS3 is twice as powerful as the 360 CPU in MIPS. Care to show me that link?Alas no. I've got MS's official assertion that XB360 has half the GFlops though.
http://www.majornelson.com/2005/05/20/xbox-360-vs-ps3-part-1-of-4/
But of course I wasn't thinking MIPS, as MIPS are a diabolical performance measure, and I doubt the journalist was either because they probably don't know what a MIP is. I was thinking the given specs, the rough numbers, that we have for the consoles. I'm not sure of all the sources but AFAIK officailly we have 100+ GFlops for XeCPU (IBM? MS? B3D? Actually they're calulateable fromthe Major Nelson article specs so can be considered MS figures), and 200+ GFlops for Cell (IBM), 1 Teraflop total system performance for XB360 (that was from MS) and 2 Teraflops for PS3 (from Sony), clockspeeds and everything else similar for both systems.

Now can you please provide me with the links that show Sony provided the figures that show PS3 to be 2x as powerful as XB360, as you claim here...
MS hasn't released specs that say they have half the processing speed of Sony, so a journalist who came to such a conclusion must have used Sony's specs. (Specifically their FLOP comparison) Where have Sony said what the XB360's specs are? AFAIK they've only given PS3 figures, and MS/IBM(?)/ATi have given XB360 figures. I think the most important figure ignorant journalists have latched onto was the 1 and 2 Teraflop system figures, but that's going by the values MS and Sony provided. You can't blame Sony for MS releasing their system performance as 1 Teraflop. As a journalist I'd read MS talk about their machine, and Sony talk about theirs, and both use this metric I don't understand and yet assume is a fair comparison which shows PS3 has 2x as much terrorflops as XB360 so must be 2x better.

The only way you could come up with "twice the speed" is if you compared FLOP performance only.Not true. Firstly there's things like integer operations, ADDs and such, that Cell can process more of than XB360 (going by the official figures) and secondly there's real world performance. For all you know in the real world when runnig real games PS3 does manage to process 2x as much per second as XB360 (or vice versa). Unless you've actually got information showing this isn't the case, which I'm guessing you must have seeing as you're so adamant PS3 hasn't 2x the real-world useable processing power of XB360, any idea of what the real performance differential between the two is purely conjecture at this point. Certainly I won't be saying PS3 is or isn't 2x as fast at processing than XB360 in real world usage. I don't know how anyone could be confident to make such claims, especially when we still don't even know what the GPU is going to be capable of. 'Impossible' is quite a claim and I'm eager to see you've evidence for it!

Mythos

21-Nov-2005, 19:40

Nesh

21-Nov-2005, 19:58

Powderkeg

21-Nov-2005, 20:08

Why?

Because it would require a level of inefficiency that does not exist.

Alas no. I've got MS's official assertion that XB360 has half the GFlops though.
http://www.majornelson.com/2005/05/20/xbox-360-vs-ps3-part-1-of-4/

That's not official, and that's not half.

But of course I wasn't thinking MIPS, as MIPS are a diabolical performance measure, and I doubt the journalist was either because they probably don't know what a MIP is. I was thinking the given specs, the rough numbers, that we have for the consoles. I'm not sure of all the sources but AFAIK officailly we have 100+ GFlops for XeCPU (IBM? MS? B3D? Actually they're calulateable fromthe Major Nelson article specs so can be considered MS figures), and 200+ GFlops for Cell (IBM), 1 Teraflop total system performance for XB360 (that was from MS) and 2 Teraflops for PS3 (from Sony), clockspeeds and everything else similar for both systems.

Again, it's only if you compare Flops and nothing else, and the only way you could arrive at that as the sole comparison is if you got your specs from Sony.

Now can you please provide me with the links that show Sony provided the figures that show PS3 to be 2x as powerful as XB360, as you claim here...

Oh come on. Be realistic.

If they got specs from IBM then they got a lot more than just the Flops. So why pick out just the flops and make your whole statement based on that alone?

Especially if you are a journalist who is supposed to present an unbiased presentation of the data at hand?

Where have Sony said what the XB360's specs are? AFAIK they've only given PS3 figures, and MS/IBM(?)/ATi have given XB360 figures. I think the most important figure ignorant journalists have latched onto was the 1 and 2 Teraflop system figures, but that's going by the values MS and Sony provided. You can't blame Sony for MS releasing their system performance as 1 Teraflop. As a journalist I'd read MS talk about their machine, and Sony talk about theirs, and both use this metric I don't understand and yet assume is a fair comparison which shows PS3 has 2x as much terrorflops as XB360 so must be 2x better.

But again, that's only 1 spec out of many? And FYI, the Tereflops comparison was for the entire system (Complete with slide), not just the CPU which is what this comment is specifically about. So why attach the comment to the CPU alone?

Not true. Firstly there's things like integer operations, ADDs and such, that Cell can process more of than XB360 (going by the official figures)

Link?

Because I am quite sure the reverse is true. The 360 has significantly better integer performance.

and secondly there's real world performance. For all you know in the real world when runnig real games PS3 does manage to process 2x as much per second as XB360 (or vice versa). Unless you've actually got information showing this isn't the case, which I'm guessing you must have seeing as you're so adamant PS3 hasn't 2x the real-world useable processing power of XB360, any idea of what the real performance differential between the two is purely conjecture at this point. Certainly I won't be saying PS3 is or isn't 2x as fast at processing than XB360 in real world usage. I don't know how anyone could be confident to make such claims, especially when we still don't even know what the GPU is going to be capable of. 'Impossible' is quite a claim and I'm eager to see you've evidence for it!

Considering that the PS3 does not exist in the real world how could this journalist possibly be making that comparison?

And yes, it's impossible for a CPU that does not exist to be twice the performance of one that does. It's quite an imaginative world you live in if the opposite were true.

Titanio

21-Nov-2005, 20:15

Lads and lassies, would you get a grip. It's a Yahoo article. Seriously, if we're gonna start having multi-page debates about "power" every time something like this crops up..

Inane_Dork

21-Nov-2005, 20:27

Lads and lassies, would you get a grip. It's a Yahoo article. Seriously, if we're gonna start having multi-page debates about "power" every time something like this crops up..Exactly. Someone please tell you-know-who to stop taking offense at these petty things.

Edge

21-Nov-2005, 20:27

> "Especially if you are a journalist who is supposed to present an unbiased presentation of the data at hand?"

Maybe the journalist does not understand the information at hand?

> "The 360 has significantly better integer performance."

Does it? How do you come to that conclusion? From where I am sitting, all those SPE's running full bore, also provides more integer porformance than the Xbox 360 CPU. Every cycle not running a floating point operation, can operate on an vectorized integer operation.

Alpha_Spartan

21-Nov-2005, 20:29

drpepper

21-Nov-2005, 20:37

Thanks for proving that the PS2 was three times more powerful than the Xbox. That's what you get when you compare half a system to half a system.

I think in his case he was comparing the 2 chips. So by analogy, are you saying the ~300 MHz emotion engine is 3 times more powerful than the ~700 Intel Celeron?

According to this (http://www.activewin.com/faq/x-box.shtml) site, the Xbox is at least twice as powerful as the PS2 as a system. Let alone the main CPU.

Shifty Geezer

21-Nov-2005, 20:43

That's not official, and that's not half.It came from MS engineers and was emailed to several gaming sites AFAIK, including IGN.

Link?The fact that for every float ADD a SPE can do, it can do an integer ADD.
Because I am quite sure the reverse is true. The 360 has significantly better integer performance.Based on what? An unoffical Major Nelson article? Or the offical MS document that compared PS3 and XB360 that was posted at Major Nelson?

Considering that the PS3 does not exist in the real world how could this journalist possibly be making that comparison?Because the journaliset is taking what little he understands and is reporting it.
And FYI, the Tereflops comparison was for the entire system (Complete with slide), not just the CPU which is what this comment is specifically about. So why attach the comment to the CPU alone?The journalist didn't. The journalist said the machine had twice the processing speed. That means overall (system TFlops figures from MS and Sony respectively).

And yes, it's impossible for a CPU that does not exist to be twice the performance of one that does. It's quite an imaginative world you live in if the opposite were true.Sorry? What processor doesn't exist?

Anyway, this is daft. You accept XeCPU has more integer performance than Cell based on no real world comparisons, yet you won't believe 2x the theoretical peak for Cell means it can attain 2x higher realworld performance over XeCPU because it's not proven in the real world. You make a reckless assertion that it's impossible for PS3 to be more than 2x as powerful in the realworld despite the fact on this forum we often cover the point that realworld efficiencies are more important than peak values and Cell provides a very different untested architecture that may or may not attain higher efficiences.

This is why these threads shouldn't be allowed. There's always at least one for every such thread that'll make rash claims that get 'debated' unintelligently. I concede. I accept Sony have lied to everyone, hoodwinked the entire press, it's all their doing and all the statics and specs that MS have put out there have nothing to do with it, and that it's impossible for a console of radically different processing architecture to another to process 2x as fast because, despite having a different and unproven architecture, you won't believe it. The journalists of this world aren't naive or misinformed but are being maliciously controlled by Ken 'Puppet-Meister' Kutaragi.

Edit : Fixing a quote, I see already we've sunk to 'XB was better than PS2/PS2 was better than XB' garbage. Please, for the sanity of the forum, killthe thread!

Edge

21-Nov-2005, 20:44

Thanks for proving that the PS2 was three times more powerful than the Xbox. That's what you get when you compare half a system to half a system.

I know this has been explained to you a number of times, but you like that twisted argument to somehow compare it to this generation. It's like if you repeat that nonsense enough times, will people believe it? How many more on this forum believe that?

Here we go again:

1) 733 Mhz Celeron is far superior to the Emotion Engine on everything except floating point.
2) The GPU on the Xbox has massive floating point capability, that the Graphics Synthesizer was lacking. The GS has NO vector engine!!! NONE! ZERO! Do you understand that?
3) The Xbox has twice the external bandwidth and memory of the PS2.
4) The Xbox GPU was much more feature rich, than the PS2 GPU.

Thus as the specs bore out, makes the Xbox superior to the PS2. Easy to accept, and who denies this?

This generation:
1) GPU's are comparable.
2) CELL is a lot more powerful than the 360 CPU, thus giving the PS3 a TWICE performance advantage in that area.

Thus as the specs bore out, makes the PS3 superior to the 360.

Alpha_Spartan

21-Nov-2005, 20:50

I know this has been explained to you a number of times, but you like that twisted argument to somehow compare it to this generation. It's like if you repeat that nonsense enough times, will people believe it? How many more on this forum believe that?

Here we go again:

1) 733 Mhz Celeron is far superior to the Emotion Engine on everything except floating point.
2) The GPU on the Xbox has massive floating point capability, that the Graphics Synthesizer was lacking. The GS has NO vector engine!!! NONE! ZERO! Do you understand that?
3) The Xbox has twice the external bandwidth and memory of the PS2.
4) The Xbox GPU was much more feature rich, than the PS2 GPU.

Thus as the specs bore out, makes the Xbox superior to the PS2. Easy to accept, and who denies this?

This generation:
1) GPU's are comparable.
2) CELL is a lot more powerful than the 360 CPU, thus giving the PS3 a TWICE performance advantage in that area.

Thus as the specs bore out, makes the PS3 superior to the 360.
And you still make this assumption with a question mark around the RSX. You have Sony's spec sheet, but...

mckmas8808

21-Nov-2005, 21:15

And you still make this assumption with a question mark around the RSX. You have Sony's spec sheet, but...

Let's just stop this silly arguement. Can we start it when we get real RSX numbers. Please?

Edge

21-Nov-2005, 21:15

And you still make this assumption with a question mark around the RSX. You have Sony's spec sheet, but...

Your implication that the 360 GPU is superior to make up the difference. Feel free to explain it to me.

Bill

21-Nov-2005, 21:21

It's typical uneducated media to confuse the layman. Everybody knows PS3 is not 2X as powerful.

czekon

21-Nov-2005, 21:21

so if PS3 Cpu is so superior to X360 Cpu and 2 x faster and a Flops monster and yada, yada why Carmack said - difference is marginal ?? huh???

Titanio

21-Nov-2005, 21:28

so if PS3 Cpu is so superior to X360 Cpu and 2 x faster and a Flops monster and yada, yada why Carmack said - difference is marginal ?? huh???

One gets the impression that Carmack isn't particularly fussed about CPU power as long as it's enough for his purposes. He couldn't have been more explicit about this at Quakecon - he's quite sceptical of the need for increasing CPU power vs increasing GPU power. So for him, two boxes may well be 6 of one and half a dozen of the other regardless of CPU differences - just as long as they're both enough on that side (and have great GPUs). Couple that with his scepticism of CPU parallelism and, well...

For what it's worth, we've heard opinion of greater difference too from other developers, and one wonders also why they think that..

Bobbler

21-Nov-2005, 21:36

ignore this -- seems I tried to respond to the wrong post.

czekon

21-Nov-2005, 21:38

well we will see the truth is always in the middle

Alpha_Spartan

21-Nov-2005, 21:45

Your implication that the 360 GPU is superior to make up the difference. Feel free to explain it to me.
I implied no such thing. I'm just saying that all comparisons are futile until we have all the facts to have an informed opinion.

Any conclusions as to which is more powerful means we're relying on marketing numbers. As far as I'm concerned you might as well say "PS3 is 1024 bit and the Xbox 360 is only 512 bit."

That's how silly this "terrorflop" shit sounds to me.

Alpha_Spartan

21-Nov-2005, 21:47

One gets the impression that Carmack isn't particularly fussed about CPU power as long as it's enough for his purposes. He couldn't have been more explicit about this at Quakecon - he's quite sceptical of the need for increasing CPU power vs increasing GPU power. So for him, two boxes may well be 6 of one and half a dozen of the other regardless of CPU differences - just as long as they're both enough on that side (and have great GPUs). Couple that with his scepticism of CPU parallelism and, well...

For what it's worth, we've heard opinion of greater difference too from other developers, and one wonders also why they think that..
Moneyhats. The only non-ambiguous statement I've heard about PS3's power came from Factor5. And well, we know that it's moneyhats galore.

Titanio

21-Nov-2005, 22:08

Moneyhats. The only non-ambiguous statement I've heard about PS3's power came from Factor5.

There've been a number now, actually, but I was specifically thinking of comments made by a certain third party developer who's actually working on a X360 game at the moment, when I made that post.

Oh, and certainly F5 aren't the only first/second party to have made that claim "unambiguously". You can take their words with a grain of salt if you wish, but I think it's interesting that, for now at least, MS's "moneyhatted" devs aren't making similar claims on its side (although I'd expect them to get round to it at some point!).

Edge

21-Nov-2005, 22:25

I implied no such thing. I'm just saying that all comparisons are futile until we have all the facts to have an informed opinion.

What facts do you expect to be released that will provide the answer as to what system is more powerful? Or do you believe this can never be answered?

So you are saying specs are totally useless?

scooby_dooby

21-Nov-2005, 22:33

What facts do you expect to be released that will provide the answer as to what system is more powerful? Or do you believe this can never be answered?

So you are saying specs are totally useless?

Um, realworld efficiency for one thing.

Are you saying that FLOP counts are an effective way to gauge power when comparing different architectures?

There are many realworld cases where the hardware with the higher theoretical flop count underperforms the hardware with the lower peak FLOPS.

Why does everyone need to accept the PS3 as more powerful? Not a single game has been created yet. Is it really that out of the question to wait until we see the realworld performance of these two machines?

Edge

21-Nov-2005, 22:39

Um, realworld efficiency for one thing.

Are you saying that FLOP counts are an effective way to gauge power when comparing different architectures?

There are many realworld cases where the hardware with the higher theoretical flop count underperforms the hardware with the lower peak FLOPS.

Read again, what I posted:

CELL has:
- More than twice the internal bandwidth
- More than twice the external bandwidth
- More than twice the number of processors
- More than twice the amount of on-chip memories
- More than twice the floating point rate
of the Xbox 360 CPU.

CELL is superior to the Xbox 360 in a number of CRITICAL areas that all help contribute to greater throughput.

I'm not just comparing GFLOP's.

Why does everyone need to accept the PS3 as more powerful?

Ummm, maybe because it's true. Why do you have a problem with people accepting this?

If I said the Xbox was more powerful than the PS2, people don't have a problem with this, so why is the current generation any different in the acceptance of one being more powerful than the other? Is it because people who are fans of the Xbox 360 are afraid that being seen as less powerful will limit it's chances at success?

mckmas8808

21-Nov-2005, 22:55

Ummm, maybe because it's true. Why do you have a problem with people accepting this?

If I said the Xbox was more powerful than the PS2, people don't have a problem with this, so why is the current generation any different in the acceptance of one being more powerful than the other? Is it because people who are fans of the Xbox 360 are afraid that being seen as less powerful will limit it's chances at success?

Well Edge I agree that the PS3 looks to be more powerful, but to be honest at least the Xbox has proven that it's more powerful than the PS2. Scooby is saying we should at least what until games like KZ, Motorstorm, MGS4, etc prove that the PS3 is more powerful.

And I for you kinda agree with him. We can at the very very least wait until we get some true to life RSX information first.

Alpha_Spartan

21-Nov-2005, 23:06

What facts do you expect to be released that will provide the answer as to what system is more powerful? Or do you believe this can never be answered?

So you are saying specs are totally useless?
A final PS3 that actually runs. I have a problem with people comparing a PowerPoint presentation to an actual working console that hopefully I'll be playing in 6 hours.

Titanio

21-Nov-2005, 23:10

A final PS3 that actually runs. I have a problem with people comparing a PowerPoint presentation to an actual working console that hopefully I'll be playing in 6 hours.

It's funny how this argument is cropping up when we were all very happy to debate things previously when both were in-development consoles. Forgive me, but it smacks of stretching for any means to delay/avoid the comparison, now that you can differentiate one as being "out" and the other as not. Expecting/Suggesting PS3, or the PS3 described by Sony, will not become a "console that actually runs" or the like is a little bit much.

scooby_dooby

21-Nov-2005, 23:20

Ummm, maybe because it's true. Why do you have a problem with people accepting this?

That's the entire problem. It's NOT true. It's still to be decided.

If CELL is only ever able to reach 20% of it's theoretical potential, while XeCPU is able to reach 50% of it's theoretical potential, than it's the XeCPU that is more powerful.

Until we see this processor in teh real world, running real games, and we can see how EFFICIENT it really is, then and only then can you make a legitimate comparison.

Also, Software will play a huge role in determinging which CPU gets exploited to it's fullest potential.

So without knowing the realworld efficiency of CELL, and how much of that power dev's will truly be able to extract, and at the same time acknowledging that MS is likely to have a superior software tools(which will impact efficency), it's WAAAY to premature to conclude PS3 is giong to be more powerful.

It's not paper-specs that matter and peak #'s that matter, it's the the visuals on the screen.

OtakingGX

21-Nov-2005, 23:33

Read again, what I posted:

CELL has:
- More than twice the internal bandwidth
- More than twice the external bandwidth
- More than twice the number of processors
- More than twice the amount of on-chip memories
- More than twice the floating point rate
of the Xbox 360 CPU.

CELL is superior to the Xbox 360 in a number of CRITICAL areas that all help contribute to greater throughput.

I'm not just comparing GFLOP's.

Internal bandwidth doesn't really seem to matter, what with the old Athlon XP having 1/4 that of a P4 of the same speed and still being faster in many cases. The Athlon 64 has 1/2 that of the same speed P4 and is faster than P4's with a 50% higher clock.

Same goes for external bandwidth. The old XPs were rather deficient in that regard to the P4 and fared admirably in benchmarks.

I'm not so sure about "number of processors." The way I see it, the SPEs are little sub-processors. Each one is really good at vector math, and not much else.

Again, I'll point to the Athlon 64 trouncing the P4 with twice the L2 cache in many a benchmark. More cache doesn't necessarily equate to better performance.

There are also many ways of measuring peak FLOPS that I'm sure have been discussed before. Do you mean double-precision FLOPS, because the SPEs are geared for single precision. How about SIMD operations? I don't think FLOPS is an accurate way of judging a processor's performance either.

Edge

21-Nov-2005, 23:40

Edge

21-Nov-2005, 23:49

Internal bandwidth doesn't really seem to matter, what with the old Athlon XP having 1/4 that of a P4 of the same speed and still being faster in many cases. The Athlon 64 has 1/2 that of the same speed P4 and is faster than P4's with a 50% higher clock.

Same goes for external bandwidth. The old XPs were rather deficient in that regard to the P4 and fared admirably in benchmarks.

I'm not so sure about "number of processors." The way I see it, the SPEs are little sub-processors. Each one is really good at vector math, and not much else.

Again, I'll point to the Athlon 64 trouncing the P4 with twice the L2 cache in many a benchmark. More cache doesn't necessarily equate to better performance.

There are also many ways of measuring peak FLOPS that I'm sure have been discussed before. Do you mean double-precision FLOPS, because the SPEs are geared for single precision. How about SIMD operations? I don't think FLOPS is an accurate way of judging a processor's performance either.

Those are good points, but CELL has 256 KB of SRAM per SPE processor, and one can argue, because it's not cache, but localized memory, it will allow better predictability by programmers, as to where their data will be. Why? Because developers will be responsible for data flow in loading and unloading that memory. Give me a programmers brain anyday over a cache algorithm.

Yes I mean single precision FLOPS, and you don't need double precision for a game console.

Each SPE has SIMD instructions.

Each one is really good at vector math, and not much else.

I don't see any evidence of this. We are not talking about math coprocessors, but processors, that will have no problems running general purpose code. One could argue it's less efficient than the PPE in running integer code, just as the PPE is less efficient than an Athlon in running integer code. Now no one says because the PPE is less efficient in running integer code than an Athlon, that it's no good in running integer code. The SPE difference over the 360 CPU, is that there is more processors to make up the difference, all the while having massive floating point capability.

Laa-Yosh

21-Nov-2005, 23:55

Give me a programmers brain anyday over a cache algorithm.

You know, the problem with nextgen software development is that your supply of programmer brains is seriously limited...

Lessard

22-Nov-2005, 00:07

2) CELL is a lot more powerful than the 360 CPU, thus giving the PS3 a TWICE performance advantage in that area.

Yeah and the Jaguar was TWICE more powerful than the playstation you know ...
coz it was a 64bit console and the psx a 32 bit one ...

Edge

22-Nov-2005, 00:13

You know, the problem with nextgen software development is that your supply of programmer brains is seriously limited...

Seems to be lots of PS2 developers that are very clever in getting great performance out of the PS2. I assume those programmers will still be around for this generation.

Laa-Yosh

22-Nov-2005, 00:34

Seems to be lots of PS2 developers that are very clever in getting great performance out of the PS2. I assume those programmers will still be around for this generation.

Compared to the number of games released on the PS2, skilled developers are an absolute minority. And even if you have a lot of very good programmers, the amount of stuff that they can do in a reasonable timeframe still might not be enough. All that power from having low-level access might get left unused if there's no time to implement it properly, and what seemed to be an advantage might end up an obstacle.
And FYI, most of the stuff that could differentiate this next gen from the previous one are high-level things, which will be even more difficult to implement if the coders have to fight the low-level stuff...

Edit: for example, let's assume that we have a coder whose mad skillz can give us about 10 times as much processing power to spend on AI, so we can have 10 times as many enemies compared to the previous gen. Or, we have a coder who can get 5 times the processing power but he can use it to create the same number of AI enemies, but 5 times as clever. Which one would be better? Which would you consider "next-gen gameplay"?

compres

22-Nov-2005, 01:08

Give me a programmers brain anyday over a cache algorithm.

Damn edge, I am not sure how to reply to you, don't want to seem rude.

That little statement seems to suggest you have no clue about software engineering. When you write a program that 20 or more co-workers need to understand and interact with, what you need is it to be readable.

This hardware model will make code very specialized, which is not completly bad but will be harder to maintain and thus put a lot of strain in developers. Working on a tight schedule this can only be bad.

Most software engineers will tell you a CPU with a good cache mechanism which is transparent to the programmer, will run more efficiently most of the time. For example if your programmers ***** up with their optimization of memory access, basically your whole program will get to a crawl. I remember some big time developer comments about this. With a cache system the programmer can focus on optimizing other areas, now with the cell they would have to optimize for everything, and any minor change in code can lead to disartrous cosecuences performace wise.

So maybe you like a programmers brain, (and in an ideal world I would bet I too!) but in real life what we need is to make the right compromises, and in MHO they don't seem to have made the right one with regards to cell when it comes to development time, dev. cost and mantainability of code.

That said I am no expert in cell assembly code, and as this is beyond3d, any enlightment is gladly welcome.

PS: Have you ever wonder why java is so popular among programmers?

EDIT: Damn wasn't trying to go by the word filter, i really must stop cursing lol...

scooby_dooby

22-Nov-2005, 01:29

If that's the criteria around here, then fine. I don't mind waiting, and somewhat confused why this criteria is not more emphasized around here, as there are many posts comparing the two systems.

As matter of fact, Asher's comments in another thread was claimed to know what he was talking about in a comparison between the two systems, even by you Scooby Dooby, and I was told I did not know what I was talking about. Remember, you did not say the comparison was not valid, but said

from here:
http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=25719&page=7&highlight=asher

Should it not have been brought to Asher attention that he cannot make a comparison at this point?

That entire thread was titled " Does Cell Have Any Other Advantages Over XCPU Other Than FLOPS?"

I don't see any strongly worded objections by you Scooby Dooby that the thread's discussion was invalid?

What am I missing here?

Well simply put, I think CELL has recieved more than it fair share of "optimistic" discussion. I think it's much more interesting at this point to discuss the downsides, not for any stupid console war crap, but just for interests sake, and because the positive's of CELL have been discussed to death.

That's why I encouraged Asher's posts, finally another side of the debate from someone with solid technical knowledge on the matter. You can call it cheerleading or whatever, but I'm interested in cool technical discussions that aren't one-sided, I'll be buy a PS3 that's certain, so I have no vested interest other than a preference for xbox franchises.

And my only problem with your posting in that thread, was the 10-20% numbers you were throwing around were presumably based on P4 hyper-threading, and you were referring to these percentages as if they were set in stone without admitting that the numbers may be drastically different on an IO PowerPC with a different implementation of SMT. That's all.

Also, I'll point out that in the other thread nobody was claiming the X console was undeniably more powerful than Y console, it was simply a discussion about the upsides and downsides of a CPU.

- And for the record, Sony's in no position to really worry about "losing it's grip" x360 may take a good chunk of the market, but sony has nothing to worry about, it'll just be more even this time around.

Edge

22-Nov-2005, 01:59

Damn edge, I am not sure how to reply to you, don't want to seem rude.

That little statement seems to suggest you have no clue about software engineering. When you write a program that 20 or more co-workers need to understand and interact with, what you need is it to be readable.

This hardware model will make code very specialized, which is not completly bad but will be harder to maintain and thus put a lot of strain in developers. Working on a tight schedule this can only be bad.

Most software engineers will tell you a CPU with a good cache mechanism which is transparent to the programmer, will run more efficiently most of the time. For example if your programmers ***** up with their optimization of memory access, basically your whole program will get to a crawl. I remember some big time developer comments about this. With a cache system the programmer can focus on optimizing other areas, now with the cell they would have to optimize for everything, and any minor change in code can lead to disartrous cosecuences performace wise.

So maybe you like a programmers brain, (and in an ideal world I would bet I too!) but in real life what we need is to make the right compromises, and in MHO they don't seem to have made the right one with regards to cell when it comes to development time, dev. cost and mantainability of code.

That said I am no expert in cell assembly code, and as this is beyond3d, any enlightment is gladly welcome.

PS: Have you ever wonder why java is so popular among programmers?

EDIT: Damn wasn't trying to go by the word filter, i really must stop cursing lol...

This is getting absurd. I have you telling me I have "have no clue about software engineering", and then you follow through by saying "That said I am no expert in cell assembly code."

Yes, thank you for your contribution to this thread. :major rolleyes:

Next time, drop the rude tone, if you want to have a civil discussion. I won't reply to you again.

Edge

22-Nov-2005, 02:00

Well simply put, I think CELL has recieved more than it fair share of "optimistic" discussion. I think it's much more interesting at this point to discuss the downsides, not for any stupid console war crap, but just for interests sake, and because the positive's of CELL have been discussed to death.

That's why I encouraged Asher's posts, finally another side of the debate from someone with solid technical knowledge on the matter. You can call it cheerleading or whatever, but I'm interested in cool technical discussions that aren't one-sided, I'll be buy a PS3 that's certain, so I have no vested interest other than a preference for xbox franchises.

And my only problem with your posting in that thread, was the 10-20% numbers you were throwing around were presumably based on P4 hyper-threading, and you were referring to these percentages as if they were set in stone without admitting that the numbers may be drastically different on an IO PowerPC with a different implementation of SMT. That's all.

Also, I'll point out that in the other thread nobody was claiming the X console was undeniably more powerful than Y console, it was simply a discussion about the upsides and downsides of a CPU.

You're not being consistant, and your excusing your behaviour. It's either allowed or it's not, and going by the standard here, it's allowed. I don't think you should be trying to stop discussion, just because you don't like what you are hearing. I brought up some valid points about the performance difference that can be discussed for everyone's education.

Edge

22-Nov-2005, 02:03

Compared to the number of games released on the PS2, skilled developers are an absolute minority. And even if you have a lot of very good programmers, the amount of stuff that they can do in a reasonable timeframe still might not be enough. All that power from having low-level access might get left unused if there's no time to implement it properly, and what seemed to be an advantage might end up an obstacle.
And FYI, most of the stuff that could differentiate this next gen from the previous one are high-level things, which will be even more difficult to implement if the coders have to fight the low-level stuff...

Edit: for example, let's assume that we have a coder whose mad skillz can give us about 10 times as much processing power to spend on AI, so we can have 10 times as many enemies compared to the previous gen. Or, we have a coder who can get 5 times the processing power but he can use it to create the same number of AI enemies, but 5 times as clever. Which one would be better? Which would you consider "next-gen gameplay"?

There are lots of great games being released now on the PS2 that could not be done years ago. I should know, I'm buying those games. These games are coming from the developers that matter, the developers that help sell systems.

Barbarian

22-Nov-2005, 02:41

This hardware model will make code very specialized, which is not completly bad but will be harder to maintain and thus put a lot of strain in developers. Working on a tight schedule this can only be bad.

I used to think differently, but these days I have to agree. Skilled programmers are a minority and when you have a team of 50 programmers, stability issues dominate the time and resources of skilled programmers.
For whatever reason no publisher will believe you that you can make a next gen project with less than 30 programmers. Most new programmers come straight from college or with minimum experience. They get no ramp up and no training. So no surpise, the code base quickly becomes a mess.
The schedules don't get any shorter. Games are still expected to be done in 12 months or so, and most importantly - ready for Christmas.
With this kind of pressure, there is no time for hard-core optimizations. You need to get things done fast and stable.
And as much as I would hate to admit it Xbox360 dev environment is just light years ahead of PS3 (after all MS IS in the software business). Sony has been getting away with their arrogance in software support (or lack thereof) so far due to legions of dedicated and hardworking engineers, but now there are other options ...
And have in mind I enjoy coding for PS2 (and probably will for PS3).

SubD

22-Nov-2005, 03:15

And as much as I would hate to admit it Xbox360 dev environment is just light years ahead of PS3 (after all MS IS in the software business). Sony has been getting away with their arrogance in software support (or lack thereof) so far due to legions of dedicated and hardworking engineers, but now there are other options ...
And have in mind I enjoy coding for PS2 (and probably will for PS3).

What a joke.

So please go right ahead and list the projects you are referring to. Clearly someone with your experience should be able to demonstrate that:

1) PS2 projects have longer development schedules than similar Xbox projects

2) Or PS2 projects require larger development teams than similar Xbox projects

3) List specific examples of development issues that caused 1) or 2)

I have worked on and run many console projects over the years. I know vast numbers of people who work on and run console projects throughout the industry. I have personal knowledge of the team sizes, budgets, and development schedules for multiple multi-platform console products. And I have a rough estimates for a large number of other projects from a large number of companies that friends of mine work at.

PS2, GameCube, and Xbox projects have, for the vast, vast majority of case, virtually identical team sizes, schedules, and budgets for similar types of projects.

ERP

22-Nov-2005, 06:26

PS2, GameCube, and Xbox projects have, for the vast, vast majority of case, virtually identical team sizes, schedules, and budgets for similar types of projects.

Sure but that's more a function of similar budgets = similar number of people x similar amount of time. Quality and content get scaled to maintain the sum.

Most cross platform games use the primary SKU model where you really develop for one target and have small numbers of people developing and maintaining the other SKU's.

Outside of graphics, working on PS2 isn't radically harder than working on Xbox, but frankly the Xbox tools are a lot better and I'd rather debug gameplay code there than on PS2.

The current PS3 tools leave a lot to be desired, I don't think Sony will ever reach parity with MS on this front. I just don't believe they are willing to make the investment it would require, MS can only do it because they are leveraging years of work on PC dev environments. Honestly the toolside could hurt Sony in the medium term, but primary SKU's are decided by bean counters and projected installed bases, not by software engineers so I doubt it will make a real difference.

And FWIW if you have 50+ programmers on a project (my current gen project does), and your primary goal isn't readability and maintainability you are in for a world of hurt.

As team sizes increase you have to accept that the average quailty and experience level of the programmers on a team decreases, there simply aren't that many good experienced game developers out there.

22-Nov-2005, 08:12

And FWIW if you have 50+ programmers on a project (my current gen project does), and your primary goal isn't readability and maintainability you are in for a world of hurt.

50 programmers? I work on MMOs and we don't even throw that many on a project! You work for EA?

Phil

22-Nov-2005, 08:27

That's the entire problem. It's NOT true. It's still to be decided.

If CELL is only ever able to reach 20% of it's theoretical potential, while XeCPU is able to reach 50% of it's theoretical potential, than it's the XeCPU that is more powerful.

Until we see this processor in teh real world, running real games, and we can see how EFFICIENT it really is, then and only then can you make a legitimate comparison.

Also, Software will play a huge role in determinging which CPU gets exploited to it's fullest potential.

So without knowing the realworld efficiency of CELL, and how much of that power dev's will truly be able to extract, and at the same time acknowledging that MS is likely to have a superior software tools(which will impact efficency), it's WAAAY to premature to conclude PS3 is giong to be more powerful.

It's not paper-specs that matter and peak #'s that matter, it's the the visuals on the screen.

This is a classic example of why people here will always continue arguing something that simply never will be established. When comparing processors, you usually compare them based on their potential as this is what developers will strive to max out over time. The problem with comparing "real world performance" is that everyone has their own definition of it. To some, it's an example of their favorite game A on platform B from developer C looking better than game X on platform Y from developer Z. It just doesn't work that way and by comparing it like that, you're limiting the potential of the systems performance on the ability of that particular developer. By doing that, you missing out on valid factors like time, money, budget, stress, inefficiencies, libraries, team sizes... how do you quantify these factors that play a significant factor in every single game? Answer: You can't. What's left is a flawed conclusion, one that usually is only ment to suit the arguing persons agenda.

IMO the only way you'll ever get some reasonable and valid conclusion when comparing different things is if you messure them under the same conditions: Take a relative simple task and see which one results in better performance. Even then, it's still an apples / oranges comparison, because you might be ignoring that each processor / architecture tries to solve its problem differently from the other. In the case of PS2 / Xbox for example, we have a system [Xbox] that allowed developers to extract easy performance while doing complex pixel operations, while on the other [PS2] developers have a very flexible yet complicated system that's optimal usage lies in different areas. When both are used efficiently and to the systems strength, you get very different results: I'd say a game like ZOE2 shows what the PS2 is very good at: Geometry, particles while low on textures. Xbox's advantage in my eyes lie primarely in its pixel operations (bump mapping) and texturing... something the PS2 isn't good at. After 5 years of this generation, it's still arguable which of these two systems is "more powerful" - but perhaps only because it has ever been an apples / oranges comparison from the beginning. In programmable performance, I'd give the edge to PS2 among other advantage like more usuable fillrate - on Xbox, the advantages clearly goes into other aspects of its hardware. How do you quantify which is "better"? In the end, it simply boils down to personal preference.

Fast forwarding back to the PS3 / Xbox360 situation, I can't help but feel some of you are really looking at it from the wrong angle. The CELLs potential is its floating point performance - something that will give it a lot of potential for developers to use. This is an undeniable fact - how far it will be utilized by developers is a completely different discussion, one that even in 5 years from now won't give you cut and dry answers. There will be developers extracting better performance than others - and none of them is a definite benchmark of a systems performance because they're influenced by many factors (cost, teamsize, effort...) as well.

As to which of the two systems will be "more powerful" (what a silly term)? Does it really matter when the results are different? I expect each exclusive developers to make brilliant use of the hardware each going for different looks based on the system's potentials while multiplatform targeted games will rarely be of any benchmark since they will be programmed to suit both systems at the same time. If we want to be geeks though and compare processors, you have to see the processors for what they are and what the approach they require. As such, CELLs potentials are undeniable (as is XeCPU and any other unit of each of the systems).

Laa-Yosh

22-Nov-2005, 08:56

There are lots of great games being released now on the PS2 that could not be done years ago. I should know, I'm buying those games. These games are coming from the developers that matter, the developers that help sell systems.

Is this meant to be an answer, an argument, or what?...

Phil

22-Nov-2005, 10:25

I'll bite:

Compared to the number of games released on the PS2, skilled developers are an absolute minority. And even if you have a lot of very good programmers, the amount of stuff that they can do in a reasonable timeframe still might not be enough. All that power from having low-level access might get left unused if there's no time to implement it properly, and what seemed to be an advantage might end up an obstacle.
And FYI, most of the stuff that could differentiate this next gen from the previous one are high-level things, which will be even more difficult to implement if the coders have to fight the low-level stuff...

I understand that the industry is forcing developers to produce more in less time and consequently to be able to bring down costs (do more for less) as costs in development rise. This isn't unique to the console industry but is found in all IT markets as well. Either you make accesible hardware at the expense of performance or the other way around.

If we take the PS2 / Xbox scenario, you'll see there are quite a few half assed efforts on Xbox as well, even though its hardware is more accessible. We'll always have examples on both and yet, I do enjoy the results of those developers on PS2 that fought with the hardware to get the best results possible.

The question is: do you want more challenging hardware to achieve more or do you want more accessible hardware to achieve fewer things with less effort? It's really a gamble, one that isn't as black and white since you have developers with more and less talent as developers with their personal preference on the subject as well.

Edit: for example, let's assume that we have a coder whose mad skillz can give us about 10 times as much processing power to spend on AI, so we can have 10 times as many enemies compared to the previous gen. Or, we have a coder who can get 5 times the processing power but he can use it to create the same number of AI enemies, but 5 times as clever. Which one would be better? Which would you consider "next-gen gameplay"?

I'm going to assume that the coder with those "mad skillz" didn't necessarely put the performance to best use in that case then. I'm also going to assume that the first coder in your example could find other ways to use that double performance into evenmore clever enemies (or sophisticated AI) or simply in more advanced gameplay challenges thanks to more sophisticated enemies.

Truth though, more complex games don't necessarely make better games, but I'd argue that has less to do with the coders skills but more the teams talent of knowing what gamers want and putting the teams coding skills to good use.

Metal

22-Nov-2005, 14:27

mckmas8808

22-Nov-2005, 16:18

The day Microsoft knows how to play the media game and pull the wool over the eyes of the average gamer is the day they may have a chance to take the lead. I can't even talk about the Xbox 360 with gamers in real life, in online games, or on forums without hearing Xbox 1.5, PS3 is the one to wait for, etc. It's amazing how many sheep there are in this world.

It's true Sony knows how to advertise better than MS, but I don't think Sony is pulling any wool over any gamer's eyes. All Sony did was talk about what the PS3 will have in it and showed the world what the games will look like. Nothing wrong with that.

london-boy

22-Nov-2005, 16:20

You can't be THAT naive...
Not saying Sony's success is 100% due to their marketing, but saying they innocently "showed PS3 and what the games will look like" is just naive.

mckmas8808

22-Nov-2005, 16:28

You can't be THAT naive...
Not saying Sony's success is 100% due to their marketing, but saying they innocently "showed PS3 and what the games will look like" is just naive.

I don't think I'm understanding you correctly. Are you saying Sony will not have games that looked like what they showed us and the rest of the world?

Metal was stating that MS needs to learn how to trick the average gamer like Sony does. Yet, I still don't know how Sony has tricked the average gamer. I watched the Countdown to Xbox 360 show last night on G4TV twice. Yes that's about 5 hours worth and even some respectable people said that they thought next-gen games would look like MGS4 and KZ.

So, maybe what MS should have done was show a better representation of what next-gen gaming is and not just show 1st gen, made in a hurry, with a current gen foundation with some next-gen polish type of games.

To me Sony is doing next-gen gaming justice. As is Nintendo. They are talking about next-gen gameplay; which sounds totally different from what we are getting today. Nintendo and Sony are talking more about real next-gen games, while MS is talking mostly about current gen games with some good next-gen polish. Bad mistake.

Joe DeFuria

22-Nov-2005, 16:33

To me Sony is doing next-gen gaming justice. As is Nintendo. They are talking about next-gen gameplay; which sounds totally different from what we are getting today. Nintendo and Sony are talking more about real next-gen games, while MS is talking mostly about current gen games with some good next-gen polish. Bad mistake.

In other words, MS is "talking about" what they will actually deliver at launch, and others are just talking hypotheticals....

function

22-Nov-2005, 16:46

Maybe we should judge console power by actual power consumption!

I think the power supply 360 is supposed to be rated at up to 204W of gameplay power. Come on Sony, with higher transistor counts and a faster GPU, perhaps you can deliver up to 408W of gameplay power!

Zomg, twice as powerful!

london-boy

22-Nov-2005, 16:54

Well, people always talk about console "power" when it comes to performance. This undescribable "power" one console has over the other if it pushes more polygons or more pixels or blah blah blah.... But in a sense, power is really the electrical power that goes through these things!
Consoles in 2050 will have a nuclear reactor to compete with each other.

ERP

22-Nov-2005, 16:54

50 programmers? I work on MMOs and we don't even throw that many on a project! You work for EA?

Someone large, and while I may not agree with the idea of throwing bodies at a problem, it's an unfortunate reality, which radically changes the way games software is developed.

Edge

22-Nov-2005, 17:14

Is this meant to be an answer, an argument, or what?...

It's a statement of fact.

nelg

22-Nov-2005, 17:32

Someone large

Gabe Newell?........

jk/

mckmas8808

22-Nov-2005, 18:15

In other words, MS is "talking about" what they will actually deliver at launch, and others are just talking hypotheticals....

The first part in bold in 100% correct. MS is only talking about the now. MS is only talking what the consumer will see within the next 3 or so months. You notice games like Mass Effect wasn't hyped at E3 or TGS much as it should have. Mass Effect looks to me and many others more next-gen than Perfect Dark 0.

That's the difference between Sony and MS. Not to say one is correct and the other is not. Sony and Nintendo are not talking hypotheticals. To us they may seem like hypotheticals, but I'm pretty sure Sony and Nintendo will deliver what they are talking about and showing us.

Eleazar

22-Nov-2005, 18:27

I whole opinion on the things is that Sony will still maintain their dominance. Just by looking at the major gaming sites the push seems to be for Sony rather than MS. I don't think it is really about who has the better system or what games are coming out for which. Sony just has a loyal fan base. Microsoft will eat away most likely eat away at Sony's market share, but I don't seem them coming out the winner, unless Sony just really disappoints their fans, or gives them a reason to look elsewhere for a console. I myself fell the xbox360 to be a better choice, however I am mostly a PC gamer. I will only be getting a xbox360 because my bro is buying one. I am just more impressed with xbox having the general cores, unified shader, and the XNA. I don't know why, but these just appeal to me. Sony however does have the cell, but my gut doesn't tell me it will be everything it is cracked up to be. Maybe once we know what the RSX will be I will become much more enthused, but as it stands now I see MS as more solid. Though that could very well change once Sony finally decides to reveal more about the PS3.

TheMightyPuck

22-Nov-2005, 18:51

To us they may seem like hypotheticals, but I'm pretty sure Sony and Nintendo will deliver what they are talking about and showing us.

Now that is naive. Since when has any company delivered on their marketing hype??

mckmas8808

22-Nov-2005, 19:37

Now that is naive. Since when has any company delivered on their marketing hype??

What the heck is naive about it?:mad: It's plain and simple to me and should be to you.

1. Sony showed a showstopper at TGS called MGS4. Now we all know that the game will look just as good and more than likely better than what we seen in September. How is this marketing hype? You make it sound as if it's impossible to make the game look like this. If this game looks worst then yes marketing hype, but that's Kojima's fault.

2. Sony showed a showstopper at E3 called Killzone. Now we don't know if Gurillea will deliver this, but is the video really isn't that much better than what MGS4 showed? Is the video really beyond the scope of what next-gen systems can do? Why is it that MS's first gen games are the end of be all of what next-gen games can do? Again how is this marketing hype. If Sony pulls it out then it was the truth the whole time. If they don't then yes you would have been correct in calling this video marketing hype.

3. Nintendo has given us some ideas of what the controller will be able to do in their promo video. Should we really question them on if they will be able to deliver on this? Nintendo's feelings about their revolution through gameplay is not marketing hype. But if the controller adds 0% to gameplay then yes this would have been marketing hype.

Platon

22-Nov-2005, 19:50

What the heck is naive about it?:mad: It's plain and simple to me and should be to you.

1. Sony showed a showstopper at TGS called MGS4. Now we all know that the game will look just as good and more than likely better than what we seen in September. How is this marketing hype? You make it sound as if it's impossible to make the game look like this. If this game looks worst then yes marketing hype, but that's Kojima's fault.

2. Sony showed a showstopper at E3 called Killzone. Now we don't know if Gurillea will deliver this, but is the video really isn't that much better than what MGS4 showed? Is the video really beyond the scope of what next-gen systems can do? Why is it that MS's first gen games are the end of be all of what next-gen games can do? Again how is this marketing hype. If Sony pulls it out then it was the truth the whole time. If they don't then yes you would have been correct in calling this video marketing hype.

3. Nintendo has given us some ideas of what the controller will be able to do in their promo video. Should we really question them on if they will be able to deliver on this? Nintendo's feelings about their revolution through gameplay is not marketing hype. But if the controller adds 0% to gameplay then yes this would have been marketing hype.

I was thinking more along the lines of xbox1.5, 120fps, hight drama and so on. As for the games, sure MGS4 is more than achievable, even on xbox, KZ on the other hand, I don't know, will the games be close? Well maybe, actually GOW is quite close, but still reaching the exact fidelity that the KZ demo showed feels quite far away...

mckmas8808

22-Nov-2005, 20:10

I was thinking more along the lines of xbox1.5, 120fps, hight drama and so on. As for the games, sure MGS4 is more than achievable, even on xbox, KZ on the other hand, I don't know, will the games be close? Well maybe, actually GOW is quite close, but still reaching the exact fidelity that the KZ demo showed feels quite far away...

And I totally understand why you feel that way. But think about it. In 1999 were games like RE4, MGS3, SOTC, God of War, Far Cry, Splinter Cell 3, etc thought about? The developers always seem to amaze us with what they come up with. People sometimes look at me as a Sony fanguy, but I'll say it right here and now I personally think the Xbox 360 will be able to produce games that look very very close to the KZ video also.

Basing what a console can do off of what you see in first gen games that are rushed and not really polished seems foolish to me. Why say a game like isn't possible from Sony's videoshow while comparing it to a game like PD0? I wish I could bet some people on this board that Splinter Cell 5 will look damn near as good as the KZ video.

Why people think Gears of War is the best thing that we will get next-gen graphically is beyond me.http://community.allhiphop.com/images/smilies/fragend013.gif

_phil_

22-Nov-2005, 20:39

I wish I could bet some people on this board that Splinter Cell 5 will look damn near as good as the KZ video.

not with me.they will probably make it with UE3 (or modified).But i think insomniac can do wonders.

Laa-Yosh

22-Nov-2005, 21:15

I'm going to assume that the coder with those "mad skillz" didn't necessarely put the performance to best use in that case then. I'm also going to assume that the first coder in your example could find other ways to use that double performance into evenmore clever enemies (or sophisticated AI) or simply in more advanced gameplay challenges thanks to more sophisticated enemies.

I'll try it in another way then:
Coder #1 has low-level coding skills, he can write very efficient and fast code. But he hasn't got a clue about how to design AI, complex renderers with unified lighting, shadows, etc., complex simulations for persistent worlds (RPG-like), and so on.
Coder #2 has the above mentioned high-level skills, but he isn't really able to optimize his code to the metal.

See, I consider the high-level stuff to be more next-gen than a reiteration of the previous gen stuff, but with more more more from everything. I don't want an FPS with ten times as many enemies, or a shallow RPG with even more spells, or more phong-shaded polygons in the graphics.

I guess you'll now try to argue that there are many coders out there who are a perfect mix of #1 and #2...

Joe DeFuria

22-Nov-2005, 21:20

Sony and Nintendo are not talking hypotheticals. To us they may seem like hypotheticals, but I'm pretty sure Sony and Nintendo will deliver what they are talking about and showing us.

If they are not showing actual in-game footage, they are showing hypotheticals.

From a marketing perspective, I'm not saying one is better than the other...however, I would argue that the closer you are to launch, the less hypothetical, and more "real" you need to be, otherwise you set yourself up for a backlash.

So it only makes perfect sense for MS to be more "down to earth" because they were always closer to launch than the other two.

Bobbler

22-Nov-2005, 21:45

I guess you'll now try to argue that there are many coders out there who are a perfect mix of #1 and #2...

I imagine anyone creating a game will have more than just one coder -- usually a mix between people with low level skills and high level skills (low level people make abstraction layers for the high level people, etc, etc). There shouldn't really be a trade off like you mention. Unless you're very much understaffed you should have high level and low level coders who in theory match the two types of coders you mentioned. Maybe I'm just not sure the point you're trying to get across...

I will say that, in my opinion, you can get done with 5-15 programmers (depending on project scope of course) as much as you can a team of 30+ -- throwing more people at the job is a highly destructive attitude that the industry seems to be in favor of, rather disappointing to see the publishers so eager to do that.

mckmas8808

22-Nov-2005, 21:53

If they are not showing actual in-game footage, they are showing hypotheticals.

From a marketing perspective, I'm not saying one is better than the other...however, I would argue that the closer you are to launch, the less hypothetical, and more "real" you need to be, otherwise you set yourself up for a backlash.

So it only makes perfect sense for MS to be more "down to earth" because they were always closer to launch than the other two.

In a non-direct way we are agreeing with one another.

Laa-Yosh

22-Nov-2005, 22:29

I imagine anyone creating a game will have more than just one coder -- usually a mix between people with low level skills and high level skills (low level people make abstraction layers for the high level people, etc, etc). There shouldn't really be a trade off like you mention. Unless you're very much understaffed you should have high level and low level coders who in theory match the two types of coders you mentioned. Maybe I'm just not sure the point you're trying to get across...

The main problem here is that especially with the PS3, the high level coders will have to learn hardware details because their existing programming approach would kill efficiency. And you obvoiusly can't get one programmer's high-level code constantly rewritten by someone else... so combining your team's individual strenghts will be pretty hard too.

And the original point was that a programmer's brain is always a better approach than a good cache algorithm, which I disagree with. As programming has to move to solve higher and higher levels of problems, it'll become increasingly difficult to manually build the low-end foundations for it by hand. Having to manually manage all the data around the SPEs might end up like forcing a developer to code each and every pixel and vertex shader by hand, in assembly... You may have a few, or even a lot of clever coders to do that, but the end result will still suffer, because the budget is limited, the deadline is closing in, and your team's efficiency will decrease with its size as well. So maybe Sony should've decided for a good cache algorithm instead.

mckmas8808

22-Nov-2005, 22:32

Having to manually manage all the data around the SPEs might end up like forcing a developer to code each and every pixel and vertex shader by hand, in assembly... You may have a few, or even a lot of clever coders to do that, but the end result will still suffer, because the budget is limited, the deadline is limited, and your team's efficiency will decrease with its size as well. So maybe Sony should've decided for a good cache algorithm instead.

Great point, but I guess we will have to wait and see if a good cache algorithm would have been better when the games come out.

compres

22-Nov-2005, 23:19

This is getting absurd. I have you telling me I have "have no clue about software engineering", and then you follow through by saying "That said I am no expert in cell assembly code."

Yes, thank you for your contribution to this thread. :major rolleyes:

Next time, drop the rude tone, if you want to have a civil discussion. I won't reply to you again.

How does me not being a cell assembly expert make you have a clue about software engineering?

By simple logic I don't seem to contradict myself like you are implying, enlight me.

I was certainly not trying to be rude BTW. Having a civilized discusion seems rather hard if it's with you.

compres

22-Nov-2005, 23:30

If I were sony, I would make the PS3 run Linux without the need of a hack. Ohh man a 300 bux console/PC would dominate the market for sure. Add a mouse and a keyboard(could be sold separatly, for what I care) and PC gamers will be happy.

Guess am daydreaming...

mckmas8808

22-Nov-2005, 23:31

Lord Darkblade

23-Nov-2005, 00:19

Depends, if its a crippled linux (console OS+X) then probably no, if its a full release then you will likely have a lot of people jumping for joy.

compres

23-Nov-2005, 00:58

Well what about the HDD that comes with Linux that Sony is going to sell? Will that do?

Can I install my favorite dist. on it?

mckmas8808

23-Nov-2005, 05:53

Can I install my favorite dist. on it?

Now I'm not sure about that.

Platon

23-Nov-2005, 07:58

Phil

23-Nov-2005, 08:06

Sounds awefully familiar...

http://www.chez.com/ps2game/assets/images/internet.jpg

...with the exception that the above picture was never targeted for the mass market but for hobby programmers and enthusiasts, which is why it was sold exclusively via Sony's online site and never by retailers. Not to mention that the Kit itself isn't even mass market capable since the average windows user outthere would even fail to know how to use and set up for the reasons you're suggesting.

mckmas8808

23-Nov-2005, 15:56

Sounds awefully familiar...

http://www.chez.com/ps2game/assets/images/internet.jpg

Good try though. Play again later.

Barbarian

01-Dec-2005, 01:30

What a joke.
So please go right ahead and list the projects you are referring to. Clearly someone with your experience should be able to demonstrate that:
1) PS2 projects have longer development schedules than similar Xbox projects
2) Or PS2 projects require larger development teams than similar Xbox projects
3) List specific examples of development issues that caused 1) or 2)

Sorry for the late reply, I was away on vacation.
You must be pretty lucky to work for a studio where things go so smoothly.
I wasn't so lucky in my almost a decade of experience, I have worked in teams of 2, 10, 50 and 150. My last project had a team size of 100 of which 35 were programmers. The numbers are projected to double for next gen.
Strangely enough the number of "system" programmers always stays around 10%. So we have the scenario where 5 "system" engineers have to babysit 50+ engineers and keep them away from trouble, while concurrently developing "cutting edge engine". Don't get me wrong, I love spending months doing asm optimizations and rewriting the all important "inner loop" 10 times. But, these days that's not really possible anymore. It seems way more crucial that my time is spend helping all these other 50+ engineers doing their job fast and effieciently, so that they can iterate and polish as much as possible. Optimizations seem irrelevant when you have dull gameplay or crash bugs.
And to answer you question: PS2 had the luxory to be "the target" platform and everything was first developed on it, Xbox and GC "ports" were done on the afterburner with very few people and minimal time investment. All the gameplay people used VC/Xbox to debug and test their code.
As for development time - it seems similar at first glance - exclusives take 2 to 3 years. But this would be deceptive - Christmas shopping dictates these dev times. What we should compare is polish of the final game within same amounts of time, and especially when we go for aggressive schedules like 6-12 months. I have no doubt an Xbox/Xbox360 title would have significantly more polish and performance with equivalent time and effort. This is very difficult to verify, since good developers are naturally biased to the market leader. (ie just like comparissons between Pentium4 and PowerPC G5).
So, ease of development might be irrelevant, but the perception of being so is much more important especially when deciding what is "the target platform".