[Laa-Yosh]

The EDRAM does count a little, all those temp buffers eat up a lot of the 256MB VRAM in the PS3. Depends on the game and the renderer of course.

[Rangers]

Originally Posted by Laa-Yosh

Might be profitable per quarter, but there's a multi-billion dollar deep hole it has to climb out, of with those few hundred millions per quarter it might not even happen within the system's life cycle. Then there are the Xbox1 losses to recover, too.

Nintendo on the other hand has been profitable all the time. Maybe not that much with the GC, but they made no losses at all, only profits...

My post addressed that. I believe it was at ~-$600m if you just straight add the division P&L through the 360's life (may have been 2-3 profitable quarters ago).

Now if you assume the 360 is consistently more profitable than the division as a whole (and this was stated by MS in one past conference call at some point IIRC), it's probably already break even or better, would be my guess.

I agree Nintendo has been vastly more profitable Wii vs 360 life to date. But right now Microsoft is arguably in a better position.

[hoho]

Originally Posted by Laa-Yosh

Think again, Nintendo sold a LOT of software. About as many units as the other two combined, at least, and most of the big sellers were first party, with pretty low budgets compared to the top selling HD franchises.

Anywhere I can see the (more or less) exact sales numbers? It sounds rather unbelieveable considering pretty much everyone that I know that owns a Wii uses it just a few days a year at best and several haven't touched it for over a year.

[function]

Originally Posted by Rangers

Yes, but you could also take time into account. Ps2>ps3 6 years. Xbox>360 4 years. 360>nextbox=7? 8? PS3>PS4=?

You could argue we should see a bigger ram jump this time, 360 will be looking at at least 7 year gap, probably 8 or more.

The 360 managed 8x in 4 years by doubling the number of ram chips. That's not a trick MS can pull again. It's possible they might want to use less than the absolute highest density chips for supply reasons, or 8Gbit chips may not be ready, or MS may even want to go back to 4 chips (with 8 for the devkits).

The 360 narrowly dodged 256 MB!

Originally Posted by Rangers

Some of these RAM counts where you straight add in the EDRAM seem disingenuous...it's not like the 360's 10MB of EDRAM effectively gives it 522 MB of RAM, from what I can gather, that memory is special purpose and doesn't add to main RAM. It's not used in the same way. Likewise I dont consider PS2 had 40MB of RAM, but 32MB. Seems you added 2MB of "I/O memory", 2 MB sound memory, 4MB of EDRAM, etc.

Frame buffers have to go somewhere, as does audio. On the PS1 and Saturn it was common to store texture (or other) data in audio memory. It doesn't matter what you call the memory, it's what you can do with it that matters.

Disregarding memory that will be used because you don't like its name isn't very fair.

If your 360 game is using MSAA then the edram is saving you main memory. If your 360 game is using all 10 MB of edram to store a framebuffer that is then switched with the front buffer during vblanc, then yes, it's like the 360 has 522MB of memory.

[archangelmorph]

Originally Posted by Laa-Yosh

The EDRAM does count a little, all those temp buffers eat up a lot of the 256MB VRAM in the PS3. Depends on the game and the renderer of course.

What temp buffers?

[Laa-Yosh]

Originally Posted by archangelmorph

What temp buffers?

Framebuffer, Z-buffer, backbuffer, particle buffer, and if you use any level of deferred rendering than that's a few more buffers again. Reflections and other off-screen render targets will stay there too.

X360 keeps the backbuffer in main RAM and depending on the title it might get away with using the EDRAM only for everything else. If you do tiling or deferred rendering, or use more space for HDR (like Reach) then it might get complicated but then you can always go sub-HD

[Laa-Yosh]

Originally Posted by hoho

Anywhere I can see the (more or less) exact sales numbers? It sounds rather unbelieveable considering pretty much everyone that I know that owns a Wii uses it just a few days a year at best and several haven't touched it for over a year.

Monthly NDP charts usually had 3-5 Nintendo titles, and most of them in the top spots. Many games have sold more than 20 million copies whereas even the X360 only has a few that went 10+ million.

[function]

Originally Posted by Laa-Yosh

X360 keeps the backbuffer in main RAM and depending on the title it might get away with using the EDRAM only for everything else. If you do tiling or deferred rendering, or use more space for HDR (like Reach) then it might get complicated but then you can always go sub-HD

I think there was a developer here that explained you could avoid having a back buffer entirely by copying the final colour "buffer" (I can't think of a better word) from edram to the front buffer, and if you timed it right you'd keep vsync. I think they said that this way it was also possible to effectively achieve triple buffering using just a front and back buffer...

[Shifty Geezer]

If they did, you'd require a very particular backbuffer that fits in eDRAM. But yes, all RAM in use counts as RAM and XB360 has 522 MBs for devs to choose what to do with. And that's exluding what the OS reserves.

[Rangers]

Originally Posted by function

The 360 managed 8x in 4 years by doubling the number of ram chips. That's not a trick MS can pull again.

Sure they can. That's what technology does, double.

Frame buffers have to go somewhere, as does audio. On the PS1 and Saturn it was common to store texture (or other) data in audio memory. It doesn't matter what you call the memory, it's what you can do with it that matters.

I agree, which is why you shouldn't just add all the memory a system has on the motherboard hodgepodge together. GC was not really a 43 MB system compared to others when 16 MB was brutally crippled and limited in use. EDRAM in any system is not additive to main RAM either.

[Laa-Yosh]

Yeah it's no accident that devs always mention the memory advantage of the X360 over the PS3. And the divided pools on the PS3 are yet another issue to deal with and it also makes full utilization even harder. You need 6 more megs, you have 2 here and 5 there but can't simply move anything around, so will you re-architect everything just for that?

[Rangers]

Yeah it's no accident that devs always mention the memory advantage of the X360 over the PS3.

Those devs call out the divided RAM and OS overhead issues (Carmack recently), as you point out. I've never heard a dev mention EDRAM about any added memory on 360.

But there was a detailed debate before about this on B3D if anybody can find it...if I recall the conclusion was unclear at best.

PS maybe probably OT but I this should get your next gen juices slathering, it does mine (all new BF3 trailer)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5eLbPQt_Pk&hd=1


Quite a lot of headroom left in graphics I'd say, although BF3 is that example we've been missing this gen of a incremental PC game that somewhat lessens the wow factor of next gen consoles when they arrive. But hopefully not too much cause I want to be blown away, and trust that I will even beyond BF3.

[function]

Originally Posted by Shifty Geezer

If they did, you'd require a very particular backbuffer that fits in eDRAM. But yes, all RAM in use counts as RAM and XB360 has 522 MBs for devs to choose what to do with.

Yeah, it'd need to fit in one tile. That got me wondering if you could use a single (front) framebuffer, a horizontally split pair of tiles for rendering, and time the copy from edram to framebuffer so as to maintain vsync. If that makes any sense. At all.

And that's exluding what the OS reserves.

Another contentious issue! An issue this generation and a potential wildcard in the next.

Originally Posted by Rangers

Sure they can. That's what technology does, double.

I wouldn't complain about having 16 highest capacity memory chips in the next consoles, but I wouldn't bet on it!

The original Xbox used 4, with 8 being saved for the devkits. The jump to 512 MB of ram for the 360 robbed MS of the chance to have more memory in the devkits, but obviously made the system much more capable.

[archangelmorph]

Originally Posted by Laa-Yosh

Framebuffer, Z-buffer, backbuffer, particle buffer, and if you use any level of deferred rendering than that's a few more buffers again. Reflections and other off-screen render targets will stay there too.

X360 keeps the backbuffer in main RAM and depending on the title it might get away with using the EDRAM only for everything else. If you do tiling or deferred rendering, or use more space for HDR (like Reach) then it might get complicated but then you can always go sub-HD

There's no requirement for putting your render targets or depth/stencil buffers in VRAM over XDR on PS3...

Your final render targets maybe a different matter however...

[Laa-Yosh]

You have to put them somewhere and that's substracted from that 512MB figure, whereas on the X360 it isn't. So what's your point?

[Laa-Yosh]

Originally Posted by Rangers

Those devs call out the divided RAM and OS overhead issues (Carmack recently), as you point out. I've never heard a dev mention EDRAM about any added memory on 360.

Devs usually don't get into that much detail but the fact is that the extra 10MB does count as an extra 10MB.

[Andrew Lauritzen]

Originally Posted by Rangers

Quite a lot of headroom left in graphics I'd say, although BF3 is that example we've been missing this gen of a incremental PC game that somewhat lessens the wow factor of next gen consoles when they arrive. But hopefully not too much cause I want to be blown away, and trust that I will even beyond BF3.

Agreed BF3 is looking really nice. I hope it ends up demonstrating that people still want more out of graphics vs. the currently increasing belief that we're at a "good enough" point.

I honestly don't expect next gen consoles to leapfrog PCs though. As things are becoming increasingly heat and power constrained the console form factor becomes the limiting variable (as it will be with all devices).

I fully expect next generation consoles (at least one of them) to jump to midrange discrete DX11-level performance, but I doubt they will even reach the high end of PC performance, let alone surpass it. It's just not reasonable to expect in that size and power profile. Of course there will still be some performance advantage of less abstraction/portability like always on consoles, but I'm not sure if it will make up the gap which is currently the widest that it has ever been and getting wider.

[bkilian]

Originally Posted by Laa-Yosh

Might be profitable per quarter, but there's a multi-billion dollar deep hole it has to climb out, of with those few hundred millions per quarter it might not even happen within the system's life cycle. Then there are the Xbox1 losses to recover, too.

Nintendo on the other hand has been profitable all the time. Maybe not that much with the GC, but they made no losses at all, only profits...

I don't think the execs here are thinking about XBox having to "pay back" it's investment. This isn't venture capital, and MS was not hurting for profit in those years. I think they're more focused on future profit. The E&D business is now the 4th most profitable at MS and the fastest growing. A few years of absorbed investments is a small price to pay for an entirely new revenue stream with the potential to rival the Windows and Office juggernauts.

[Laa-Yosh]

I know that, and I absolutely don't want to make it sound like I have some issue with the Xbox business, and noone ever expected the entry of a new player into the console market to be a cheap one.

I've merely talked about how Nintendo is the only one really profitable in this generation if you look at the bottom line.

[Laa-Yosh]

Originally Posted by Andrew Lauritzen

I'm not sure if it will make up the gap which is currently the widest that it has ever been and getting wider.

I don't think we should look at double and triple graphics card systems as a reasonable metric of PC performance. Sure, they're more available to the public compared to stuff like the GSCube or the first multi-chip 3dfx cards; but I'd put those systems into a different leage and not with the "PC".

[liolio]

Originally Posted by Laa-Yosh

Yeah I don't get it either. How much more money has Nintendo made with the Wii, ten times or more than what Sony or MS has? Then again they both haven't really recouped their losses yet, so I think the Wii has actually made infinitely more money compared to the HD consoles.

Yes it made a lot more for Nintendo even in regard to brand strength / public perception than what the ps360. MS won a lot of mind share but EU? I don't know I know that in France it's still lagging in mind share and that they will have to tough job to have people forget about Rrod.
Money I guess nintendo made a lot of money, the current trend on their share with negative forecast has nothing to do with the wii.

Originally Posted by hoho

The main problem with Wii is that it was interesting, seemingly fun and really cheap. That meant tons of people bought it but after you realized how little it really offered it just staid in a corner collecting dust. I wouldn't be surprised if software attachment rate for it was several times lower than either PS3 or XB360.

Well there a thread on the matter (where it was discussed heavily) some months(/ one year?)ago. Editors sold quiet a lot on the Wii there are numerous millions sellers N titles aside. But may be it's not the game that cost editors the most to port that prove the most lucrative. Anyway the trend now is negative and I'm confident indeed that a lot of Wii are indeed collecting dust (all my friends ones are).
It's easy to do an almost postmortem analysis but I believe that N made the wrong decision by try to push the Wii down even more people throats through more and more pointless peripherals while not delivering the games that pushed people to buy the game. They took the wrong path (postmortem it's easier to come down to that conclusion I know). Clearly adults that don't play games often were not a reliable base and trying to replace board/social game game was not a good idea either. My postmortem idea is that the WiiU should have been there for a while now, a real in between product. Instead of trying to address non gamers (while not delivering enough games) their focus should have been to get every body within the family around their system but not at the same time. That's where on-line service, a more potent system would have come handy. Nintendo pressed the lemon way too dry.
N should have ship the Wii2 fall 2010 when they were still at the top of the wave. Wii2 should have developed along their new handled something fresh not a new DS. They've been cheap and their exec will get fired in near future that's sure. They were all about their "casual gaming" while wondering about what to do with "da vitality censor". It looks like success made them a bit tipsy.
Imagine how strong Nintendo was in 2009 and if they have announced a system in TGS 2009 launching worldwide in 2010 matched by a new handled that can work together with the system providing WiiU functionality and way more? They were the unquestionable wiinner, they could have like MS develop a facebook application that run facebook games for example, they had the strength to do so, minecraft editors would not have been like "user base is not enough". No they preferred in a cocky fashion spend money searching how to do a new balance board, a wii motion; a vitality sensor??? WTF postmortem WFT
Imho they missed the point, social game and online servicces were the way to extend further their reach more than balance board 2, Wiimotion+ , vitalishit and I don't know what, a more potent system was the way to take male teenagers from either sony or MS. They got locked in a posture, searching workaround for their system and business model lacking instead of looking forward about what they peak popularity allowed them to do. It's like they took the Sony "10 years life span for them selves" but 10 years life span is not an universal truth neither for them or MS or Sony. For them 4 may have been enough they were past profitable with outstanding public perception.

[Andrew Lauritzen]

Originally Posted by Laa-Yosh

I don't think we should look at double and triple graphics card systems as a reasonable metric of PC performance. Sure, they're more available to the public compared to stuff like the GSCube or the first multi-chip 3dfx cards; but I'd put those systems into a different leage and not with the "PC".

Agreed, I'm comparing only to high-end single cards (6970, GTX 580) and I still doubt we'll leapfrog those level of cards at all. Similar for the CPU. I'd love to be proven wrong but I seriously doubt that I will, given both the technical factors and the increasing apathy for pushing high-end hardware from the console makers.

Arguably last generation barely did it anyways. The PS3 in particular was a bit depressing with the NVIDIA 8xxx series and DX10 coming out around the same time and providing significantly superior hardware.

[Tahir2]

I find it encouraging that we are more than likely going to be moving away from the PPC design used in PS3 and Xbox360 - it was just a megahurtz monster = lackluster performance. Of course the decision to go with such a CPU would have been made when it became known that IPC counts for something and splitting the cache on those multicore processors just served to starve them.

It would be nice to design a GPU from the ground up just for specifically for eye-fidelity, rather than the trend to go all general purpose which doesn't increase performance/die size in reality. I am talking about the legacy of DirectX and features that add bloat but don't increase speed. Didn't some dev state that you can do most of the effects in DX8 that you can in DX11 (I think a slight exxagerration but still some DX9 games look incredibly similar to their DX10/11 counterparts.)

Here is hoping that Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft choose wisely!

[Andrew Lauritzen]

Originally Posted by Tahir2

Didn't some dev state that you can do most of the effects in DX8 that you can in DX11 (I think a slight exxagerration but still some DX9 games look incredibly similar to their DX10/11 counterparts.)

It's a ridiculous claim from naive people. DX10/11 stuff to this point has been - bar a few exceptions - ports. As long as you're forced to support DX9 (and consoles) it's hard to write a completely different renderer to take advantage of new features. Frostbite 2 is one of the notable exceptions that has a very DX11-styled renderer that they have "made work" on older hardware, with probably some pretty significant performance implications.

Lots of the real breakthroughs in graphics are happening due to increased flexibility enabling fundamentally more efficient algorithms to be expressed. So while you can criticize certain features as not turning out to be too useful or efficient (*cough* geometry shaders), overall the feature improvements have mattered as much if not more than the raw speed. We have plenty of raw speed in high-end PC GPUs for instance, but the problem is things like how naively the GPU pipeline makes use of the available memory bandwidth. That sort of thing needs to be addressed by better algorithms (enabled by more general features), not more bandwidth.

[AlphaWolf]

They should be able to easily match 6970/580 level performance given the advantages of a closed system. I'd guess current laptop graphics withing a closed ecosystem would accomplish that.