Cross-platform Next-gen game speculation

[shaderguy]

What will cross-platform PS3 / Xbox 360 games look like? What features will they support? Here are the greatest common denominators this time around:

Graphics:

• Shader Model 3.0
  720p (limited by PS3 fill rate)
  1x AA (limited by PS3 fill rate)

CPU / coprocessor

• 1 general purpose PowerPC CPU
  VMX/Altivec
  big-endian data formats
  2-4 SPEs. (Assuming 1 Xbox 360 CPU core == 1-2 Cell SPEs)

System:

• 512 MB of RAM
  6.5 GB of storage (Limited by Xbox 360 DVD.)
  20 GB HD
  Ethernet port present, some form of network service present, limited by customer adoption of broadband.

Platform-specific features that probably will be used:

• Xbox 360: 4x AA, user sound tracks, online presence.

Platform-specific features that might be used:

• PS3: Eye-candy physics that doesn't affect gameplay. e.g. better cloth simulation.

Platform-specific features that probably won't be used:

• Both: Platform-specific code for floating point. (e.g. SPEs for PS3, GPU processing for Xbox.) It's just too much work for a cross-platform game. There's a chance that cross-platform middleware will make this easier.
  
  PS3: Better physics that affects gameplay. (Increases test and design cost.)
  
  PS3 1080p (because most games won't even support 1080i.) Unless you count rendering the game at 720p, and then scaling the graphics up to 1080p as 1080p.

Conclusions:

• Next-gen cross-platform games will likely look closer to platform-specific games than they do today. (Because next gen platforms are more similar than today's platforms.)
  
  Cross-platform games will probably look more similar across platforms than today. (Because next gen platforms are more similar than today's platforms.)
  
  Cross-platform games will probably look slightly better on Xbox 360, due to more use of AA.
  
  Cross-platform games may look slightly better on PS3, due to improved eye-candy physics.

Implications for Sony:

• The SPEs will be underutilized. Save money by dropping 4 of the SPEs, and shipping with 3 SPEs.
  
  Blue Ray will be underutilized for games. Consider offering a second, cheaper SKU that has DVD instead of BlueRay.
  
  PS3 probably won't play games better than Xbox 360, so differentiate it by non-game features (e.g. Blue Ray).

Implications for Microsoft:

Consider offering a high-end SKU that includes 1080p and Blue Ray, to remove the percieved advantage of the PS3.

Implications for Nintendo:

Nintendo's Revolution must meet the following minimum bar in order to allow easy porting of PS3/Xbox 360 cross-platform games:

• Shader Model 3.0 @ 720p
  PowerPC CPU + 2 co-processors of some sort. (Alternately a much more powerful CPU core than the PS3 / Xbox 360 might also work.)
  512 MB of RAM
  DVD ODD
  20GB HDD

If the Nintendo Revolution doesn't meet this minimum spec, then it won't get next-gen cross platform games.

 

[ninelven]

erased

 

[shaderguy]

I think you've been smoking something hallucinogenic...

Huh? How come?

 

[Xmas]

An interesting perspective, though I don't agree on some points.

First, I think games on PS3 will make use of antialiasing. Maybe not always 4x, but 2x should be an always-on feature. Then, instead of a 20GB HD, I think "some fast non-volatile memory" should be enough for Revolution. Mostly you need space for savegames and maybe some user created content, I don't think caching of data from OD will be used all that often.

And I think your advices for different SKUs are a bit strange. Who would buy a console that only plays cross-platform titles?

 

[shaderguy]

(paraphrase) I expect the PS3 to use 2x AA

You may be right. It depends on how good the RSX's compression algorithms are, and what the game's overdraw rates are.

I would expect not, though, since the same things were said about Xbox 1 games, and very few of them used 2x AA.

(paraphrase) Don't need a HDD, can use non-volitile RAM instead

Well, you may be right. I was thinking of the way that some Xbox-specific games (e.g. Halo) used the HDD for caching game data. You can't buy enough Flash to do that.

I think your advices for different SKUs are a bit strange. Who would buy a console that only plays cross-platform titles?

I'm not suggesting that at all. Rather, I am sugesting that Sony drop Blue Ray as a feature for their games, and just offer it as a movie playing feature in a high-end SKU. (Sort of like how Nintendo offered DVD support only on the Panasonic Q player this gen.)

I think Blue Ray is a great, compelling, marketing feature for PS3. It will get them more sales, because people want the best features. But it will cost them a ton of money to subsidise in the first 2 years, and its extra capacity won't be used by most games.

 

[talyn99]

Last year Sony made that algorithm chip for the WEGA TV's, I don't know how that is going. And not to bring up the daunted PPU thing again. But who knows how that can be intergrated into things.

From since they integrated the EE and GS they have been working on ways in shrinking their motherboards for various products now. Even before they are realeased now. They shrunk the board of the PS1. And maybe they are coming up with such solutions even now, cause they kinda made that a 'core' business practice like 3 years back.

LIke I said, I would EXPECT PS3 to have anti-aliasing, would make no sense that this X-box and Gamecube had hardware devices to just turn on AA filtering and a hardware such as PS3 wont have them.

That just seems insane, and on many accounts you guys who seem to know all this tech jargon was proven way wrong. Hell, Deadmeat seemed more credible in comparison, and I wont call names..........

 

[doob]

I rather play at a high res without AA (using the gpu resources to the full in texture details&fx) than a lower res texured AA game.

Any AA method i've seen on games till today just end up softening the textures way too much and loose sharpness.
If by someway developers decide to lower texture quality just to add AA to their game and come to the press braging about how jagless their game plays is something i don't need. Or any game needs for that matter.
jmo

 

[Geeforcer]

Eh, the fact that "high resolution VS AA" debate is still ongoing 6 years later seems like a sure indication that we are not quite where we expected to be technologically.

 

[jvd]

Eh, the fact that "high resolution VS AA" debate is still ongoing 6 years later seems like a sure indication that we are not quite where we expected to be technologically.

na cause every few years we rehash it where the lower res is normaly the same res we claimed was high res in the previous arguements .


I.e years ago it was 640x480 with 2x fsaa vs 1027x768 . Then it was 1027x768 with 4x fsaa vs 1600x1200 .

In the console area we kept going higher res. This is really the first time we will have a fsaa lvl standard .

 

[mckmas8808]

Well didn't EA and Vivendi say that they are on board with Blu-Ray. To me this sounds like they will be making thier PS3 games on Blu-Ray while making other console games on DVD. And the cost for them shouldn't be to much different they did the same thing with the GC (because they were forced obviously.)
________
MARIJUANA TRICHOMES

 

[jvd]

Well didn't EA and Vivendi say that they are on board with Blu-Ray. To me this sounds like they will be making thier PS3 games on Blu-Ray while making other console games on DVD. And the cost for them shouldn't be to much different they did the same thing with the GC (because they were forced obviously.)

I dunno . Personaly i believe no launch titles will use the bluray discs . From what i understand they will be much more expensive than standard dvd discs (Even hd-dvd discs carry a preimum over dvd discs )

 

[DuckThor Evil]

I.e years ago it was 640x480 with 2x fsaa vs 1027x768 . Then it was 1027x768 with 4x fsaa vs 1600x1200 .

Ok this might be nitpicking, but it's not 1027x768 it's 1024!x768, you always type it 1027, I just couldn't take it anymore.

 

[one]

• PS3: Eye-candy physics that doesn't affect gameplay. e.g. better cloth simulation.

Novodex and Havok support PS3. It means they utilize SPE instead of programmers. The result? 6,000 rocks rolling down a hill instead of 600 rocks.

 

[Mulciber]

most of the 1st gen playstation2 games came on CD. its not a big deal.

 

[flick556]

My main disagreement is that platform specific games will be similar to cross platform games.

I think the systems are still very different from each other especially the cpus. I think writing specifically for the cell can change everything, that can be seen in the difference between some of sony's demos compared to games using ported engines like the UE3 demo on ps3.

Xbox gpu will use some new unified shader language this may allow for data flow back and forth between the pixels shaders and vertex shaders to produce some new types of effects.

ps3 cell should be able to take on some pretty exotic graphics solutions that use both the gpu and cpu.

I still think the majority of developers will rely on cross platform engines like UE3 and Renderware. I agree that these engines will likely run similarly on the different next gen consoles as well as pcs.

I just think platform specific engines will be able to do some very different things and likely produce some of the best possible visuals.

 

[shaderguy]

• PS3: Eye-candy physics that doesn't affect gameplay. e.g. better cloth simulation.

Novodex and Havok support PS3. It means they utilize SPE instead of programmers. The result? 6,000 rocks rolling down a hill instead of 600 rocks.

They also support the 3 processors on Xbox 360. So Havoc only has 2x to 3x more fp power available on the PS3. (And they may have less general CPU power, so the advantage is even less.)

Worse, many interesting algorithms scale worse than linearly, which means that applying 2x the fp power may result in much less than 2x additional results. I don't know about rock simulations -- if the rocks can collide with each other it might scale at O(n*n), so 3x the fp power would only give you sqrt(3) = 70% more rocks.

It is certainly possible that there is some cool effect that is just beyond the reach of the Xbox 360, but just within the reach of the PS3. If such an effect exists it could make a big difference between the two platforms. (An example of where this happened in the past was Quake, which ran significantly better on Pentium CPUs compared to other CPUs, due to superior floating point performance.)

 

[_phil_]

What are the strength of each consoles concerning vertex creation/destruction ?

 

[one]

They also support the 3 processors on Xbox 360. So Havoc only has 2x to 3x more fp power available on the PS3. (And they may have less general CPU power, so the advantage is even less.)

Though theoretical fp power of those CPUs are much bragged about as they are very clear and intuitive as comparable numbers, I think the strength of CELL lies more in cache locality and higher mem bandwidth which are elements inherited from supercomputer architecture and will make a difference if properly used.

 

[mckmas8808]

if the rocks can collide with each other it might scale at O(n*n), so 3x the fp power would only give you sqrt(3) = 70% more rocks.

Wow 70% more rocks is great. I didn't think about it like that. So if one game had 6000 rocks the other system could have 10,200 rocks. That a great improvement.
________
VERMONT MEDICAL MARIJUANA DISPENSARY

 

[pegisys]

wouldn't that still comes down to the gpu you still have to be able to have enough polygons to have 4200 more rocks, so if the gpu's are even the added physics may not come across on screen, or am I wrong about this