BusinessWeek article on the next-gen systems (some dev comments)

[London Geezer]

Selective reading for the win! See you're back to your old tricks.

All this sex lately is having an adverse effect on my 20/20 vision. Oh well... Better that than nothing i guess...

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The article says years. Why you're trying to twist that into months is beyond me.

I'm doing nothing of the sort. I'm pointing out a mistake in your reading in taking Kosta's statement as meaning 3-4 years to make the most Cell. Kosta said 3-4 generations. The editor (or author, Burt Helm) added a comment in parenthesis along the lines of 'in other words years' to explain to his readers in a measurement of time they can understand what 3-4 generations relates to. The readership are likely to not know whether a software generation is years or months or weeks and need this broad clarification. Nowhere did Kosta say 3-4 years. Now I ask you how long is a generation in software terms? How do you qualify that definition? A software generation has no offical definition. It could mean a year. It could mean a sequel, and for each developer that may mean every two years. SotC is the second game from the ICO team. Does that make it a second generation game? EA has a massive turnaround. Are they on their 10th generation titles now? Are EA games better than SotC because they're on a further generation of development?

If Kosta meant 3-4 years, why did he say 3-4 generations? 3-4 Generations means, without a clear definition, by the time the devs have had a couple of titles or so out and got used to how Cell works. Unless you can find me an official qualification that Kosta rates a generation as a year, or proof that he chose the term 'generation' instead of the term 'year' for no other reason than to obfuscate, I'll remain convinced your language parser needs an upgrade.

 

[Titanio]

But if it does take 4 years to "take advantage" of Cell (not even max out) I'll be extremely dissappointed.

I read that, "taking advantage of its real potential", as effectively getting the most out of it, or close to it.

It takes years to max out most systems - what's so surprising about that? It lends a nice evolutionary path for games too. But it doesn't mean you won't see Cell put to good use in the interim, and making a difference.

It should also be taken as just one developer's opinion. I'm sure all would agree that it'll take time to tap Cell properly and/or fully, but they may disagree as to how long that'll take. I wouldn't expect the dev who made this comment to be exactly pushing the boat out to bring that day closer..

 

[Nite_Hawk]

WHOA

I know, isn't it impressive? I mean, when you have 1st-2nd generation games that look like MGS4 as a baseline, can you imagine what it will be like in 4 years when they've really tapped the chips power? That's a lot of headroom we are talking about! It sounds like the PS3 should have a lot of room to grow given how Sony wants the PS3 to last a while. I bet it will significantly outlast the xbox360 based on this.



</sarcasm>

Nite_Hawk

 

[blakjedi]

I know, isn't it impressive? I mean, when you have 1st-2nd generation games that look like MGS4 as a baseline, can you imagine what it will be like in 4 years when they've really tapped the chips power? That's a lot of headroom we are talking about! It sounds like the PS3 should have a lot of room to grow given how Sony wants the PS3 to last a while. I bet it will significantly outlast the xbox360 based on this.



</sarcasm>

Nite_Hawk

or it could be like the release of Doa3 on Xbox and Soul Caliber on DC where only that final generation of games on that system CLEARLY outdo that first generation... Xbox graphics have basically been the same (really high quality) since the start of the console's life.

 

[mckmas8808]

or it could be like the release of Doa3 on Xbox and Soul Caliber on DC where only that final generation of games on that system CLEARLY outdo that first generation... Xbox graphics have basically been the same (really high quality) since the start of the console's life.

HA! Funny how he was being sarcastic, yet you still answered with this weak arguement. First and foremost you can't and shouldn't compare DOA3 to better and different looking games like Splinter Cell: DA or Far Cry Instincts. And remember the Xbox had more off the shelf parts in it than both the PS3 and Xbox 360.

Different ball game here.

 

[London Geezer]

HA! Funny how he was being sarcastic, yet you still answered with this weak arguement. First and foremost you can't and shouldn't compare DOA3 to better and different looking games like Splinter Cell: DA or Far Cry Instincts. And remember the Xbox had more off the shelf parts in it than both the PS3 and Xbox 360.

Different ball game here.

Uhm i think you got it the wrong way...

or it could be like the release of Doa3 on Xbox and Soul Caliber on DC where only that final generation of games on that system CLEARLY outdo that first generation... Xbox graphics have basically been the same (really high quality) since the start of the console's life.

Meaning he's purposedly just writing a "what if" scenario. It wasn't an "argument" therefore it wasn't a "weak argument". Nothing he said was meant to be read as seriously as you did, as he was just offering a "possible scenario" of what could happen. Hell, he doesn't even looked too convinced himself!

 

[mckmas8808]

Uhm i think you got it the wrong way...




Meaning he's purposedly just writing a "what if" scenario. It wasn't an "argument" therefore it wasn't a "weak argument". Nothing he said was meant to be read as seriously as you did, as he was just offering a "possible scenario" of what could happen. Hell, he doesn't even looked too convinced himself!

And that's somewhat respectable, but I guess it got to me because a lot of Xbox fans used that excuse when the MGS4 video was first shown to downplay what future games years from now could look like for the PS3.

We all know more than likely that PS3 games 4 years from now will blow the doors off of MGS4. I mean come on. I understand right?

 

[London Geezer]

And that's somewhat respectable, but I guess it got to me because a lot of Xbox fans used that excuse when the MGS4 video was first shown to downplay what future games years from now could look like for the PS3.

We all know more than likely that PS3 games 4 years from now will blow the doors off of MGS4. I mean come on. I understand right?

Yes, it's very very safe to say that games on both X360 and PS3 will get better and better as time goes by. X360 because it will take time to get everything from Xenos and the 3 core CPU, on PS3 becasue it will take a long time to get to grips with Cell, and we still don't know much about RSX so i reserve jusgement on that one.

 

[blakjedi]

Speaking for myself... I would definitely hope that things look better after two three or four years on any system. What I was stating, which was completely missed, is the fact that after seeing their performance on Xbox this last generation I find Nvidia boards to be HIGHLY accessible to developers from the onset. I still have games from the first generation of Xbox that look terrific. Devs seem to be able to milk their architectures and get great, high quality graphics with ease, so a very high bar (MGS4?) is set from the beginning.

Giving a dev two years with an advanced "traditional" Nvidia chipset and expecting it not to blow you away is like giving Bernini a full chisel set and 216 cubic feet of marble and expecting him not to make something fantastic from it... the dev might not even have to be like bernini though to make something very nice .

The question is where do you go from there? I'd say say we wont really see what PS3 has until 18-24 months from the receipt of the final RSX - so that will make it either december 2007, January 2008 or February 2008. However, having had a chance to work on a stable advanced platform like the 7800 for more than a year, and before them having dual SLI'ed 6800 means that PS3 have had fairly close to spec architecture from a LONG time...

That time and similarity to spec is the reason why most Xbox fans will concede parity of not superiority of the visual quality of first gen PS3 titles with first gen and maybe even concurrently released software from x360 later this year. This is not a concession of power but of easy power availability. Christmas 2007 is when we should finally get a REAL taste of what each system is capable of and whether PS3 can/will graphically pull away from the x360 or not.

I try to say things in a nutshell but on B3D because of biases and misconceptions, I've learned you might as well take the time to be clear.

 

[mckmas8808]

Oh okay I can totally respect that blakjedi. Like I said to l-b I wasn't trying to accuse you, but you know how it is with some people. *nudge nudge*

 

[standing ovation]

Well the article isn't THAT bad! It is actually a better piece of journalism than you'd find in most of the gaming press ...

Besides, I think its concluding remarks are spot on:

And it's not like in the early days, when top hits like Super Mario Brothers or Sonic the Hedgehog sold exclusively for the Nintendo or Sega system, and provided compelling reasons to buy one console over the other. Third-party published games make up the majority of sales on consoles today (last December, they accounted for 90% of sales on the current generation of consoles, according to NPD). That means it's going to be harder for Microsoft and Sony to differentiate their game portfolios this time around.

The underlying problem is that software is becoming more and more hardware independent. :neutral: