Design lessons from PS2 applied to PS3

[quest55720]

As a non tech person I would say sony corrected both PS2 mistakes this time around.

1. Getting NVidia to do the GPU was huge. The biggest mistake of the PS2 IMO was the GS. From what I understand the GS did not even have the feature set of a voodoo 1.
2. Having a better tool set to have developers get up to speed. First gen PS2 games were sub par because of poor tools. I could be wrong but everything I have read has suggested the PS3 tools are much much improved over the PS2 tools at the same stage. I am sure having NVidia will help a ton in tool development.

Between the money invested in R&D and fabs. Add to that the willingness to loose big bucks per console and having NVidia on board this time around will make sony almost invincible and it will take luck to beat them. The PS2 had chinks in the armor especially the first gen games. If the rumors hold true there will be no chinks in the PS3 armor. It will take incredible content and other features to knock off sony this time around.

I just hope someone can get that lucky punch to knock sony off the top. There is nothing more scary than a sony monopoly of the console market. If the next gen repeats the current gen sony might be the only ones standing.

 

[wco81]

I just hope someone can get that lucky punch to knock sony off the top. There is nothing more scary than a sony monopoly of the console market. If the next gen repeats the current gen sony might be the only ones standing.

Sony is going to be hard-pressed to repeat the very high market-share, especially when MS and Nintendo have the budget to do heavy marketing. They should still be the leader but it's a high bar to reach again.

Some of the best-selling games of this generation were multi-platform, rather than console-exclusives.

What goes up must come down.

 

[quest55720]

I just hope someone can get that lucky punch to knock sony off the top. There is nothing more scary than a sony monopoly of the console market. If the next gen repeats the current gen sony might be the only ones standing.

Sony is going to be hard-pressed to repeat the very high market-share, especially when MS and Nintendo have the budget to do heavy marketing. They should still be the leader but it's a high bar to reach again.

Some of the best-selling games of this generation were multi-platform, rather than console-exclusives.

What goes up must come down.

I hope you are right because while the NES days were nice the prices and selection were set by 1 company. Once sega entered the market we got brand new content and selection. Nintendo ruled content and selection with an iron fist. Also prices have stayed the same up till now as in the NES era which is remarkable. How many places can you find a price freeze for over a decade.

 

[PC-Engine]

I just hope someone can get that lucky punch to knock sony off the top. There is nothing more scary than a sony monopoly of the console market. If the next gen repeats the current gen sony might be the only ones standing.

Sony is going to be hard-pressed to repeat the very high market-share, especially when MS and Nintendo have the budget to do heavy marketing. They should still be the leader but it's a high bar to reach again.

Some of the best-selling games of this generation were multi-platform, rather than console-exclusives.

What goes up must come down.

I hope you are right because while the NES days were nice the prices and selection were set by 1 company. Once sega entered the market we got brand new content and selection. Nintendo ruled content and selection with an iron fist. Also prices have stayed the same up till now as in the NES era which is remarkable. How many places can you find a price freeze for over a decade.

Huh? Both SEGA and Nintendo entered the home console market at about the same time.

 

[quest55720]

I just hope someone can get that lucky punch to knock sony off the top. There is nothing more scary than a sony monopoly of the console market. If the next gen repeats the current gen sony might be the only ones standing.

Sony is going to be hard-pressed to repeat the very high market-share, especially when MS and Nintendo have the budget to do heavy marketing. They should still be the leader but it's a high bar to reach again.

Some of the best-selling games of this generation were multi-platform, rather than console-exclusives.

What goes up must come down.

I hope you are right because while the NES days were nice the prices and selection were set by 1 company. Once sega entered the market we got brand new content and selection. Nintendo ruled content and selection with an iron fist. Also prices have stayed the same up till now as in the NES era which is remarkable. How many places can you find a price freeze for over a decade.

Huh? Both SEGA and Nintendo entered the home console market at about the same time.

They might of entered at the same time but sega was pretty much non-existant till the Genesis. I could not buy master system games at places I could get NES games. Kind of like how colleco and intelivision were just there against atari.

I guess I worded it wrong with out 2 strong competitors going at each others throat I would be worried about the console market. It could be sony,ms or nintendo I don't want any of them to be the only game in town.

 

[PC-Engine]

The chances that only one console will exist in the market is very very slim.

 

[one]

A simple analogy would be that if you had a beginning (PS1) and an end goal (PS3), and a middle (PS2)

That's a fairly interesting view, since in the last chapter of this book written months before the PS2 launch it's said Ken Kutaragi actually told so.

 

[Guden Oden]

And Oden, give this guy a break would you?! It's his first post.

To be quite honest I'm not sure I even registred it was his first post, I don't believe post-count mirrors a person's knowledge or authority. I have too much time on my hands so I post a lot. Does that make me smarter than others with a much lower count? I know a lot of people here would strongly disagree with that assessment!

I just happen to dislike what basically amounts to disinformation, that's all. I'll reply to a post like his even if the guy has -3 posts!

 

[j^aws]

A simple analogy would be that if you had a beginning (PS1) and an end goal (PS3), and a middle (PS2)

That's a fairly interesting view, since in the last chapter of this book written months before the PS2 launch it's said Ken Kutaragi actually told so.

Hehe...that's freaky!

Kutaragi thinks like me!

Kutaragi must be beaming info right into my brain with that recent patent!

Actually, what's weird is that I was just thinking of drawing a straight line, minimum needed was two points and a third for accuracy, i.e. the middle, PS2, that went astray...and slightly off-course! 8)

 

[Fox5]

FACT: None of the highest performing graphics cards produced by NVIDIA or ATI during the past 5 years have used embedded DRAM.

Well, that is true... for now. Seems the R500 will have eDRAM though.

It might be external to the chip also... and if that is the case I really REALLY hope ATi brings something like that to the PC. It would probably need to be a little bigger, BUT 256GB/s of effective bandwidth would be a nice solution to some of the bottlenecks preventing more standard use of AA, etc...

Hmm, I thought all GPUs since like the geforce 3 had small amounts of edram.

 

[Fox5]

The chances that only one console will exist in the market is very very slim.

Well, if microsoft has another unprofitable gen and it doesn't look like xbox 3 will fair any better, they could drop out.
And if nintendo loses more market share and the console market becomes unprofitable, they could go handheld/gimmick only or 3rd party. Heck, we don't even know if Revolution is aimed at being serious competitor or not.
After that, or else would have the money or want to enter the console market and how would they approach it if Nintendo and Microsoft failed? They could buy up Sega or some other game companies, but if Nintendo couldn't do it with established franchises then that might not work, and if Microsoft fails then just throwing money at it won't work.

 

[PeterT]

The CELL PPU is a simplified in-order design, so it won't have quite the performance of a fully out-of-order design

Um pal, you have any idea what you're talking about here? That it's in-order rather than out of order means performance might be vastly lower.

For someone writing such a patronizing reply to what is basically a far more informative post than the average console forum crap you seem to have very bad reading comprehension skills. Of course the original post had some problems, but that's no reason to lash out like that.

 

[phat]

PREDICTION: PS3 GPU will not use embedded DRAM. The PS3 will use external highspeed memory for best performance.

Congrats!

 

[jpr27]

I dont see MS getting out of the console race simply because of the potential of the Home entertainment Hub. Online connectivity, gaming, surfing the web, possible Tivo funtionality, (seamlessly intergrated at least in the future )and probably alot of other things I have missed MS has pretty much dominated the PC software industry but they as a corporation still need to grow. In most cases when MS puts in serious amounts of capital into a segment, they are usually there for the long haul. (Look at IE browser. They gave it away Free just to gain marketshare over Netscape to gain dominance in the browser market) If MS does come across potential problems or lag behind the competition, they have the $$ to keep them in the race whether through buying segments or corporations to help even or surpass the odds. (Not to mention the various ties with so many hardware and software corporations to strengthen their options)

The potential for growth in the gaming industry (which already meets and probably exceeds Movie productions dollars) is just another source for MS to tap.

Now this is not to say that MS will not ever give up on the console market but I just dont see it in the near future. If there was any point that would be possible, I suspect at least two more generations that would all have to be major failures. Just my .2