Leaked PS3 Price?

[Johnny_Physics]

Yeah, time is certainly a problem.
I have so many unopened games that I've actually started to give them away as birthday presents or surprise gifts to people I know, and I have stacks of games that I've played for 10-20 minutes and thought "yeah this seems fun, I'll play it some more when I have some more time".

I even have a constantly growing list of games that I want to complete that stretches back to the eighties, and I constantly promise myself things like "next christmas I'm really going to sit down and finish Ninja Gaiden II!".
I prefer short and intensive games that I can finish in one or two sittings, I really don't want 30 hours of mindless powerleveling or random encounters anymore.

Recently I started to download speedruns of games that I'm interested in but don't have the time/patience to play, I just want to see how the game plays and how the story pans out, so a speedrun is actually a pretty good substitute for actually playing some games.
Before that I had a friend that was more than happy to play my games for me and I popped in and watched some segments from time to time so that he could fill me in on what had happened so far and what was good/crap, it worked pretty well. Absurd but effective.

 

[Dot50Cal]

Seconded.

A motion is on the floor and has been seconded. All those in favor, say I...

I.

 

[SirTendeth]

I hear you Johnny. I hear ya.

Personally I've started trading my games for babysitting services, so that my wife and I can get away.

It takes a lot of used Xbox games to get someone to watch 5 kids.
Maybe I should have gotten a PS2...I wonder how many hours of sitting I would get from ICO or MGS3.

 

[MrWibble]

IS there any real liklihood audio requirements (footprint) will increase next-gen? Perhaps a litle more variety in sounds but overall games can cover the audio nicely now, with DVD audio track and a few spot samples+sound effects. I can't see much scope for taking up multi-megabytes of audio. But I'm not working with game audio so what do I know?!

I think the majority of improvements will be with the quality and variety of processing (and the number of channels being played) rather than the amount of audio available.

However increasing production values in general will probably mean more audio content is required just as with other types of content.

I think the bulk of game audio (in terms of space) is probably with the soundtracks right now, and I guess that they're more or less going to stay the same (unless there's some compelling reason to move them to multi-channel). However FX have a lot of scope for improvements.

I also think that at some point - and I don't know if it'll be in this coming generation or not, though I'd expect to see at least a little progress - we'll move towards physically simulated sounds rather than just plain samples.

None of which has anything to do with codecs

(edited for appalling grammar)

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I also think that at some point - and I don't know if it'll be in this coming generation or not, though I'd expect to see at least a little progress - we'll move towards physically simulated sounds rather than just plain samples.

Eventually, but I don't believe this'll happen for a LONG while. Existing physical modelling softsynths gobble up processing power. And that's I imagine for simpler modelling than'll be needed for extensive soundFX. It's an area I'm very intersted and hope to see softsynths making good effect of Cell, but doubt it'll reach mainstream in games for yonks.

 

[pc999]

That price (if true) is to high, they (all the industry) needs to lower the prices (consoles + games) to get true mainstream thus a lot more of revenue for them and lower prices + less problems like those of the dev X in the other thread for us.With the rising prices of devolpment I think this will be the better way to keep gaming in a good tide.

I hope they (the 3) realise that market (or a lot of them) can not suport*, at least so well as it can with the time of PS2, a 500 euro console + a game + a memory card (~600) and if you want a XB360 too even less, it seems that Rev will go a better way but it still to much thinghs unknow.

*I dont mean the tech guys, I mean the big public which is the one who give them money/revenue.

 

[MrWibble]

Eventually, but I don't believe this'll happen for a LONG while. Existing physical modelling softsynths gobble up processing power. And that's I imagine for simpler modelling than'll be needed for extensive soundFX. It's an area I'm very intersted and hope to see softsynths making good effect of Cell, but doubt it'll reach mainstream in games for yonks.

I dont think we'll see entirely physical sound effects in games for a long time either, but in specific cases there might be attempts.

For example I could imagine racing games spending a reasonable CPU budget to simulate engine noise to give a bit more variety and realistic response. Probably not going to the lengths of simulating the whole actual engine and analysing the vibration but beyond just samples and pitch shifts.

What I also hope will happen, are more realistic ways of modelling how sounds change with regard to environment. Currently there's not much more than a bit of filtering and/or reverb associated with driving into a tunnel during a driving game. But if you already have a decent low-res collision mesh for an environment, and positional information for the sound sources, you really ought to be able to do better simulations of sound bouncing around in that space before arriving at the listener.

It's the next stage beyond basic surround and the first step towards physical simulation of the sounds themselves.

Playing an FPS it wouldn't just be a case of sound coming from the direction of an enemy, but being able to hear them echoing down a corridor and around a corner.

Or playing the next GTA and having all the sirens rushing towards or away from you undergo doppler effects. And all the noises of the city be seperate sources so that the sound changes when you're running down an alley way or standing on a roof - or even when you're in a car and the window gets shot out...

Audio has a long way to go beyond just playing back samples, and with the next-generation of machines I hope we'll start to see (er, I mean HEAR) it happen.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

God points. Sounds like raytracing for audio, and that could work quite well tracing a sound and the surfaces it interacts with. Though of course like GI we'll need hacks for a good long while.

 

[MrWibble]

God points. Sounds like raytracing for audio, and that could work quite well tracing a sound and the surfaces it interacts with. Though of course like GI we'll need hacks for a good long while.

It shares a lot in common with ray-tracing, GI and/or radiosity operations. Also, most of the required maths is also required (or at least useful) for stuff like AI and physics (collision detection, ray-casting for line of sight, etc.).

It ought not to be as expensive as a graphical raytrace because you probably don't need to trace as many rays as there are pixels on screen - a few rays per surface back-tracing to the available sound sources should do for a pretty good effect. With simplified collision geometry I would hope it'd be pretty low cost on a next-gen processor.

 

[Brad Grenz]

Doesn't Sony operate an online music store using WMA with DRM? I imagined they'd want interoperability with the PS3 for their files.

 

[Mefisutoferesu]

I thought Sony used their own audio format, ATRAC3, or whatever for their online & DRM stuff? It's possible that they support WMA as well, though.

 

[aaaaa00]

The 360 has the WMA codec in hardware, so I'd expect all in-game sounds to be stored in memory as WMA, and only decompressed for the mixing and effects buffers. So there should be nearly zero hit to the CPU for it.

 

[hongcho]

I think ATRAC is (unofficially) dead. I've read that some of the newer Sony products don't even support ATRAC anymore.

The 360 has the WMA codec in hardware, so I'd expect all in-game sounds to be stored in memory as WMA, and only decompressed for the mixing and effects buffers. So there should be nearly zero hit to the CPU for it.

AFAIK, all audio work on Xbox360 is done in software (one hardware thread dedicated). They don't have a dedicated decoding chip or anything.

Hong.

 

[ERP]

I think ATRAC is (unofficially) dead. I've read that some of the newer Sony products don't even support ATRAC anymore.



AFAIK, all audio work on Xbox360 is done in software (one hardware thread dedicated). They don't have a dedicated decoding chip or anything.

Hong.

The original poster is right, X360 has hardware WMA decode.