Sony: 2M PS3s shipped

[lefizz]

Indeed great post well thought out and very much along similar line to my own views.

I think one thing that cannot be over stated in the 360 favor is the fact that unlike Sega they have deep pockets. Developer know no matter what there is know chance of MS deciding in a years time ( just when there project might be near finishing) to pull the plug. The high attach rate is because avid games wanted something new and shiny and the 360 has had over the past year a very solid lineup. I also think that the way that PC gaming is getting so expensive at the high end has turned people towards consoles.

I personally looked a year ago at upgrading my pc, the gfx cards was going to cost more than a 360, and in 2 year it would not really cut it with new games. A 360 would give you great games for the next 4-5 years. Ok in 4 years they may start to seem old hat but still. The same could be said for the PS3 if it wasn't so expensive, for £500 ( one console, HDMI lead and game) i COULD get a pretty decent complete PC upgrade

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

Actually pc gaming becomes cheaper and cheaper. Well, ofcourse its still expansive if you want to keep up to date but unless you want to best of the best every 6 months it isnt that expansive. Shop smart and you can get away with good performance at a relative low price. If you spend 500 a year you can keep resonably up to date for gaming at high settings. And ofcourse your pc is able to do alot more things than your console. In the end your console is only really good at playing games while you can do alot more with your pc and your pc lasts longer. Not for gaming, but after that you can use it for a variaty of tasks (I have a old 700Mhz thunderbird in the living room as HTPC and it works just great) while your console is basically done for in 5 years or so. I guess it all depends on what you want. You just want to play games without any hastles? buy a console. You dont mind playing around with hardware/software and you want a machine that is good at more that one thing? buy a pc.

 

[.Melchiah.]

- MS has created a slow ebb toward (slowly) equalizing the exclusive market with key gains like GTAIV, VF5, AC, etc. How many PS2 exclusives hopped ship to be multiplatform on the DC?

Soul Blade's sequel Soul Calibur, Virtua Fighter 3(?) and Resident Evil: Code Veronica, come to mind.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

Soul Blade's sequel Soul Calibur, Virtua Fighter 3(?) and Resident Evil: Code Veronica, come to mind.

Umm are you saying that Virtua fighter by Sega was a PS2 exclusive...

edit: naturally I don't need to put this edit here to explain that I'm not talking about VF4! :smile: right?

 

[_phil_]

Once PS3 devs got a Cell, any GF6800 or better GPU would suffice (and did.) It seems that it has been easier to simulate PS3's final environment for a longer time than trying the 360's environment has been finalized.

For (sided ) people that want to make a point on this subject ,it's really a lot better to avoid the software side of the things

 

[patsu]

From any point of view! XB360's dev kits had an alien CPU and alien GPU for far too long. PS3 kits had the real CPU and similar GPU for yonks. Maybe on PS3 had the concern of different BW architecture in the Beta kits, but at least you could work on CPU code that'd drop straight into the final dev kits. On XB360, half your work had to be totally re-engineered!

I am less certain about that scenario. The key difference is the software.

MS already has a hardware-neutral, multi-threading, multi-core Windows kernel to boot, together with a mature toolchain from its PC business. They "only" need to port it to a new CPU and GPU. Apple took a similar approach when migrating from Motorola to PowerPC, and from PowerPC to Intel.

Meanwhile, developers can write to the software abstraction layer which is less efficient but can shield the hardware changes. I am also not sure about "half your work had to be totally re-engineered" argument since in my understanding, MS developed the abstraction layer whereas game developers build their stuff on top. MS started with something "normal" and then introduce the advanced features later (after a year). The game developers would most likely delay their game engine rewrite until they can take advantage of tiling fully in second-gen games.

Furthermore, game developers can use the Xbox 360 scaler when they cannot get the framerate up.

Early Xbox 360 games looked nice but were not that "intensive" (compared to what PS3 launch devs have done for MotorStorm and Resistance).

OTOH, Sony has to build and integrate everything from scratch. There were complains about late and unstable libraries too. Developers are also forbidden to use the scaler.

How long does it take to build a stable, performant, multitasking OS on a new CPU architecure ? Apple (OSX) and MS (Vista), both in the software and OS business, took 7-10 years to develope/evolve. If I recall correctly, both abandoned part of their R&D efforts and used existing OS (Apple took NeXT OS last minute and then spent about 2 years to port all key software over, MS inherited Windows Server 2003 kernel on same CPU architecture).

Frankly, Sony is a noob at creating a "computer OS" and it shows. I had hoped that they partner with someone else (like IBM, Google, ...), but perhaps Sony sees this as an opportunity to equip itself with an in-house software + OS team. It should be cheaper (and more strategic) in the long term but in the meantime, they are getting lot's of dirt in their face for going alone. Is the GameOS Linux based ?

I agree. I have been argueing since summer 2005 that I think Sony had a much better dev kit hardware approach. Sure, it wasn't final hardware--if it were, they could have shipped in 2005! But considering they had a real Cell chip in the kit and a NV4x class GPU (RSX is a NV47 derivative) that allows for a lot of testing and sampling code. In most circumstances your code is going to run faster on the final PS3 hardware.

I actually think MS has a more proven development approach. In addition, Cell will penalize "regular" code more due to its controversial design. For Xenos, I understand that developers can use SM 3.0 to program it to get similar level of performance (as a regular SM 3.0 part) due to its unified architecture ?

 

[Cheezdoodles]

MS already has a hardware-neutral, multi-threading, multi-core Windows kernel to boot, together with a mature toolchain from its PC business. They "only" need to port it to a new CPU and GPU. Apple took a similar approach when migrating from Motorola to PowerPC, and from PowerPC to Intel.

I dont see how that applies to game development.

The game developers would most likely delay their game engine rewrite until they can take advantage of tiling fully in second-gen games.

I may have misunderstood you here, are you saying that gamedevelopers would most likely delay their game, rewrite the engine until they can get more out of the X360..

This is not how the real world works. A developer, cannot simply delay their game a year or two, they are working on a budget, sometimes the publisher will agree to delay the game because they see a big hit coming, and help them out, but most of the time, they have to get it done before they run out of money.

You cannot simply say, "Hey, lets toss out all our work so far, and start over", shareholders dont like loosing money.

It does work however, if your publisher is MGS, and Microsoft has a hard on for your title.

Early Xbox 360 games looked nice but were not that "intensive" (compared to what PS3 launch devs have done for MotorStorm and Resistance).

First of all, motorstorm is not a launch title. Further, it could be argued as to which games were "intensive" or not.

Second, where is your point? You got a piece of hardware, that we have allready had final kits (final as in, everything except for bluray) in order around february\march 2006 (with the Cell cpu and a G70 GPU dev kits dating back even further.

With the PS3 "delay", they got an additional 6 months or so to improve their games. What do you think would have happend if the X360 got delayed 6 months? Oblivion would have been a launch title...

 

[patsu]

I dont see how that applies to game development.

Does the Xbox and Xbox360 OS use a variant of the Windows kernel ? Do they share the same resources and the same API as Windows games ? According to the developer, the HD-DVD add on software implementation is also ported from the Windows counterpart right ?

From Sony's perspective, all these need to be written from scratch for the new Cell architecture. It takes time. Some of these components are on the critical path for PS3 rollout (and for game developers to use).

I may have misunderstood you here, are you saying that gamedevelopers would most likely delay their game, rewrite the engine until they can get more out of the X360..

This is not how the real world works. A developer, cannot simply delay their game a year or two, they are working on a budget, sometimes the publisher will agree to delay the game because they see a big hit coming, and help them out, but most of the time, they have to get it done before they run out of money.

You cannot simply say, "Hey, lets toss out all our work so far, and start over", shareholders dont like loosing money.

It does work however, if your publisher is MGS, and Microsoft has a hard on for your title.

I probably didn't say it right. This is exactly what I meant. The developers won't throw out their game code just because Xenos is different. They will use their existing game engines to develope launch games. They will likely wait 1 year (for MS to beef up their API, and middleware guys to rewrite their game engines for Xenos, or they roll their own during that 1 year) before deploying (2nd gen games with) Xenos specific enhancements.

First of all, motorstorm is not a launch title. Further, it could be argued as to which games were "intensive" or not.

To me, MotorStorm is a launch period game. The demo released in December already exhibits intensive physics not found in previous (launch) games.

Second, where is your point? You got a piece of hardware, that we have allready had final kits (final as in, everything except for bluray) in order around february\march 2006 (with the Cell cpu and a G70 GPU dev kits dating back even further.

Where did you get the info that final kit was ready in Feb/March 2006 ? Based on what I understand, the SDK was still in alpha in March. DEH-1040 (with v0.9 SDK) was seen in May timeframe. Then in July, we heard that Sony has shipped 10,000 PS3 devkits.

If you read the cell sdk mailing list, you'd see much development still in progress today. This is why I made reference to OS development in my previous post.

They also had quite a bit of trouble getting SACD working on PS3. If they launch in early 2006, PS3 would have fewer end-user features, and may be no games.

What about the multitasking between programs (e.g., loading and interacting with web browser from in-game). They may not be available at launch, but it does not mean that there is no work-in-progress.

With the PS3 "delay", they got an additional 6 months or so to improve their games. What do you think would have happend if the X360 got delayed 6 months? Oblivion would have been a launch title...

Yes, both Sony and the game developers have additional 6 months. If Xbox 360 gets delayed for 6 months, it will sell fewer units today in exchange for better launch games. And the point is ?

I am saying there are more than just hardware challenges before launch. The OS and SDK count as much.