X-Box hacker interview

[wazoo]

Another prediction :

Console sales by 2006
Playstation 2: 118.2 million
GameCube: 54.1 million
Xbox: 43.8 million

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2373399.stm

The games console wars are over with Sony's Playstation 2 emerging victorious, according to the hi-tech market research firm In-Stat/MDR.
It says the PS2 is on course to remain the best-selling games console, with Nintendo's GameCube and Microsoft's Xbox trailing far behind.

InStat predicts that there will be almost 120 million PS2s in homes across the world by 2006, crowning the console's position as the market leader.

"The video game console business is increasingly big business," says Brian O'Rourke, a senior analyst with In-Stat/MDR.

"The year 2001 saw total video game revenue surpass movie box office receipts in the US for the second consecutive year, and shipments are expected to increase substantially in 2002."

Games champion

Sony has built an unassailable lead in the console wars. It launched its PS2 console more than one year earlier than its competitors.

Console sales by 2006
Playstation 2: 118.2 million
GameCube: 54.1 million
Xbox: 43.8 million
Since the console went on sale in March 2000 in Japan, more than 40 million units have been sold worldwide.

"Sony used the experience gained from the original Playstation, its year-plus head start to market, and its formidable marketing operation to create the fasted-selling game console in history," said the In-Stat report.

"And Sony will not lose that advantage in this generation of consoles. It has the largest installed base in all the regions of the world, sells the most software, and has one of the best marketing organisations in the consumer electronics business.

"Sony will be a very difficult champion to dethrone," said In-Stat.

Recent price cuts have intensified the competition between the consoles. Gamers can look forward to further reductions, as Sony seeks to maintain its dominance, and Microsoft and Nintendo battle for second place.

Online gamble

People can also expect big changes in how they use their consoles, with the development of next-generation consoles and online gaming.


Gamers will be able to play Halo on the Xbox online

Playing against friends or foes over a fast internet connection is seen by many as the next big thing in gaming.

All three consoles are planning to go online, though only Microsoft has plans to charge for its service.

Analysts are cautious about the prospects for online gaming.

"The next few years will be an experimental phase in online console gaming, when the three companies will be trying to figure out what works, what doesn't, and how they can make money," said the In-Stat report.

"The market should begin to emerge more clearly with the introduction of next generation consoles in 2005. Online gaming will likely be a core function of this next generation of consoles."

The new consoles are expected to give a big boost to online gaming, with more than 11 million gamers forecast by In-Stat to be online by 2006.

 

[Magnum PI]

I think it's crazy that Sony has been in the business for 7 years and has very little first party success to talk about. Long-term they're going to wish they had more than Twisted Metal and Gran Turismo.

when you have franchises like "final fantasy", "dragon quest", GTA, tekken, MGS, street fighter (just to name a few).. the lack of not having the strongest party is not a big deal.

 

[Geeforcer]

when you have franchises like "final fantasy", "dragon quest", GTA, tekken, MGS, street fighter (just to name a few).. the lack of not having the strongest party is not a big deal.

True, but there is always a risk that you might not have some of them next year, or the year after that. (In other words, you have to constantly work on keeping your key third-party developers loyal, lest you run the risk of loosing them)

 

[Magnum PI]

when you have franchises like "final fantasy", "dragon quest", GTA, tekken, MGS, street fighter (just to name a few).. the lack of not having the strongest party is not a big deal.

True, but there is always a risk that you might not have some of them next year, or the year after that. (In other words, you have to constantly work on keeping your key third-party developers loyal, lest you run the risk of loosing them)

first sony has signed some exclusivity contracts for some of these franchise, so it's not as they could instantly change for another plateform.

of course there is still a risk of square or enix going te develop exclusively for xbox.. they would do killer sales, especially in japan :/

but for now if we take into account all the franchises, first party or not, you can only say that sony is way ahead..

the gap is *so* big (and apparently increasing) b/w sony and the others... how could any company willing to make some money not go for the PS2 ?

sony gets the leading franchises.
the others get the challengers..

and idontrememberhisname was talking about microsoft franchises.. ok for halo.. but i doubt that project gotham is really a big franchise..

 

[wazoo]

sony gets the leading franchises.
the others get the challengers..

Going with the challenger has always been the key for success when you have a small company. Crystal Dynamics was built around the 3do, and you could argue that EA first years were based on the A500 (maybe I'm wrong for this one). Rare may not be so well known if they were not one of the only efficient companies on the N64 (same for Factor5).

 

[marconelly!]

EA first years were based on the A500 (maybe I'm wrong for this one).

I believe they have started with Commodore 64.

Rare may not be so well known if they were not one of the only efficient companies on the N64 (same for Factor5).

Rare (then Ultimate) was absolutely *huge* on Spectrum 48K/

Factor5 was also very recognized among Amiga users (Turrican games)

 

[Mr. Angry Pants]

Marconelly!!!1:

It sits in your living room. You are looking at it every day. If it's good enough for you, that's fine.

My line of reasoning is - I pay for something once (and, usually, pretty soon forget how much money it was) and then it sits there for years to come - right there in my living room. I'd much prefer it to look nice, then.

Alright, then if I must comment on how it looks then I think it looks perfectly fine from the front, which is where you'll be viewing it from for 99% of the time. The only thing I don't like about the design is the puke green oval on top of the case. Yuck.


MARCONELLY! continues:

Are you going to sleep with ugly lady or with the pretty one? Why? Is pretty lady a 'work of art'? Is the ugly one somehow defunct and unable to perform sexual activities?

Everyone likes prettyness, there is nothing superficial or shallow about it. It's in our genetic programming as many experiments have proven.

Define 'ugly'. It is subjective. Like I said, I don't think the PS2 is pretty. And if the Gamecube were a girl, sleeping with it would be a criminal act.

'Art' is subjective. 'Beauty' is subjective. How many polygons a video game console can draw on screen at once is not.

Marconelly GET!:

Again, your opinion. I very much like how PS2 looks.

Thanks for proving my point.

-tkf-

I guess Microsoft knew who they targeted with the X-Box, single 20-40 year old pc nerds. Surely they didn't expect their target audience to have a girlfriend or wife with that design.

Yes, because only some one who has a girlfriend or wife would be so anal about how an inanimate object looks over how it actually performs. Fascinating logic.

 

[marconelly!]

Define 'ugly'. It is subjective. Like I said, I don't think the PS2 is pretty.

It's all fine. You don't, I do. But just as you have a girl that turns everyone's heads after she goes by on the street, and you happen to think she's not pretty, I could argue there's much more people who would agree PS2 does look pretty, and that's what is important for the industrial design in the end. I just said, I wouldn't mind paying more for Xbox if it would, in my opinion, look better.

'Art' is subjective. 'Beauty' is subjective. How many polygons a video game console can draw on screen at once is not.

I don't like going into this but... Art is not subjective. Opinions are. I don't think a sane person would side with me if I tried to argue that the portrait I painted is art and Mona Lisa isn't. I'm not saying artist shouldn't create art that is suitable for the audience (making it subjectively successful), but that he shouldn't restrict him/herself because of trying to do so. Balance, as ever, is important.

On a completely different note, beauty can be very well analysed, and statistically determined to appeal the minds of most people, as the geometrical proportions and such, are part of our genetic programming. Same goes for architecture and industrial design.

 

[PC-Engine]

Here's my take on the case design of the 3 consoles.

Xbox: Too big, neon green accents are ugly, big X is cheesy, shape and overall design isn't unique.

PS2: Size is acceptable not great, looks stupid laying horizontal but good vertical, Blue LED and DVDs are nice, shape and overall design is unique.

GC: Size and shape is nice and unique, handle is nice, purple color makes it look cheap, mini DVDs are nice.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

It's funny how those numbers are just my numbers with 50% added to them for the extra year and console market growth.

 

[mech]

Do you care if your car looks cool/attractive?
Does anyone?
And yet, it's just a Tool we use to drive around...

Yeah, but everyone sees your car, and you see it all the time - hence looks are important.

With a video game console, you can just chuck it in a cupboard. Sure, okay, looks are still important to some people, just like how some people put neon lights in their PC case, whereas most are happy with a beige box.

The thing about a console is that it's more about functionality than looks. Much more than many other things other people will try and mention here. How many people here have sexy VCRs or DVD players? Some people, sure, but many people just don't care - it's more about saving money, because they're almost always going to be just sitting in a cabinent.

 

[BenSkywalker]

Faf

Do you care if your car looks cool/attractive?
Does anyone?
And yet, it's just a Tool we use to drive around...

A car is the end product that matters in the automobile industry. For consoles games are the end product. Why do you spend so much time making sure that your game is visually appealing(and do such a good job at it btw)? You know what really matters in the console market when it comes to visual appeal

Johnny

Btw, I don't know if you agree with me or not Ben, but I figure that run-rate is the only thing that really matters long-term. As long as MS can weather the first 2-3 years, they should be able to capture 20% of the market on a run-rate basis. They should be able to get to 30-35% by 2005. That has to worry Sony a little bit.

I think that tie in combined with installed base are the really important figures. If MS has or N had 1/3 the console installed base but sold three times the amount of titles per console(not that that would happen, but if it did) then from a developer standpoint it would be easy to gain a comparable level of support. The run rate is the only thing that any of the companies have any influence over as what done is obviously done, so it is what they need to focus on although their success in run rate is what will land them the installed base. Run rate percentage is important when breaking down the market as a whole although expansion of the market is also key(although that has been to date a natural evolution of the game market for a long time as of this point).

 

[archie4oz]

Yippie the GC has extremely low THEORETICAL memory latency on its 1t-sram.

Actually the GCN's memory latencies are very real, not 'theoretical'. That's one of the rather pleasant things about the system.

However one can see in a number of benchmarks (ie EA's) the Xbox beats the GC's performance by a wide margin. The same holds true for the PS2.

Using EA's asset compiler as a benchmarking argument is not only silly, it also does a great disservice to it. Their GCN back-end was still rather immature (not even completing some tests), and they chose a rather set configuration for their PS2 backend to suite cross platform dev'ing...

and we all know that the audio unit is a center for mass bandwidth saturation.

I take it you've never seen audio consume several hundred MB/s then have you?

Sony really only has Gran Turismo. That's not very good for 7 years in the business.

I'm not sure that's necessarily bad. They've never emphasized being a 1st party powerhouse, GT was a fluke that SCE really didn't expect to take off as well as it did. That was one of the rather interesting paradigm shifts they brought to the industry, where before you were nobody without an established 1st party presence (essentially providing M$ with a valid belief that it was possible to enter without being DOA at launch). They also elevated the status of the 3rd party providers and provided a viable platform a large number of small game developer to 'make it big' so to speak. Not to mention taking the middleware market from the cottage industry it used to be and expanding into big business.

Essentially they've been the M$ of the console industry (whether you see that as good or bad is up to you). Only instead 'you guys make the hardware, we'll make the software, it's been 'we'll make the hardware, you guys make the software'.

Microsoft already has Halo and Project Gotham as potentially huge franchises + the purchase of Rare will surely bring more. Microsoft's sports lineup is actually good

Well PGR isn't a 1st party (or did M$ buy Bizarre Creations?), and Halo barely makes it as M$ cashed in on an already 'good thing' (and pissing me royally off ). Although I will give props to their sports lineup... (and it's a shame 989 has gone so downhill since the PSX days)

I think it's crazy that Sony has been in the business for 7 years and has very little first party success to talk about. Long-term they're going to wish they had more than Twisted Metal and Gran Turismo.

Strong 1st party didn't do SEGA a whole lot of good in the long run. Of course now they're not doing so bad as a software house.

Putting on my shareholder's hat, makes me think two things:

a.) Several very *large* (or notable) acquisitions of studios (who were providers to other platforms, not to mention offers to several *other* large studios) gives one the impression of desperation. As though the platform can't cut it on it's merits alone (emphasized by going after marquis, high-visibility studios).

b.) Secures an exit strategy if they can't make the hardware dance, then it won't be a total write off as they can still benefit from their software acquisitions and strengthen their games division for the PC software, or swallow the 'hard pill' and go the multi-platform publisher route (ala EA and SEGA), releasing their console development from the albatross of having to sustain a minority platform.

of course there is still a risk of square or enix going te develop exclusively for xbox..

I wouldn't call that risk, I'd call it seppuku...

sony gets the leading franchises.
the others get the challengers..

You may have not noticed, but all the various SCE branches (SCEI and SCEA in particular; and perhaps SCEK too! ) have extremely aggressive at exploring and signing publishing deals with a lot of either little, no-name studios who have a lot of potential (or at least proposing titles that do), and/or pushing titles out that don't fall into your mainstream genre or taste...

With a video game console, you can just chuck it in a cupboard. Sure, okay, looks are still important to some people, just like how some people put neon lights in their PC case, whereas most are happy with a beige box.

You can put it in the cupboard, but not every body does. Many people don't even have a video cabinet to place it in...

The thing about a console is that it's more about functionality than looks. Much more than many other things other people will try and mention here. How many people here have sexy VCRs or DVD players?

I have sexy vcr and DVD player. Not quite like a Bose, or Nakamichi home audio component but fairly so. Sony's compact, vertical DVD players sell quite well (both on style and size) in Japan. Take a look at the face designs of car stereos that change constantly every year.

A car is the end product that matters in the automobile industry.

'Driving' is the end product that matters, not the car itself. People buy their car so they can drive, buying it for it's utility, and even buying them for the 'image' they provide...

Why do you spend so much time making sure that your game is visually appealing(and do such a good job at it btw)?

The same reason you buy a 'good' car over a 'POS' car. The experience it provides...

You know what really matters in the console market when it comes to visual appeal

And yet the PSOne still sells (often on merits of it's 'cuteness')...

 

[aaaaa00]

and we all know that the audio unit is a center for mass bandwidth saturation.

I take it you've never seen audio consume several hundred MB/s then have you?

Depends on how your audio chip is designed.

A cheap low end PC chip like the EMU10K (SBLive) has no onboard card memory, and uses PCI busmastering and scratchpad RAM.

Such a chip can mix 64 audio channels in HW and apply complex effects to 32 at a time with a minimum of CPU usage...

...and it has to live on the other side of a PCI bus with a maximum realistic throughput of about 100 MB/s, which also has to feed every other IO device on the system.

If you think about it, say I want to stream 64 16-bit channels at 44.1 khz, that's only 5MB/s.

Assuming some reasonable FIFOs and some scratchpad DSP RAM, I see no reason why audio processing has to be bandwidth or latency sensitive.

Decompressing your sounds can consume a fair number of cycles and bandwidth, depending on how fancy you get -- but this also is affected by how sophisticated the audio hardware is.

The MCPX is a whole lot more sophisticated than the EMU10K.

 

[mech]

I take it you've never seen audio consume several hundred MB/s then have you?

Gamecube must suck for Audio then, with a whole 81MB/s of bandwidth to its Audio RAM

 

[zurich]

Well a 5.1 Dolby Digital stream is only 384k/s (or so says Gordian Knot ). Does the Xbox play with everything uncompressed, then compress it before it sends it out the spdif? That would explain how sound could approach 100+meg/s over a bus.

zurich

 

[BenSkywalker]

'Driving' is the end product that matters, not the car itself. People buy their car so they can drive, buying it for it's utility, and even buying them for the 'image' they provide...

No, it is the car itself and you explain why. 'Driving' is the force behind the various sports cars of the world, utility is a pretty much a direct opponent to the driving factor in automobiles(how many mini vans can run with Ferraris?). You think Tom Cruise worries about how his next Limousine drives?

 

[Legion]

Actually the GCN's memory latencies are very real, not 'theoretical'. That's one of the rather pleasant things about the system.

care to back this up?

Using EA's asset compiler as a benchmarking argument is not only silly, it also does a great disservice to it. Their GCN back-end was still rather immature (not even completing some tests), and they chose a rather set configuration for their PS2 backend to suite cross platform dev'ing...

What is silly is you are arguing that the GC's performance would rise so dramatically that it would be a competing force againt the xbox. Multiplatform developers here have stated that the xbox has a significant lead over the GC in terms of power (ie ERP). If you are going to disagree please show me something that backs up your statements. Granted it might not be 100% accurate (but then what benchmark is ) i would imagine that it does at least represent more than 50% of what the GC is capable of. To say that the GC's performance would double or tripple is entirely outlandish. Not to mention it may also be possible that their xbox compiler limited its performance (such is the problem with all benchmarks). Are you arguing with me simply because i chose the EA benchmark over other ones? If I had just said the xbox has a significant lead in power would you have not said anything? I wasn't posting this to show that the GC is not a good system what i was discussing is that it is not up to par with the xbox. Now are you going to disagree with that?

I take it you've never seen audio consume several hundred MB/s then have you?

Is all that bandwidth for audio necessary? I would say not. Not to mention accross the board you will not find the average game using that much bandwidth for audio. In most cases systems don't even HAVE that much bandwidth going to their sound devices.

(44100HZ * 16bits) * 2 channels = 1411200 bits/second or .1764 MB/s for CD music i could play 56 tracks all at once before even reaching 10 MB/s. I would play nearly 567 tracks to get 100 MB/s. How could anyone ever use so much bandwidth for audio?

most games even use some form of compression for their audio. even width twice the number of tracks i could reach 10 MB/s using ADPCM.

 

[Fafalada]

What is silly is you are arguing that the GC's performance would rise so dramatically that it would be a competing force againt the xbox.

That's not what Archie was trying to say there. Xbox being the performance leader is a rather well established fact.
But that doesn't change the fact that EA's benchmark was at best a crossplatform performance comparison of their SOftware. making underlying HW comparison pretty much pointless on that basis alone. Although it May accurately reflect it in some cases, it's just as likely it paints a completey wrong picture in others. Case in point, their numbers are not a reliable hw comparison indicator, period.

And on the same note, the 3 consoles aren't nearly far enough apart for them to not be competing forces against one another (except in the eyes of small minorities in each camp).


Ben,
you make a good point too. Thing is though, when I argued 'looks sell' I wasn't refering to giving a well thought analysis prior to my purchase about how the said item will look on the road, or in my cupboard, or wherever it'll be used.
It's the impression it makes on me, as the customer, that we're talking about.
When I went all giddy over PSOne+LCD it sure as hell wasn't because I would have any use for a portable PSOne, or cared so much for playing games on it. I simply loved the design. And I'm downright anal about buying stuff I don't need most of the time...

No doubt, the software is the major part in console sales, but the design plays a big role too. C'mon, surely you won't say you wouldn't pay 30$ more for that opal blue PS2 over a black one? (actually I think they are same price now, but just as an example).

 

[marconelly!]

No, it is the car itself and you explain why. 'Driving' is the force behind the various sports cars of the world, utility is a pretty much a direct opponent to the driving factor in automobiles(how many mini vans can run with Ferraris?). You think Tom Cruise worries about how his next Limousine drives?

Ben, I think you have a point here, but you are not applying it to other aspect of our dicussion. For the car maker - car is the end product. Therefore, he takes care that his car drives very good and looks very good so it can attract cusomers that find the look important.

It is exactly the same for console hardware manufacturer. They take care to make a console that has good performace, and that looks good so people don't have to 'tuck it inside the drawer', hide it in the shadow or so.

Game makers take care to make the games that play well and have good graphics - again because it's their end product and will help increase the sales.