PS3's now meeting demand (1 Viewer)

[Carlo_M]

I will fully agree that the initial release of PS3 games is terrible (except for Resistance, which I don't own because I'm done with FPS until Halo 3). That said, I was looking for a next gen console to buy and I looked closely at all games for the Wii and the 360 as well. None of them "blows my skirt up". So I ended up getting the PS3 because all of them lacked killer apps, and at least I saved $200-$400 on a BD player.
I think the lack of a HD is dumbing it down. Why? Because it's always better to go from a HD. After all, the "holy grail" of gaming, PC games (which until the most recent gen always had better hardware than consoles) still recommends fully installing stuff to the HD rather than playing off of a CD/DVD. HD access (given a good 7200rpm ATA100 or faster drive) is almost always going to beat disc access.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not 360 bashing. As soon as Halo 3 hits the stores I'm picking up a 360, so I'm not going to badmouth something I will own in less than a year, but the fact that it's sold without a drive makes it imperative for game makers to design without the use of the HD, which can be a detriment depending on the game. Since MS sells a build without a HD, they must make sure all games work without one. Whereas the lowest build of a PS3 has a HD, so all games can make use of it without fear of making a game that a percentage of PS3 owners cannot play.

 

[BrianB]

All 360 games have to support the system without the harddrive. All XBLA games must fit in 50MB of space to fit on a memory card to support the Core.

 

[Ryan-G]

What difference does that make? Real world it's the equivalent of PS3's requirement that all textures be small enough to fit in the very small amount of video ram it uses.

Only difference here is the level load times, outside of that, both companies are hurt by bad design decisions. One should've used a HD on all models, the other should've used significantly more memory.

 

[PeterTHX]

The PS3's RAM is 512MB, same as the 360's.

It's not combined in one spot like the 360, dividing 256MB between the core and the video, but can be combined dynamically. Any lag is offset by the greater speed of the video core and the RAM itself (XDR).

 

[Ryan-G]

Yes, but unlike the 360's which is shared and accessible, the PS3 has only 256MB's video memory, and it's not XDR it's GDDR3, at 700mhz which is where the 360's memory is clocked at. Which is probably a good thing considering Rambus's history. Sony has also declined to release the number of shaders available on the chip, probably for good reason. The chip itself is clocked at 550mhz, compared to the 360's at 500mhz, which is at most a theoretical 10% advantage if everything else were the same, which it likely isn't as evidence indicates RSX has fewer shaders. Considering Sony's PR department and everything else they've done, if they had the same or more number of shaders they'd have made sure everyone knows it, instead it's conspicuously absent from many of their spec releases. In fact, I can't find a single citation anywhere of how many shaders the PS3 actually has.

256MB's at 1080p is a very tight squeeze, though 512 isn't a whole lot better. For it to exceed the 256MB restriction, it has to go outside the GPU's area on the board and access the XDR, which is in use by 8 other processors. 9 seperate X-PU's trying to access the same memory interface at one time is sure to gum up the works.

 

[Jason Harbaugh]

I can probably find that out since I'm having dinner with one of the guys that worked on the chip sometime over the next couple weeks.

 

[Ryan-G]

First,

Nice! Some amazingly talented people there on both Nvidia and Sony's side.

Second,

If you do, and I'm not asking you to ask, let me know. I'd be interested to see.

It's really purely academic, all of the industry heavyweights have gone on record, PS3 has the stronger CPU, 360 the stronger GPU, it all comes out basically as a wash. IMO, when Carmack says something, not much room left to argue.

 

[Edwin-S]

I've noticed some people stating that the PS3 lacks a scaling chip; however, if 720p is being downconverted to 480p then isn't that a good indicator that the PS3 does, in fact, have a scaler or scaling function. Or is the disc encoded in 480 and 720p? Does the PS3 automatically select the 480p encode if no 720p handshake is detected?

 

[Jason Harbaugh]

Yeah he works for Nvidia now, but before that he cofounded 3dfx and basically created 3D gaming as we know it. I'm at my geekiest when he comes to town. (gotta get him to autograph my Voodoo II) I just like finding out the scoop about the good ol' days when it was 3dfx vs nVidia. Here I was debating it up on internet forums and chatrooms, and he was living it. A decade later, the companies have changed, but the same debates continue.

I have a lot of questions for him though. Last year it was hard to get any definites about the PS3 out of him other than it was a modified 7800GTX. Hopefully this time I'll go in with some good questions. It's funny though, he is really down to earth and could care less about which company's card is better/faster. Once a chip is made, he moves on to the next one and doesn't think about it much. They're the ones making money off the chips, yet we are the ones that fight like we have something to lose.

If you do have any questions reguarding the PS3 and its GPU let me know. I'll try to get some answers. I'm really interesting in finding out if he has any insight into the scaling problems.

 

[jervis961]

Can you also ask him when he thinks reasonably priced DirectX 10 capable cards will be available for notebooks? I've been putting off a purchase because of Vista and Directx 10.

 

[Beery]

All this talk about evil corporate empires seems a bit silly to me. After all they're all after a bigger market share and whichever one gets to the top will start being monopolistic as a natural result of the very motivation to keep growing that aided their rise to greatness. It's not a case of these companies being evil. During their rise they are expected to compete, but suddenly when they reach the top they're suddenly expected to drop the habit of a lifetime? Trust me, it's never going to happen.

As for a big company's ability to lie to further its interest, again, why is anyone surprised? Their motivation is profit, not truth.

 

[Ryan-G]

Thank you for the kind offer,

But all of my questions regarding the stuff he works on would delve into NDA territory. Except one...

Given the current state of the industry, and assuming no major breakthroughs occur in processor or cooling technology so things proceed in an evolutionary manner, what is his take on the future of Consoles? Will heat dissipation from GPU's, CPU's, and whatever route PPU procesing takes preclude the ability to pack it all into a small console case? Will the ever increasing demand for more power for CPU's and GPU's create an issue with the accepted design of a console?

Ok, it's two questions, but they're very similiar.

(Note: Nvidia's current GPU demands a 450 watt or greater power supply, rather large even by PC standards for a single card, and assuming evolutionary progression, a serious issue for consoles to provide while retaining their small footprint)

 

[Austan]

1 million Playstation 3s sold in North America

hmmm... collecting dust or leaving other game consoles in the dust???

 

[Zack Gibbs]

Austan, If I had to base weather I ever visited that site again on the validity of that article...well I wouldn't.

First, Sony said they 'shipped' 1 million units in North America, not 'sold'.
http://www.joystiq.com/2007/01/07/ce...l-by-march-07/

Not only that, but the article compared the number of these "sales" in NA to the actual sales of the 360 in the United States. NA has other small countries in it too a lot of people aren't aware of, like Canada.

 

[Dave H]

I called eight Best Buys today for the 20 gig PS3 - a couple stores said they had them this morning, but as of this afternoon they're gone (grrr!). I even visited two stores, as well.

A couple of stores had a couple of 60 gig models, but this unit is clearly in high demand here in the Detroit metro area.

I'm wanting to use my 10% off coupon, but unfortunately I'm not going to be able to now. I'll have to wait.

 

[Carlo_M]

Dave, just a word of caution, I don't think the standard 10% off coupons that BB mails (or emails) out can be used on video game systems. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure they can't.

Nothing wrong with trying, though, and if it works, more power to you!

 

[nolesrule]

In all the years I've been getting BB coupons, only one I ever got allowed for it to be applied on the purchase of a game system, and all the others before and after explicitly excluded them. I promptly used that one coupon to buy a GameCube when Metroid Prime was released. Even so, I had to go through one cashier and 2 managers before I convinced them to actually read the fine print rather than blindly refuse the coupon.

 

[Ryan-G]

1 million PS3's, and yet they sit on store shelves, not a good sign. By comparision, Gears of War for the X-box 360 sold 1 million units in two weeks, and that's just a single game.

I'll be very blunt, PS3's got some problems, no more than any other console.

But the price tag kills it. Gamers right now enter a store and have 1 of 3 choices(In no particular order except maybe release).

1. X-box 360- slightly above normal pricing on the high end, established online service, numerous titles, and at least 2 exclusive "Must play" titles.(Gears of War, Dead Rising).

2. Wii- Cheap pricing, innovative(Possibly gimmicky, time will tell if it's a winner) controler and gameplay, numerous exclusives, biggest headline titles(Zelda, Mario, better well known than anything short of FF7 and Starcraft), and the most appealing potential backwards library(Nes, Snes, Sega, etc, nostalgia factor is huge here for their target market).

3. PS3- Extremely expensive by any accounting, marquee feature is a next-gen drive the vast majority can't use to it's potential, small library, lackluster exclusives, and a recent history of extremely bad press(PSP quasi-fraud, rootkit, exploding batteries, rendered video passed off as real gameplay.

Why would anyone pick a PS3? All it has left is Grand Turismo, Final Fantasy, and Metal Gear as marquee titles. None of which are available now, and Grand Turismo's gotta be pushing it on how long they can keep people interested. When you've modeled all the real world cars 4 times already, and you've modeled upgrading them, you're pretty much left with "Better graphics!" as the tag line.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying PS3's worthless, or that there's something inherently flawed in it. I'm saying it doesn't have the library, it's expensive, it's marquee feature is useless to most potential customers, and it's exclusive pipe is pretty thin. At this point a whole lot of potential buyers are going to be taking the "Wait and see, and perhaps after a price drop if the games are there" position.

Especially since at this point, a significant number of people know that even if the PS3 bombs, those PS3 exclusive marquee titles will be ported over to the 360, wii, or PC.

PS2 did as well as it did because of...

1. Riding the success of Blood Omen, FF7, Grand Turismo, Metal Gear, Parasite Eve, Tomb Raider, and a number of quality niche titles.

2. Pricing that was acceptable for a console.

3. A DVD drive at the right time when DVD's were becoming mass market, making it's slightly more expensive pricing rationilizable.

PS3 has none of those benefits. More than a few of it's marquee titles are either ad nauseum rehashes of the PS's successes, or jumped ship to be platform independent.

All of which makes the PS3 a hard sell.

 

[PeterTHX]

Replace that with "monopolistic practices, security breaches, BSOD", etc. Ask any Apple or Linux person what he thinks of Microsoft

The others you mention are not even known to the vast majority of the public who will buy the console (or not).

Besides..."exploding batteries"? Hyperbole much?

 

[RobertDW]

I was at Target today to see if they had any new HD DVD titles and of course they didn't. Anyway I happen to notice this store had six PS3's so I commented to the manager of that department "I'm surprised you have any PS3's to sell" and his replay was "yeah we can't get rid of them and I have more in the back". I said you mean this store can't sell your PS3 stock? He says "no it's all Targets.

Anyway if you are looking for a PS3 check out your local Target.