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"The XBox wasn't that good, and lost tons of money, and yet still they released the XBox 360, which had lots of problems too"

Huh? The XBox was the probably the best game system of its generation. The only reason the PS2 is king is because of the huge library of games for it, which is largely due to it being a few years older than the xbox. It was intentional that microsoft lost a lot of money on it. They were entering a market that was new to them, and dominated by players who'd been there for quite some time. They needed to get a foothold. I think they managed to do far better than anyone would have thought. And despite the higher price, it even beat out the Gamecube. As for 360 problems, I'm not sure what you're referring to. The overheating issues?

"Many people bought the XBox, because it was marketed like crazy, even though it was marginally more powerful than the GC"

Marginally? Try somewhere on the order of twice as powerful. Xbox specs. Gamecube specs

"Still they won't understand why they aren't doing as well as they thought"

Let's see, 2nd place in last generation's market and the only player in the latest generation so far? If they expected to do better, then it was an unrealistic expectation.

Hey, I hate Microsoft as much as the next guy, but give credit where it's due. The XBox was/is a great game system. Add a modchip and xbox media center software, and it's one of the best media players around too.

"The XBox wasn't that good, and lost tons of money, and yet still they released the XBox 360, which had lots of problems too"

Huh? The XBox was the probably the best game system of its generation. The only reason the PS2 is king is because of the huge library of games for it, which is largely due to it being a few years older than the xbox. It was intentional that microsoft lost a lot of money on it. They were entering a market that was new to them, and dominated by players who'd been there for quite some time. They needed to get a foothold. I think they managed to do far better than anyone would have thought. And despite the higher price, it even beat out the Gamecube. As for 360 problems, I'm not sure what you're referring to. The overheating issues?

"Many people bought the XBox, because it was marketed like crazy, even though it was marginally more powerful than the GC"

Marginally? Try somewhere on the order of twice as powerful. Xbox specs. Gamecube specs

"Still they won't understand why they aren't doing as well as they thought"

Let's see, 2nd place in last generation's market and the only player in the latest generation so far? If they expected to do better, then it was an unrealistic expectation.

Hey, I hate Microsoft as much as the next guy, but give credit where it's due. The XBox was/is a great game system. Add a modchip and xbox media center software, and it's one of the best media players around too.

Look up the prices of the Pioneer LaserActive and its various modules for Genesis and TurboGrafx-16 (and karaoke?).

ummm....no

Sega did not "clearly" plan anything. They added the second processor for 3D after they saw the Playstation's abilities. And that is entirely the point anyway. He said revolutionary. There was nothing revolutionary about it. So they could port a cut down version of virtua fighter....like they didn't port most other games to previous consoles? Revolutionary means doing something others can't. The Saturn was made to compete with the 3DO. They didn't consider making it better until they saw the Playstation's abilities and that was too little too late. Don't get me wrong, I loved the Saturn but it was not revolutionary. Don't believe me?

http://darkwatcher.psxfanatics.com/console/saturn. htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_Saturn

...an Indrema L600...

The Pioneer LaserActive was freaking expensive when it came out (main unit around $700). I think it was more than the 3D0. The add on modules for the Genesis or TG-16 cost more than the original systems were running at the time. I think the LaserActive counts as a game system. It had laser disk games that you couldn't play on anything else at the time.

http://darkwatcher.psxfanatics.com/console/laser.h tm

If someone told you that the PSP is a portable gaming device, shoot these people. The PSP is not a portable gaming device, it is really a convergent portable entertainment device.

Right, because the history of convergent entertainment devices is long and illustrious. They would be fools to not want some of this action.

And going with a brand new disk standard that nobody has and nobody sells as a medium for selling movies? It's a brilliant maneuver from some of the industry's best minds.

I should say that the Sony reps I've worked with about other things have been completely with it and didn't lose sight of reality. So what happened to this guy?

If someone told you that the PSP is a portable gaming device, shoot these people. The PSP is not a portable gaming device, it is really a convergent portable entertainment device.

Right, because the history of convergent entertainment devices is long and illustrious. They would be fools to not want some of this action.

And going with a brand new disk standard that nobody has and nobody sells as a medium for selling movies? It's a brilliant maneuver from some of the industry's best minds.

I should say that the Sony reps I've worked with about other things have been completely with it and didn't lose sight of reality. So what happened to this guy?

Actually, from what data I've collected, Nintendo has consistently sold less and less units with each hardware revision.

NES = 62 million units
http://darkwatcher.psxfanatics.com/console/nes.htm

SNES = 46 million units
http://www.nintendoland.com/home2.htm?history/hist 3.htm

N64 = 30 million units
http://darkwatcher.psxfanatics.com/console/n64.htm

I didn't see any up to date info on the sales of GameCube, but I guesstimate somewhere between 12-18 million units.

Now supposedly, the game market is increasing, with more and more gamers everyday... why are people abandoning Nintendo?

Actually, from what data I've collected, Nintendo has consistently sold less and less units with each hardware revision.

NES = 62 million units
http://darkwatcher.psxfanatics.com/console/nes.htm

SNES = 46 million units
http://www.nintendoland.com/home2.htm?history/hist 3.htm

N64 = 30 million units
http://darkwatcher.psxfanatics.com/console/n64.htm

I didn't see any up to date info on the sales of GameCube, but I guesstimate somewhere between 12-18 million units.

Now supposedly, the game market is increasing, with more and more gamers everyday... why are people abandoning Nintendo?

It is an interesting idea, but one that failed previously

Since current games consoles can play DVDs, I don't see it taking off.

What I'm surprised we haven't seen is a DVD movie with a PS2 or XBOX game on the disk. Maybe it would need to be a 2-sided disk to get it to play properly.

Nice way to reply...well done.
Now we wouldn't want to make Slashdot too friendly a place, would we? Anyway, sorry if I offended you, though there still is a "or what" option.

Now next to the question of optimisation. If you are so sure about its potential, can you give some impressive examples? I can name some games that ran much slower than warranted by their visual quality (Halo and GTA3 being the prime culprits), but I can't really think of any prominent titles that did the opposite.

My main point is that rendering a modern game at acceptable quality requires rendering about 50 million pixels per second. And there is a minimum number of processor cycles that you need to just generate the geometry and add a simple one-pass texture - you can't cheat here. When we start talking about effects, a lot of shortcuts are possible. But even with the shortcuts, every generation of hardware has its limits. You can get closer to them, but that would never give you a qualitative improvement, like switching to a next generation hardware would.

Check out some PS2 screenshots here and compare it with something like this. Do you see a lot of progress? I honestly don't. This is Quake3 level technology, there is nothing you can do about it. Yes, it's possible to use good artists to try to hide the fact that the platform is almost 4 years old, but whatever you do, you can't hide the fact that Mercedes-Benz World Racing looks way better than any PS2 racing sim and that FarCry or Painkiller look so much better than any game on PS2.

If such extensive optimisation (as opposed to limited improvements during exploring the limits of new technology) was possible, surely we would see some PS2 developers do it. The fact that all modern PS2 games look the same as old ones did (which is like shit, by modern standards) proves that you are wrong.

Apple's entered this arena once, with the Pippin Dont expect them to return anytime soon after the large amount of $$$s lost on that debacle.

The NES did not have custom CPUs. It did have a universe of different ways to do bank switching (mappers) though.

The SNES on the other hand, had many games with custom chips (SuperFX, etc). This can be read about here.

To keep to the point, Nintendo will most likely have to replace the cartridges. The ROM in GBA cartridges is pretty fast, since most of the code is run directly from the ROM. Flash chips with that kind of performance is prohibitively expensive for games that cost about $40.

Maybe they'll release a game console/set top box

They tried that, and failed, back in 1995.

JP

• Gamecube - 33M Polygons/sec
• PS2 - 66M Polygons/sec
• XBox - 60M Polygons/sec

You fail to realize Sony's hand-held will most likely be dealing with a quarter of resolution the PS2 games are at (320x240 vs 640x480 for decent TV), and considering the Playstation 2 dates back to early 2000 it's using hardware already over 3 years old. Obviously 3 years is forever in cpu years, so I have no doubt Sony can make a handheld unit that can handle 1/4th the resolution of the now 3+ year old playstation 2, especially considering PocketPCs have reached what your typical PC offered 3 years ago (533mhz) (the 533mhz processor isn't quite available but neither is the sony handheld so it all works out).

"The N64 was the first, and for a while, the only console that was built with 3d in mind"

Actually, after doing a little research (which I should always do before posting here...*sigh*), I found out that there are a few projects already underway for the PlayStation. If you're interested, this website seems like a good starting point.