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PSX2 To Replace Your PC?
rosewood writes "It is always slightly funny to watch a major news agency like CNN delve into a high tech debate. This article gives some information about Sony's new Playstation 2 and their Emotion Engine that claims 6.2 GFlops at 300mhz. Sounds interesting, but is it really enough to start replacing computers?"
replace computers? never. replace computers as primary gaming devices? absolutely.
I am, therefore you think.
It depends. Do you use your computer for gaming? Then, it probably will. Do you do CAD work or something? It probably won't. The current incarnation of the computer (beige box) will be around for a while, especially in businesses. Homes will probably move more towards information appliances, like the PSX2.
I suppose that depends on what you want to use a computer for - i use mine for web browsing, word processing and playing games.
If you can plug a printer, mouse & keyboard into a PS2 then i'll consider it for my next upgrade.
They are all dead.
Dead. Deceased. Ceaced to be. Joined the Choir Invisible. Rung Down the Curtain and Pushing Up the Daisies. It is an Ex-Parrot!
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Hmm... do I really want to do my hacking, word processing, work from home, etc.. in my living room?
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
When it comes down to it, isn't that the whole point of the PSX2? Granted, I'm sure they'll have some sort of browser software available...but because of the nature of the machine, at least this generation, I don't think it'll be knockin' out too much of the PC market. Besides, what true hardware geek would settle for just one system for all her/his gaming/net/coding needs?! ;) -Slynkie (too lazy to log in...)
I'm going to wait for Nintendos 'Dolphine'. Nintendo doesn't seem scared AT ALL about the Playstation2.
Linux is gay. It's a hack-job OS made out of play-doh and popsicle sticks by a bunch of pimple-faced 12-year olds punks with their vienna-sausage-sized peeners in one hand and a Red Hat CD in the other. Linus from the Peanuts gang has more computing power that Linux and his stupid drool-soaked blanket has a better chance of becoming a legitimate OS. Open Source is gay, too, go take your liberal crap to Woodstock, you filthy disease-ridden hippie. GPL stands for "Gay Product: Linux!" Remember the X-Band modem add-on for the Sega Genesis? That had better networking code than Linux. My Tagamochi keychain out performs Linux. Yesterday I took a crap and looked in the toilet before I flushed and said "Look! Linux!" I saw a friend walking on the side of the street so I offered him a ride in my car. He said "No way, man, I'd rather walk because walking is FREE! Walking is like open source, you know, so people can make improvements to it. It just gets better and better." So I drove away and left his stupid 'tard ass on the curb. Open Source? Open Wound! GPL? BFD! Linus? Penis! Linux is the only OS I know of that comes with incense sticks because its crap smell stinks up the room so bad. Information should be free! Why? Because I'm a fat lazy tub of lard who would have to take my hands out of my rolls of fat and go get a job other than sitting reading porn to actually pay for my software, that's why! You ever see that movie of the monkey peeing on himself? That's what a Linux user looks like. My mother (rest her soul!) found a Hustler mag under my brother's bed once and she didn't care, but later she found a Linux CD and she cried for days.
My argument has always been the other way around that soon the PC will subsume the console market. PC's are improving at way too fast a pace for consoles to keep up like this, this makes an assumption but I think it is safe at least for the next 5 years or so. I mean look the consoles are becoming more and more like a PC so why not just get a PC?
It may replace PCs as entry level web browsers but little else...
I doubt that the PSX or similar will ever replace the computer for business or home office use. I don't have a lot of understanding about the architecture of the PSX but I think it's unlikely that it's well suited to applications that would suit your average business user.
Where I can see this might be good is in the set top box arena. YOu can already send email with the Dreamcast, it seems a natural step to build web browsing functionality into a PSX style console. Throw in the better styling of the console / set top box idea, and the PC could well be replaced as a home device for entertainment.
Now I can ditch my 1280x1024 resolution 17 inch monitor for the resolution of a TELEVISION! What more could I want?
I suppose it would work out well for some people, but not for people who use computers for more than web browsers and email.
That's impossibe. My computer kicks ass!
According to MicroDesign Resources, the processor can handle 6.2 gigaflops at 300MHz. A single gigaflop equals one billion floating-point operations per second. MDR says that makes the chip two times faster than a 733-MHz Pentium III...
Ok, everyone here whose machine is currently at 100% CPU usage, raise your hand.
Now lower your hand if it is seti - 98%.
Now lower your hand if it is distributed.net - 98%.
Anyone with a hand still up?
The realy question is not what its CPU speed is, but how fast its access to peripherals is. Anyone got any info?
The cake is a pie
I remember getting a Megadrive at the same time as I was using an Amstrad CPC 464 to code Basic on. They said then that the Megadrive would could replace the computer, as it was supposed to have all these add-ons like keyboards and the like. I think its a matter of what you want. Can't see me hacking Java on a PSX2 mind you...
It's one of IDG's that CNN republishes. They do this all the time. Look at that little "PC World Online" logo just above the article...
"People" using "unnecessary" quotes should be "shot".
Beowulf cluster of PSX2s!
I feel purged now.
- "It [Emotion Engine] could provide the processing power for the PlayStation 2 to challenge cheap PCs as the entry-level device of choice for home access to the Web."
which is nothing like "they're going to replace PCs as we know it".Someone will want to port linux to it though... which will lead to hooking them up with that "B" word.
Not until there is a hard drive, keyboard, mouse, broadband, a Linux port, and an office suite will PS2 have a chance of blowing the PC out of the water. Sure the first 4 will be availably somewhere down the line, but who really wants to surf the web at pseudo 640x480 on you TV?
Gateway Systems has issued a press release stating they have teamed up with Sonic the Hedgehog to help with their manufacturing "The guy is so fast - he replaced half our factory workers! If we could just get him to stop slamming into the gold-colored tiles on the roof we'd be all set." and Laura Croft to help with their marketing. "It was a natural fit," said the Marketing director in an exclusive interview.
But Gateway faces competition from startup VA Linux Systems, who has reportedly contracted with ID Software for their Quake guy. "He's going to be our legal department," said Eric Raymond while grinning evilly.
I'd be glad to see something replace the PC a central information appliance around the typical household. Today we're so reliant on various computer applications (particularly e-mail and the web) that unless you've got around $1000 to spend, you're in trouble. This of course helps to cause the "digital divide", but if you can buy a much cheaper box that's just as fast and will be able to get web and e-mail (and possibly some basic word-processing), then you'd open up the net to many more people. Then we could see the advancement of things like Online Voting and an even more robust marketplace of ideas online. Of course, I could just be being too optomistic...
Feminism is the wild notion that women are human beings.
That's all I have to say. I'm banking on my computer for the time being.
"I may disagree vehemently with what you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it."
"On that train all graphite and glitter, undersea by rail. Ninety minutes from New York to Paris..." -Donald Fagen, IGY
It's easy to make a proccessor that gets outrageously great speed doing one particular thing. (like graphics engines, for instances). But The proccessor in question probably couldn't do most PC tasks worth beans.
Judge Pag, the Learned, Impartial, and Very Relaxed
This reminds me of when I had a subscription to Nintendo Power. Every few months, they would have a back of the issue tow pager about some "educational" or "organizer" cartridge that would be coming out soon. There was one you could get for the gameboy that had a datebook, note keeper, alarm clock, etc. These articles were usually headed with something like "Look! Nintendo Can Make Stuff That Is Not Just For Fun" to which I would reply "And no one buys it because they bought the thing to play games!"
Perhaps this is not a parralel situation, but that's what I thought of.
So when does the Crusoe'd Emotion Engine arrive?
And when do people start developing chips in crusoe first?
If you can plug a printer, mouse & keyboard into a PS2 then i'll consider it for my next upgrade.
:P
IIRC, IBM is starting to sell them off real cheap now...
Pope
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
My guess is that it all started with Apple. Before that, computers were used just for business. Nobody had a need for a computer at home (an IMHO, very few do now). Instead, computers were used for complex calculations and such that people couldn't (or shouldn't waste their time) doing on their on. Now, everybody's got a computer so that they can print greeting cards, e-mail their Aunt Sue, or play backgammon on Yahoo! Games. They all think that it's economical because paper costs less than Halmark cards, e-mail is cheaper than postage stamps or telephone calls, and you don't have to actually own a backgammon board. Instead, let's spend a thousand dollars on a computer, twenty bucks a month for Internet, and we won't have to buy a Halmark card for $1.50 or a stamp for $0.32.
The truth is that most computers are used for nothing more than fancy typewriters that can check your computer. Very few people actually use their Gateway or Dell for anything more than you could do much cheaper with simpler equipment. Programmers (what would we program for?), Hackers (what would there be to hack?) and businesses are the only true computer users these days.
So if Sony wants their Playstation 2 to replace home computers, then by all means let them do it! I think that I'll be content with the four that I have as I write webpages. But then again, I just might not have a job if it weren't for all the people in the world who absolutely have to be on the Internet and have to have something to look at once they get there.
Brad Johnson
--We are the Music Makers, and we
are the Dreamers of Dreams
Brad Johnson
While I'm not sure if the Playstation has the capabilities to run boring application-level (word processor, etc.) software, it certainly has incredible potential as a dumb terminal.
Computers are becoming more network centric every day. Remember the "Personal Computing" revolution? I don't either
If we could get a Playstation with an Ethernet jack, it might just make the best dumb terminal you've ever seen. Want the font for your terminal window 3d rendered and shimmering? The possibilities are endless. So long as the applications (or at least some of them) are hosted remotely...
One step closer to VR. Waiting patiently.
Anthony
"I think any time you expose vulnerabilities it's a good thing." -Attorney General Janet Reno
FOR ONCE, A NON "FIRST POST" FIRST POST!
NOW HOW'S ABOUT THE MODERATORS SHOW THEIR INTELLIGENCE, MATURITY AND TASTE BY DROPPING A FEW POSITIVE MODERATION POINTS ON THE GUY?
As a scientist, I want to get a computer, OS and a software pack which are suitable for my needs, specialized for my computations and so on. It's nice to play Q3D, but this is an additional bonus, and anyway I spent more time in my life playing nethack then playing Q. I don't need them everything-inside multimedia-gamers-office-everything-computers. Linux changed my computer into something resembling much more this dream machine of mine, but it still isn't perfect.
Next thing: I don't want to be forced into a silly arm race just because of new-extra-cool features which enable some people playing a real-time 3D flight simulator on their laptops, with 3D sound and a 72x CD-ROM and God-knows-what else. I would like a nice, laptop-sized machine, good for typing texts when travelling and with a decent acumulator, and *cheap*. Guess what? You can't. Yes, there are them old laptops, heavy as a hog, with an accumulator able to get the machine running for an hour or so (if you're lucky). Harh.
Yes, hopefully there will be a specialized games-computer much better then a normal home-computer. So I don't have to buy it.
Regards,
January
so it should be possible. Not sure waht the driver situ. would be though
There's actually an emulator project for the PSX2 right now. No, it's not to run PSX2 stuff on the PC - it's to run PC stuff on the PSX2. It uses dynamic opcode translation and some other neat stuff to emulate a full x86 system.
:)), plug in the USB peripherals and pretend as if the whole thing were a desktop PC.
This means that you can boot up your copy of Win '98 (yeah right
Cool stuff indeed. It might just serve as a low-cost PC alternative.
æeee!
You probably started out on the 'board and only started using ergonomically designed input devices at a later point in life, am I wrong? Keyboards are designed to enter textual data into a computer ... joysticks are designed to translate actual physical and locational information into a textual representation and interpretation of that data.
I am, therefore you think.
Without reverse engineering I dont think it is going to work. Console companies live by keeping the development for their machines under total control, they make money on levies payed on software from all developers not on hardware.
And lets not forget who pushed the new copyright laws through now being used agains the DVD hacks... if Sony puts their minds to it reverse engineering will not be an option anymore even for hardware.
Ill gladly pay premium on hardware to avoid it on software and loose the ability of freely developing on it.
Id rather have the X-Box from m$ replace PC's for gaming than a machine from the classical console manufacturers.
In a couple of years, the 'desktop' computer won't exist. There will be lot's of computers- the ones you wear, the ones you pickup and use, the ones you walk up to and use. The one you sit down at will just be another variant of the above, not the other way around.
And Linux will be the dominant OS on all of them- because it's free (as in freedom), it has mindshare bigger and better than the *BSDs, or any other OS, and people will be free to create all these other uses for computing devices.
Richard Stallman's vision is realized.
fox one fox one
Peter Glaskowsky, a senior editor for Microprocessor Report, said Thursday that a PlayStation 2 will be fundamentally easier to use than a PC.
Give this journalist a prize! (Did he really need to quote somebody to say that?)
But it will probably replace my friends for a month or two.
This may sound, erm, (-1: Offtopic), but it isn't. When the inevitable Linux/BSD port to PSX2 happens, imagine the cost drop in commodity supercomputers! Put a bootimage on a DVD-ROM and use them as simplistic nodes. At $400, you could match the performance of a SGI Onyx 10000 Reality Engine for under $2000, (including the NFS server, network, etc).
PSX2 Beowulf Cluster!
.sig: Now legally binding!
Anything that helps to bring non-PC type computing to mass attention is a good thing. PCs really suck, I look forward to being able to buy an inexpensive computing device that does the job and doesn't allow me to waste my money on crappy upgrades that I really don't need, the better.
And what is the chance that MS will port Windows to PS2? Infinitessimally small I hope. What is the chance that Linux and *BSD will get ported to it? Pretty damn good, I hope. End the idiocy of PCs everywhere! Who knows, we might not have to put up with adverts claiming a CPU upgrade will increase the speed of your Inet connection ;-) And without the technical details of the hardware being required knowledge, we might not have to put up with people that don't know what they are talking about boasting to their colleagues about their computer - and getting it all cringefully wrong.
The PSX2's uptake as a 'replacement' or rather alternative to the desktop will hinge largely on its extensibility or upgradeability.
:) kewl!!
Although the PSX2 is forecast around $340 dollars, you then need to buy some more add-ins from Sony to make it a semi-practical computing solution:
1) Digital Display (You wouldn't like to wp on a 600line tv)
$110
2) Hard Drive (nothing like filling em up) - Sony 10Gb
$140
3) Keyboard+Mouse (also has to be Sony)
$40
4) Printer (for that paper-full office feeling)
$135
TOTAL $765 US
Its a bit pricey when you consider what kind of kit you could buy PC wise for that money....
However, I *really* like the idea of using the PSX2 (when I get one) as the centrepiece of my home entertainment system ie: Sony stereo, VCR and HDTV all controlled by the PSX2
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
We here in the game development community are live in awe/fear of the PSX2. It is an extremely capable device, beyond it's gaming characteristics. It has FireWire. It has DVD. It has PC Card. It cost $200. It will be in every living room, bought as a game device.
/. sometimes forget how little of the market we represent. We are elite. Most people don't even know what we are talking about. While we argue about the suspensions in our sports cars, most of the world drives their Hondas, oblivious to our passions.
But, with the right marketing and accessories, it could do everything that 80% of home computer users need in a computer. It will surf the web, do email, and play games. For way less than a PC, and no hassles with compatibility, no installation nightmares, no DirectX downloads, no problems at all.
I predict this device will sneak into America's homes and become the home computer that everyone envisioned in Sci-Fi books 20 years ago.
We here on
By the way, everyone thought the IBM PC sucked when it first came out. Remember?
I just had two ideas.
:-)
What if you were able to use a PlayStation2 as the user interface to your Linux/PC box in a really well integrated fashion?
XWindows and really fast rendering with hard-/firm-ware acceleration without having to buy some ridiculously over priced PC card, and it can play some games too.
Think of doing VR without watching the screen update about as quickly as glaciers flow.
C'mon guys there must be a way we can USE this!
The second idea is unrelated but here goes:
How many companies sell Linux distributions?
And that's competition your honor...
How many companies sell Windows distributions?
And that's a monopoly your honor...
Now lets put that topic to bed, without its supper.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Its floating point prowess is well known... but for integer it wont compete, only dual issue RISC at 300 MHz, for branch heavy code I have my doubts if that will not hit it even harder and for stuff needing large caches you can forget about it altogether.
Actually I dont think a PSX2 emu will be unattainable in the future. PSX2 development is moving away from low level programming to heavy library use, and as the PSX emu has shown emulating at the library level is a lot more efficient. Combined floating point capabilities of high end PC's plus hardware T&L will be beyond the PSX2 in a couple of months... I think PSX2 emulation will be possible somewhere in 2001.
One of the things I discovered when I started looking more into the design of the Sound Blaster Live is that while it's got some ridiculous amount of MIPS, they're almost all hardcoded.
;-)
In other words, yeah, you can do alot of processing, if you're specifically trying to process what they're trying to accelerate.
Take a gigahertz X86 processor and toss 256x256 texture bilinear filtering at it, and it's gonna choke. Take a Voodoo 1 that has entire gate arrays devoted to doing nothing else *but* filtering 256x256 textures scaled to arbitrary sizes, and it'll do just fine. That doesn't mean a Voodoo 1 is by definition faster than a Gigahertz x86 chip; it means that a hardware architecture highly optimized for a specific type of processing can execute those specific operations or sets of operations much, much faster than software attempting to do the same with a more general architecture.
Gate arrays beat emulation any day of the week
What's interesting is that there's a rather large problem going on in the computer industry: General purpose processors are already quite fast enough to do almost anything that can be thrown at them, with the exception of those tasks that are wayyyyy outside of their design specifications. So you have servers at 10% load saturating their network bandwidth, but make that same server a rendering station and it could have ten times the power and still not meet demand.
Makes an interesting case for FPGA architectures which can dynamically rewrite the actual logic gates, and for directly programming Transmeta's surprisingly versatile Crusoes.
Incidentally, surfing web pages on a television sucks. Will PSX2 ship with VGA out? If so, it might have an interesting chance. By then, though, x86 webpads will likely be the standard.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
From what I have read, I have heard that the Emotion Engine chip will be used not only in the PSX2, but also a line of PC's, and a line of high-end workstations.
:)
The PSX2 is a home system. Essentially, it's aimed at WebTV, Dreamcast, Dolphin, and AOL. That is their target user base for people that are going to use this as a device for connecting to the net. Not to say that I won't be connecting mine to play games, but still.
The new line of VAIO computers in late 2000 or early 2001 will feature some integration of this technology also. I would look for some very kick-butt video and audio processing on them.
However, they are also going after Sun, Fujitsu, HP, Dell, Apple, and the workstation market with a new line of workstations featuring a more powerful version of the EE chip in tandem with other processors. This I remember reading. This also looks very promising, especially if they can find a way to make Photoshop run like it does on a G4 in terms of processor optimization with the EE.
This PSX2 will not replace computers. It's not aimed at that in Sony's overall stragegy. It's squarely aimed at the low-end market of people that buy WebTV, AOL, or Dreamcast (or Sega SaturnNet Link ).
-Elendale (*drool*)
IANAT (I Am Not A Troll)
One is the quote: experts predict the high-tech processor will offer unprecedented gaming power They say this before any new release, all the console game companies do, It doesn't allways pan out. The Playstation one is not all that "Oohh' LaLa, and Sony said it was the greatest thing ever or some spin like that. I bought one for my kids and they want to sell it to the neighbors kid and use the money to buy more N-64 games.
But that kind of speed in a console is going to open up a whole new realm in gaming. Second was the DVD influence: Combine that with a DVD drive, and a modular design that will offer simple upgrades to Internet access.... I'm getting a little leary of DVD/Net connected anything. For one the technology is just advancing to fast to make it a sound investment and also Because a PlayStation 2 lacks a built-in storage device, he says new programs would likely run through the DVD drive. DVD Write will eventually come in to play and with it will come all the hassles with encription, keys, copyright infringement etc.
Should be an interesting product to watch though, I wonder how Sony will target market it to the non-gamer community. Those chips could have so many other uses.
Never knock on Death's door:
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
"extraordinary processing power in a sub-$400 game console."
:-) Although I can break R/O CDROM devices just as easily as harddrives, given a proper height from which to drop them.
Hmm...
1) Get PSX2 that plays DVDs and a couple of games, and allows me to surf the web via dialup on my TV
2) Get that TNT2 Ultra or GeForce256 DDR for the same price, and realise that upgrade cards can handle some work..
" Peter Glaskowsky, a senior editor for Microprocessor Report, said Thursday that a PlayStation 2 will be fundamentally easier to use than a PC."
Yes, the PSX2 gamepad seems to be so much easier on the wrists as compared to a 101-key QWERTY keyboard.
"There are fewer ways for the average user to run into problems because read-only devices are harder to break, he says."
Considering the "average user" intelligence level (12:00... 12:00... 12:00...) -- he's right. They'll likely not realise they can't save any of their files
So we have an expensive chimera unit. Not gaming console (like the ever loveable Super Nintendo I own), and not a computer (like the ever loveable homebuilts I own), and does the gaming not as well as a powerful PC, and does the PC stuff not as well as a cheap PC with an ancient monitor.
"Success? Who needs it! We have the emotion engine."
---
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Development on consoles costs a lot of dough. And you can forget about open source development on it using their tools because of the severe license restrictions.
What happens if someone brings out a PSX2 disc that enables you to connect to an ASP from home? Do you really need a computer at home then?
Having said that, $400 is not a bad price for a DVD player alone.
Regards, Ralph.
I really doubt people are itching to write emails like:
Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Select Start.
Daltorak
The only way the PSX2 will replace your PC is if you only use your PC for entertainment - basically, the iMac/WebTV crowd. Sure, I could play games, surf the web, or watch a movie. But I doubt I would ever be able to (or desire to) do serious work in front of my TV.
Gee, let me think really hard on this:
No.
That wasn't so tough.
Like it wasn't enough having to write code that NS, IE, and AOL would display somewhat similar, now you have the Dreamcast (and god how horrible is the Dreamcast browser. I'll concede it -might- be somewhat useable if I had the Dreamcast keyboard, but .. why would I go buy that? So I can browse at 320x200 resolution?), and soon the PSX2 to worry about?
...
It is a -bitch- to view pages on the Dreamcast. In my routine surfing on one for testing, I don't think I came across one I didn't have to scroll horizontally on. I envision the PSX2 is going to suffer from the same shortcomings.
BilldaCat
How does using a manufacturer's product mean you're "in bed" with them? In that case we're all whores.
PC gamers, though, enjoy pushing the technology. Stuff like getting inside the machine and overclocking it or installing the latest graphics cards. PC Gamers also love being able to create modded levels to exercise their creativity. One thing that will probably change is online play, which console gamers may pick up.
I'm going to probably switch to being mainly a PC gamer now, after years of supporting consoles. I don't like what Sega did to consumers when they locked out the import light guns for Dreamcast (you cannot play House of the Dead without a light gun. Minor game, maybe, but I like it.), and I don't like Sony's way of treating consumers with region codes and the latest DVD fiasco. So, for me that leaves Nintendo's Dolphin, but I haven't made up my mind on that one yet.
PC's on the other hand, have started to look really good for gamers, even more so than they have for years. Of course, the habit does seem slightly more expensive to support on a PC... but I'd rather do that than give chum to the Sony shark.
Oh, and I'm sick of the whole, "...will replace the PC line of reasoning." This is just old fashioned "conventional wisdom" that the "average joe" neither needs nor wants a PC, but wants to be on the Internet. PCs are great, cool and fun (yes, even fun beyond just games... though I fear to utter near-heresy like that) and I think people have been buying them because they want to, not because they are forced to because there are no alternatives. PCs are going to be just fine... they aren't going anywhere, and neither are consoles.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
slash sucks
The value of Dreamcast hit home when I was able to show 10 people in the room the news of the Indian Airlines hijacking from CNN.com as it came up live. Oh- and there was no side-scrolling on CNN.com using the Dreamcast browser.
I don't play games and really think that this is nothing but hype. We need open (and free) hardware standards, not this propriatery crap that we get forced into using.
Hey... let's read a few reviews or the specs and rethink your rather uninformed rant.
The hardware is entirely proprietary,
Like those USB ports? or the FireWire (IEEE1394, isn't the IEEE a standards group?), or are you referring to the Type III PCMCIA slot?
meaning that the upgrade possibilities if you replaced your computer with a gaming console are ... limited.
Unless you slap in a few standardized PCMCIA devices... or chain a few USB devices... or drop your camcorder on the FireWire port.
Similarly, there are other strange quirks. Sure, all the new consoles will have keyboards and everything, but they require special internet service -- I highly doubt they're PPP compliant, and Ethernet compliance? Probably not, in all fairness.
Yeah, because you can't put a Ethernet card as a standard feature... oh, wait... they are going to ship with one. They say that they prefer that you use their broadband network optimized for games, but you can put a modem into one and dial into any ISP, or use DSL or a cablemodem. Funny... it sounds like they've got a Ethernet and PPP stack.
Lastly -- text on TVs is hard to read. It's getting better, but it will never be a computer monitor, because it's designed for an entirely different effect. Those of us who sit near our computer screens, for lack of a better `ergonomic' setup, can tell you that it looks vastly different from close up from a television.
So, until you can afford HDTV, just in case I'm remembering wrong about it having a VGA output (it just lists a multi AV cable), slap a HTDV converter on your monitor.
Oh, and it comes in a tower configuration when you buy the workstation model... or you can put the regular model and it runs the DVDs sideways.
Just in case you think I'm a rabid gamer, the last game system I owned was an 8-bit Nintendo. I have no clue what's come out since then, never seen a Nintendo 64, just recently found out that GameBoys are now in color. The specs and positioning for the PS2 (it looks like a sterio component!) are nice. I'm holding off on a DVD player for it.
Links:
Sony Japan (specs are in english:) http://www.scei.co.jp/ps2/hard.html
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Really, guys, can't you come up with something that really matters?
Its the software, like some have said, Sony keeps a very tight reign on the development side of things because thats how they make money. Even if they top the 60million PSX1 units out there, they aren't likely to open development. This is what will kill the pc replacement idea. Even the little PSX1 has lots of potential as a cheap educational/training tool, but it costs too much to get around the protections. Also the PSX2 won't 'run' linux, the devlopment environment is in linux. They're using GNU gcc with proprietary libs. jmr
I saw a post on www.sourceforge.com asking for developers on a PSX2 cluster project.
Could be tasty...
J
I saw a post on http://www.sourceforge.com asking for developers on a PSX2 cluster project.
Could be tasty...
J
allright... the hardware specs first:
:)
1) it has 2 USB ports. with an adapter, it'll support up to 127 usb devices... plug in that mouse, and watch it work (more on this later).
2) Video Games almost always use peak performance out of a system. If you don't believe me, read some interviews with the people of Naughty Dog, or Polyphony Digital, who created Crash Bandicoot 1/2/3 and Gran Turismo 1-2, respectively. that Emotion Engine is gonna be getting a pretty good butt-whoop'n in the begining, and totally maxed out to peak performance when the software demands (Polyphony Digital has already talked about wanting to make the system bleed.)
3) it will support normal Televisions and HDTV. the hell with small resolution, you'll be more than happy with HDTV, Daniel-san.
...and now for the software end...
1) IT RUNS LINUX. all you freaks saying "port linux to it and I'll use it" are in need of a SERIOUS swat with the clue stick.
2) because it runs linux, I'm pretty sure that there will be ways to flash the PS2's BIOS so that it supports more peripherals.... i.e. USB Mice, USB Keyboards USB Printers (mmmm.... HP 970cxi), USB Scanners, and.... heh... prolly that N64 to USB adapter too.
3) Breakpoint (the man behind Project Unreality - the first N64 Emulator) is actually working on a PC-to-PS2 emulator.... he summed it up quite well by saying "Imagine a 3DSM rendering farm running on REALLY FAST computers"
now, on to the demographics of the average PS2 user
1) The average PS2 owner is going to be between the ages of 14-23, as this is who's buying the most games. Most of this age group either has a computer, or is going to get one in the near future. Most won't have a DVD player, and will be more than happy to use that as an excuse for purchasing/getting someone to purchase the PS2.
2) more people will jump on the "We can surf from the couch with WebTV" market. You see, most of these 14-23 year olds live at home, and their families will be using this as a web terminal (probably a major way to con the parents into getting one). No matter what one thinks of net surfers without computers, this is gonna become more widespread... so get used to the idea.
3) since GCC is being ported to the PS2, I'm thinking that there will be a few more people out there wanting to create their own PS/2 games, and have a comparable system to run/compile with. No longer will aspiring Game Creators have to spend $400 on a Net Yaroze to make half-baked games... no. they'll use their 3,000 PC!
4) speaking of games... now that Quake 3 Arena is being ported to the dreamcast, don't be surprised if Q3A and Unreal Tournament pop up on the PS2. John Carmack and Tim Sweeney have both mentioned the large possibility of porting the games.
but I really don't care... I won't even consider owning a PS2 untill Bleem, LLC kicks sony's large corporate ass in court....
Oh yeah, like I want a computer without a hard drive. No more mods for Quake & Unreal, No more custom levels or skins. It may make a cool DVD player and arcade station, but it can't even replace the gaming functions on my computer, nevermind the useful things like Browser plugins. You can't even download patches...
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No Zen is good zen
Most people who debate in the matter of "Consoles" replacing desktops than I've talked to tend to miss a couple of things.
There is a reason why Linux isn't currently running on the desktop of CEOs of fortune 500 companies. What that reason is, isn't the matter here, its the fact that it exists. Can you *really* see Microsoft dumping desktop/servers. They could port their software to consols, but Microsofts attempts at porting tend to be less than sucesful.
Another point that is mentioned more, but not enough is viewing device. 17" monitors may be small compared to your 28" at home. But just try *reading* that 28". So it looks like for now, the legacy monitor will remain (Till something else with sharp clarity comes along (read: LCD, Plastic that glows, etc).
I suspect that Consoles won't replace PCs, and PCs won't replace consoles. PCs will on the whole get smaller, however, there is a possibility of having many small devices, like consoles, that do different things. A Games computer, an Office tools computer, Development computer, an Internet Computer. However, that won't happen till each device can communicate perfectly with every other device, preferably wireless. And the protocol and standards for such devices are open.
I suspect if the console was more Open, and you could play the same game on many different machines without having to go buy another copy, it could begin to replace the PC. But thats sounding more and more like a PC. One reason why they won't be more open is consoles can do such cool stuff because they are specifically designed to do it, and the games and specifically designed to work on one console, and the hardware is generally known at the time of game creation.
As far as I can tell, in the near future (say 5-10 years), consoles will remain primarily games only device.
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I use to have a funny sig, but slash cut it off, and I forgot what the punchline was.
man.....
:-)
just for the pure nostalgia that was conjured up by the mere utterance of the Konami Code, you deserve some moderation points.
It's just that rather than becoming a separate entity, the PC morphed into it, while still retaining it's own properties.
Browswer based apps are already here. They're still wimpy, but in a few years consumers and regular office workers will be able to accomplish everything they do now via a computer with a web browser.
The NC's not dead. It's just the PC became the NC.
IMHO, the point appears to be that one could easily surrender the confusion of a PC if all one does is gaming, quicken/checkbook, WWW, email, and minor word processing. I would claim (without reference to anything) the the 80/20 rule would easily apply here, and a system like a PS2 would be of incredible use to home users. Besides, plug it into your suburban family cable modem, and you've got instant multiplayer possibilities without having to worry about modem hookups.
Yes, there are security issues, yes, there are privacy issues, yes, there are issues of usability and access, but if grandma wants a web connection, this might be a good way to go.
ceci n'est pas un sig.
From the posts, a lot of people seems to think that this is another case of the MSX syndrome, and that the PC will destroy PSX2 as it destroyed other contenders
;).
;), PC resellers will see some though competition: not from a 'console', but from a Sony-branded, home-targeted PC that just happens to be called like a console.
But if you look at PSX2 specs, you'll see it has USB ports (Keyboard, mouse, scanners, printers, Modem/ADSL, even *GASP!* floppies), a FireWire port (Video, but even big and fast HDs), and a Type III PCCard/PCMCIA Slot where you can plug lots of things, from HDs to Video Cards. And all these devices are/should be STANDARD PC PERIPHERALS, not Sony proprietary dongles.
And all this without knowing for sure what PSX2 can do by itself. Is it limited to TV video freqs, or can it do better? Will it have some expansion capabilities (RAM, internal devices) or not?
Maybe after all PSX2 will be able to replace some (lots of?) PCs, since it's not very different from what PCs are becoming these days (think of the new all-usb machines...), and as someone stated in the article, it won't fsck itself up every two games you play "since it doesn't have an HD" (since it doesn't have an idiotic OS on it, i'd say
Even Linux-wise the thing is really cool, because its processor is MIPS4000 compatible and its developement system is Linux-based, so it should be easy to port Linux to it, if Sony itself doesn't do it.
If Sony doesn't do something VERY wrong and stupid with this thing (think Commodore...
Ciao,
Rob!
-- since English isn't my native language, corrections are welcome! --
AniToolBox! An Open Source animation program!
Sony should be happy just replacing the psx1. They are making the exact same mistakes so many others have made. They think that because they are all mighty Sony they can make these mistakes and still come out ahead -- I am betting that they are wrong. A video game console that plays last generation games? It didn't work with the atari 7800, the Sega Nomad or the Sega Genesis (which would play master system games with an add-on.) A console that is really a computer? Both atari and Coleco failed in their attempts at such a device. How about a console that plays movies? This feature didn't help the 3do. And while Sony is sitting there blowing hot air about how great their new system is going to be -- Sega is actually selling honest to god next generation consoles right now. They already smashed the record for the shortest amount of time needed to sell a million units in north america. By the time the psx2 comes out there will be at least 5 million DC in North America complete with an entire library of great 2nd and 3rd generation games. If I were Sony I would just worry about selling video game consoles -- no video game console maker has ever made it selling computers and I don't think Sony has any idea how much of a headache that little dreamcast can cause them! It is cheap, easy to program for and although not the most powerful console of its day it does hold it own against the competition. Sounds like both the DC and the psx1 to me!
Deepak
--
Deepak Saxena
Deepak Saxena
"Computers are useless, they can only give you answers" - Picasso
My TFC gaming machine is a windowsNT dual celeron running at 400Mhz. My Linux development box is a 486/66.
I'd say yer probably right.
Just Another Anonymous Coward
JAAC
We've covered it before in here, but the article here gives a hint at their workstations based on the emotion engine.
As far as current PS2 replacing PC, I don't think it could happen considering that the PS2 is so limited in CPU direction. From what I hear, if you tried to run a program like Excel (shiver), it would run slower than if you tried to run it on a 486.
If you think about it, the price of the EE makes it nice and easy to plop into a slot and take advantage of those new GPU API's DirectX uses. I seriously doubt Sony would ever put a PSX emulator on a card and sell it to the general public, but having an add-on won't threaten the PSX at all. But, the huge bus of the EE and reliance on Rambus would probably hinder a few things.
No storage, no PC replacement period.
...as this may incur some wrath from the masses, but I think it's a comment needing (and thus far not) to appear in this discussion..
The topic is "Will PSX2 replace the PC?". Obviously, a relevant subtopic would be "Will the Slashdot audience support the PSX2 replacing the PC, or for that matter being a success?"
IF you agree this is a valid sub-topic, then I am amazed that noone has yet brought up the (now political/social) issue of DVD. Remember, the PSX2 is amoung other things, a DVD player. Not by an option, but by default. And a lot of people that I see drooling over the PSX2 in this convo are also very passionate in other fora about boycotting DVD, and all who back it, about boycotting the MEDIA companies in cahoots with the DVD CCA (of which, in THIS case, Sony is BOTH). So, regardless of whether you believe the DVD makers or the DVD content providers should feel the pressure from us, realize that Sony is in both camps and therefore, if you believe that we should resist funding the pockets of those who are trying to squash our freedoms, Sony, like it or not, should be a prime target.
I agree I'm as bummed as the next guy to admit that, the PSX2 looks like it will be one kick-ass machine, but on principle, I will not support it until the DVD issues are resolved in a manner acceptable to the principles and freedoms at stake.
And as such, at the moment, I as a Slashdot reader cannont in good conscience wish the PSX2 to "Replace the PC", or even have success.
Just my 2 cents.
from what i read it looks like crusoe spends some of its cpu time running the recompilation/translation/optimization of x86 into VLIW crusoe instructions.... now the translated-code-cache and the optimize-by-learning might be sort of equivalent to having a CPU optimized for a specific task,,, on the other hand its still just a 400mhz general purpose cpu chip... do you think such a general purpose chip can really be faster than an FPGA.. just by doing clever software translation/optimization-by-learning tricks?
First off, most people don't really use their PCs for all that much. People talk about running sophisticated code on their home machines but they tend to be the exception. Most people want to surf the web, read and write mail, play games, movies and music and that's sufficient for them. A PSX2 is actually overkill for everything but games.
Second off, while TVs are not an ideal display device, if there isn't a monitor adapter somewhere for them, I'll be extremely surprised. That makes things a lot more readable. But strangely enough I think we're really going to end up waiting for the flat panel market before people really start dumping their televisions for plugging their consoles into.
Third off, no need to assume that people will just have one of them in the house. These things will drop to the $150 and even to the $100 range in time. That makes having two or three affordable to a far wider audiance. That leads to the next point.
Fourth off, yes, they are limited compared to PCs, but envision a home network of PSX2 boxes linked by ethernet to a Linux box that serves as a file/printer server as well as gateway. Not that I envision that PSX2 boxes will be usable in a configuration like that, but my vision of home computing is that PC's will eventually evolve into home servers while the consoles become the home network computers that plug into them. The PCs can run Linux (or even some icky OS) and be the servers that run continuously plugged into the Net as well as being the focal point for commonly used devices such as printers. If Sony was really thinking though, they'd copy Apple and produce their own version of the Airport. That would encourage multiple PSX2's in one house and increase their sales through easy wireless networking.
The fifth point is that it has been pointed out that PCs did a lot of damage to the minicomputer market by eroding it from below. Exactly the same thing is happening now to the PC market. PC folks are scoffing in nearly identical fashions to what the minicomputer folks said about PCs.
However, the sixth point is that there is going to be trouble here. All Sony has to do is put a Java virtual machine on their PSX2 and that destroys their whole economic model. Sony makes money by charging a fee to developers who produce and sell software on their consoles. The moment someone puts a Java machine on, which allows anyone to code and load software and run it on a PSX2 without giving a cut to Sony, everything falls apart.
In time, we're going to see the collision between the PC free development model (and bitch all you like about Microsoft, they don't try to control who writes what on their machines) and the console controlled development model. I think in the end we'll see a bump up in console prices and the PC model taking over. It probably won't happen from a traditional vendor, or if it does, through a court case.
So in short I see these things shoving PC's up into the high end server market, where the modularity of the PC and its flexibility are a real advantage. However in colliding with the PC market they are going to be changed by the more robust PC economic model. A home will have a console plugged into the big screen television and associated stereo system (eliminating the need for an MP3 box in the stereo rack), but there will be a couple of others in the house for personal network computer use and networked game play.
Will it replace the PC? Of course not. Will it replace Dreamcast/PSX/N64 absolutly. For proof
of this, check out Square Gamer which somehow managed to sneak a movie out of ff10 that they demoed. FF9 which is on the original play station (backwords compatable with PSX1) looked how I expected it to look on a PSX2... What does 10 (which is on the PSX2) and 11 look like? Take a gander.
IT's not about replacing the PC. Sony's much too evil for that. (quite frankly, Microsoft pales in comparison...)
The PSX2 will be the core of Sony's "home entertainment universe" (remember their new commercials about how all their stuff is interconnected? What's missing? hmmm...). It is designed as the gateway unit for all of your home multimedia equipment, this includes your PC if it is equiped with 1394 oops I mean firewire oops I mean iLink Sony's proprietary protocol built on top of 1394.
Sony has come out publicly to state that PSX2 is a settop box, which is not the same genre of equipment as a game console. PSX2 is Sony's bid to completely and totally control your living room.
There's a company called Bleem that makes PSX2 emulation software for the PC. They made about 4 million in sales last year. Sony has spent about 10 million so far trying to shut them down. Why should they care when they sell their consoles at a loss and Tekken3 was their highest grossing product last year? Becuase if you can play playstation games on your PC you don't need a playstation, or the PSX2. The PSX2 is what will enable you to take your Sony camcorder, and plug it into your home network to connect to your Sony TV, Sony VAIO computer, and your Sony microwave, bathroom scale and toothbrush.
So of course you will see all kinds of releases about how great and wonderfull emotion engine is and how PSX2 (*cough*with-iLink*cough*) will make everyone's lives easier and better and make you more attractive to members of the opposite sex.
Patiently I await Dolphin or NUON.
"You want to kiss the sky? Better learn how to kneel." - U2
Sig:
Barbeque is a noun. Not a verb.
Daily Radar has a good article on this same topic. It's more about the pros and cons of the PSX2 in the gaming arena than just "Well, it's powerful and there's a lotta hype, so it's gonna replace the PC."
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
I hold in my hand a simple igneous rock that is capable of 6.2 Gflops/s. Think about it: all by itself, it can solve countless (and many as yet undiscovered) laws of fluid dynamics as a throw it at people through the air. It easily and comfortably interfaces with both my hands, and it has a far finer resolution than any tv or monitor: it has a fractal-surface display. It's multi-user (we can both take turns throwing the rock) and it's fully networked (it interacts well with human hands and other rocks). It's fully backwards compatible with sedimentary rocks, and it holds great promise for future developments in becoming a metamorphic rock. And it's far more durable that this newfangled PSX2 device -- long after the last PSX2 crumbles to dust, our descendants will still be digging up rocks.
Rocks. They're not just for breakfast anymore.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Even though I just don't play games on my PC, comments like this piss me off. There aren't two classes, one "PC purists" and the other "Gamers." It's foolish to even attempt such generalizations.
_______
I just wish I could c:\format Internet
The EE in the PS2 doesn't have any Level 2 cache. Theoretically, it can do vast numbers of floating-point operations, but unfortunately, the speed of a system also depends a lot on the rate that you can move data around.
;)
It's a nice system, but it is constricted in some ways. As always, if it's too good to be true, it probably is. The PS2 is not some supercomputer that can thrash a dual Athalon system into the ground for a tenth of the price, but it will be a nice gaming/DVD system, with a lot of expandability options.
cheers.
(Anon on purpose. I'm pretty sure the above info isn't covered by NDA, but it's better to be cautious...
I agree that lots of claims have been made to indicate the emminent demise of the PC, but the key factor here is that technology is on a steady course of advancement. All things must change. The fact is, PCs are amazingly adaptable (excluding the processor - which still has a development track).
Does anyone remember the amazing quotes the media gave the PSX version 1? That beast has a measly 4 MB of RAM (the new ones); it hit the streets initially with 2 MB!! Face it, consoles will always alternate between leading the pack and bringing up the rear. The lack of upgradability forces companies like Sony and Sega to shoot as high as possibile when introducing a platform. The last thing console games want is to have to upgrade their system. That is the beauty of the console, no?
But look where the first mighty hype machine is now. It's a dinosaur. (The key that Sony has known all along is that performance is important, but to console players, the games matter most, so new PSX ver1 games still rock.)
Computers will catch up to the PSX2, but in time. Let Sony have their heyday. They're shooting for the living room, not the teen's room (Apple) or the office (everyone else). They happen to have a great idea whose time has come.
I still want one -- bad!"My guitar wants to kill your mamma." - Frank Zappa
Look at the Wulfstation project over at sourceforge.net. Sony is apparently donating hardware and dev kits to this open source project.
You can use a N64 controller with a PC check out www.wishtech.com
to play dvds on. standard audio cdroms. games most. but it'll never replace the computer. besides has anybody ported linux for it?
Unfortunately some PC games just aren't suited for the console (and vice versa.)
Game genres on PC and Dreamcast
RTS are not very enjoyable on consoles. Check out Warcraft II for the PSX, if you don't believe me. At least the Dreamcast has 640x480 resolution.
Most consoles also don't come with a keyboard and mouse. Playing Quake without a mouse and keyboard? Yeah, right.
Don't get me wrong. Consoles have their place. (Look at the amount of R&D Sega, Sony, and Nintendo are spending on the next generation consoles.)
Consoles were designed for one thing. Play games.
PC's are more expensive because they are more versatile. Sometimes gaming is better on PCs, sometimes not. Soul Caliber on the DreamCast blows me away with the graphics and gameplay. Age of Empires II on the PC does likewise.
Arguing which one is better is pointless. They were designed for different purposes.
But what do I know, I'm just a game developer.
Cheers
Michael,
3D game programmer
I don't know if the Playstation 2 can displace a PC, but it sure might displace DVD players. Supposedly, the PSX2 hardware is fully capable of doing the mpeg2 decompression needed to play back DVDs -- Sony just hasn't decided whether or not they want to compete with their own DVD players. Last I heard, they were planning to offer an "upgrade" to enable the feature.
One thing about these guys -- they are the one company out there that really understands what convergence is all about. If there's anyone who finally manages to replace the PC after all the failed attempts, it's Sony.
LAME ASS MODERATORS! MARK THIS UP!
I'm holding off on a DVD player for it.
you're stupid. the dvd player will not be full featured. i guess you bought into the hype.
Yeah, whatever..... PC age is over. Theyve been saying that forever. They said it with SNES, playstation, N64, Dcast... Has it happened? No. And now everybody and their dog proclaim PCs to be dead. Internet devices, PSX2 - you name it - will take over. But I dont see it happen. I like my multipurpose PC. Ill keep it, even as I will get some small handheld idevice. The PC wont go away for awhile.
TN
there is a big stain on my bed that was some funny shit my big rolls of tubby lard are firmly enwrapped round my arms, encasing my fat little cum stained fingers in a moist, warm environment, until i am ready to unfurl them in order to rant on irc, slashdot, or download bondage porn.
How about this guy? The quote that caught my eye was "we had a four month jump on most developers." And doesn't the PS2 use Linux in some form or another?
I don't relish the thought of putting in a new CD for each and every single app I want to put it. Surfing the web and you use a separate email client? Turn off the PSX2, take out the CD, put in a new one, reconnect to the Internet (forget cable modems, the thing has a 56k modem!), wait for it to read, read your mail, do the whole swap thing again to resume browsing.
And the likelihood of having a fully functional web browser along with a news reader and email client in the limited memory space of the PSX2 is highly doubtful....
Esperandi
Plus, isn't 2D slower than polygons on this thing? I mean, its not made for 2D stuff... and I've never seen a proposal for a 3D GUI that didn't suck
the adapter costs about 30$ though. If you have the money it's worth it. And you should be playing descent.
The PSX2 wil be an incredibily powerfull game machine, no doutb about that, and it's powers can be used for simple matters like doing homework, sending mail, browsing the web, chatting, and playing quake 3 online. In other words all the reasons normal users have to buy a computer. It is aslo vrey cheap compared to computers (seen from my norwegian point of view...) I think the PSX is a natural evolution towards a new all-use gizmo that will replace VCR, Computer and other thecnologies. Its going to be exiting to see what sort of add-ons we will se to the PSX. It wont replace computers for all the nerds in the world, but for the home user it could theorieticaly have all it needs. And some crazy developer will end up porting Linux too it, no doubt ;) ------------------------------ St4k1n
Battle Of The Multimedia Platforms
"In the past, we've referred to it only as the Battle Of The Consoles; the ongoing wars between Sega and Nintendo, and the relentless pursuit of Sony. Now, a new war is being fought. This war, however, will bring a new enemy into the fray: The Personal Computer..."
A different article with a topic similar to the one from CNN -- this time from a gamer-oriented site, with some game developer quotes. The site also has some other nifty Playstation 2 info as well.
The PSX2 is going to fill a void that the PC is just incapable of filling. In the 1980s, there was a plethora of platforms available, competing with the PC, with a few standing above the rest: The Atari 8-bit computer is a good example of a technologically advanced, but overlooked low-cost home computer with a basis of gaming features that made it attractive to the general home user. For thousands of dollars less than a PC system, you could do what a home user in the 1980s would want to do - play games, use e-mail and online services, share and print documents and graphics, etc. It even had an option to hook up PC peripherals such as printers and modems. The 1990s were dominated by the PC and the PC has had no low-end competition as it had in the 1980s. Sure, you could spend less, and get a stripped down PC that does less. You can't spend less and get a better deal than a PC. This is the competition that computer makers like Atari provided. The PSX2 is going to fill the void that was left circa the early 1990s when platform competition faded and the PC platform was allowed to run rampant. I think many of us will be surprised at the technological sophistication of the PSX2 in terms of graphics and ease of use for such a low price. (Same 'power without the price' goal that Atari pursued). But there will be some who will be disappointed at the proprietary design of the PSX2. You can run Linux on an Atari computer, but will PSX2 allow it? I think Sony is going to be notorious for going to great lengths to disallow copying.. therefore potentially crippling the PSX2's abilities.. Just like their MiniDisc line of products. Ever see the Sony MiniDisc Data drive MDH-10? It does not allow copying or recording of MiniDisc audio data, and requires a completely different and incompatible type of MiniDisc "data" disc to allow it to function as a standard PC 140MB 'floppy' drive. Bottom line? The PSX2 holds a lot of promise, and may somewhat fulfill hopes of held out by the recent demise of the Amiga computer and all other non-PC based platforms before it. Just because it plays games is no reason to discount it as a contender, but it may be more to Sony's advantage if people are fooled into thinking this is just another game machine. I can't wait to see what the PSX2 can do better than the PC in a home environment.
As for the Dreamcast shipping with a slow modem - do you know of a faster one? Last time I checked 56K is the fastest standard phone modem you can buy.
If these game consoles provide HDTV outputs, then this might provide motivation for a lot of people to get HDTV sets (once the feedback loop has created enough demand to bring the price down to "reasonable" levels).
And once you've got HDTV sets (at least the 1024 level), then you've got acceptable mininum resolution for doing web surfing and/or gaming.
These consoles, acting as smart terminals & working with a subscription service over a DSL-speed line, could very well provide all the functionality that your "average" family could want out of a PC, and be a hell of a lot cheaper than a typical PC as well.
There have been a lot of posts mentioning the possibility of getting Linux ported to the PS2. The fact is that it's actually already been done and by none other than... Sony. If their press releases and other publicity is to be believed, the development machines that they are producing are workstations based around the Emotion Engine chip, running a modified version of Linux. For anyone that wants to check it out, the press release is at http://www.playstation-europe.com/ps2/press_releas e_html/tools.html
Vil.
Will computers replace God? Will neck ties be able to tell you the date? Will these "tech" reporters ever stop asking stupid questions just to start some controversy? The answer to all this is no.
Troll.
Troll. People, take note - this is *not* the mindset of most Christians, and should not be viewed as such.
Actually... the controller is your remote. I don't see that being too big of a problem, especially since most of us play games/watch movies sitting in our coutch. And in all honesty, I use my DVD remote rarely. A gentle push on the drawer and the disc goes in and starts up. After I've seen the "special features" once or twice, it's a rare occasion to return to them. Hopefully the cords on the controllers will be a bit longer this time around.
look PCs are for personal and business computing. Consoles are for games. You could do computing on a console but it would suck. You could play zelda 64 on a pc but I've seen it and believe me it does suck. does your oven have a cold setting? does your refrigerator cook? certain things have sertain jobs. Nothing is being replaced because you need both.
thank you.
"Whoa" (Kianou Reevs)
I was explaining to a friend of mine similar thoughts -- do all my gaming on the playstation, and development on the PC. He laughed, and asked if I had John Madden Football on my Playstation. Then, lauching it on his 1024x768 display, he asked me 'does it look anything like this?'. The answer -- 'No.'
There might be some promise when the price of HD-TV starts dropping, but for now, playing games on a TV just plain sucks.
Damn, I didn't know the players had faces!
Webmaster, City of Saint Paul
"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away" -- "Step Right Up", Tom Waits
well, the way that I read it, it is not so much about christains but instead about what is right and what is wrong. there are some things that are right regardless of anything, and there are some things that are wrong regardless of anything, including what you're particular religion is (christain, muslim, hindu, even atheistic.) fact of the matter is, it is **generally considered** to be a universal truth that there are some things that women just should keep away from. this is independent of christainity, or islam. the post will get moderated down of course, but that's just because it is not politically correct karma whoring.
dsl :)
Simple as that really, Firewire to connect to hard drives, etc, that will be addons, and USB to hook up joypads, mice, etc.
Ewan
OK, I'll throw in a hand grenade just to see what happens. Here goes.
/. the other day about wireless and how the actual OS used becomes of less importance for web-pads and similar gadgets. Well, take that to the next level by starting to look at productivity software used by corporations.
:)
We had a discussion on
In my work I'm often faced with web-enabling legacy applications for companies such as banks and insurance companies. And if you take the web paradigm to the next level by putting it in the context of a dynamic dashboard, where a user is presented with the appropriate functionality based on user preferences and permissions, then suddenly it starts to come together really well.
OK, you say, fine, but where does the PSX2 fit in?
Well, it's got a browser, right? And it will have broad-band capacity, non? Fit that into an application service provider context, and hey presto, you have a serious PC contender right in your living-room.
After all, when you get down to it and look at individual users, they would most likely be just as happy to use Word2001 Web Edition (and yes, MS has ASP plans for the Office suit) from the convenience of their living room as they are to do it from the PC. When it comes down to it, all you need to do is to boot up the PSX2, load the browser and you're off.
The only real thing holding this evolution back today is that too many applications today have a very tight coupling between underlying functionality and UI, making it very difficult to make them ready for web-presentment. I do belive, though, that the era of desktop use of software is coming to a close, and there will need to be a push for applications and suites to be accessible over a network through a web-client interface. And that has a very nice fit within a broad-band ASP strategy, where a vendor offers applications to its subscribers.
But then again, what do I know?
"That's funny. I just had this conversation the other day!"
Now they are going in to space? Russia is dead, china is next. The government is run by a bunch of idiots, just look at the accusations they make against us. They are not even rational, and I know you know what I'm talking about. They are growing so fast, and with that many people, they are advancing fast. they are advancing much faster than us and they will soon catch up. Just wait, you will see. The government leaders need to all be shot and let the people come up with something. Do something now or regret later. Now is the chance, in a few years it will be too late.
Sony should put one or two of those into the little robotic toy dogs they make.
This is a good observation. However, what is the speed of a typical FPGA these days? I find it hard to believe they'd compete with the processes Intel, et. al. are using. Wouldn't it be smarter to have a chip with lots of different specialized function units on it?
It turns out that there are a lot of trade-offs here.
FPGAs are indeed much slower than custom integrated circuits. There are a variety of reasons for this, which are beyond the scope of this reply. Typically the speed difference is very substantial (FPGA is typically 5x-10x slower). You also have serious density problems (FPGA has 5x-10x fewer effective gates than a custom IC). This is enough to make FPGAs slower for almost all problems. A few very specialized problems might be better solved on a large FPGA array than an a custom (or even general-purpose IC), but most problems aren't in this category.
Where FPGAs _are_ useful is in quick prototyping and validation of new IC designs, use as "glue logic" on boards, and for processing where performance isn't critical and you aren't shipping very many product units (custom ICs are only practical in lots of 10,000+).
Now, there is the question extending general-purpose processors to contain "lots of specialized functional units". This is useful... to an extent. It depends on what you're doing, and how many units you try to add.
Remember that a functional unit that isn't being used is dead weight - adding silicon and cost. If you have a dozen types of functional unit, each used for a few of the tasks you use your computer for, but each sitting idle most of the time - then I would argue that you have a computer that's 5x or 10x more expensive than it needs to be. While a custom functional unit is considerably faster than a general-purpose processor emulating the same operations, this speed difference isn't huge. On a good nicely-optimized superscalar processor, it might only be a factor of 2 or 3 (unless you're doing something really ugly, like emulating FP in integer or emulating quote notation numbers). So, for most cases, you'd be better off emulating the desired functions, paying 5x less, and living with a processor that was 2x slower for specialized tasks and just fine at everything else.
Exceptions exist. SSE and 3DNow are good examples. While most general-purpose operations don't benefit from SIMD floating-point operations, several common applications do (most notably games). If enough demand exists for a feature, it becomes practical to add a functional unit to handle it. You just have to be careful not to let this get out of hand.
Summary: Adding many new functional units would not be cost-effective, but adding one or two that make sense works very well. FPGAs can't compete with this, though they're useful for other things.
Just FYI, it was announced quite a while ago that the PSX2 WILL indeed support DVD playback, and even has an optical DTS/DolbyDigital output for direct hookup into a reciever. Check http://www.playstation.com for details, as well as http://psx.ign.com .
Take a gigahertz X86 processor and toss 256x256 texture bilinear filtering at it, and it's gonna choke. Take a Voodoo 1 that has entire gate arrays devoted to doing nothing else *but* filtering 256x256 textures scaled to arbitrary sizes, and it'll do just fine.
:).
While I agree that custom hardware will dramatically outperform general purpose hardware at dedicated tasts, I question a couple of your statements here.
Firstly, there is a world of difference between a custom integrated circuit and an FPGA. FPGAs have very hefty overhead. While you can build custom logic with them, the slowdown just from using an FPGA will offset the advantage from this in the vast majority of cases (not all, but most). Click on "user info" above and see my previous post on the topic for a more detailed discussion.
Secondly, a 1 GHz general purpose processor can handle texture filtering just fine. Work through the number of operaitons required.
Nastiest case: each pixel drawn to the screen is from a different region of the texture.
Operations needed:
- Extraction of texture coordinates.
Left as an exercise, since you seem to be focusing on filtering. In the absolute worst case, this involves four multiplications and four additions (one 2-element vector subtraction and one 2x2 vector-by-matrix multiplication to convert from screen coordinates to texel coordinates). Finding the origin vector and matrix in the first place are irrelevant, as that's done once for the whole polygon.
Total operations needed: 4 fast, 4 medium (multiplication is slow compared to addition, but fast compared to division).
- Filtering of the texture.
Here's a naieve algorithm that still works pretty well:
Step 1: Truncate texture coordinates, retaining only the fractional components. Call these p and q.
Operations required: Two fast operations.
Step 2: Blend pixel values, for each colour component. Formula is:
result = q(ap + b(1-p)) + (1-q)(cp + d(1-p))
Operations required: Extracting (1-p) and calculating it only once, this needs 4 fast operations and 6 medium applications (multiplication is slow compared to addition, but fast compared to division). You also need four texel fetches.
Total number of operations required: 6 fast, 6 medium.
Total operations for both steps: 10 fast, 10 medium.
Fast operations happen once per clock. Medium would happen once every 3-4 clocks without pipelining, but can happen once per clock also with pipelining. We should have enough filler instructions for bit-twiddling and loads/saves to avoid stalls. Speaking of which, quadruple the instruction count; we need to shift, mask, and convert to floating-point for each colour component of each texel (whole texel is loaded as a 32-bit word, once and only once).
Some of these instructions can be issued simultaneously due to superscaling, but there are also a handful of other instructions for loop control and so forth, so we'll call it even. Memory latency should be completely masked - we only do four fetches and one store per pixel drawn to the screen.
This gives 80 clocks per pixel written to the screen, or a fill rate of about 12 megapixels per second in the worst case using naieve algorithms, for your 1 GHz processor. This gets you around 30 FPS at 640x480, assuming an overdraw of 1.3. Not beautiful, but pretty decent, given that this is non-optimized code doing bilinear filtering.
A real game coder could easily produce a loop that does bilinear filtering in half the time that my illustration version does.
A real game coder working with SSE could produce a loop that gets a factor of three speed gain over *that*, as all of the colour components could be filtered in parallel.
To conclude, while I agree with the gist of your argument, I think you might want to re-check your numbers
This gives 80 clocks per pixel written to the screen
Erk. For one colour component.
Add another 12x4 clocks per component for the additional components. Total is (8+12+12+12)*4 per pixel, or about 180 clocks. 80 clocks would be with SSE doing the component calculations in parallel.
This seems slow. I'm going to have to try coding this to see what I can really get. An UberCoder, as mentioned, can certainly get a factor of two or three by using superscaling to issue several operations at once.
As noted on Ars Technica, there is a meaty aritle about EE over on PCWorld: "The Sony Emotion Engine: We're Talking Gigaflops " More informative than CNN.
This isn't about "stuff that matters" anymore. It's about "stuff that is controversal so people will want to post, and read the posts, and reply to the posts, thus raising the level of hits on Slashdot and hopefully also raising the number of click-throughs on the advertising so Andover can make more money".
Slashdot went corporate -- didn't you notice?
To get access to a SDK for a console you need to sign NDAs. To publish your games you need to put your code through various conditions and a closed distribution process. Dev kits are only usually given to bone-fide developers and they cost a small fortune.
In addition to this, the manufacturers are keen to keep developer knowledge a secret. Look at what happens with emulators and attempts to reverse engineer the hardware. Legal hassles for all. Nintendo maintain that emulators and reverse engineering is illegal and still keep leaping on anyone who produces anything they disagree with.
Games programming is dying amongst amateurs. Most computers do not come with a compiler these days to encourage people to start (GNU tools excepted). Computers of the past used to have a built in language to get people started. Asm language could be learnt on these machines.
People writing games today have built experience programming 8/16 bit computers and PCs. If consoles are the only way to play games, can the next generation be skilled and motivated in the same way?
Consoles do not encourage tweaking being a black box, and a lot of younger games no have no impetus to write their own games. There is not even a keyboard or storage on these machines to learn how to program on these even if you could..
Having a console only future would be a nightmare. Talented people would not develop skills to write games, and the large companies will employ the people they want to write the game that they want. No innovation, No hacker spirit.
Console games now dominate the market where PC games are down to a third or less of market share. Profits on console games are much higher and therefore much more desirable..
With Sony et al wanting gaming to be a closed console affair, and MS trying to turn the home PC into a set top box/ X-box games console - I am really worried that a lot of potential talented games programmers will not have the options of learning to program and developing skills to help move the existing games industry out of a rut..
Thank goodness for Linux. A proper low-cost environment for learning to program on. All we need now are complete device drivers to cover new hardware and the Linux games industry can really take off :-)
Both have benefited and borrowed from each other. The PS 2 will beat the PC games when it debuts, but the PC market will catch up. They always do. If the PS was meant to compete head to head with the PC market Sony would merge its consumer computer and entertainment divisions. Sony is serious about pushing the capabilities of the console market. It is rumored that Sony will have two million units and eighty-four games ready for the debut. Check out the the list of games or the PS 2 video.
It says it can run in two modes, and it has a x86 chip on board. I can think of an alternative explanation.
If they ported Linux to the PSX2 they would have to provide sources the minute they start spreading the machines. (wich they have already started doing...) I think some developer would have already leaked it if no legal barrier existed to stop him. Of course they could have closed source binary modules wich are necessary to run... but still I dont see any PSX2 source code at all.
.
Companies release these benchmarks as to what the actual chip can do when in fact it couldn't do that well. Using flops is a synthetic benchmark, ie it has no real world relievance.
There is nothing preventing Sony from putting a set of completely unrelated set of instructions together to acheive this figure. Don't trust Giga Flops.
The only benchmark you should trust is one such as SPEC. That one tests the all around ability of the chip and is useful since we use a variety of applications.
As well, I don't think that figure is much greater than what an Intel,Alpha or MIPS chip could acheive if the same benchmark was used.
I will play the Playstation but I am not prepared to through away my computer.
Try reading the press releases at www.playstation.com. The "Development Tool" is a PSX2 w/ 128 MB RAM running Linux!
- an anonymous twit deserves an anonymous swat
Not impossible. If you can have a shrink wrap license for software forbidding it I dont see why they couldn't put the same in a box with hardware.
Thats another problem with shrink wrap licenses, once its allowed on software it wont be long till "they" try (yet again) to get them legal for hardware too.
And its digital hardware, I dont think it would be too hard to "convince" the legislators from making the jump from software to instruction sets. (with money and cluelessness combined it should be an easy one)
BTW a scheme could be thought up making the loading of self made code impossible by design... have an instruction wich does a digital signature check on code. (you need some extra care in the architecture to make sure everything executable follows that path, but I think its feasible) They could even have the encryption only accessible online on their own secure server so you couldnt steal their secret key from the compiler. Scary thoughts... hmmm maybe I should patent this? (Im 99% sure somoene already has, its usually the case with any obvious solution to a presently incommon problem)
What does the 'X' stand for? This has been bothering me for months. Please help!!!
all right, it's **generally considered** to be true that women would not make very good professional football players. forklift drivers? maybe, but that's not their forte. In general, it is **generally considered** that tasks that require physical strength and stamina are better suited for men. do you contest this?
gee, what a hateful person I am, pointing out that men and women are physiologically different! better get the aclu into action and sue, sue, sue! litigate in the name of feminazism!
Actually, their is already a project underway to make a beowulf using Playstation 2 boxes. Check out http://wulfstation.sourceforge.com. Sony, sensing the PR opportunities there, is donating Playstation 2 dev kits to the team, and a working prototype is expected this year.
Some of the skepticism on the power to performance price point that Sony is going for is warranted, however keep in mind that they are intending to LOSE money on every single playstation sold. Sony charces a liscencing fee to developers for the privelage of releasing a game on the PS2, and take a cut of every disc sold. Eventually economies of scale will allow Sony to cut their production costs considerably, but for the time being the idea is to get the console into so many homes that the installaed userbase will garauntee a revenue stream from software sales. Most people in the know estimate that the PS2 will debut at a 299$ price point, and Sony will eat as much as a 100$ loss on every unit. Another thing to think about -- is sony forced to pay any liscensing fees besides their base hardware costs? From what I understand to obtain a liscense to manufacture a DVD player, part of the contact is you have to pay 20$ per unit produced. Perhaps it would be in Sony's best interests to fight the DVD-cartel along side the Linux community. After all, the dev kits they supply are Linux based...
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The psx2 devel platform, the one that allows the PSX2 to use a monitor, disk devices, etc, is $22,000 I don't think it's even going to replace computers for complex games at that price. Looks like we're stuck with the cheesy NTSC graphics for consoles
But do you think the consumer version will run Linux? Nooooo....... Why the hell would it need to run Linux anyways?
I could be mistaken, but it seems to me that they are comparing specialized floating point operations used for 3D graphics processing with general purpose FP instructions used a general purpose CPU like the Intel PentiumIII or Celeron or Athlon or G4. If this is true, then this is 'Apples to Oranges' and says NOTHING about the supposed engineering marvel of the EE. That would be like saying "The NVidia G-Force outperforms the PentiumIII in floating point by x times" when all they really mean is that a specialized set of long instructions on the G-Force for doing say.. texture and lighting, is more efficient than doing the same operations with general purpose FP instructions on a standard CPU. Granted, the PSX2 will be impressive for it's price and probably be a great gaming platform / DVD decoder, but I really doubt it's CPU will be suitable for much else. .. Now if only Sony would make 3D accelerators for the PC..
Just plug in a Firewire HD, and there you go.
this is a test
sub {
print "this is a test\n";
}
why would they make cord longer?... never sell extention cords that way. I see psx2 becoming more of a gameroom 1 in all (2nd cd player 2nd dvdplayer and game consol for the "game room or equivalent" DERRICK
From the posts, a lot of people seems to think that this is another case of the MSX syndrome, and that the PC will destroy PSX2 as it destroyed other contenders ;). ;), PC resellers will see some though competition: not from a 'console', but from a Sony-branded, home-targeted PC that just happens to be called like a console.
But if you look at PSX2 specs, you'll see it has USB ports (Keyboard, mouse, scanners, printers, Modem/ADSL, even *GASP!* floppies), a FireWire port (Video, but even big and fast HDs), and a Type III PCCard/PCMCIA Slot where you can plug lots of things, from HDs to Video Cards. And all these devices are/should be STANDARD PC PERIPHERALS, not Sony proprietary dongles.
And all this without knowing for sure what PSX2 can do by itself. Is it limited to TV video freqs, or can it do better? Will it have some expansion capabilities (RAM, internal devices) or not?
Maybe after all PSX2 will be able to replace some (lots of?) PCs, since it's not very different from what PCs are becoming these days (think of the new all-usb machines...), and as someone stated in the article, it won't fsck itself up every two games you play "since it doesn't have an HD" (since it doesn't have an idiotic OS on it, i'd say
Even Linux-wise the thing is really cool, because its processor is MIPS4000 compatible and its developement system is Linux-based, so it should be easy to port Linux to it, if Sony itself doesn't do it.
If Sony doesn't do something VERY wrong and stupid with this thing (think Commodore...
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
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Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
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Its all about money anymore. That's what makes the world go 'round, remember.
Forget about your karma... who cares, if your a millionaire.
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
www.npsis.com
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
you dumbasses... it's a *JOKE*!! /. in quite some time...
This is actually one of the more humourous things I've read on
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Observe, reason, and experiment.
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(First time I have posted here so be patient) Something that PC's allow is freedom, if I don't like how fast the game is going, I can upgrade it with a new 3D card, processor etc. If I want to do something different from the norm like play Quake with a keyboard and trackball, I can do that to. With a console the game devopers are the ones who decide how much FPS is enough. I like my games to be able to sustain 35 FPS at least, when I played Goldeneye a bit, I obsereved 5 FPS a hell of a lot. And because you're using a TV you're limited to 30 or 25 FPS anyway (depending on NTSC or PAL). And what is it that makes the Quake series popular? MOD's. You can get MOD's that completely change the game, and almost anyone can make one provided they have the skills. Will consoles allow all this? No.
Something like this could be a pretty good xserver .
-- imagine having an application server at the concentrator for your block, and everybody running applications from the cable modems...
--imagine everybody with non-technical positions at an office all having a play station (200 bucks! swap it out if it breaks!)
willis/
there is no thing
what else could you want?
Nah, the Emotion Engine is the CPU. It has a main RISC processor and two floating point vector coprocessors built into it. The Graphics Synthesizer is the graphics chip. Also, when you make your comparisons between the PS2 and PCs, remember that those coding for the PS2 have -complete- control over the system. In my experience programming console and PC games, this allows you to squeeze an additional 10-20% out of the system.
Connect a PSX2 to your computer...?
Possible? It might be, and if so just what implications would that have?
Its gonna be very hard to replace the little powerfull multi-purpose box we have on our desks. No other appliance in our house rivals to it. Today's PC is such a powerfull and diverse device, that even if a PSX2 could give me faster FPS in Quake, I still wouldnt replace it. Dont worry guys, it aint going nowhere.
I build my own boxes like everybody else - but i want to run corel draw, scala, imagefx and whatever other amiga stuff survives as well as datacad, and word perfect on a ps2 and dump this supercharged forklift piece of shit.
in the end there will be AOL, Sony and ATT/Microsoft left standing. The rest is irrelevant
kiptech7
age 60
Err... Ok, Goldeneye is a fantastic game (probably the best ever FPS, IMO), but you really would not want that style of control for a game like Q3. if you think it's feasible, play more Q3 using keybd/mouse; you just can't rail, rocket juggle, do 180 degree turns, without the speed of the mouse.
the reason that the N64 controller works so well for Goldeneye is that Goldeneye was specifically designed to accomadate the controller.
the 6.2Gflops is not every day program operations, it's specialty float instructions like AltiVec and stuff. I can't tout the speed of 3DNow!, MMX, AltiVec and claim those speeds as speeds of the processor. I would suspect this huge number of operations with the PSX2 is do to using 32 and 64 bit instructions on 128bit chips getting twice to four times the number of operations they could get using 128bit instructions. I'm not saying this is a bad thing either, it's a very good idea and efficient use of the processor. I do however remain skeptical the PSX@ will replace the PC. We are definitely moving in the direction of thinner systems that use a single application (the browser) to do multiple jobs by using plugins and Java applets but I don't think Sony understands the PC industry yet. Processing power might grab some eyeballs but it probably won't grab developers and SOHO users. This is due to SOHO people wanting to work quickly and not have to mess with the hardware, Gateway and Dell cater to this desire well. I don't think a serious SOHO user is going to use a box with all of the hardware connected using FireWire connections, the fact wireless networking devices are becoming popular are a testament to this. Will the Sony web browser get the same kind of support that IE and Netscape have had? Just look at AOL's browser, for a number of years you wouldn't view jack shoes with it. In general I don't think America is really set up for thin computers in the mainstream. The main thing is storage, Jonny User likes to download his mp3s and porn and keep them on his 34GB hard drive, I think he might be really bothered if he tried to keep these sorts of files on a networked drive for privacy/legal/personal reasons. Sure he can buy a 4GB FireWire drive to save all his stuff on but the added cost of periphrials is inversely related to your savings from not buying a fully loaded PC. Until it is common to see a networked RAID with a 1Mb+ connection to the internet sitting in the closet with a dozen little wireless devices networked to it in people's homes you probably won't see many thin computer systems raiding the market.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Remember years ago when home users could buy an inexpensive computer like a Commodore or Atari, plug it into their TV set, and use it for both games and simple general applications? I've thought for a while that this is a market where no products exist to fill. Sure its limited compared to normal computers, but there are benefits for the average Joe (especially with kids): its inexpensive, great for games, web browsing, easy to setup- just plug it into your TV, and has the capability to run real applications.
;-)
Yeah there are a shitload of cheap PCs nowadays, but I bet PSX2 will run circles around them in game performance. And in a year or two that cheap PC will be too outdated to get good performance on the newest and coolest games. Consoles tend to have more of a life than PCs. PC game programmers always think that the end user has brand new top-of-the-line equipment, whilst console programmers always seem to find some new way to get the console to give the effects they need.
Yes, for the average non-geek household, games and internet browsing are the top uses for computers. I'm definately not saying that I would replace my computer with one, but I wouldn't mind having one.
If simple word processors, spreadsheets, paint programs and other apps are developed, and drivers for printers and such become available, why wouldn't these be a perfect family computer? Or second computer for the kids? Alot of people don't really need more than what this could offer.
It would be really cool if Sony had no ties with Microsoft for this thing. These things ARE going to sell, and it would help that much more to move ppl away from a Microsoft OS.
If Sony could just put TIVO-ish functionality in this thing it would kick some serious ass.
...and maybe ship with a copy of SonyLinux too...could you imagine the crazy shit Gnome could do on a PSX2?
~J
Sony's much too evil for that.
What evil does Sony do other than oppose MP3? Sure, they try to promote their own standards sometimes, but some other companies do licence them too.
oops I mean iLink Sony's proprietary protocol built on top of 1394.
What information do you have to indicate that Sony's version is different or incompatible from other 1394 devices? Everything I've seen seems to indicate that iLink is simply a marketing name as IEEE-1394 is pretty stuffy and Firewire is a trademark by Apple.
This thing kicks ass. Check out its 2056 bit wide data bus. Here are some stats. GS Core: Parallel Rendering Processor with embedded DRAM Clock Frequency: 150 MHz No. of Pixel Engines: 16 (in Parallel) Embedded DRAM: 4 MB of multi-port DRAM (Synced at 150MHz) Total Memory Bandwidth: 48 gigabytes per second Combined Internal Data Bus Bandwidth: 2,560 bit Read: 1,024 bit Write: 1,024 bit Texture: 512 bit Display Color Depth: 32 bit (RGBA: 8 bits each) Z Buffering: 32 bit Rendering Functions: Texture Mapping, Bump Mapping, Fogging, Alpha Blending, Bi- and Tri-Linear Filtering, MIPMAP, Anti-aliasing, Multi-pass Rendering Rendering Performance Pixel Fill Rate: 2.4 giga pixel per second (with Z buffer and Alphablend enabled), 1.2 giga pixel per second (with Z buffer, Alpha and Texture) Particle Drawing Rate: 150 million/sec Polygon Drawing Rate: 75 million/sec (small polygon), 50 million/sec (48 pixel quad with Z and A), 30 million/sec (50 pixel triangle with Z and A), 25 million/sec (48 pixel quad with Z, A and T) Sprite Drawing Rate: 18.75 million (8 x 8 pixels) Display Output NTSC/PAL Digital TV (DTV) VESA (maximum 1280 x 1024 pixels) Accessories included: "Dual Shock"2 analog controller High capacity 8MB Memory Card PlayStation2 Demo Disc AV Multi Cable AC Power Cord Dimensions: 301mm (W) x 178mm (H) x 78mm (D) (12" x 7" x 3") Weight: 2.1 kg (4 lbs. 10 oz.) Media: PlayStation2 CD-ROM, DVD-ROM PlayStation CD-ROM Formats supported: Audio CD, DVD-Video Interfaces: Controller Port (2) Memory Card Slot (2) AV Multi Cable Output (1) Optical Digital Output (1) USB Port (2) I.Link (IEEE1394) (1) Type III PCMCIA Card Slot
GS Core: Parallel Rendering Processor with embedded DRAM
Clock Frequency: 150 MHz
No. of Pixel Engines: 16 (in Parallel)
Embedded DRAM: 4 MB of multi-port DRAM (Synced at 150MHz)
Total Memory Bandwidth: 48 gigabytes per second
Combined Internal Data Bus Bandwidth: 2,560 bit
Read: 1,024 bit
Write: 1,024 bit
Texture: 512 bit
Display Color Depth: 32 bit (RGBA: 8 bits each)
Z Buffering: 32 bit
Rendering Functions: Texture Mapping, Bump Mapping, Fogging, Alpha Blending, Bi- and Tri-Linear Filtering, MIPMAP, Anti-aliasing, Multi-pass Rendering
Rendering Performance
Pixel Fill Rate: 2.4 giga pixel per second (with Z buffer and Alphablend enabled), 1.2 giga pixel per second (with Z buffer, Alpha and Texture) Particle Drawing Rate: 150 million/sec
Polygon Drawing Rate: 75 million/sec (small polygon), 50 million/sec (48 pixel quad with Z and A), 30 million/sec (50 pixel triangle with Z and A), 25 million/sec (48 pixel quad with Z, A and T) Sprite Drawing Rate: 18.75 million (8 x 8 pixels) Display Output NTSC/PAL Digital TV (DTV) VESA (maximum 1280 x 1024 pixels)
Accessories included:
"Dual Shock"2 analog controller High capacity 8MB Memory Card PlayStation2 Demo Disc AV Multi Cable AC Power Cord
Dimensions: 301mm (W) x 178mm (H) x 78mm (D) (12" x 7" x 3") Weight: 2.1 kg (4 lbs. 10 oz.) Media: PlayStation2 CD-ROM, DVD-ROM PlayStation CD-ROM
Formats supported:
Audio CD, DVD-Video
Interfaces: Controller Port (2) Memory Card Slot (2) AV Multi Cable Output (1) Optical Digital Output (1) USB Port (2) I.Link (IEEE1394) (1) Type III PCMCIA Card Slot
okay, right now the playstation2 is a system that can play games and watch movies, nothing more. One has to upgrade to the Hard Drive, The Cable Modem and all that other fancy stuff..If You look at the history in the videogame Market add on perephials don't succeed ie...the segaCD and the 32X. Dreamcast has internet now, and they are coming out with an adapter so you can use broadband modems and the such. All sony is doing is hyping the system. I see what happend to sega and nintendo happening to sony...SNES=Great System, N64=Horrid Genesis=Great Saturn= Dismal. I think sony's big head is going to hurt them. And with sega making the deal with 30 Japanese Cable providers (including the 2 largest) that equals 70% of japans cable. Sony is falling down the ladder when it comes to network. Dreamcast is there now, not promising anything, they deliverd, sony hasn't. So you add all the costs of the modem, the hard drive and all those other little acesories and it will cost about as much as a low end computer, maybe even more...And how many people know what a firewire port is? To most that is some big fancy word that to them means the Playstation2 is going to be better, but why? they have absolutly no idea. todays's society is sad when it comes to some things. MAn...you people hate microsft so much cause they are taking over the world...look at sony :p ......
It's time to recognize that the "connectionless" mode of the Web was crucial in getting the infrastructure boot-strapped, but that high rates of interaction are about to become important once again -- and not simply for "games".
Once we admit the existence of a solid connection to well balanced client-server functions the Sony Playstation becomes an obvious evolution of the old Plato graphics terminal -- only 100,000 times more cost effective.
PS: Control Data could have deployed Plato to the mass market at $40/month flat rate including terminal rental and amortized their system costs in 3 years -- and that was in 1979. However, Bill Norris's vision wasn't fashionable among Wall Street analysts nor among middle management at CDC (who thought of it as a corporate elite training system). I should know, I was among the 5 or so people who had put together the technologies for the mass market Plato system based on the Cyber 750's and the then new extended semiconductor memory systems that would support thousands of interactive users on a single mainframe. Too bad we all had to wait 20 years to repair the damage. Too bad it has to be the Japanese to do it for us.
Seastead this.
Right now 300 MHz sounds like quite the powerful machine. It could replace some of the lower-end computers. But it lacks in the software to do so. By the time that you get all the software to do computing then they will have the PSX3, which will be faster, and people will say it will replace the computer...
My point is that 800 MHz machines are becoming more popular. Soon the 300 MHz PSX2 will be less and less powerful with todays standards.
(and in a few years we will be emulating the "old" PSX2 on our 1.3 GHz machines...)
... does it run Linux ?
Will the PS2 let you use a PS2 keyboard and mouse? :-)
PSX2 wasn't made to replace a computer. It made as a DVD drive and a gaming system and although it is going to rock at that, it will never replace computer. How am I going to compile my latest code with those funny little controllers:)
Id give them more than a couple of months.
As far as I see, games programmers on PCs arent pushing the envelopes on the equipment they have, because there is always something better to support. I think when console programmers work on the exact same system for some time they will find what works best for it, maybe even get the hardware to do a few tricks that the designers hadnt planned on. It may or may not compare well with the very latest hardware being used badly (programmers rush through support for a new card just so they can say they did it) but at least it doesnt mean changing hardware every few months just to see a new game as it was intended.
Make it PCI card shaped.
If I was in the PC graphics card/soundcard industry, I'd be scared, very scared.
...and as a Mac user, It would be a dream come true - the extra graphics horespower might just be enough to run Aqua at a useable speed ;-)
- Andy R
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
http://ps2pc.parodius.com/
2. It would have to have the Microsoft Office software on it. Everyone uses it and I don't see people giving that up anytime soon.
3. It would have to be on at least a HDTV, ever try to read 12 point font on a TV, it ain't easy and hard on the eyes too!
The only problem is, that if this happened the PSX2 would be just like a computer. Therefore making it a computer duh!