Slashdot Mirror
New PlayStation 2 Chip
Iron Chef Japan writes "Sony has announced that they have fit the PlayStation 2 Emotion Engine, and the Graphics Synthesizer on to a single chip using a 0.13-micron process. This will allow Sony to make three times more PlayStation 2's annually, so it's all for the better."
Too Bad I have to boycott sony because they are idiots, downloaded a bunch of Korn songs from WinMX and sent out about 60,000 legal notices. What a bunch of jerks. I really like GTA3 too, good thing in a month or two it will be out on PC, probably with better graphics.
What, me worry?
Will this enhance the performance of the PS2 in a ny way?
They've probably been working overtime to get the production costs down on this thing to be able to drop the price and take a chunk out of X-Box's gains in marketshare. "Always wanted a PS2 but couldn't stomach dropping $300...well, here you go".
"...and generally behaved in a manner one can only describe as despicable." - February 27 2001, Michael Sims
While its nice to see a company keeping up with the latest technology in an effort to stay ahead, sony might have been better off doing this before everyone and their dog already owned a PS2.
Wouldn't it be great if they could reengineer consoles so that the games were reasonably priced?
-- Button up, your ignorance is showing
There's rumors to the effect that Nintendo may drop the price of the GameCube. If that happens, then it's likely Sony and possibly Microsoft will have to follow suit.
The time frame I heard was E3'ish, but please consider that it is a non-substantiated rumor.
"Derp de derp."
and fit it in a pc expansion bay, like the apparently vaporware GD-Rom drive that Sega was thinking about making. Make it $150-$175 and I'll buy it & one for my brother...
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
Well, not great timing for me. The price is definitely going to drop on the PS2, probably to $200. And I just bought a PS2 last week, because I just had to have Maximo and Virtua Fighter 4. Oh well, still worth it I guess.
The new model will have exactly the same specs as the old one. This is not a PC based architecture, speeding it up could very well effect the playability (to do with timing) of existing games. One of the disadvantages of a highly low-level environment
:-(
This is purely to:
a: reduce the number of chips that they have to have custom made, thereby allowing them to more efficiently use their existing production facilities and make more PS2's per year.
b: reduce the cost of the PS2 to produce so that they can sell it at a lower price, to make people want to buy it when given the choice of the pretty(graphics, can you say easy, low cost anti-aliasing) X-Box at a similiar price point.
There is a possibility they may update the case somewhat to distingish the new model (eg: playstation vs PS1)
Samn that made me look pro X-Box. I have a PS2, but the blocky graphics gets on my nerves. Pity anti-aliasing has to be done on the CPU and is therfore rarely done
Now that the protection on the currrent line of PS2s has been pretty much cracked to allow swaps using just non-evasive plugin-card, I wonder if Sony is planning to make these new ones different enough to foil hack attempts?
This also could improve chances of the PS3 being PS2 compatible.
After all, as I understand it, the PS2's compatibility with the PS1 were mainly a side effect of the "Playstation On a Chip" design that was created for the PSone.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
How lame is this? Our wonderful "story" is merely a reference to a post on gamefu which, itself, points to no credible source.
Slashdot: "Sony says... cause Gamefu says that Nikkei Microdevice says that Sony says..."
Good, God. I don't really doubt it's happened, but where's the interview? Where's the real scoop? I'd rather know a bit more than this. I'd like to know what else might get integrated; I don't consider squeezing 2 chips into 1 is going redefine the marketplace, or even Sony's bottomline.
Mod as you will, and let's hope someone on Slashdot can post a link with more info...
-
Heck why dont they put the Playstation on a PCI card. have some sort of a passthrough connector for your CD rom and Wa La! PS2 for a $100.00.
Now they can start pumping doctored photorealistic "screenshots", drop the PS2 price and eat the rest of the market cake.
It isn't even about the games anymore... Everyone loses money on the consoles and yet still try to peddle as many as they can -- I will postulate that the game has become about establishing control through presence.
Japan's reaction to X-Box was VERY weird. I mean, those people buy A LOT of junk. They live through the junk. They date and fish and hallucinate through the consoles. Japan is the pinnacle of consumption-based philosophy. Why didn't they go for the X-Box? National pride? It was as if old Yancy told everyone that they should ignore the american toy.
Anyway, a question. Can we assess the "long run" outcome at this point? Has X-Box lost the war?
~zecg.
The price of games has gone up quite sharply in the last while. The first one I noticed was Return to Castle Wolfenstein which sold for around $80 here. That is a shitload of money.
Now, if you go into Electronics Boutique (who do mark their games up more than anyone else in town), you can find games for consoles for as much as $85, as the norm. That's fucking steep. I remember paying $55 or $60 for a game in most cases. After taxes, the game comes to just below a hundred dollars.
The gameboy advance games are being sold for more than the original gameboy games back in the day. I used to purchase original gameboy games in '91 for $35. Now they are $65. Hell, even the original gameboy games have a jump in price.
It's just ugly.
This is a logical evolution to the PS2 chip design. Those 3 chips were so integrated in function, placing them into a single unit was a logical step. It would allow for a move to $200 and eventually $100 price tags for the PS2. Likely the incentive to move design is due to Sony having recouped their investment on the 3-chip solution. Otherwise, this move would not make sence. Plus this would allow for the PS3, in 2008, to have PS2 (and PSOne) compatability.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
Ok... so they can now make 3 times as many Playstation 2's as possible... I don't know about where you live, but here there's not exactly a shortage of PS2's. What does increased production mean? Certainly not improved sales... To me, all that means is more units sitting on the shelf.
Just because you like xbox better than the ps2 does not mean the xbox is going to "win"
Hacker Media
I forgot to reply to the two folk that asked about the Atari chips source files, so here is the link:n etlist. htm
http://www.geocities.com/glenn_b18/jaguar/
It's in a custom HDL that can decode to Verilog simply. All you need to create your own Jaguar Tom and Jerry chips.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
20,000,000 PS2s in the market place, that means people are writing games for that console so they can sell big and make money. A shit-hot hardware console is nothing without games.
The Canuck Buck is now sitting around 63 cents US.
In '91 it was 89 cents US.
.89/.63 = 1.41
$85/1.41 = $60
Feeling a little poorer now? Well, keep voting Liberal or Conservative-- they are the economic wizards that were in charge all that time....
Cheers,
-B
Does 0.13u also means that the fan won't have to be so noisy to dissipate heat on the new chip in this coming model. I found that fan on my current model way too noisy in a quiet environment (when you are not in a car in gta3.) The Nintendo cube has also a fan but it's quieter. Actually I always had trouble with Sony noise level for fans. The VAIO R505 I bought had this intolerable variable fan that made it even worse (constant noise is way better to cover with a pair of cancelling noise earphones.)
That could also mean that Sony would be able to come with a System on a card for PCs. I would definitely buy a PS2 PCI/AGP card to play on my PC. My monitor and sound system in my office are way better than my TV/Stereo in my living room.
PPA, the girl next door.
-- I feel better now. Thanks for asking.
Industry common knowledge (aka mostly semi-informed rumor) has it that Sony has been making money on the actual PS2 unit for a while now. (In terms of the production timeline it makes sense.) M$ is still losing a bunch of money on the XBox units themselves.
I have a feeling that Sony's decision to lower prices have more to do with market positioning and the XBox. If they lower the price on the PS2 then M$ will probably follow suit on the XBox and that might make open it up to a wider market of shoppers - and since Sony has the numbers head start they may not want that. Remember - it's all about market share and Sony's winning that race with their big head start. But with both boxes at ~$200 the XBox might appeal to bigger audience and dilute Sony's advantage.
Of course they'll have to drop prices sooner or later... if this chip advance means Sony could still make money (or break even) at $200 and M$ would be losing $200 a unit Sony might not be able to resist that. Against any other company it would be a pretty automatic move - but M$ can afford (and seems willing) to take that loss and keep pushing so Sony seems to be treading much more lightly.
Don't forget Sony's price move with the PS1. It was $250 for months but the DAY before the N64 was officially announced Sony dropped the price to $200. Nintendo was then forced announced the N64 at $200 rather than $250 when it shipped. Sony literally took AT LEAST $50Million (probably more like $150Million+) from Nintendo with that move. Wicked.
My point is - Sony is a very market/sales aware company... they have a short, medium and long range plan.
=tkk
Bill Gates - Creationist?!?
I think that sony spent too much time hyping and marketing the chipset as opposed to actually spending time designing the chipset
I say this for two reasons:
First, one should look at Sony's competing rival Nintendo: I have no idea if the gamecube is better than the PS2 tech wise, however what I can say is nintendo seems to be doing fine on the gamecube's technology without having to deal with the lunacies of the PS2's chipset. Enouogh said.
Secondly, aren't we trying to make chips smaller to begin with?
Had sony thought this chip out a bit more carefully, I wholefully believe that sony wouldn't be in the current situation as they are in right now.
Don't get me wrong, sony is a very smart company and they always know what they are doing, however the actions behind the PS2's chipsets make less sense to anyone. Only now does it seem like sony is trying to fix up the problems inherent with such a large chipset as the EE turned out to be.
Just my two cents, all taxes included
Sunny Dubey
After rumamging through Google for a while, the best estimate to where the article is Here. However, it gives a DNS/Server Down error. It may have already been /.ed by the people who originally read the article. Then again, I could be wrong. If GameFu is citing the right source, the above URL is where the news site for Nikkei MicroDevice should be. Maybe it will be up in a few hours.
In any case, the new chip might not help benefit people who've already bought a PS2, but the technology used can help lessen the cost of making the PS3, as well as open up possibilities for backwards compatibility. Sure, it would have been great if the new chips came out sooner. However, not every advance is made at the best possible time. Look on the bright side: it can still offer a chance to help the PS2's potential. It'll be interesting to see what they do with the new chip.
This
Yup. Take a look at the guts of a first run Playstation; it's crammed full of electronics, tended to overheat. Now, take a look at one of the last run of Playstation, before it was the PSone; same exterior case, but the inside is a little bitty circuit board, and lots of empty space.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
thank God someone else sees the light. I have access to over 70 systems, and do you know which ones i play the most? Pre 3D. The Genesis is my favorite, but SNES and Neo Geo are serious competition. Go here to see.
I want 2D games back.
0.13 chips can usually run much faster than 0.18 .. Will we be able to overclock the new mini-PS2 chips?
Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.
In fact one of basic M$ has a strategy is to make people believe that it's product will literally "invade" the market ! they lobby journalist or make them believe this will be the case, hence the flood of press articles making people believe this. It's like a self fulfilling prediction, the more you make people believe it'll happen the more it has chance to actually happen.
Did you remember the public hysteria when Windows 95 was released ? and TV showing all these people waiting for the stores to happen to rush in and buy that crappy OS ?
Yes M$ is really very clever at that kind of mass manipulation !
Ken Kutaragi talked about their us research group's mulitprocessor PS2 machine as their model for the PS3. It had 16 PS2's in it but he said they were aiming for something like a 1000x performace boost going from PS1->PS2 and got a 400x boost. For PS3 they want a 10000x performance boost over the PS1.
It's going to be a bitch to program... But it might make for a bitching real time raytracer.
It's because of this (very wrong) mindset that piracy is so rampant.
You aren't paying that much for a "silly plastic disc and some paper", you are paying for the man hours and labor of some dozens of people, all working together for year long stints or more to create graphics, models, artwork, scripting, a storyline and then put it all together into a coherent package so that you can sit down, play and enjoy the game for some 10-50 hrs (depending on the game genere.)
If you really think this, then you simply have NO freaking clue what is involved in the production of a modern video game, which today, rivals the scale and budgets of major motion pictures, of which "only" provide you with 2 or so hrs of non-interactive entertainment.
... because if history is any indication, then the console with the most shovelware titles invariably wins. Atari 2600: shovelware. (Remember E.T.?) NES: shovelware. PlayStation: shovelware.
True, a lot of great games are released for these systems but the idea is to get "a library of over a hojillion titles" because new game developers, if they want their game to sell well, will jump on board the biggest bandwagon.
It may not be doing so hot now, but a few more quality titles and the X-box will be king.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
1. Lack of Japanese style games on xbox
2. Several faulty xbox consoles ruined MS' rep
3. MS refused to admit (2) was true
4. Till this day MS won't replace discs destoried by (2), just the console itself
5. Two of Japan's largest retailers quit selling the console because of (2) and (4)
...so to answer no content for the market, and poor customer service.
...hence the flood of press articles making people believe this. It's like a self fulfilling prediction,...
Welcome to modern psychology based mass marketing. These lessons are derived from political propoganda going back I know not how far. Lest this thread descend into irrelevence, I leave it to the reader to recall who said that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it.
My PS2 CD tray went kapoot. I had to open the thing up and put tape on the spindle. And, that doesn't fix it completely...I have to jiggle the dang thing just to get it to 'grab' a disc. And Sony wanted $130 to fix it!!! Not only that, they accused me of dropping the PS2...even when I told them I didn't! Phuckers....I HATE Sony now.
Have you tried a GameCube? Half the price, decent games, a non-MS product and a damn decent controller!
~ Why is there no reason modifier for overrated posts?
The Dreamcast came with a working GD-ROM drive. Or are you saying that Sega was planning to make one available for PC use? That would be awesome!
~ Why is there no reason modifier for overrated posts?
Actually, the region coding is much more powerful than the copy protection. Gives you some ideas about priorities of Sony on this. So, if I'd just want to play from "backups", I could get an el-cheapo module. But because I'd like to play US imports, I gotta get the fancy (and expensive) one.
PS2 protection is, in any case, much more robust than PSX. You have to do quite a bit of wiring to get completely protection-free box.
As far as I understand, EU regs say you cannot price dump units. So M$ cannot sell Xboxes under the manufacturing cost here.
Too bad for them.
If anyone is interested in purchasing a PS2 system for $175 email me at work... mike@9software.com
Large quantity orders welcomed!
PS2's for $275 brand new sealed with warranty.
mike@9software.com
Now that everything's on CD, which cost pennies to press, games for the new systems cost MORE?!?!?!
They're also a couple orders of magnitude bigger. Filling a CD requires creation of over 640 MB of data; filling a Game Boy Advance cartridge takes only 8 MB with the cartridges that nintendo is currently offering to licensees. It takes more labor to create 640 MB worth of data than 8 MB. Game companies have to pay for this labor somehow, and they do so by charging for copies of their games.
Also, US$20 when the Game Boy first came out (1990-ish) is worth what now after inflation, $35? Coincidentally, that's how much Game Boy Advance games cost now; therefore, real prices for Game Boy games have not changed.
Will I retire or break 10K?
But according to this article, the new chip will have 8x the video RAM and will allow them double the clock speed.
If this is the case, they will probably include a way for new games to determine if they are on the new hardware revision. Yes timing is important, but it depends on how the developers are doing it. If they are using some known hardware quality like screen refresh rate, they may be able to use higher polygon counts on the new hardware. The older games would spend more time in an idle state waiting for the next refresh. If they are dependent on how fast a program will run due to the cpu clock speed (like the really old PC games that required the turbo button to be off), then this would definitely would be a bad thing.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
" The EE is a very powerful and complex system"
It was for 1997. But today, its is very mediocre and has too many transistors for the level of performance it brings.
Its no secret that of the 3 major consoles, the Sony is technically the furthest behind in CPU power and graphics power. However, the EE costs more and accomplishes less. Classic mistake.
Why did nintendo do a better job at hardware design than Sony, despite being a software company? Its an important question to answer and it says much about the mindset of engineers at Sony.
Sony will use the money they make from the "extra PS2"s to implement stronger piracy controls on music CDs, movies, and media, and to fund their advocacy of SSSCA (Sony owns a movie studio, too, you know..)
The 0.18 micron GS with the extra embedded memory is for a different application. It's not going to appear in future PS2s. The 0.13 micron version is a process change and is functionality identical to the existing systems.
Sony aren't going to make a PS2 that behaves differently for games. The whole console business model is predicated around mass install base - if you change the spec you splinter the market and one of two things happens. Either developers won't support the new features because it'll mean a smaller market share for their games, or customers won't upgrade and again you have a smaller market share.
Sony are extremely picky about what they let us do, too. For example don't get to use the Playstation MDEC and GTE on the I/O processor core because they clock it faster in PS2 mode and don't test those features at the higher clock speed which means they can't guarantee they work reliably in PS2 mode.
While I'm here I might as well correct the "anti-aliasing has to be done on the CPU" comment made earlier in the thread. There are two kinds of anti-aliasing commonly used on PS2. Edge anti-aliasing and scene anti-aliasing. The former requires you to depth-sort your polys because it's an alpha blending operation (and because it uses the alpha blend ciruit in the pixel pipeline your textures can't have alpha either) and as such is basically never used. The other can be done several ways but is most commonly done by rendering at 640x448 60Hz and 50/50 blending pairs of pixel rows together using the dual output circuits. You can get the same effect by copying the back buffer to the front buffer using a bilinear filter during vblank (rather than just swapping the buffer address) - in fact if you have a 512x224 front buffer and a 768x448 back buffer you get even nicer anti-aliasing and because it's a rendering operation you can do motion blur and similar effects for no extra cost.
On a final note, I think most of the games that look bad on PS2 would look basically as bad on XBox because their aliasing problems come from poor texture mapping (too much high-contrast detail, bad/no mipmaps) and poor LOD (drawing too many sub-pixel polys) and bad colour choices (NTSC is very finicky about strong colour changes). The XBox's rasteriser is much superior but it'll only get you so far.
Graham
Buying the first run of consoles isn't the best idea. The first versions of consoles tend to be less stable.
I bet this new Playstation2 will generate far less heat.
One thing that bugs me about modern games is that people think that games have to have storylines. Asteroids had no storyline, neither did Defender, Pacman, Pong, Tetris, Super Mario Kart, Metroid, Qix, Quake Deathmatch, and many other games. Games are supposed to be about play, not about interactive movies, interactive books, interactive stories, etc...
In my opinion, the best games are those based around a simple premise. Story based games lose their replay value once the story is over. Games like Tetris, Nethack, etc... those games have a simple premise and near unlimited replay value.
Scripting and stories are turning games into movies. See the final fantasy series for example. Started out great. Peaked with Final Fantasy 6... and then the games turned into movies that require button pressing to advance the story. *yawn*
The company's investment coffers and the salaries of the employees who produced it? Of course, but also you are paying for the CEO's private Jet(s), Lamborghini(s), etc.
- The only way Nintendo could play in this market is because their single chip solution keeps their costs way lower than their competitors. So they don't lose nearly as much per box.
- Xbox *cannot* be shrunk to the same degree. 1) Intel's x86's will always have baggage that make them chew up too much Si. 2) The XBOX is a PC (anyone who thinks diferently needs a boot to the head) and thus has IDE controller, southbridge, northbridge, CMOS, etc, 3) nVidia and Intel *HATE* (in the sense of Jihad) each other. There's no way in hell they will ever give each other their processor netlists -- those chips will always be seperate.
Given these facts it should be obvious that for Sony, integrating and shrinking was actually of vital importance in this crowded market. XBox can't chase them down that path and they can run Nintendo out of room. Its all about costs.
I don't know anything about the nexGen playstation CPU, but presumably they can keep playing the "backward compatibility" game by including the entire previous generation. But don't be mistaken into thinking this is any kind of advantage over XBox -- the next generation XBox will almost certainly also be an x86 running Direct X + Win2K, which means it will have software based backward compatibility.
Exactly. I looked at the other responses, and yours is the only one that gets it. MS's design -- basing the console on PC hardware -- is flawed for pure economic reasons.
Here's my prediction; MS (seeing the price gap widen) will tune a new slimmed down XBOX.
1. The new one will not work with 100% of the XBOX games that exist now due partly by design changes and partly by the game makers not following the MS provided specs.
2. The new one will still cost more to make when compaired to the PS2 or Game Cube.
3. MS will goof, allowing the new ones to be converted into cheap PCs.
4. The new unit -- rushed to market when the price gap becomes obvious -- will not be as reliable.
The only alternative to this is to bundle more freebies with the console so that the cost is cheaper. This is hard to pull off; if they give away too much, they will cut into profits from actual game sales. Even though that could happen, it might be the most sane decision MS could make because they can increase market share -- even if it's at the expense of themselves as well as thier competitors.
That said, Sony or Nintendo could also offer bundles as aggressively as MS and MS would be back at a disadvantage.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
I'm assuming the answer is yes, because the external interfaces should still be the same, but does this hose up device drivers or anything?
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
When's that PS2One coming out? You know, the PlayStation2 that you can hook up to a little folding LCD screen...
Will it still be as easy to install a mod chip :)
Don't forget that Xbox sales have sucked in Europe too.
I think a more sensible question is to ask why Americans have bought Xboxen when nobody else has.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Making something complex doesn't automatically make it bad design. The EE has a huge amount of resources available for vector processing. The PS2 needs all those resources if not more. If the only way to achieve that level of power is a complex chip, so be it. It's not just Sony, however. NVIDIA does it all the time. They introduce gigantic complex GPUs every six months at very high prices. Eventually, those chips stabilize and trickle down into the mainstream, but the high-end gets the complex stuff, always. There's nothing wrong with that, as long as you can make money on it (and oh yes, Sony is making a ton of money on PS2 licenses).
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...