The Economist Looks At The Console Industry

Fromeo writes "The Economist is running an interesting article discussing the state of the console industry, along with their usual interesting graph, showing the cycle that the industry follows."

Comments

8192 bits by 2030!

[Wesley Everest]

Gotta love how the game industry plays with their numbers of bits. I imagine it'll take another hardware generation or two before the marketing guys come up with another number to hype.

Re:8192 bits by 2030!

[Phil Wilkins]

That's ok, I know more about the PS2 than either of the others. The actual situation with regards to EE registers is pretty complex, as the EE actually consists of the core, 2 vector units, and an fpu.

The core has 31 128-bit registers, and instructions to manipulate them either as 32-bit, or 64-bit integers, or as 4x32-bit integers, or as 8x16-bit integers (where 4x32 bit means, four 32-bit integers packed into one-128 bit integer). The reason there's 31, is that register 0 (zr) is a constant 0.

Each vector unit has 31 4x32-bit float registers, and 15 16-bit integer registers. One of the vector units (VU0) is available to the core as a co-processor, as are all of it's registers. The other sits in the DMA stream, and can be thought of as a pumped up vertex shader.

Finally the fpu is pretty traditional, with 32 32-bit float registers.

So thats 31 128-bit integer registers, 31 4x32-bit float registers, 15 16-bit integer registers, and 32 32-bit float registers. Giving us a total of 109 registers, with a total of 8208 bits, and that's not including 20 or so status or result registers.

None of this is modal, you can mix core, VU, and fpu instructions as you like. There's also nothing stopping you treating a 128-bit core register as a 32, 64, 4x32, or 8x16-bit integer, nor moving it to a VU0 register, where it's treated as a 4x32-bit float.

There's also the IPU, a DMA controller, and a whole bunch of other stuff, but they're not directly accessibly from the core. Well, actually, even that's not true, as most things are also memory mapped, but that's only really for debugging, as memory mapped access has a habit of stalling everything.

Oh, and the bus to the RDRAM is 128 bit, while the bus to the GS is 64 bit.

So, in summary, mostly 128-bit registers, and a 128-bit data bus. It's a 128-bit system.

Re:Consoles....

[s20451]

Why buy a $1500 gaming computer, with all the worries about compatible hardware, flaky software, etc. etc., when you can buy a $300 console, plug it into your TV, and be on your way? I have a console because I use linux on my main box, and if I'm working and want to take a break, I don't want to have to save everything, shut down, reboot into Windows, play the game, shut down, reboot into Linux, and re-open my work. There are also all kinds of games (like Gran Turismo) that are unavailable on the PC.

Slashdot linking to The Economist...

[Anonymous Coward]

... is like the National Enquirer mentioning Scientific American.

Wrong Wrong WRONG!!!

[Cutriss]

My god...this article has more inaccuracies than a Slashdot story!

but Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo all intend to release plug-in adaptors to link their boxes to networks.

And WHERE do you plug in the Xbox broadband adapter, eh?

Both Sony and Microsoft decided that ordinary modem connections were too slow to do justice to their advanced consoles.

Really? Then why does the PS2 network adapter have BOTH network and modem ports?

All three firms are losing money on their consoles, though exactly how much is difficult to say.

Wrong again! Microsoft is the only one doing this!

And as far as that sales graph goes...not a single one of these systems is 128 bit. The GameCube and Xbox are both 32-bit systems (PowerPC-based and Intel x86, respectively). I don't know about the Emotion engine in the PS2, but I suspect that with less than 32 MB of RAM, there's no reason for it to have more address lines, so it's probably 32-bit as well. And the Dreamcast uses a SH4 processor...That certainly isn't 128-bit either.

Re:Wrong Wrong WRONG!!!

[Have Blue]

And WHERE do you plug in the Xbox broadband adapter, eh?

Into the ethernet port on the back, perhaps?

Wrong again! Microsoft is the only one doing this!

I have yet to hear real numbers from a reliable source (and I have talked to several people inside MS) that prove or disprove this point. All the console manufacturers use the same business model.

And as far as that sales graph goes...not a single one of these systems is 128 bit

Already been pointed out many times, but an argument could be made that the (128-bit) graphics processor is now the most important part of the console (it's certainly doing far more work than the 32-bit CPU).

Wrong as usual...

[Viewsonic]

Nintendo stated many times that they plan to eventually offer the Gamecube for $99 and they will still be turning a profit on the machine itself. However, they didn't plan on cutting prices so soon to fight the competition. As usual the person writing the article just assumes all the consoles are losing money when in fact Sony has refab'd their system for the pricecut so they dont lose money, and Microsoft has done nothing but lose tons of money from the start.

broken metaphor

[bigdavex]

Nothing illustrates the battle's ferocity better than the eye-watering price cuts of the past few weeks.

It makes people cry? Maybe the hardware makers, I guess.

Huh?

[Ex-Parrot]

Sony's PlayStation business currently generates around 60% of the firm's profits. That figure has exceeded 100% at times.

That sounds like either new math or Andersen accounting practices.

Re:Huh?

[baboyer]

It's called subsidies. They were using profits from the games to offset losses in other groups. Because of this, the profits from the PlayStation business were actually larger than the profits for the whole company.