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Technology Of Current, Future Consoles Analyzed
ban25 writes "There's an interesting article at Ace's Hardware with an in-depth analysis of the technology behind the PS2, Xbox, and GameCube, plus hints to the future. It covers the CPUs and GPUs of each of the systems, and also has an interesting discussion about embedded DRAM and its role in consoles compared to the high-speed discrete memories found on all of today's top PC graphics cards. The other part of the article covers the next generation of systems and, in particular, the Xbox 2 and PS3. The recent IBM/MS agreement is discussed, as well as the chances of the Xbox 2 having a PowerPC inside, or perhaps even a CELL derivative. On the PS3 side of things, the piece goes into some detail about the patent that turned up last year on CELL."
Why can't console makers start making their high profile games for the PC? I'd love to be able to play Metroid Prime or Final Fantasy 10 on my computer and no matter how good those games are I'd never buy a game console. They're too limiting. I realize that I'm in the minority, but I think there'd be profit in this.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
There's the same ol' same ol' in most of those.... They point at "more power", well duh. Of course systems are going to get more and more powerful, otherwise I'd wait for things to come out still on my good ol' Atari 2600.
What we really need is a revolution in gaming technology for the console. Something that provides a new level of interactivity, be it from a 3D projection, to a Virtual Helmet set. ANYTHING would be an improvement over the joystick games of current. I mean look at it this way, we've had the same type of games coming out for years now, nothing new, nothing challenging as far as pushing the limits of what we can do. Why not give the home console gamer something they'll be addicted to? Perhaps an interactive environment where we're pumping sensations to them that they actually FEEL, SMELL or even TASTE. To long has the gaming world been in our rumble packs, ears, and eyes, something has to push forward, and I just wonder when the gaming companies will notice that.
The future of the xbox has many unknowns, latest rumor going around is the xbox2 will have a proprietary disc format, much like the GC's. Why you ask? To prevent piracy.
According to an ad on microsofts career website, the Microsoft's Xbox team is seeking an engineer "to manage the design and development of the Xbox Game Disc for the next generation Xbox console", with the job description going on to mention anti-piracy as the first in a list of key factors for the new game disc specification.
Article here about it
Taking a console game and making it run on PC is usually very feasible from a purely technical point of view. There are, however, four things that stand in the way of turning a console game into a PC game.
Firstly, the art is designed for 640x480 on a TV. This means it usually looks bad at 1024x768 on a PC monitor and PC gamers react very negatively to bad art because they spend a bunch of money on their systems in order to have their games look as beautiful as possible.
Secondly, the game is designed to be played with a console gamepad. To sell a game on PC it needs to play well with keyboard and mouse - some people have gamepads but the vast majority do not. This can mean making changes to a lot of game systems.
Thirdly, PCs vary in their specifications. The game must be able to run at different frame rates, at different resolutions and so on. Loading and saving works differently. Data may be coming off CD or off the hard drive. Users can task switch away from the game. Basically, the environment is just different. Depending on how the game code is written these things may be easy to accomodate, or extremely hard.
Lastly, the business environment for PC games is different. You need a much bigger tech support department (all those users with their disparate configurations). The retail channel is somewhat different to work with (margins, major buyers, cost structure, packaging, promotional material).
The bottom line from all of this is that it takes a bunch of money and time to turn a console game into a PC game that anyone would actually want to pay for. Either you do it after the console version is done, or you do it along the way by keeping the game cross-platform. You also need a different set of business resources than you do for console games. It's unclear that, for most console games, the return on investment would exceed the costs of this. Perhaps more importantly the effort spent on PC versions can instead be spent making the console version better.
In my opinion the above are why you don't see many console games come to PC. That's not to say it never happens, of course. Most of the conversions that I'm aware of were done by relatively small developers well after the console version was known to be successful and in many cases the PC versions didn't sell well and were negatively perceived basically because of their console-ness.
Graham