Slashdot Mirror
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."
nt
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!
(Use a disposable account from a disposable IP before moderating this up. Editors generally watch and see who moderates controversial things like this up.)
When you are logged in,
Please *log out* AND use another browser before making your AC comments.
Your UID is being tracked, it's not Anonymous. Lots of people post lots of things to Slashdot as AC only because they believe it is really anonymous - it isn't. They hunt "trolls" (non-karma whores and non-group thinking bots) down.
This is true. I used to be a bit more freestyle and witty AC and be a nice guy logged in [basically a karma whore]. After a short while, I could no longer moderate. Slashdot does brand AC posts with IP and then map them back to users. They lie about AC, AC doesn't exist if you re-use ip addresses.
Big brother is watching. So while I might be a "troll" a lot of the AC things I said were to protect myself from Slash-bot groupthink. They punished me for voicing my opinion freestyle.
They also revoke moderation FOREVER - $rtbl it is called, for any moderations of any post that have been secretly flagged annoying [Slashcode has hidden flags viewable by editors]. If you *EVER* mod up something an editor secretly marked annoying you NEVER moderate again, ever - ever even if your karma is capped.
Also, Slashdot uses the friends system to track "trolls." Mark a troll you find funny as a friend *bang* $rtbl never to moderate ever again. My real account had many many good friends who had good karma, and a few funny trolls later, no more moderation for that account. Again, Slashdot is spying on its users to make the people who find certain things funny uneligible to moderate. You will never moderate again if you are a friend of a "foe or freak" of an editor.
FACT: This is in Slashcode CVS
Revision 1.7.2.5 / (download) - annotate - [select for diffs] , Thu Feb 8 13:12:32 2001 UTC (2 years, 9 months ago) by pudge
Branch: bender
CVS Tags: v1_1_3_0
Changes since 1.7.2.4: +18 -7 lines
Diff to previous 1.7.2.4 to branchpoint 1.7
log more AC info
So AC is a scam here. Hitler-Malda screws AC posts in the caboose. So now all you can do is go 100% AC, or , as they expect you to, KARMA WHORE. And it is so lame and unfair and probably illegal as they lie about anonymity.
Also, sometimes when certain information becomes an active thread, they bitchslap the thread much later so that people think its "safe" to participate and the whole thing gets slapped.
There is a presumption anonymous means something. They lie like rugs to the posting public by using the word anonymous. It is not. They brazenly lie though and the un-assuming poster is having everything he says correlated with him and stored in a computer just waiting to be subpoenaed by the people that Slashdot claims to hate but works for. They work for the fascist forces and components of the US government. I like the US and other Western governments but they have good and bad components - there are things you need to do to protect yourself from the bad components. Basically "covering your ass" so to speak. At Slashdot, in lying about AC, un-protects its posting public (seeding a de-anonymizing privacy stripping pandemic in their own "little" way). This makes Slashdot a very dangerous target for you the posters to have your "anonymous" information subpoenaed and you to be chased down and persecuted for speaking your mind. I think that it is a joke Slashdot editors post about SCO, MSFT, RIAA, MPAA, TIA, FBI, etc. They do the same fascist big-brotherly things that those companies do the public at large as they do to the Slashdot posting public.
Protect yourself. Try and use proxies or a super good second browser with proxies that you never log into such as Opera (which makes it very easy to delete all private data). Thank you.
I'd pay 20$ a pop for many of the great snes, dc, n64 or ps1 games or maybe some legal emulator on my pc. Till then I guess I'll legally dl them free from pirate sites while the big co's loose a chance to make some money
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