Slashdot Mirror
More On PS3 and Xbox 2
News for nerds writes "The BBC has news about the next-generation game consoles, with comments from various third parties. According to Rory Armes, studio general manager of EA in Europe, they have already received the development kits from Microsoft, but not yet from Sony and Nintendo. He assumes Sony's PlayStation 3 will have a little more under the hood and be more cost-efficient than Microsoft's Xbox 2. Gerhard Florin, head of EA in Europe, remarks 'PS3 will provide graphics indistinguishable from movies.' Spider-Man 2 or Toy Story 2, that's the problem."
Would it be too much to speculate that Apple can easily come out with a iGame console similarly sized like a Mac Mini?
The article mentioned that "Microsoft is obviously a software company first and foremost, while Sony has more experience in hardware", so what then, can a software/hardware company like Apple do?
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
when Nvidia said their GeForce FX series could render 6 Jurassic Park quality dinosaurs in real time. Long story short, this is bullshit and it'll be a while before we get such great quality.
http://ipod.fresh27.net/
"We have no idea what the two will look like, but that doesn't keep us from making Wild-ass guesses and then providing 'analysis' on them!"
This sounds like hype to me...how can you render on the fly as well as movies which use huge render-farms to come up with a static video? If he just meant cutscenes....well guess what, thats just the work of any DVD player.
...it seems Nintendo is all but ignored by the MSM, unless it's an article predicting doom and gloom for the country. I think Nintendo's system is definitely the one I'm most interested in seeing.
:P)
And anybody else upset that Microsoft wants to rush the next next generation? I still don't think this generation has been tapped out yet in terms of graphics and gameplay potential (maybe I'm just a bit bitter cuz I bought an Xbox last week
I love this comment.
"Graphics on PC games such as Half Life 2 will be capable on the new consoles"
In another 6 months, PC's will have moved on yet again to the next generation GPU's, leaving these things behind once more.
In the article they mention that a big thing they'll be able to do with the improved processing power is more realistic physics. ??? Does anyone else find that a bit weird? I remember like 20 years ago I played a game with monkeys on buildings throwing bananas at each other. That thing had gravity you could adjust :)
The screenshot does look amazing though... it's going to be really interesting to see where this technology (games) goes not only in the next 18 months, but 5-10 years down the road. Maybe we'll have holodecks after all :)
I store my recipes online (the way nature intended)
Maybe I'm getting old and all but I find with better graphics I end up forgetting about the game and just watching the game. For Halo I'd walk around for awhile just admiring different things while getting shot at by Convenant ships.
;)
Well not really. But I'd feel like I missed something whipping around on the warthog.
This can only be more true with movie like games.
Blurring the lines between cut scenes and gaming. Can't wait! Although I'll probably be too distracted to actually finish my objective
-Teiresias
Every time a new Playstation comes out Sony marketing types talk about how it will deliver movie-quality graphics to the masses in realtime. The truth is that it tends to perform exactly how you would expect it to perform, about the same as a high-end PC graphics card at the time it is released. Given how PC graphics cards aren't very close to rendering movies in realitime yet, I think it is safe to assume that any such statements made by Sony marketing are bullshit.
I read the internet for the articles.
Mr Dunn said he expected the introduction of real-world physics to be a major part of the new consoles.
"We want to increase that level of immersion and realism in gaming to people can lose themselves in a game."
Microsoft has apparently delivered devel kits to some of the game makers but Sony has not. I really hope that with these "real-world physics" and "more immersion" that the Adult Industry has development kits from all parties RIGHT NOW.
PS3 will provide graphics indistinguishable from movies.
Didn't they say nearly the same thing about the PS2 in the months leading up to its release?
my pet machine
That's what they said about the PS2; movie-level graphics.
The Emotion Engine, they said, could render very subtle faces, expressions, emotions.
Well, go take a look at, say, Final Fantasy X. Yes, the faces are very nice. But the belt on the guy? It's a damn texture. Floor length hair? It's four solid bars joined end-to-end. Nasty, nasty stuff.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
We'll see Halo 3, Metal gear 4, Mario sunshine 2 and so on and so forth. The new consoles can't do much new because no one is risking it, they just want better graphics and the same thing over and over. That's just how the market is these days.
Tell me when we're seeing Virtual reality, because untill then "inovation" is a word Microsoft like to throw infront of their patents.
I like muppets.
Would it be too much to speculate that Apple can easily come out with a iGame console similarly sized like a Mac Mini?
Last time Apple tried to make a game console, the result was the Pippin. It flopped. But by the time the Nintendo Revolution comes out, we'll probably have a half-height GameCube SP to match Sony's new thin PS2.
I look forward to the price drop in PS2 games and consoles, particularly in the used market. Granted the games won't have all the eye candy appeal that the PS3 games will, but I figure the new influx of games will keep me happy until the PS3 price drops (probably around xmas of 2006).
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
http://www.blachford.info/computer/Cells/Cell0.htm l
"We can thrown more polygons around and have better AI but if it doesn't make for a better game then that's not very useful."
Yes. I've talked to people at EA. They really have no clue what it takes to get a movie made. When it takes 100 CPU hours to render a typical frame (not unusual) and hours of work by human compositors to achieve subtle 2D effects for which no algorithms as yet exist (such as touching up the lighting because what is aesthetically pleasing isn't geometrically correct) I wonder how they're going to do this stuff at 60fps even if the hardware renders 1000 times faster than is possible on the current crop of PCs.
On the other hand, if by movies they mean the likes of Episode II then Half Life 2 is already better.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Custer's Next Revenge!
With those new consoles, gaming industry will continue to follow the same trend as motion pictures industry: incredible CGI, more marketing... less innovations.
Sounds like everyone's goal is graphics realism and immersion. Isn't anybody trying innovate anymore? Thank God for Nintendo. You want immersion? You want to run...they gave you the power pad. You want to punch...they gave you the power glove. You want to shoot...they gave you the light gun. You want to play music...they gave you the Konga bongos. While Sony and Micsrosoft are trying to improve their graphics, Nintendo is actually immersing players in the game by innovating hardware...the only area left for innovation.
'PS3 will provide graphics indistinguishable from movies.' Spider-Man 2 or Toy Story 2, that's the problem.'
I'm having a hard time finding that quote in this article. Could someone help me find it. Saying that a video game will look just as good as Spider-Man 2 or Toy Story 2 is a very bold statement. It makes my mouth water.....I just can't find it in the article provided.
My Xbox Live Gamer Card
And Playstation 2 can presumably render the original Toy Story in real time, right? Just like Sony claimed before PS2 was released ( http://www.dvdfuture.com/features.php?id=2)?
The illusion of total immersion is the first step in building the Matrix. Thank you for your feedback.
-Agent Smith
Those first three were from the NES era. Only the bongos were recent, and they really weren't all that innovative or immersive. It was essentially Drum Mania. Your point is kind of moot given the fifteen year time lag.
Well there's an understatement. What with the wish list that Sony has put into this thing's development - being the center of your home entertainment universe with the cell technology....I'd certainly expect nothing less than a screaming V-12 under the PS3's hood.
;)
What I wish they would let on about is the prospects of the PS3 having a DVD burner and/or a DVR type of device in it like the PSX, or whether the PS3 will have different "models"
Base: "Mecha high polygons (MHP)" for gaming only
LS: "MHP with DVR" for gaming, recording your gameplay and television shows, and being able to transfer those recordings to other devices on your home network
SS: "MHP, DVR, DVD writer" for all those techie "musclehead" equivalents
You gotta make something explode to really understand it...examine all those tiny particles while they're still on fire.
It seems every generation is going to give us "Latest Pixar flick" quality graphics. Curious thta pixar haven't caught onto this trend. I mean, Luxo Jr. took about 3 hours to render each frame. With all of the improvements in graphics technology, they're still rendering at the same rate. But perhaps Sony have a revolutionary graphics technology that's 40000 times faster than whatever Pixar use.
Nintendo is not an American company. It is not traded on the American exchanges like Sony and Microsoft are. Press about Nintendo is not as useful to the people who actually get "gaming" news from the MSM, except to give perspective compared to Sony and Microsoft, and yes in the American market it is relatively doom and gloom for Nintendo. This is all logical and matter-of-course.
And for a little perspective on rushing things... The GBA and Xbox both came out in 2001. The NDS is already out. Nintendo is the one complaining about the pace of the console cycle. This does not make sense. I'm just saying.
The new PS3 has a "Realism System" guaranteed to render realism more realistically than ever before! Criminal simulators such as GTA are further enhanced by the special "Gritty" subprocessor!
---------
Get back to me when my brain starts working.
Where the hell did that beautiful picture come from?
g /_40753511_ea_screenshot203.jpg
It's definately rendered - but from what?
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/40753000/jp
George II -- Spreading Freedom and American values, one bomb at a time.
Nope what?
The only question needs an explanation not a yes or no.
Also the link to your other post ezplains nothing. Are you saying the cell is powerful enough to render spiderman quality graphics in real time?
The PS2 was supposed to allow 3,000,000 polygons/sec . Even developers were tricked into thinking it was more then it was (the Metal Gear guy in an interview said they had a lot less options then he wanted, but it could have been learning curve, because I don't know if he still was disapointed in the hardware for the newest title).
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
In related news, the PS3 will also be packed with the following features:
- Built-in AI indistinguishable from humans
- Integrated 10 MP digital camera
- 10 Gigabit ethernet & wireless
- Controllers will interface directly with the human brain--wirelessly!
- Processor will run at 42 GHz
All these and more, in the Next Sony Platform(TM)!...is there anyone here who still believes pre-release/development crap like this? Anyone? I mean, anyone other than Michael.
And now, it is time for a shameless plug.
You probably shouldn't click this.
Both MS and PS want to have an "entertainment center", basically a machine that plays games, movies, music. pc's already do this, but they are much more upgrade friendly.
... but I have no doubt that the Xbox2 will be larger, louder, and hotter!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Actually, from what I heard: Sony promised 75 million polygons per second, but it takes the best coders to squeeze a tenth of that out of the PS2.
Just to compare: Sega promised 3 million polygons per second, but the Dreamcast could actually do more than that. Melbourne House (Infogrames' aussie studio) claims to have achieved 5 million polygons per second with "Test Drive Le Mans".
Circumcision is child abuse.
This is the second thread today that is a direct throwback to The Wizard.
Is something burning?
Oh, it's my karma.
"A gamer could buy a starter disc for 10 euros. When he goes home he goes online and he could buy AI and levels as you go. It's much smarter if you can get levels as you go."
Sounds like another subscription service, which is definitely smarter for the manufacturers. Smarter for us? While it does mean that we can constantly get new levels, it also means that the game may not work without being able to go online to download the levels, or will be sold with crappy levels to encourage you to sign up.
http://bike.stu.ph/rides - free GPS routes available for Garmin, Magellan, GPX and Google Earth
I'm positive the next generation of consoles will be very nice to behold, but I also remember all of the hype surrounding the PS2 launch and how the PS2 was such a super computer that they had to ban exports to Iraq, and how it was "movie quality" and such... And then it came out, and it was a clear step up, but not nearly the giant leap the hype suggested.
I suspect we'll see the same thing here.
The other thing to worry about is that the increasing reliance of highly detailed art means games are going to take much longer to produce, cost a lot more to make, and those costs will certainly be transfered to the consumer. Not to mention that when you're making games that require 100s of artists and with artists being a limited resource, you'll be seeing less projects spread among less game developer/publishers, with less competition and thus less gameplay innovation...
So things aren't *all* rosy...
Still, I'm sure I'll buy the Xbox2 on release day... I'm a sucker for new things.
Hey - why bother working with another established console maker when you can just attempt to pilfer the competition's titles?
.... :-) Actually, Apple making a video game console would be similiar in strategy to the iPod/iTunes being available on Windows...
The new XBox will be using a PowerPC cpu instead of another x86 type cpu. In this field, Apple has plenty of experience.
They could release a slick looking console, and have games easily ported by the game companies themselves - or make it even capable of playing the XBox 2 games as well.
Another side benefit of the overall increase of PowerPC cpu sales would hopefully include decreased per unit costs and an increase in compatible software.
I had never even considered Apple making a console until mentioned in these comments. I think Apple making a video console would be awesome - hell - there's many things I don't like what Apple does, but I can see myself buying a console made by them. Especially if they make it very hackable - that always adds bonus points.
Hell - they could even include iTunes with the box and a docking station or connection for an iPod. Have it display an interface on the TV that would control the iPod, even while you play a game - this would allow custom control over game soundtracks
One thing to consider as significant here is that Nintendo's been rediculously secretive about their not-formally-announced consoles of late. They're almost approaching Steve Jobs-like proportions. Dev kits for the DS were in the hands of some developers since if I'm not mistaken like the November or December before E3, but Nintendo was able to keep the DS totally under wraps until the moment they chose to start giving out information-- heck, it wasn't even that long before E3 before the rumor that Nintendo was even going to announce anything at E3 started to surface in a serious way.
So in this particular case very likely the MSM is not going to report on the N5 because at this point, there's nothing known to report.
Meanwhile enough solid information is known about the XBox 2 to make speculation worth the bother, and Sony's been fairly cheerful about talking about the PS3, or at least the Cell. Whereas with the N5, what are they going to say? "Nintendo's doing... something!" So while Nintendo's getting the shaft from the MSM in a lot of ways, I don't know if we can chalk this particular case up to MSM idiocy unless E3 comes and goes and the MSM is still ignoring the N5.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Does this mean we'll FINALLY get some quality game-porn?!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Don't be too hasty. I hear they used an advanced compression algorithm in order to minimize the space the final game will take up. Unfortunately, the decompressor for their "Zero-Space" compression system is only now entering the earliest stages of development.
Note: The above statement, like the article, has little or no foundation in reality.
It seems to me that all this technology just increases the effort necessary to produce a given quantity of satisfying gameplay.
Once you add physics into the mix, every object needs to be broken down into more parts, represented in more ways, its possible impact on the game logic dealt with. (No point putting in a maze puzzle if you can bash through walls.)
So now you need hyper-detailed models with hyper-detailed textures and somewhat-detailed physics representations to produce something that looks as good as a second-tier film from ten years ago.
And the state of the art is, say, Half Life 2, a game which provides gorgeous graphics but runs you around on rails -- because providing that level of detail in a more open-ended game is simply prohibitively expensive. Indeed, by all accounts, Half Life 2's game play is unusually restrictive, even by the standards of First Person Shooters.
The key to me is choosing a level of design detail that suits the game you plan to make and then hiring an art director who can make the game look fabulous at that level of detail -- rather than maxing out the level of detail for the hardware currently available, and then producing the best game you can given the budget constraints you're stuck with.
The way things are trending we'll have games where you only get to visit one room because it costs millions of dollars to texture the pillows, insects, cracks in the wall, navel fluff, etc.
The reason I play games on my PS2 is not because it's cool. If I was in for being cool I'd buy, mod and seriously hack a Xbox just to show off what my cool console could do.
I bought into that cool image I'd mention pirate every Xbox game there was, and show of all those cool new games and show them off the week before they'd hit the stores.
If I was in for awesome, cool graphics, I'd buy anything but the PS2, as it seems most consoles have a more capable GPU.
I play the SP2 because of the games and their replay value. My main reason for not playing games, or investing money in PC-gaming at all, is because I think all the PS2 games I've played have a higher entertainment value and especially replay value. This goes for anyone I know with a PS2.
You, mister, are way off.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
Not to be confused with I, Product, the next hollywood blockbuster movie featuring Will Smith and an assortment of popular rappers du jour.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
If only they would re-release this. Or Star-Raiders. (Not Star-Raiders 2). Star Raiders was amazing at the time it came out.
Then I would think about buying one.
I don't care about movie quality football.
I want to hear the sound of Zylon ships attacking, crank the engines to full power and scream thru space to save another space-station
Hiring one or two CG supes from visual effects comapnies does not suddenly make you know how to make movies.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
XBox was such as dismal flop considering how much money Microsoft has put into R&D, as well as Microsoft's marketing power.
For those who argue that first-generation products suffer from lack of name recognition, take a cue from Sony Playstation 1, which came out of nowhere, ruined Sega, and created a severe dent on Nintendo.
And for those trying to compare XBox's flop to Itanium, it's completely different. A brand-new CPU architecture requires an ENTIRE infracstructure to support it, from OS to hardware drivers to sofware and to vendor support, and people tend to suffer from lost-cost syndrome by continuing pouring more money to support their great ol' platform that's been crunching their mission-critical data for years before, and probably years ahead. There's no "prior" investment for a consumer to buy a new console. PS2 claims backward compatability with PS, but honestly, who seriously plays PS games these days (other than the utterly nostalgic). Nintendo Gamecube didn't have backward compatability, but didn't flop.
I did this in the first unreal, second level, when you walk outside the ship onto the beautiful planet complete with birds, waterfalls, grass, and even a sort of bunny/deer sorta thing. I spend about 15 minutes just wandering around going "OMG this is beautiful". This was 1998 on the Voodoo 2.
PS: Same thing happened with Unreal 2. Epic sure knows how to make beautiful games. Oh, and more recently Crytek with their Far Cry game. I spent most of the demo swimming with the fish, checking out the birds.
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
A DVD is 720x480 (NTSC), which is ~0.3 megapixels. Most of the next generation consoles will probably be similar (they plug in to a TV). Movies are usually 35mm frames at 3200 DPI, which works out to about 4400x2800 (the numbers elude me at the moment; my (still image) film scanner at home is the same quality); this is ~25 megapixels.
At any rate, a slightly out of date stand alone console will never be able to produce in real time what a massive bleeding-edge renderfarm can produce in non-real time.
Fortunately, it won't have to.
i think slashdot linked to this article on the ps3's cell processor a few days ago, and i found it to be good light reading on this topic.
i disagree with the author on the general use pc-killing potential of the cell because it's hard to parallelize most operations. most people want one thing to run really quickly at a time, and for those people, x86 is serving them very well. a compiler won't be able to do much to split something like X or a media player into lots of parallel threads, so the only applications that'll benefit from such a radical change are those expressly written to use that. so while a cluster of playstation 3's has huge potential for stream processing, it wouldn't really be relevant to the average user running the applications that such average users put on their average computers.
it's more likely that a cell processor may be used to complement an x86 cpu in future pc's to accelerate things along the lines of the gpu-accelerated video editor mentioned on slashdot earlier today.
This sounds like a stillborn idea if I've every heard one.
Digital distribution was already a major irritant with Steam, on a platform where users have grown used to having to download hundreds of megabytes of patches over the lifetime of a game. Console gamers don't expect to have to put up with this kind of crap. Not to mention that parents like to feel secure that they they plop their kid down in front of a console, that kid's not going to be costing them 10 bucks a pop to download new levels.
Frankly, I'm getting tired of hearing about the wonderful benefits of digital distribution for games? Who's asking for this great advancement exactly? Besides the game companies, who see it as the first step toward squeezing the consumer beyond the already exorbitant 50 bucks they charge now, that is?
The whole paradigm just strikes me as an excuse for game companies to maximize profits while doing less and less work. A lofty goal in itself, but if it means that when I spend good money on a game I don't really own anything, I ain't down with that.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
Why it's not good for games to approach too much realism:
Uncanny Valley
-jc
I did something very similar, but I used mechassault instead of 007. I have been running Linux on it for almost a year now, but a month ago I decided to go further.
I used 2 peices of wire(no solder) to flash my BIOS, It's great! I also swapped out the little 8gig HD for a 120gig. I wrote a little thing about it here
how unforgiving you are.
I don't know if you can exactly credit Sony for this, but what about the EyeToy, and headsets with non-traditional uses (i.e. Karioke Revolution instead of just voice chat in multiplayer games).
I would say these are far better examples of innovation, becuase they hve both been wildly successful (something like over 10 million EyeToys sold now!) unlike the examples you provided.
Microsoft has not done much, but even there one comapny had a very cool full custom control for a mech game (that really was more the game maker than Microsoft at work).
Also, the PS2 has had some really original titles like Rez or Katamari Damacy. Nintendo has had some different stuff out, but nothing quite that edgy. Not even aything as wierd as Seaman on the Dreamcast!
I am a big fan of Nintendo, the hardware and games they create. But I do think Sony deserves a lot of credit for a really diverse library.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"As powerful as we said the PS2 would be!"
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
>PS3 will provide graphics indistinguishable from movies.
So, what's left for the PS4 then?
Seriously, improvement in graphics does not interest me as much as genuine improvement in the AI of the computer controlled characters. What's the point of having opponents with "graphics indistinguishable from movies" when they still are as stupid as in the original Quake? I'm really waiting for a first person shooter where your opponents could actually launch some coordinated action against you - and you could also have some small talk with the NPC's, not limited to just a few random prerecorded lines. These random lines were a real mood breaker in "Half-Life" or "Max Payne". All those "Ah, Gordon, good to see you" in the most inappropriate situations...
The cell chip is your explanation? While it sounds wicked cool, it is not going to replace clusters of hundreds of multiprocessor workstations. Cell may be the most irrationably hyped product in years...
The Pippin was an Apple-developed gaming console / set top box, circa 1996.
:P
They hit the gaming market (and failed) long before Microsoft even thought about it.
If there is anything that I have learned is: the latest generation of children have be trained to have attention spans measured in nanoseconds. Game play is next to non-existent and is not much farther than pushing the right button in the right order, and half of the game play (or more) is done automatically by the computer.
If a kid today cannot figure out something that goes "wizzzz! Bang!" within 20 seconds of picking up the joystick, it's a dead game. I was playing a game a while back a friend of mine's teenage boy and some of his friends. I had never played the game before and yet promptly started to beat the crap out of them. The concept of feints, parries, timed response, and multiple-attack strategy was simply beyond them. I feigned lack of interest and join the rest of the adults because I felt bad about trying not to show them up. They thought it was cool to mash the buttons.
Bel, the mostly sane.. "Of course I can't see anything! I'm standing on the shoulders of idiots." -- Me
SEGA-Sammy on the software, Apple on the Hardware
DON'T PANIC
Considering the development workstations reportedly shipped by Microsoft are reportedly Apple G5's running a tweaked, slimmed down version of Windows XP - that doesn't sound so far fetched....
I still don't think it will ever happen...
Wasn't it about 2.5 years ago when nVidia released the GeForce2 and their press release included the statement "Achieving Pixar-level animation in real-time has been an industry dream for years," explains Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO at NVIDIA. "With twice the performance of the GeForce 256 and per-pixel shading technology, the GeForce2 GTS is a major step toward achieving that goal."
This statement was later refuted by various partisans of high-end animations tools, such as Tom Duff of Pixar, who said;
---------------------
`Pixar-level animation' runs about 8 hundred thousand times slower than real-time on our renderfarm cpus. (I'm guessing. There's about 1000 cpus in the renderfarm and I guess we could produce all the frames in TS2 in about 50 days of renderfarm time. That comes to 1.2 million cpu hours for a 1.5 hour movie. That lags real time by a factor of 800,000.)
Do you really believe that their toy is a million times faster than one of the cpus on our Ultra Sparc servers? What's the chance that we wouldn't put one of these babies on every desk in the building? They cost a couple of hundred bucks, right? Why hasn't NVIDIA tried to give us a carton of these things? -- think of the publicity milage [sic] they could get out of it!
---------------------
So when is Pixar due to refute this new statement, that the PS3 will provide graphics indistinguishable from movies.
My main reason for not playing games, or investing money in PC-gaming at all, is because I think all the PS2 games I've played have a higher entertainment value and especially replay value.
I'm not sure how you can say that PC games don't have as good of a replay value -- a lot of PC-only games (like Civ-type strategies, and RTS games) are famous for exactly that, the replay value. Other replay-value games like sports titles are all available on pretty much every console and PC.
What type of games are you referring to when you say that PS2 has replay value that PC doesn't?
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
Also the link to your other post ezplains nothing. Are you saying the cell is powerful enough to render spiderman quality graphics in real time?
Actually, it will do this, while finding a cure for cancer, finding an end to war, and turning lead into gold. Plus it will allow any device its connected to to defy gravity and exceed the speed of light.
Please keep up with the Sony press releases.
Unless Sony delivers an online experience on par or exceeding XBox Live, they're going to get a drumming come XBox2. Halo2 is one of the nicest and easiest to use online expereinces I've had on any game platform, and unless Sony can match it they're going to fall behind in that arena.
Too bad none of these video games will make me go WOW, like things back 6-8 years ago. Those days, we went from primitive, cool and some what still simple things, to revolutionary complex environments -- basically a revolution in realism. Nowadays, we have been progressing smoothly, with no real breakthroughs. The competition is holding steady, and they insist in releasing all these damn machines at the same time, just to hold back time and guide us slowly through this revolution, that way perhaps they will gain one more of us as an audience. Fuck this! I hate waiting!! I want a damn space machine!!!
Innovation is when a game is created and that breaks with the schemes set by other games before or when a possibility in a genere never explored before is used. There are TONS of innovative games (REZ, ico, pimkin, katamari damacy etc) but they are overweighted by the flashy hyped games that fit in a more commercial criteria. (innovation does not guarantee success) thats why most companies aim at standard games BUT try to set records in realism, or "shock value" .
And by the way. Nintendo DID NOT invented any of those devices they simply "ported" them to their systems.
Oh yeah and they did not invented: Pokemon, Wario, Metroid (which is basically a clone of castlevania) either. They were made by small indie companies and sold to Nintendo afterwards. Their only original and succesful franchises are Mario and Zelda.
Go ahead MOD my day!
Go ahead MOD my day!
More opinions here
it says "graphics indistinguishable from movies" not "graphics indistinguishable from boobies" like you'd know either way. just kidding, just kidding, oh, who am i kidding... anti-flame armor on
Frylock: "We should have cloned twenties, Jackson wouldn't have given a fuck."
I'll say they have done an excellent job of showing what an online service can do really well, and have had more buy-in than I thought. I think that counts as well.
I'd be really surprised in Sony or anyone else does not try to duplicate that soon... After a while I think the possibility of having a user linked to multiple services like Live will surface, and you'll be able to keep a handle across them.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This remainds me a mini-game in the Star Fox, where you had to dominate your fear, in the screen, Fox was assaulted by monsters and nightmares, and there was a line up in the screen with a line that must remain in the central region. When monsters appear, the line moved to one part or the other, the game was old like a NES, and I didn't paid attention to the graphics (if you did, you were lost), don't take me bad, it was time since a game had made me more nervous and stressed.
DON'T PANIC
Whoops. What I meant is, the PS2 actually has more games _worth playing_ that support 1080i. ;)
Quote from the PS4 press release: "PS4 will provide graphics indistinguishable from reality."
What about the PS9? Come on, you saw those commercials that aired when the PS2 was release. Best. Commercial. Evar.
(\(\
(^.^) INFECTED
(")")
Let's face it, except for the Super NES days, Nintendo is largely irrelavent. The Gamecube has not been a huge success outside of Japan (and even then, it's dominated by PS2). Nintendo is known for innovations, but not necessarily leading edge hardware. Nintendo's biggest problem is getting 3rd party support. They were so protective in the past (and also their younger audience stigma) that it's going to be hard for them to get 3rd parties to develop on the Nintendo. It seems like 90% of the games on the Gamecube are by Nintendo, and 80% of those games are sequels. I currently own all 3 systems, and I have the fewest games for the Gamecube. I would prefer if Nintendo became a developer for PS3 or XBox rather than try and introduce yet another machine as it's getting harder and harder to buy a console just for 3 games.
Also, am I the only one who just wants his consoles to play games? Granted, if I had the cash, I'd build a media center PC in a second, but that'd be dedicated to media. I'm really not feeling good about this whole convergence thing. The convergence thing, along with Bill Gates' push for "trusted computing" really make me trust my computer less.
I just want to play devils advocate for a while here (goes out to the pinball machine ) when developers say "movie quality" they are actually telling the truth, the catch is that they do not mention the date of the movie they are using for reference...
Games today,(some at least) are pretty much the same quality than CGI movies of the early 80-90's, Take tron 2.0 per example, the game looks much better than the original CGI in the early 80's movie.
Actually in the famous presentation of the geforce 3 (where Doom3 was presented by Carmack) nVidia had a realtime presentation of "Flexo Jr" the first movie pixar made (and which is shown in their logo). If you dont think thats impressive, dont worry, the audience didnt get it either.
So when they say "movie quality" today they are probably referring to Tin toy or maybe toy story 1 (tops) not Shreck or the Lord of the rings.
Sad as it may be, games CGI versus movie CGI is like trying to catch up your older brother age. No matter how old you get, he will always be older than you. Games need fast processors (and several tricks) to make images more realistic and each generation processors get faster and developers learn new tricks, BUT movies can use the very same tricks millions of times and take hours per frame without anyone complaining for the shot being slower than 1/60 of a second.
Sometimes though, the tricks get so authentic is hard to surpass them with anything else, take GT4 (or forza motorsport) per example. While some shots still look like CGI from a mile. Some of them are good enough to trick any eye. (specially if caught at movement and a decent distance) will some day the baby brother catch up? Well... theres an actual limit for photo realism and that is well.. reality. and once film and games reach that point, theres nowhere else to go, But we are still a really,really far way from there. (and only then we can worry about people actually confusing reality with games and not only saying so to get media attention and out of law problems)
Go ahead MOD my day!
More opinions here
... I've heard that somewhere beforee.... (cough) nintendo 64 (cough)
Yeah this type of thing is getting absolutely ridiculous. I for one would refuse to pay for a game and then have to pay for the content beyond a particular point.
It's bad enough that game companies are releasing sequels that are barely an improvement on the original; not to mention sports games that are just as expensive and are vitually just a new GUI with updated rosters. But, this must be great for the game companies because instead of having to make new video's and story lines...they don't even have to make a sequel! They can just have you buy new levels and continue the game that way. Shoot, they could even sell the cheats for the game.
I am not down with this either except maybe in the area of sports games. I'd pay $10 a year for roster updates and maybe some new features on essentially the same game, rather than the $50 they want now. For some reason though, I don't think the game publishers would find that scenario very convienent.
Let's face it, except for the Super NES days, Nintendo is largely irrelavent
Are you kidding? NES was far more dominant than the SNES. I'd argue that N64 was more important, too. When you think Nintendo, Super Mario Bros, Legend of Zelda, Mario Kart, and Goldeneye have got to come to mind as some of the top titles. I can't think of a single SNES title that had the same social impact (or expanded the console market in the same way), and SNES had the misfortune of coming out at the same time Sonic came out for the Sega.
rage, rage against the dying of the light
Indeed, EA and Take Two have just put the kibosh on that very thing by entering into exclusive agreements with the NFL and the MLBPA respectively. I can't speak to Take Two's reasoning, but EA undoubtedly penned their contract because Sega was eating into their market share by charging an unprecedentedly reasonable $20 for their sports titles.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
Is called "modding" and "expansion packs" PC has been doing it for years and nobody has yet shed a tear over it, not even once (well there was the nude pack for Larry but that was a different history). They are just trying to bring the "pc experience" to the non-geek... and failing miserably at it since only geeks care for those. (have you ever meet a non-geek with the ninja gaiden, kotor, halo 2, socom or splinter cell downloadable content installed? )
Go ahead MOD my day!
More opinions here
Not all programming problems are inherently parallel, and some things actually degrade by making them parallel.
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
First, I own all three games you mentioned and enjoyed all of them, but I didn't find them particularly innovative. Mario Sunshine wasn't much different from Mario64 except for the water gun. Metroid was a direct translation from 2D to 3D. With essentially the same gameplay elements if you ignore the fancy graphics. Even the annoying backtracking in levels. Zelda was an evolution of Zelda64. The puzzles reminded me of exactly the same puzzles on the Gameboy version. The sailing was a nice twist, but is it really that different from riding a horse? And fishing out treasure than digging for it? There have been some exceptions like Pikmin and Luigi's Mansion, but most of the stuff from the house of Mario were minor updates to existing franchises. How many Mario Party's do we need? For 1st party releases, I find the stuff coming from Sony the most interesting. Ico and Kri were excellent games.
I hate to agree but it's true. Nintendo is making too many games for kids and not making new series. Mario, Link, Samus, etc all need to retire and make new characters and series. Frsh blood and depart from the wore out series of games.
Sure Sony has not been the primary developer of these things. But through licencing practises being lienient, and Sony pushing some things (they did help promote the EyeToy to some extent) they are giving direction to developers saying that they welcome and encourage diversity of games. The image Sony has projected for the PS2 has encouraged things like the EyeToy, just as the "edgier" image Microsoft has used for the XBox has brought them more games that fit with that image.
Sure any other console could have these games. But then the question is, why don't they? And Sony is part of the answer. I don't think marketshare alone accounts for it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
and it accounts for a LOT. The liscensing practises aren't that different anymore(that's how Sony gained marketshare in the first place though), and the only thing I can think of that they pushed at all is the EyeToy. Which you mentioned, and which is also fairly recent.
It's also easier to make a high graphical quality XBox game or Gamecube game than it is to make a PS2 game, but that's kind of tangenital.
Do you think the Capcom 5 are getting ported to the PS2 because Capcom likes the platform(the general manager at least HATES it and Sony)? They're not. They're being ported because shareholders and management look at the sales on the distantly behind the PS2 Gamecube and think... how much better could we do if we had 4 times the userbase? 4 times the userbase means 4 times the sales! Tada... the game goes to the PS2.
Niche games also tend to start on the PS2 because of the userbase. Which would you rather develop on, the platform with 100 million people, or one of the platforms with 40 million? Be sure to run your answer through the happy fun business filter. Where does the game go? The PS2.
The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
My best memory of this isn't some new fangled game but of Metal Gear solid 1 on the ps1. The cut scenes didn't have the greatest graphics but it was rendered by the game engine(i think) and most importantly it was nice to watch. It actually served a purpose of moving the game forward.
Though I can see your points about moderation (+5 for something that is not true - according to you) I do have two minds about it. The problem is that to get something up to +5 within the short timeframe provided by slashdot, it's impossible to rely on experts only, or to double-check every story submitted. So people tend to look at layout, low /. subscription numbers, etc. In a perfect world this would not be happening, but sometimes such things are unavoidable. Please keep reading /. and post informative replies if you are thinking something is out of order. That will keep us on the right track. It did for this article...
IBM/Sony shares with Apple the details of the cell processor, a modified Power5 with lots of extra vector units. Once these things get good, the start appearing in the mini iMacs with OSX support. We already had an article about how they will speed up ordinary computing a lot with the right software support. The only commercial OS widely in use that has any chance of running on them is OSX or OSXI. But if we're there, why couldn't a future iMac mini just play PS3 games? Well, Sony would need to cooperate, but why wouldn't they? They make little or no money on the conoles themselves, so if Apple is happy to build compatible consoles, why should Sony get upset? Apple has a lot of good vibe to it, and Sony could sell more games/PS3's if they can run the argument that the same disk will work in a Mac as well as the PS3. MS will not be able to duplicate anything like this, because everyone who runs windows has X86 chips and Xbox2 will have PowerPCs.
So with the help of Sony and IBM, Apple really could make a living room video game console. I wonder what they would want in return... maybe for Sony, a license to run a modified version of OSX? IBM would just have the satisfaction that another company that buys their processors is prospering, and at the same time is hindering MS/Intel's growth in the living room.
I don't know, did you read the Cringley about the mysterious appearance of Sony people at Jobs's keynote? These companies are ready to be seen together, and maybe even substantially work together.
If a critical mass of Mac mini systems end up in TV rooms across America, a few game developpers will probably gravitate towards exploiting that market, and Apple may find themselves selling a popular game console entirely by accident.
Everyone agrees that the Mac mini is not a 3d powerhouse. It has a very weak integrated graphics card with a minimum amount of memory. There is no way that it would become a popular game console. I don't have the exact specs of its graphics hardware on hand, but I'm sure the graphics capabilities of the Xbox and PS2 exceed it (because that's all they do) and don't cost $500.
It has a Radeon 9200 (better than the gForce 3 in the XBox)
The Radeon 9200 is slower than the Geforce 3. It's even slower than the Radeon 9000, and THAT was slower than the GF3.
In addition, the Xbox doesn't really have a Geforce 3 in it, it has a variant that was never released in the PC world. It's the NV2A, and it's partly between the Geforce3 and Geforce4. It has 2 vertex pipelines instead of one and is faster than the PF3.
It's interesting that SONY hasn't yet sent out any developer's kits. As I understand "Cell", it sounds remarkably similar to the concept of separating video/audio processing from "central" processing.
:P
:)
Of course recently (on the grand scheme of real-time computer graphics), developers have had to adapt to a separation of processing at the GPU level. With vertex processors and fragment (pixel) processors. When this came to pass, it was a radically different way of thinking about your graphics workload. Now that the work of the graphics pipeline is split between several different processor units, implementing something like tangent space normal mapping requires a close coupling between two completely separate processors.
Of course tangent space lighting's a simple example. It's possible to immitate the holy grail of computer graphics now with vertex/fragment programs, using math kernels and treating textures as arrays, fragment programs as loops, etc... But it's rather clunky and still far from a general purpose graphics processor.
It's not completely unmanagable this way, but it gives a general idea. And it even seems the hardware manufacturers are beginning to doubt the solution of having specialized vertex/fragment processors (ATI saying they want to unify the shader units, and the Shader Model 3.0 specs, allowing vertex ops to be done in fragment progs and fragment ops (i.e. texture lookups) in vertex progs).
Multiply the situation times 5 and you've got the PS3 Cell... SONY better start handing PS3 Developer Kits out fast, because the architecture looks to 5 times more complicated than when real-time hardware graphics introduced Vertex/Fragment separation.
I'm not saying it's going to be impossible or even difficult to write games for the PS3. But "Cell" won't be a selling point of the console unless they thoroughly drill their licensed developers how to utilize it by console launch...
Microsoft on the other hand, is said to be using something similar to DirectX 9.0c (with Shader Model 3.0). Developers have had access to Shader Model 3.0 hardware for over a year now, and the XDK2's already out.
Microsoft has the clear advantage there... Especially since launch titles could potentially include ports of highly successful DirectX 9 PC titles.
And Nintendo's, well Nintendo
The only time they had a stationary console that was the most capable and had the largest library of games was the Famicom (NES) during the 80s.
It's clear Nintendo will release a new console, and it WILL have a sizable library of 1st party games featuring the Nintendo characters we've all known and loved for the past 20 years. But the rest is shaky...
It's always been that way. SEGA was the same way (developer relations and hardware design wise) with their 32X (SEGA's version of the Virtual Boy disaster =P) Saturn and Dreamcast and now they're software only.
In summary, no big surprise that Microsoft has developers kits available already... They're adapting the DirectX architecture, working with a Shader Model 3.0 spec. But SONY is a bit of a surprise. And Nintendo's just being Nintendo
How soon we forget...
When the PS2 was about to come out, they claimed that it could render "Toy Story-like" graphics in realtime. When the PS2 came out, it could not.
Now they say the same thing about the PS3. I'm getting tired of being fed the same lines.
How long do they think a horse will keep on walking if you dangle a carrot in front of it?
... is the worst of both worlds.
You pay a full $40 for the game, and then you have to pay $5 each to download "song packs" from Xbox Live if you want the old songs that are included in every other version of the game for free.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Some of us were there, son. We don't need sources to talk about history we lived through. I remember well the days of Bungie revealing their plans for Halo. It was to be a Mac game for sure, and probably a cross-platform networked game allowing PC's to play on the same network. (When they ported Marathon 2 to Windows, they failed to make it network-compatible with Macs and learned it was a huge mistake. When they released Myth, it was specifically cross-platform compatible.)
Yes, Halo was meant to be the ultimate Mac game, but Microsoft wanted a showcase piece to compliment the X-Box, so they bought Bungie specifically for HALO, which they adapted to be an exclusive X-Box release, later to be ported to Windows and Mac.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
How long before Nintendo partners with MS and bails out of the console wars?
How long before Samsung buys a stake in Xbox?
How long before Apple teams up with Sony on the PS3? (yeah, I know that one has already been chattered about)
How long before EA tries to buy Nintendo and/or Xbox?
There are many mergers coming. Bet on it
Sig for hire.
Analog sticks were more of a Sega thing actually. Mario64 was initially prototyped using the Saturn analog gamepad! IIRC there was also a console back in the 80s that had analog controllers, but the name escapes me (it was obscure, and the analog tech was different than modern console usage). And of course this is all ignoring that analog controls have been in arcades for decades...
Touchscreen in a portable isn't new either. Ignoring all of the PDAs that have featured it for years (including their games), the dedicated gaming handheld Game.com had a touchscreen.
64DD was just a fancy disk drive that no one purchased (in fact, you could only get it by renting it essentially!). Hell, Nintendo had a disk drive back for the original Famicom/NES! (The Legend of Zelda was originally released only for that peripheral, actually.)
Rumble packs were probably a Nintendo innovation (though it was kind of obvious, being basic arcade technology again). But nobody actually uses that specific technology anymore really (I guess some GBA games do maybe)...
Not sure if they had the first console with 4 controller ports. Most earlier systems at least had add-on hardware that allowed the same (or better). But they certainly popularized it!
All that said, innovation is overrated in comparison to taking an existing idea and making it work really well. Nintendo has done plenty of that...
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
Though the bongos are similar to Samba de Amigo, it's really more of a clone of Namco's insanely successful taiko drum arcade games (that were also ported to the PS2). That's why Nintendo had Namco make the game, too.
Metroid wasn't a clone of Castlevania, it is the other way around. The first Castlevania (coming out roughly the same time as Metroid back in 1986) was a side-scrolling action game, vaguely similar to something like Contra. And all of the early Metroid games were developed by Nintendo's R&D1 group - hardly a small indie company! (Gunpei Yokoi was the primary creator of the series - he also created the D-pad and the original Gameboy, among lots of other things.)
Pretty sure that Nintendo created Wario, too. He is just a twisted Mario clone, so I don't see how other companies could have created him... and his first appearance was in Super Mario Land 2. Unless you have some interesting evidence for this claim, you are completely wrong here...
Nintendo has also created Kirby (done by HAL Laboratories, a Nintendo sub-group), Fire Emblem, Star Fox (with the assistence of Argonaut), the Wars series (starting back with Famicom Wars by Intelligent Systems, also a Nintendo sub-group), and probably plenty of other stuff I am forgetting (Kid Icarus by Gunpei, Battleclash series by Intelligent Systems, etc.).
I don't disagree that Nintendo's tendency to "innovate" is massively overrated by its fanboy community, but let's at least criticize them for the right things (like recycling the same insipid and vaguely racist character designs for decades just because they have built-in marketing appeal, as an obvious example).
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
Quoted from the article:
"It is also likely that they will contain convergence technologies to make the machines more of an entertainment hub."
I already have a DVD/MP3/CD player, web browser, and one of whatever else they're going to cram into these things. I can understand WHY they're doing it, but it's slightly annoying to think that the retail cost of new gaming systems is being driven up because the devs have to add every shiny feature that current technology will allow.
I can just imagine the R&D labs at M-Soft:
"Does it have a WMA player yet? Make sure it has a WMA player. Hell why not two. Oh, and can I check my stocks on it? What about balancing my checkbook?"
"Sometimes you have fun, and sometimes the fun has you"
I think the original Wolfenstein 3D as well as Quake and Quake II were developed on NeXT hardware running NextStep, OS X's direct predecessor.
ID said, PCs simply crashed too often to be used for game development. At that time, at least.
I don't need a signature.
Not entirely correct. Halo was planned to be a cross-platform title from the start, but the PC version was the first one developed because at the time PCs had better 3D hardware than Macs (this was back when the Voodoo 2 and Rage 128 roamed the earth). It was only ported to the Mac right before Macworld.
But haven't you read the marketing blurb from Sony about the Cell? It *is* 1000 times faster!
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
I dont know an adult gamer who does not enjoy (and most own) gamecube games.
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.
in the PS3 to play PS2 games.
Maybe if we are lucky Sky Gunner will be playable without all the slowdowns.
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.