Slashdot Mirror
Playstation 3 Development Underway
At least in the United Kingdom, developers are already being handed development hardware for Sony's next-gen platform in anticipation of its debut at E3. From the article: "Sony plans to show the next-generation PlayStation off in public for the first time at its pre-E3 conference in Los Angeles in May, where it will almost certainly debut within a few hours of the public unveilings of Nintendo's Revolution and Microsoft's next-gen Xbox."
I wonder at what point next-gen consoles will begin to not create the positive hype that seems to currently surround them. I'm not a huge console gamer, but at some point people will no longer be willing to shell out the money to move to the newest console until a time when the price of the console has dropped well below its initial levels. Even in the PC world, the percentage of people that will rush out to pick up the newest video card seems to be dropping. There isn't quite the anticipation that there once was.
What's with all of this Playstation stuff? I've still got my NES.
I think you meant years not minutes. I've had my PS2 for around that long. And yes I even updated my Debian Linux distribution twice in that time.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
People jump to upgrade graphics cards based on the games they want to play. Several notable games have caused huge surges in card sales.
With PC games in general waning in popularity, and with current cheap cards being able to play the top games well enough, it's no wonder people aren't jumping to buy the latest and greatest all the time.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Playstation 3 - IBM Processor.
X-Box Next - IBM Processor.
Nintendo Revolution - IBM Processor.
Is anyone noticing a pattern here?
from TFA:
"they're more advanced than the PowerMac kits [Microsoft] has given us [for Xenon] - they're still prototypes, but they're closer to what'll be in the final console... The graphics chip isn't there, say, but we can get a pretty good idea by taking an NVIDIA 6800 and saying, okay, it'll be like this but faster."
This seems a far cry from what Sony was promising us just after the release of the PS2... I can't seem to find the old press release but i remember them talking about integrating some kind of organic or biomechanical components into the processor and that the spare cycles from net-connected PS3's not in use would be available as some kind of grid computing enhancement. Way to deliver, Sony!!!
This comment is fully compliant with RFC 527.
PS2 came out in 2000, ps3 comes out in mid 2006(approx.), so that a 6 year lifespan.
Gamecube came out in 2001, revolution comes out in late 2006(approx.), so thats 5 year lifespan.
Xbox came out in 2001, xbox2 comes out in late 2005(approx), so thats a 4 year lifespan. Other than the xbox, those seem pretty good intervals.
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
The 5-6 year lifespan on consoles is fairly typical, too. A brief timeline of consoles shows you have the NES at 6, SNES at 5, PS1 at 5. The trend continues, as you have noted, with the Cube and the PS2.
Of course, if you look at some of the other, "runner-up" consoles... say, Sega's... you'll find them often being released in 3-4 year increments.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Maybe you weren't paying much attention when Sony made the 'Rendering Toy Story in real time' claims. That sounded pretty revolutionary and cutting edge back in 2000. Unfortunately, it was all a big lie.
A new console will cost up to $300 or so. Even if the console manufacturers take a, let's say, $100 loss on each console sold in the first year, it's still only $400 worth of hardware, built by the same companies that make computer processors and GPUs. The best we can hope for at a console launch is the same amount of raw power of a high end PC.
If you were an ATI or nVidia executive, and you could manufacture a video card for a console manufacturer for, let's say, $200. Wouldn't you try to sell the same base components in the PC market for 2x the price? I know I would.
Sony's made a -lot- of noise about providing mature dev tools; not being a dev I can't say how much of these are accurate, but one of the top rumors is that the multiple processors will be abstractable.
That said, their key advantage in "dev friendliness" this generation won't be so much what they're doing as what everyone else is doing.
While the XBox was effectively a PC in a gaudy box last generation, the Xenon is slated to be a tri-processor PowerPC; this will be much more difficult to port to from PC (as it's no longer the same arch) and develop for in general (as not only are there multiple processors, but they're occasionally pressed into service as graphics coprocessors too).
The Revolution is, well, an enigma. It may well be the simplest machine to develop for, as there's been no reports of it having multiple CPUs; on the other hand, they've got what they consider a big UI secret that might make things all wonky.
Not to mention, it's Microsoft rather than Sony that have been pushing the idea of $55 or $60 games.
As for "did not fare so well" and "loss of market share percentage", I call bullshit. XBox had a decent run in the US and Europe, GC in the US and Japan, but similar patterns occured with the N64 and Saturn last gen.
The same was true of Xbox1. It basically has an early Geforce4 in it (weaker than what eventually was released as a Geforce4 on PC, IIRC). This was released while the PC market was still making due with the cutting-edge Geforce3. Nevermind how many years it was before PC games were really written for that level of hardware...
But yeah, early footage of next-gen console games (like Heavenly Sword) destroys any coming game I've seen for the PC. Unreal3 engine tech is impressive, but I want to see games with release dates. That Heavenly Sword footage shows the kind of graphics the consoles are getting this year (and it will probably look even better, since that footage is of the game more than a year age).
And a lot of the "high end PC games look better than console games always" argument is silly anyway when you look at the games. Panzer Dragoon Orta, Phantom Dust, Amped 2, Team Ninja's games, etc. all look just as good (and arguably better if you don't hold resolution to be the most important visual factor) than the best looking PC games. Writing to a unchanging dedicated gaming platform gives amazing performance benefits.
Even if you want to argue that some PC game does look better than Panzer Dragoon Orta or GT4 (aesthetic tastes certainly vary), you probably won't find one in most of the genres that the consoles provide. Where are the beautiful PC fighting games? 3D action games (a la Ninja Gaiden and God of War)? Platformers (Ratchet & Clank)? Rail shooters (Rez, Panzer Dragoon Orta)? Etc.
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon