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PlayStation 3 Press Conference Tonight
The official unveiling of the PlayStation 3 is set to happen tonight, with folks such as the Guardian Gamesblog, Kotaku, and GamesAreFun live blogging the event as it happens. From the Guardian post: "The sign on the way into the Sony Press Conference is big - Wi-Fi access will be only available after the event. They lied - a quick wireless search has found me some access and now I'm on. The clock says 1.00pm but my body says 9pm. By the time Microsoft unveils the 360 again tonight I'll be ready for my cornflakes."
I wish I could see the future that clearly.
(Score: +1, Stereotypes Xbox Users as "Frat Boys")
(Score: +1, Pluralizes "Xbox" as "Xboxen")
(Score: +1, Connects MTV-watching with Xbox-owning)
(Score: +1, Spins "Better Graphics" Into a Negative)
Congratulations! +5!
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the PlayStation3 [...] will absolutely crush Microsoft's empty offerings of "better graphics = better games"
Does the PS3 promise anything different? I know Nintendo is claiming graphics won't cut it but Sony's marketing seems to be mostly focussed at Skynet/Cell structures and Toystory in realtime. Would them kicking MS's ass really make a difference on that issue?
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Welcome teamxbox readers!
Sorry clown you're not in xbox fantasy land anymore. Your homework assignment for being such a retarded xbox fanboy is to go to your local game store and sit and ponder WHERE THE FUCK DID THOSE HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS of Sony titles come from.
Are there army's of geniuses out there in secret underground bases cranking out Sony titles,
or,
are you just a fucking dunce with a big ugly box with no games sitting in your living-room?
Y'know, if being hard to program for is a serious issue, then Sony are fucked. Talk to any game developer - three cores is more work, but at least they're symmetrical and have real random access to memory via a cache. The Cell has only one general purpose core, and you have to explicitly shuttle data to and from the embedded memory on the other processing elements, which is hugely annoying. Sure, it's fine for obvious streaming applications like video decoding, but definitely more problematic for other work. Nobody in their right mind thinks the next Playstation is going to be anything but much more difficult to work with than Xbox 360.
Of course, maybe that doesn't matter. After all, the PS2 is generally considered to be the hardest of the current generation to work with, and yet it's still the market leader by a comfortable margin.
Bottom line is that it's all going to come down to having the best games at the right time, and a superior marketing plan. The hardware is almost irrelevant.
"the PS3 is cell, and heavily vectorized, an unknown architecture." ... systems but never 3 cpu, or 5 cpu systems. I have to wonder if one of the PPC cores is dedicated to some type of special task.
Cell is also PowerPC and vectorized architectures are actually pretty common. MMX, SSE, AltaVec, Cray supercomputers...
The three cores in the Xbox 360 kind of bug me. For some reason I think SMP should go up by powers of 2. I mean I have seen 2 cpu, 4 cpu, 8 cpu, 16cpu, 32 cpu
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
So far in this PS3 topic, the base comments are: 1) a prayer for XBox 360's demise, 2) a statement that Sony's bragfest will be "quite a refreshing change from the endless hype" for the 360, and 3) speculation that developers will flock to Sony's 8 Cell vector processors because XBox 360's three PowerPC cores will be too hard to develop for. Oh, and now someone is piping in with typos a-plenty voicing excitement on what will surely be an immensely informative session about this console that is likely at least a year from release.
Granted, there have been swift and thorough rebuttals to most of these, but they are posted alongside further MS bashing from others. The MTV special will be drawing fire for months, I'm thinking. Because, you know, a hilariously pandering noninformative show intended to appeal to an audience whose intelligence they (hopefully) underestimated certainly has the same exact intent as an event aimed at the gaming media. There was a video released on OurColony the same day that provides much more information about the functionality that I hope they can deliver.
And before I'm branded as a Microsoft fanboy/apologist/astroturfer, I own all three current consoles and the current crop of portables. I've found reasons to enjoy all of them. XBox 360 is the next-gen console we know most about so far, and some of what we do know is impressive, like the cohesive Internet experience that it seems that the new Live can offer.
Honor Among Slackers. A veri
I remember when the original Xbox came out. There was a lot of talk about how hard it was to program for the PS2, and as soon as the Xbox closed the sales gap, a lot of developers were going to drop the PS2 and develop for the Xbox exclusively. First, game developers are going to develop for whatever platform is going to line their wallets with fat amounts of cash. The Sega Saturn's well publicized development difficulties were not the reason that developers dropped them. The problem was that Sega of America screwed up every single aspect of marketing the machine, didn't distribute it properly, and overpriced it at launch. The Saturn outsold the PSX in Japan until they prematurely announced the launch of the Dreamcast. If they had supported the Saturn longer, and waited another year on the Dreamcast, the console wars would have been a three-way battle between Sony, Nintendo, and Sega. Microsoft wouldn't have even tried entering the market as a fourth player. Second, good coders learn their way around the system, and learn how to develop for a platform, even if it is problematic at first. Also, there are always companies that provide middleware for a system, taking care of lots of the nuts and bolts portions of the development process. Naughty Dog (creators of Crash Bandicoot and Jak & Daxter) made some good coin as providers of middleware for other developers. They had bright people who understood the PS2's complex architecture, and they were able to ease the development process for other game makers (for a fee!). The console that "wins" the console wars will be the one that targets all markets, makes quality games, and offers a good value for the money.
That's very well said. They terminated the Saturn so prematurely, games were still on sale for $49.99 in stores.
About the programming. I have NEVER seen all developers universally agreeing on 1 language being the easiest. I just don't believe all 100% of the developers feel the Xbox SDK was the preferred one.
Sony also confirmed the PlayStation 3, will use Blu-Ray discs as its media format. The discs can hold up to six times as much data as current-generation DVDs. It will also support CR-ROM, CDR+W, DVD, DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD+R formats. It also confirmed the machine would be backward-compatible all the way to the original PlayStation. It will also have slots for Memory Stick Duo, a SD slot, and a compact flash memory slot. It will also sport a slot for a detachable 2.5 inch HDD somewhat similar the Xbox 360's.
Sexy
Out of the box, the PS3 will have the capability to support seven Bluetooth controllers. It will also have six USB slots for peripherals--four up front and two in the back. Sony also laid out the technical specs of the device. The PlayStation 3 will feature the much-vaunted Cell processor, which will run at 3.2 Ghz, giving the whole system 2.18 teraflops of overall performance. It will sport 256mb XDR main RAM at 3.2 Ghz, and have 256MB of GDDR VRAM at 700mhz.
Seven controllers?!
http://www.firstadopter.com/fa/archives/000988.ht
Forget the whales - save the babies.
Full set of PS3 Pics: Playstation 3 Pics
From FirstAdopter.com
AV Output
Screen size: 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p
HDMI: HDMI out x 2
Analog: AV MULTI OUT x 1
Digital audio: DIGITAL OUT (OPTICAL) x 1
Two HDMI out ports? If the PS3 can drive two displays, that would explain the support for the seven bluetooth controllers. I wonder what kind of performance hit that would mean, at 1080p x2
PS3: lanparty in a box!
Here is a cut and paste from the Gamespot article:
Sony also confirmed the PlayStation 3, will use Blu-Ray discs as its media format. The discs can hold up to six times as much data as current-generation DVDs. It will also support CR-ROM, CD-RW, DVD, DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD+R formats. It also confirmed the machine would be backward-compatible all the way to the original PlayStation. It will also have slots for Memory Stick Duo, a SD slot, and a compact flash memory slot. It will also sport a slot for a detachable 2.5 inch HDD somewhat similar the Xbox 360's.
Out of the box, the PS3 will have the capability to support seven Bluetooth controllers. It will also have six USB slots for peripherals--four up front and two in the back.
Sony also laid out the technical specs of the device. The PlayStation 3 will feature the much-vaunted Cell processor, which will run at 3.2 Ghz, giving the whole system 2.18 teraflops of overall performance. It will sport 256mb XDR main RAM at 3.2 Ghz, and have 256MB of GDDR VRAM at 700mhz.
Sony also unveiled the PS3's graphics chip, the RSX "Reality Synthesizer" based on Nvidia technology. The GPU will be capable of 128bit pixel precision, 1080p resolution, some of the highest HD resolution around. The RSX also has 512mb of graphics render memory and is capable of 100 billion shader operations and 51 billion dot products per second. It also has over 300 million transistors, larger than any processor available commercially today. It will be manufactured using the 90nm process with 8 layers of metal. The RSX is more powerful than two GeForce 6800 Ultra video cards, which would cost roughly $1000 total if bought today.
Pretty damned impressive.
" The thing that's alien about the Cell tech is that the SPU's can't access main memory. They have their own private address space of a tiny chunk of embedded memory attached to each SPU, and the programmer has to write code to move data in and out of this memory via DMA."
But unless you happen to have a Cell workstation you have no idea how hard it is to program the Cell.
A lot will depend on the compilers and tools. For all I know it will be totally transparent to the programmer.
Most programmers working on xBox 360 and PS3 will not be coding in assembly.
Maybe Nintendo just to be really whacked out will instead of using vector cells will have a huge bunch of FPGAs so that the PowerPC core will have x programmer definable hardware accelerators. Since Sony is going for Cells, Microsoft for SMP, what else is left for Nintendo?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
a little more blunt than I would've been, but after seeing the information about the PS3 it's really true.
I know that the quality of games will end up being the real factor, but given Sony's track record I wouldn't expect anything but a good number of solid games. Plus the backwards compatibility will mean that the console will launch with a large number of great games anyways. I didn't pick up one of the current generation consoles (ps2, xbox) but now that I have a little more free time I think that I'll be getting one of these and from what I see my choice will be the PS3. Not only does it look to be the most powerful, but I'll be able to catch up on all of those PS2 games that I missed.
Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know. ~Lao Tzu
Is it just me or do they have better spinsters than engineers over at Sony Computer Entertainment?
I'm sorry for the trollish opening, but the thing that really chafes my balls about the hype surrounding the Playstation3 can be boiled down to this:
The PS2 was purported to have "Hollywood-style" graphics capabilities.
Anyone remember the line about the PS2 being able to render Toy Story in real-time? I do - it was such a boldfaced lie. Dreamcast had better graphics than the second-gen Playstation. and it was older! Hell, Super Nintendo had better graphics than Sony's first offering... and again, it was older, too.
According to the Gamespot coverage: