Slashdot Mirror
MS Touts Time Advantage Over PS3 Launch
Gamasutra is reporting on Microsoft's loud exclamations on the advantage their November launch will afford them, compared to the expected 2006 launch of the PS3. In fact: "UK Xbox boss Neil Thompson has boasted that Microsoft expects to have a even more significant lead on the PlayStation 3 than previously supposed, suggesting that, in his opinion, the PlayStation 3 might launch in Europe as late as spring 2007 ..." More on this FUD from Next Generation.
If Sony released the PS3 on the 31st of October?
I know it's almost certainly not going to happen, but we can dream.
Also, why is it FUD if it's MS, and rumours if it's anyone else?
C17H21NO4
I know how Slashdot likes to spread their funny acronyms whenever they have a chance, but this is certainly not fear, nor uncertainty, and certainly not doubt. The PS3 is going to be equal to or slightly better than the Xbox 360 in performance, but it's going to be launched at least a year after the new Xbox. That's pretty much a fact. It's definitely not going to be launched earlier than spring/summer in Japan, and then late summer/fall in the US. Given how Sony treats the European market, it's probably going to launch here about six to nine months later, so I don't think a 2007 release date is off the wall.
The only people who care about the 360 are the hardcore Sega "Sony killed my Dreamcast with Hype" and Microsoft is "always the winner" crowds.
No Sony PS2 owner has ever expressed any interest in the 360. If such a PS2 owner exists, I'd love to see proof of it.
No Nintendo GameCube owner has ever expressed any interest in the 360. If such a GameCube owner exists, I'd love to see proof of it.
PS2 owners are talking about getting a Revolution as a second system.
GameCube owners are talking about wanting a PS3.
PC gamers are laughing at the 360 since it looks like 360 versions of games are having to be down ported. They will just buy new video cards for their systems to play the better versions of Obvlion, Quake, etc...
All the Xbox owners who love to talk about having the 'most powerful system' are abanoning the 360 for the PS3. Bogus PR sites like majornelson don't appear to be helping Microsoft stem the tide of defections.
There are probably 10-15 million diehard Xbox/Dreamcast owners who will buy the 360 no matter how bad it is or how crappy the games look. They could all buy the system on the day it is released(if MS was able to make that many systems) or over five years.
No matter how much Microsoft tries to pretend they are in a race with Sony and Nintendo, the reality is they are at best trying to salvage some percentage of the current Xbox installed base. With what has to be the most disasterous console launch year ever, I will be impressed if Microsoft manages to retain %75 of current Xbox owners. There are huge numbers of current Xbox owners saying they are looking at switching to the PS3 and or Revolution.
MS, give the shit talk a rest, focus on your base - they aren't a happy group of people right now.
Good lord, what the fuck is wrong with you? Why are you jumping to conclusions so easily? I didn't waste my $200 because there were still many great games for the DC that I fully enjoyed.
Do you really think I just made stuff up to "hear" myself talk on the internet or pick an argument with you?
I never said that the games weren't the most important deficit. I just felt a few lesser known facts needed to be pointed out. It's pretty obvious developers went to the PS2 in part because it was a safer bet, even though it's still harder to program for, has only half the texture memory of the DC, and also doesn't have texture compression. And Sony paid several companies for exclusive games. Sega did manage to put up a good fight, and sold almost five million units, which they said was the threshold for continuing to support the console. It's unfortunate that Sega didn't have other divisions with deep pockets like MS or Sony to draw money from. After all, it's hard to compete when others are willing to spend whatever it takes no matter how high the losses. I would guess Nintendo wouldn't have been able to do so many in-house games without Gameboy profits keeping the company going.
even on paper, the 360 specs are equal or greater than the ps3's.
anyone with a decent understanding of the technology involved can see that.
simply having a faster cpu, as in the case of the "6.4GIGAfLops Emotion Engine" that was in the ps2... doesn't make it remotely more powerful if the competing solution has a much better graphics subsystem as was the case with the xbox.
the new cell boasts "2 trillion FLOPS...etc)... let's see what the real world performance is like... if anyone has a copy of the xbox launch video... bill says the xbox does "1 trillion flops"... seems like a few months ago he said the 360 does "1 trillion flops" also.
more likely than not, they're all lying through their teeth.
the cpu in a console is the least important part. look at every single console from the past... the ones with great graphics processors held their own or surpassed the ones with a greater cpu.
and the graphics processing subsystem of the 360 is indeed next generation, as opposed to the rsx of the ps3 which is a 90nm geforce 7800. the next ati card that will have similar capabilities to the 360's gfx processor will come out in late 2006. unified shaders is the future, hell even nvidia has basically said they are transitioning to it when reluctant to do so earlier. the massive amount of bandwidth being used for the framebuffer also means that essentially, 4x antialiasing can be done without further penalty.
but if you look at both systems as a whole, they both have their strengths and weaknesses. basically you can say they're approximately equal.
and really, that's what consoles are about... to people who say "it's about the games"... if it's about the games then why bring out new generations of consoles? keep making games for the previous ones.
clearly graphics and sound etc are damn important. at least 50% of the equation.
i wonder what final fantasy and grand theft auto would look like on atari 2600 hardware.
Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
Come on guys. Every Xbox360 slashpost for the last three months ends up with some highly moderated post about how the Xbox360=Dreamcast. If it's gotten to the point where you're using one word and getting modded up X points, it's too far. There are other, far more intelligent reasons why a first release does not equal an advantage, but a comparison to Sega is not one of them. Sega is nothing like Microsoft, and the Dreamcast is completely different than the Xbox360.
Microsoft could not be more different than Sega in this situation. Sega was already running out of cash. Its arcade incomes had dropped next to nothing. More than that, Sega had lost its single major technology partner - Microsoft - just before launch, because Microsoft had suddenly decided to start dev on its own console. Sega lost its president just before the Dreamcast launch. It postponed the launch date an entire month after a solid promise of September 23. Sega was banking on the Dreamcast, but Microsoft will not go under if no one buys an Xbox360. Sega nearly did when few bought the Dreamcast.
With regards to the hardware, there are now declining returns on hardware performance. Three years of R&D does not look like three years of graphical and gameplay improvement to the mainstream. Nintendo has wisely realized this and correspondingly revamped the UI technology rather than the graphic tech. I haven't seen the PS3 in real action (few have), but I can't imagine it can do much more technically than the Xbox360, at least in terms of the difference between the Dreamcast and PS2. Sega pushed the online capabilities of the Dreamcast, but they were too far ahead of the game (this was when ISDN was fast). Now, with broadband penetration in most American middle class homes, Xbox Live 2 looks revolutionary.
Finally - and unfortunately - Microsoft has realized that it really isn't even games that matter to a consoles success: it's culture. The Dreamcast's launch lineup was unarguably the best console launch ever, and hedgehog heads and tails above the medicore PS2 launch and Halo-driven Xbox launch. What it was missing was cultural penetration. But owning an Xbox, in America and Europe, is cool. Turn on MTV and watch Pimp My Ride. It's not PS2s people want in the backseats of their cars, it's Xboxen. You never saw anything like that with the Dreamcast. Sega thought it was all about the games, and it never was. The PS2 succedded because the PS1 was cool, and because it racked up massive cool points with GTA3.
I could go on. Go research the Dreamcast launch and you'll see that not only is Sega/Dreamcast completely unlike Microsoft/Xbox360, but the market is a completely different animal now. But please, stop with the Sega comparisons. They're dumb.
So, people want to start this DC and 360 comparison again...let me tell all of you who never picked up a DC and have never seen one, it was and is better than a PS2. It was the only online console at the time. Games were often made on both systems, and often ran faster and looked better on the DC. The DC had all the advantages in place that the 360 had, the difference is that Sony did something Sega didn't expect...they dished out the FUD. Go back and do some checking and you will find that Sony's FUD compain against Sega was as bad as this one everyone is claiming M$ is up to now.
The fact is we have two huge companies going head to head over a console. This is honestly something that has never really happened. Sony has TONS of money and check out the numbers folks, their worth is more the M$. Sega and Nintendo never could have hoped to make the money these two companies make because they are specialized into a single market of consoles. Sony has their hands in everything from home electronics to DVDs and computers. There is a lot more money for M$ and Sony to duke it out with.
So we will see two new consoles going head-to-head at the same time, relatively. There will not be the 1 year gap like the last time, 1999 for DC, 2000 for PS2 and 2001 for Xbox. If PS3 is out in Spring 06, we will see to competitive consoles with close launch dates duking it out for supremacy and then we'll see if Sony starts up their own FUD.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."