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European PS3 Launch Delayed to 2007
An anonymous reader writes "Sony has finally admitted that the November release date for the release of the PS3 is unfeasible. Specifically, it will not be available in any PAL territories until March 2007. Sony cites '(a) delay in the mass production schedule of the blue laser diode', forming a critical part of the much-maligned Blu-Ray drive. With the Xbox 360 having been released for almost 6 months in overseas markets, and the Wii looming large, can Sony afford a delay like this?" Update: 09/06 17:58 GMT by Z : Just to make sure you caught it, the announcement includes the word that the U.S. will only be getting 400,000 units at launch in November, with Japan at 100,000 units. Go Sony.
I've got ask now, does anyone else feel that Sony are completely screwing up everything with the PS3?
No really, no troll, no Xbox fanboy'ery - seriously, what the hell is going on with Sony?
I've been following the news on these new consoles from the beggining, there's always been a fairly steady stream of rumours, proven to be true / false, comments, press releases etc, however one thing has stayed solid throughout, Sony keep having bad stuff to say.
There's the price, people speculated for ages, Sony prepared us for a high price with the "you should get a second job, because our console is so great" - the Sony fanboys responded with "they are using reverse psychology, it's going to be well priced, you'll see" (hell not just fanboys, game journalists said this too!) - then bam, 600$
Then they've got 2 units (sku's you Americans call them?) - why?! Don't copy Microsoft it was stupid of them too, it dilutes the market and makes it harder for developers to target a SINGLE stable platform, which is what console gaming and development is about! (idiots! both MS and Sony, bloody idiots!)
Then there's enforced blu-ray, which they may see as a bonus, we may or may not, depending where our loyalties lie.
Then there's the removal of rumble, then there's the loss of GTA4 as an exclusive, then there's delays to PAL regions, then there's rumours of less of them coming out at launch than suspected (it goes on!)
Then there's developer rumours "totally difficult to code for" then there's more rumours "isn't that much more powerful than 360" then there's screenshots pretty much showing it's really not that substantially better
Also the unit is quite a bit bigger than the X360!
The unit is using bluetooth, rumoured to have shitty latency for wireless controllers
On top of all the rumours and debates / speculation, every comment from Sony exec's seems like they are making it up as they go along, not really 100% solid on anything? - it sounds like a small nitpick but for goodness sakes I'm serious, I really am having trouble beleiving anything, some of the things they confirm / deny or speculate it can do seems like the person at the time is just thinking "that sounds good!" and the poor saps in engineering need to figure it out.
Case in point, E3 last year the "mock up" PS3 came with a boomerang controller, it had 2 HDMI out ports, it supported 7 controllers and had 3 network ports, it was capable of pretty much anything according to Sony.
At the time, I call them on it saying due to Microsoft surprisingly announcing the X360 much more complete than expected 1 week before E3, Sony panicked, pulled out a beta unit from the development cupboard, stuck a backplate on the empty plastic box and grabbed a beta controller to boot!
The back of the 2005 E3 model was a joke, it was like some dickhead manager was telling the illustrator designed, no no copy and paste, we want more of that port and more of this port, more ports! yeah! - 2/3 of them removed now, hummmmmmmm
You've also got Sony far less capable of making a decent unified online system like live as well (no, not an MS fanboy, see my post history, I'm just a cynic)
I do NOT WANT Microsoft running the gaming industry then nickel and diming us gamers with microtransactions and monthly / yearly fees, so I need Sony to do fairly well, but they are arrogantly riding on brand loyalty assuming they will be the best period, I feel they could be wrong.
(Yes, I'm also aware Sony would nickel and dime us like MS with microtransactions and fee's HOWEVER I firstly don't feel Sony would do it as aggressively and secondly with competition Sony can at least keep MS in check)
Either way the PS3 (in my opinion) thus far has been a shambles, a complete ballsup of epic proportions, I hope it does work out and I hope it does drop price, but at this rate who knows.
It's here: http://malfy.org/
I'm posting this on pure speculation as I've not investigated but AC I don't know if you're aware of this but apparently Sony is very much in the RED financially, they are betting the whole lot on the PS3 and blu-ray adoption.
There was even a large article recently on how Sony the entire corp NEEDS the PS3 to win or they are stuffed.
Assuming this is true, this means the PS3 doesn't just have to keep the gaming division up but the rest of Sony too.
The PS2 was an amazing success overall and it might be capable of that but it's dwindling now, what about the PS3, can it save Sony so they can get back on track? Who knows but based on what I've heard from them, I'm not touching that thing until it's at least PS3 revision 3 or 4 with some problems fixed and software released.
The best part of this is that several retailers here in Australia have been advertising pre-orders for the PS3 (notably $big_chain_store) and some of them were aiming it as a possible Christmas present for the kids, this is REALLY going to piss off any parents who were dumb enough to do so (although a pre-order for an A$1000 console is pretty high up there as it is).
/* FUCK - The F-word is here so that you can grep for it */
It is their fault. They are the ones who insisted on pumping the PS3 full of bleeding edge technology, expected the best and never planned for the worst. There are always big risks with using the latest and greatest.
The only things I see filling my PC games DVDs are huge-ass textures and buttloads of crappy useless cinematics & cutscenes.
If Oblivion didn't hit anywhere near the DVD storage limit, i don't see how anyone but Square-Enix and their "15 minutes of cinematics for each 5 minutes of game" can get above...
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
When I read the GPP, I assmed he meant that the console would have two DVD drives instead of one so that you could insert both disks at the same time. Upon reading his comment more carefully, I realize that he actually meant swapping the disks in and out. If the console involved swapping disks in and out, then I for one would not buy or play such a console.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
I think what most people are suggesting is that we get rid of the pre-rendered part... lets do that cut-scene in real time. In the Playstation 1 days it was nice to have it pre-rendered, the console's natural graphics were crappy enough that the video offered a more detailed look at the characters and was enjoyable. At this point however the natural power of the next gen consoles can produce graphics that are just as good if not better then what pre-rendered can do.
What I mean by better is two reasons... 1 performing the cut-scene in real time using the actual game graphics you'll never see any video compression artifacts (because it's not a compressed video) and you'll never have to worry about the videos being of the wrong resolution or aspect ratio for your screen. Nothing bugs me more then when I'm playing a game in HD and then I get a little 640x480 window in the middle to watch a cut-scene, or worse if they stretched it out across the screen. The 2nd benefit to doing the cut-scene in real time is it becomes seamless with the game you're playing. Tomb Raider I think is an excellent example of this. Back on the old playstation games I'd enter the area where the boss is hiding and it would go to a cut-scene Lara would start a plot developing conversation with he boss, but something wasn't right... ah yes... see I reached the boss while wearing the unlockable alternative costume and using a sub-machine gun but the cut-scene has her wearing the stock outfit and the trademark pistols. Not to mention I entered the left door and took 5 steps and the cut scene started as if I hadn't yet entered the room. Not in Tomb Raider on the 360 all of the cut scenes are rendered in real time. So when I walk into that room with the boss it's as if the console just went on auto-pilot and started controlling Lara, no loading of the video, no miss match in character movements like some bad B movie, and she's wearing the outfit I last saw her in and holding the gun I last saw her in.
So lets recap
- Significantly Lower Space Requirements
- no video compression artifacts
- No worries about a miss match in resolution
- No worries about a miss match in aspect ratio
- localization can be done by swapping out audio streams instead of duplicate video
- No pause or hiccup between loading the game and the cut-scene
- Seamless Character movements between gameplay and cut-scene
- character looks like and is equipped exactly how they were while playing the game
About the only thing I can see where video might have a benefit is for some sort of end credit cut-scene where the location/character outfit etc. doesn't exist anywhere else in the game. Like the main character went to Disney to celebrate their victory, it might be easier to just throw that in a video instead of storing the model and textures for the one-off scene, though you'd still have to store versions in multiple resolutions, aspect ratios and languages, which can add up fast, I suppose it would depend on the length of the scene, it's still debatable. The other scenario is if the cut-scene changes locations fast and frequently, like it has someone walking on a street and cuts to someone on a plane. then it does a split between the two. But even that can be handled in real time if optimized properly considering it's a scripted event so they can load the next scene while the current one is playing without worrying about user interaction changing what happens next, so that senario is debatable as well.So you see, the argument isn't that we should get rid of cut-scenes, just that pre-rendered cut-scenes are in a lot of ways archaic by comparison considering the graphics processing power of the next gen consoles can perform the same thing, often better, in real time.
Collector's Edition
The top 10 games of the past 6 years by store revenue have been:
The Sims, Diablo 2, World of Warcraft, Some Harry Potter game, Zoo Tycoon, Sim City 3000, Warcraft III, Roller Coaster Tycoon II, some WWII shooter, and AOM. I don't think any of these are on the bloaty side of the business.
8-bit to 16-bit (NES to SNES): remarkable graphics upgrade, changes the experience
16-bit to 3D (SNES to PS1): remarkable graphics upgrade, changes the experience
3D to FMV (PS1 to PS2): reasonable graphics upgrade, minor experience change
FMV to HD FMV (PS2 to PS3): marginal graphics upgrade, no experience change
There's several ways to update and improve a game. Graphical improvements are one. Gameplay improvements, new features, better AI, and new controls are others. Graphics have long since reached the point of diminishing returns. When you're talking multi-million dollar budgets for the graphics in games, you've gone beyond diminishing returns.
Developers fell back on "make it look prettier" to convince people that their game was worth buying, but now that's stopped working. Now the developers will have to find something else to focus on - Wii is banking on a forced change in interface to drive innovation. The games will still look good, but a successful Wii developer will spend more time playtesting and finding new ways to use the interface and less time making the 3D mip-mapping bump-shaded inverse nipplomatics really bring to live Laura Croft's facial mole.
Thus far the only legit use I've heard of for that extra space is HD cutscenes. Ok that's maybe got some nifty factor to it, but that's just a movie. I'm not getting a game to watch a movie, I'm getting it to play. So, really, what games are going to need more than 9GB of assets? You have to remember, there are two real limits to the amount of assets you can put in a game:
1) Time to make them. Nice as it would be to make a virtually unlimited environment, you simply can't afford to do it. You have to stick to a budget and that means making decisions on how big and detailed you make your world.
2) Memory. The PS3 has 256MB of graphics memory. So, no matter what, all your scene data, models and textures, has to fit in that. That means you can't just create massively detailed textures for everything. You've got to keep it in your memory budget.
So what games need this kind of space? I mean I remember then Sturm und Drang about Oblivion not being able to to fit on a DVD... Ya, about that, it takes 4.1GB on disc. Not even a full SL DVD. Game has some damn good graphics too.
You have to remember that the PS3 isn't coming on to the scene with some totally unprecedented graphics hardware. It is around the power you get with the nVidia 7900 series (it's an nVidia design) and it's memory limitation are the same as mid-high end cards. We already have a taste of what it's going to be capable of. There's just only so much you can pack in to 256MB of RAM, and thus only so much you need to pack on disc. All the whiz-bang features of the Cell are irrelevant, the ultimate determining factor of max assets on the screen is the video memory, and that combined with budget restrictions then determines how much space you may ultimately need.
At this point, I'm just not seeing it. I'm just not seeing the need for a ton more space. Right now we have games out that fill up a 256MB video card, and they weigh in under 5GB (Oblivion is the largest I've yet found, most are much smaller). So I'm just not seeing the need for a ton more space, unless it's for cutscenes. Now if that's all you care about ok, fair enough, but ask yourself how much prerendered cutscenes really do for the game. Isn't it maybe better to just to that kind of thing in the game engine itself (like Warcraft 3 does for example)?