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The 5-Year Console Cycle Is Dead
Pickens writes "The Xbox 360 recently turned five years old, and with no known successor on the horizon for the 360, PlayStation 3 or Wii, Cnet reports on the death of the 5-year console cycle — one of the video game industry's most longstanding truisms. For example, the Nintendo Entertainment System came out in 1985, followed by the Super NES in 1991, the Nintendo 64 in 1996, the GameCube in 2001, and the Wii in 2006. But now, why should console makers upgrade their offerings? Consumers are still buying their machines by the hundreds of thousands each month, and ramped-up online initiatives are breathing new life into the systems. A lot of it has to do with the fact that with the current generation of consoles, each company found a way to maximize either the technology behind the devices, or the utility to a wide range of new gamers."
Sorry for the bad netiquette / karma whoring, didn't realize these were available ...
* The PlayStation®3's SPUs in the Real World - A KILLZONE 2 Case Study
http://sijm.ca/2009/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/michiel-van-der-leeuw.pdf
* Practical SPU Usage in GOD OF WAR 3
http://www.tilander.org/aurora/comp/gdc2009_Tilander_Filippov_SPU.pdf
Cheers
-- ...
CPUs & GPUs are still too damn slow.. A graphics programmer who worked on Uncharted 2 (one of the best looking PS3 games available) shares his comments on the future of GPUs / Rendering
http://filmicgames.com/archives/467
The hell it was. Gamecube and Wii used different media formats, different input device busses, different CPU, different GPU.
Gamecube GPU - ATI "Flipper", 162 MHz
Wii GPU - ATI "Hollywood", 243 MHz
Gamecube CPU - IBM PowerPC "Gekko", 486 MHz
Wii CPU - IBM PowerPC-based "Broadway, 729 MHz
I second this. I have a gaming pc, a ps3, and a wii.
My wii sits collecting dust 90% of the time. My ps3 gets used a lot for netflix, and I play games on it every once in awhile; it gets a ton of use when I get a new game that I really like and I want to beat, like AC2. My computer gets used more regularly, although it's pretty much ignored when I'm playing a game on my ps3 like AC2.
In the end, my wii is great for playing Super Smash Bros, and Mario Kart, when friends come over. Other than that it doesn't get used much at all.
I'll be getting PSMove come Christmas so I'll see how it compares. It seems like it will basically be Wii with PS3 graphic capabilities which should be nice.
I really do wish they would make a backwards compatible HD Wii though. Even if the graphics suck using a higher resolution would be nice. After playing my PS3 for an hour, playing the Wii physically hurts my eyes because everything looks out of focus and fuzzy.
Wii was actually one of the only consoles to NOT be sold at a loss.
2006 Article