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Sony Won't Invest As Heavily In PlayStation 4
donniebaseball23 writes "Sony CFO Masaru Kato told investors this week that the company won't be looking to put the same kind of massive R&D into PS4 as they did with PS3. PS3's costs were astronomical because of Blu-ray and the Cell chip, but Sony's bottom line can't take another similar hit. Analysts are speculating that this will leave the door open for competitors like Microsoft. 'PS4's hardware could be less impressive than the PS3 at its launch. I think Microsoft will really be able to put the screws to Sony in the next console war,' Panoptic analyst Asif Khan commented to IndustryGamers."
HW is a good way to sell the console to game developers, though. A lot of big 3rd-parties jumped ship with the Wii, simply because it couldn't keep up. Similarly, you can get developers to make good exclusives if you have a uniquely powerful console.
And then, once you have the game developers, you get the games that sell the console to the players.
Why would anyone ever dream of developing a console that is weaker than a mobile phone? It has a better power source, better cooling possibilities, fewer space constraints, and fewer wireless communication requirements.
a big comeback for Sega.. Atari? I hope they bring back Pong.. still the best game ever made
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
All consoles makers use OpenGL - except Microsoft of course. If Microsoft takes greater advantage in the console arena, it'll mean less developer mindshare on open standards in place of MS's proprietary engines. Fewer GL developers on consoles could translate to fewer GL developers for desktops as well - which is one of the main barriers to companies writing games for Linux and other non-MS platforms.
I guess anyone could give their take on which company is less evil, but it would seem to me that the ramifications of MS dominating in the console arena could be a pretty bad turn for all other gaming platforms. Sure Nintendo is still around but their scope is somewhat different from the other two.
I have left slashdot and am now on Soylent News. FUCK YOU DICE.
I own a PS3. I bet on the PS3 with real money. I'm no fan of microsoft (ask anyone, anyone at all, ask everyone), and I won't buy microsoft consoles (go ahead, put screws to my fingernails, is that all ya got?), but I am not cheerful with Sony either. Rootkits, removing otheros, lawsuits against people who try to restore what they bought and paid for (when I buy an NVIDIA video card, NVIDIA does NOT get anal over what I do with the video card, when I buy an ASUS motherboard, ASUS does *NOT* get anal over what I do with the motherboard; its *NONE* of Sonys business what I do with the PS3 that *I* paid for and *I* own (and they stopped owning all of it the second *I* paid for it)! I might not be able to stop their lawyers, but I can never buy any of their products again, and I can strongly discourage anyone and everyone that I know from ever buying any of their products again. They don't have to be reasonable, and I don't have to support them.
Sony admits to a massive strategic blunder? Nintendo retreats from their "casual=king" position?
Did Microsoft just "win" this generation?
Wow what a clueless moron
you might be forgetting the part where the 360 not using the cell at all.
Why not reuse the cell design: use the exact same chip, but manufacture it with current lithography technology, smaller structures, higher clockrate, more SPUs. It may do the trcik, and there is no new learning curve for devs. I have programmed SPUs, and they can do wonders if used correctly.
http://www.stolk.org/tlctc
Sony didn't say that they are going to produce a less powerful design, but a design which costs less, in terms of investment.
Although the outcome may be a not-so-powerful console, the other possibility is something with less "custom" solutions.
Such as:
- Off-the-shelf CPUs/GPUs, or custom ASICs using 3rd-party licensed CPU/GPU designs (instead of designing one from scratch)
- Off-the-shelf DDR(1/2/3/4/5/whatever) SDRAM (instead of using something from Rambus)
- Blu-ray, instead of a new kind of optical disk design (or, even eliminate the physical medium altogether in favor of online purchases)
If this is true, then it is not a surprise. Sony released the PS3, the most technically advanced of all the current generation consoles, only to be outsold by the comparatively weak Wii. And in addition, games released on both PS3 and Xbox 360 generally looked better on the 360 (e.g. Bayonetta).
Sony of all companies should have known that the most technically advanced console doesn't generally perform the best in the market. Sega's Saturn had a multiprocessor architecture before most game programmers knew how to program for one and the PlayStation destroyed it in the marketplace. Similarly, the PS2 fared better in the marketplace than the technically superior Xbox and GameCube (which was primarily hampered by storage space issues like the N64 before it).
What is important is third-party support. That's what made the NES, the PlayStation, the PlayStation 2 and other successful consoles. If you have a system developers want to develop for, then you'll get the good quality titles that have people flocking to buy your system.
Freedom is drinking a beer in the park when you're supposed to be at work.
No they didn't.
The PS3 had a lot of power when new. But since it was such a far-out architecture, developers had to work to get to it. And developers generally aren't interested in doing so. They'd rather just port their C code over and type make.
A system that is a little less powerful but much more conventional (like Xbox 360) could easily cost less and produce better games overall, even if the absolute top levels of capability are reduced.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Except it is. And the OP exactly right.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123069467545545011.html
brandelf -t FreeBSD
There are a ton of quality games. I can't even keep up anymore. There are just too many. If you can't find any, turn in your gamer card. It's like the golden age of gaming right now. I have about 50 games that I still have to get to--about 15 on the PS3.
But no, they do not run games fine. Play BF BC2 on the PS3 and then on the PC at max settings with 8X MSAA (or even 4X) on your monitor's *native* resolution. It's quite breathtaking actually. You'll go back to your PS3 and think the games all look like mud afterwards.
We need new consoles. I'm tired of running games at 960x480 resolution, blown up 2 or 3 times to reach my 1080p HDTV's resolution. We also need more physics and destructible environments (see BF BC2 PC with max physics effects) and more open environments (no corridor after corridor like recent consolized games) and less loading between those corridors.
Combined with the active hostility Sony treats its customers to since it came out, you'd think the PS4 would come with hookers and blackjack just to get people to bite.
Don't worry, I'm sure the new Grand Theft Auto will be a launch title.
Repeat after me: Don't feed the trolls.
Ha. Sorry that's just plain ridiculous. A high PC would have out visually outpreformed a PS3 when it was released. The difference is today on a nice rig vs a PS3 is like a a PS1 vs Atari 2600.
Consoles are the lowest common denominator, and they reduce the progress of video games because devs develop games that can run well on old slow tech even when options many times their superior are available.
http://www.pcauthority.com.au/News/170605,nvidias-fermi-so-much-potential-so-little-software-support.aspx
brandelf -t FreeBSD
What I'm about to say is all speculation. Unlike other /. armchair quarterbacks, I fully admit that what I will predict is 100% speculation.
But honestly, I think MS may just skip the disc route. They'll probably sell everything through the Xbox store, and because retail is so important to consoles, they'll sell a box with packaging, just with a code inside like they do now for DLC to download the game. No more discs. They must continue to support and drive retail because that is the bulk of sales, and this is how they'll do it.
Plus, advantages to them is, why bother with a disc format when they can skip it all together, it's now widely accepted (see DLC and Steam being insanely popular), and they get first sale from all copies.
Though if they do this, suddenly OnLive becomes a contender in the console war. To the average clueless gamer with a good net connection, the ability to not have to buy a new console, not have to wait for a download, and the ability to play his/her game with the save game ready to go at a friend's house is big.
Things are gonna get interesting...
define successful? Sure the Wii has moved a lot of units. But in terms of games sold, hours played, or in terms of money made for developers (not necessarily manufacturers) they are way behind. Good for nintendo does not necessarily equate to success as platform.
Sony Playstation maybe, not Sony proper, only antitrust suit would likely bring that, if ever. Though I don't know why Sony doesn't just buy Nintendo.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
and they reduce the progress of video games
No, they don't. Maybe they reduce the progress of techno-wank, but some of the best and most innovative games of this generation have been on the Wii, DS and PSP.
That's assuming that mobile phones don't become more powerful than consoles.
Not likely. Even assuming that is a possibility the only machines that would be under threat would be the handhelds and even this can be debated. The main problems with any portable device are it's screen size and it's controls, so when comparing a handheld against a console or PC with much, much larger screen size and extensive control's then there is no contest.
Compare say a mobile smartphone against handhelds such as the Nintendo and Sony offerings, again there is not that much of a contest since the handhelds have dedicated buttons (soft or hard) that are not on the screen which in itself is IMHO a pain since the screen eventually gets marked. This is not to say mobiles cannot be a gaming platform, they can, but their games are no way as sophisticated as those on a handheld or even a console or PC. Of course if you like games such as "Angry Birds" then a mobile smart phone is fine. I know you can get adventure games for the mobile smart phone but IMHO the controls sux. I have a HTC Desire HD and my wife has an iPhone 4 and I have yet to see a game for those machines that can compete with console, handheld.or even PC games.
But I hear people say, it may possibly plug your smartphone into a HD TV via (wired or wireless) and possibly add peripheral devices such as keyboard and mouse. Great, assuming this is done your mobile smartphone is now a console but you still won't be able the play more sophisticated games when the phone is disconnected from it's peripherals or HD screen unless the laws of physics suddenly allow you to put a 40" or bigger HDTV in your pocket. So in summing up, mobile smartphones, handhelds, consoles and PC's all offer different levels of gaming sophistication and to compare mobile games against console or PC games is just pointless.
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
Sony has really pissed me off with all their bullshit. So much that, *I* won't be investing heavily in the PS4, either. Like not at all.
The consoles make it more like gaming was in the early days. Tweak the shit out of what you have, because you can't just make them buy a new machine to play your "super game". Consider the C-64... its lifespan showed that developers could make some seriously awesome game if they got to know the architecture.
What PC gaming did is make it easy for companies to write something that took more horsepower, and because of the architecture of PCs, developers could just require more this or more that. (believe me, it wasn't a conscious decision to make the architecture open... IBM was just in a rush.)
I like the idea that game companies work on an architecture and squeeze it dry. Why should we go back to the model that allow developers to be lazy and code for the "latest and greatest" because they can't be bothered to get into the architecture. One of the primary reasons I don't game on the PC anymore is the upgrade loop I can't get out of. Now that my computers are not for gaming, I get MANY more years of life out of them.
Only LAZY developers make inferior games.... great games come from great programmers, not from great hardware.
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
*facepalm* s/effects/affects/
I really do know better. FFB attack.
Yeah, all this is saying is that Sony won't be building expensive proprietary technology like Cell or Blu-ray, and esoteric technology like XDR Ram, into the PS4.
They probably are going to use off-the-shelf components like MS. Intel, IBM, ATI, Nvidia, all make components that are impressive. There is no need to develop everything from scratch in-house like the PS3. In fact, the MS tactic of using off-the-shelf components (which they have used even on the first Xbox) is clearly the way to go. Outside of a few first-party titles (Killzone, Uncharted,God of War) that look wonderful, most third-party cross-platform titles haven't bothered to tailor their development for the Cell. And as far as the disk format, there really isn't any impetus to go beyond the 50GBs that Blu-ray affords on the PS4.
The real reality is that game development costs are astronomical for AAA titles. Developing for a single platform really isn't viable, especially if they are using an esoteric architecture like the Cell. Its unreasonable to expect developers to give one platform special attention over the other, and in the same respect its unreasonable for a platform maker to build technology that will go unused into their machine as well.
Looking at the NGP, Sony seems to have adopted a plain-jane quad-core ARM cortex-A9 and a quad-core PowerVR chipset. Hardware that will be common place in the next year, Qualcomm's Snapdragon APQ8064 is similar in design, Sony clearly intends on having the Playstation Suite on Android phones converge with the NGP. Sony clearly intends on having the PS4 go a similar route.
It wouldn't be surprising if PS4 uses a ARM CortexA15 (which goes upto 16 cores) and an Nvidia chipset like "Project Denver"; Nvidia ARM/GPU hybrid. So that all development efforts PC/NGP/Android/iOS/360/Nintendo Project Cafe/PS3/PS4 can be brought under one roof. Obviously, the concept of the hardware platform itself is changing for console makers. Cross-platform tools such as Epic's Unreal Engine are becoming mini-platforms unto themselves.
The Cell SPE went on to also become the 360's CPU, but there are no Cell PPEs (the thing that actually makes them Cell processors) in the 360.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If they're anything like the trolls in The Witcher 2, I'll do anything for them. Best characters in the game.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
If you don't like it, don't play it.
MAG, Resistance series, R&C series, Uncharted series, GT5, and several others all very much impressed me and kept my attention a long time. None of them would've happened on the other consoles, and they're fun games. If you're not into those, then so be it. Its not Sony's fault you have different preferences, but I'm more than pleased with my PS3's capacities.
PS the PS4 won't need to re-invent blu-ray, because its already here, so there's a major R&D cut right there.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
I don't think phones would replace consoles, either. But aside from that, which OS will the consoles run 5 years in the future.
Some food for thought: Android 3.1 supports Xbox 360 and Wii controllers (among other things). It's up to the apps to make use of that, of course... but the support alone makes me think that Google looks at more form factors than just phone and tablet.
Look into the future. No, not the next generation of consoles, but I imagine 10-15 years from now.
Did I think my desktop would be replaced by a notebook even though they had been around by a decade or so back then? Hell, no. Just not powerful enough. Nowhere close. The small business I help a friend administer used to have 7 desktops and 2 notebooks for 7 employees (notebooks were travel computers but not for "real work"). Now it's around 20 notebooks and 1 desktop for around 20 people. Desktop acts only as a server.
It's not just the power or portability. I recently set up a salvaged desktop at home and at the end, I though, "what a goddamned cable hog". Wires to the monitors, to the speakers, to the internet, electrical from the body, from the monitors, etc - all adds up. It made the place look like a terrible mess. While I prefer workin on a desktop's keyboard and monitor size, there is little else that appeals to me.
In a dozen years, I imagine, about 3 console generations, there will be some type of Game Boy Super Advance 3x or whatever it's called, and not only will it act as your phone/portable game system/controller, but it will hook up to your TV wirelessly (perhaps with help from a transmitter stick that goes into the HDMI/newest_standard) and be your actual game system as well.
It won't be the most powerful, but for many, it will be good enough.
So when you look back, you discover the Cell was actually intended to be the GPU for the PS3. They thought it would be so good at stream processing that it would do the graphics. I don't know if that was wishful thinking or willful blindness but either way, we all know it didn't work out. Ended up causing a lot of trouble.
It was really a bad idea for Sony to go and design a new, experimental architecture for use in a consumer system. That is the kind of thing to try in research and maybe high end systems first, and then once it gets refined move towards mainstream.
The WSJ is a bit misleading - there is no definite information that the whole cell chip itself was used to create the Wii and 360 CPUs. However all three chips are derivatives of IBM's pre-existing PowerPC architecture (itself a subset of their POWER processors), with the Wii having by all reports a faster version of the PowerPC that was in the GameCube. The way that machines are created there's no way that research that went into one chip didn't go to improving all of IBM's other chips (and as the article suggests), but not to the extent that they would use the whole Cell architecture and give it to SCEA's direct gaming competitors (and I would have thought there would be an explicit exemption to that in the Sony-IBM contract). The wikipedia article (see below for links) is quite informative. It will tell you that the XBox used the PPE part of the Cell chip - from what I can tell the PPE is a PowerPC derivative - I previously heard that it was a custom built version of the PowerPC 970 that was the last Mac PowerPC chip. The special thing about cell is the parallel architecture, with the PPE and SPE tags causing some confusion. You can claim that some help might have been indirectly provided by Sony, but IBM has the expertise (and pre-existing relationship with Nintendo) to make the chips without Sony's funding. In summary it seems all chips have a basis in IBM's longstanding PowerPC series, with the Cell being a bit more specialised. As the specs of the chips are secret is difficult to say what exact differences there are without examining the chips in detail. Have a look at these links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(microprocessor)#Power_Processor_Element_.28PPE.29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC
Xbox uses a simple general-purpose PowerPC CPU. Yes, it's the same unit that's part of the Cell, but it's also the most boring part of it, and lacks everything that makes Cell special.
The current console model used by sony and microsoft is broken. They lose money on everything. They lose money on everything. Microsoft has yet to make a dime on xbox 1 and xbox 360. The lose the money to get marketshare.
Xbox is in the red if you account the entire development and marketing history - which was very expensive because of a "let's throw however much money it takes to force ourselves into the market" attitude. But year-to-year business has been profitable since 2008, with revenue ($$$ for licenses, games and peripherals) ahead of expenses (cost of making the console units themselves) - so it would seem to me that the model itself works just fine.
Also importantly: NO USED GAME SALES. Game publishers believe that they are being killed by used games, and will flock to a platform where they aren't possible.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
I ain't ever buying anything Sony again, so it doesn't matter.
Life was hell, then I discovered Linux...
Every Nintendo console has turned a day 1 profit. Only Sony and MS do the razor blade mechanism.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
That'll work really fine until Comcast cuts you in the middle of your game of GTA6 because you hit the download cap.
Excuse me, not that I really give much of a shit about consoles (Been a PC gamer since i got burnt with three dead PS1s, still have an Xbox 1 and GC left over from the kids I'm trying to figure out what to do with) but I don't understand how you can say the PS2s specs were shit when it had a 64bit 300Mhz CPU and a GPU capable of 1280x1024 when it was released in 2000.
Maybe you have forgotten what we had at the turn of the century but I haven't as back then I shelled out nearly $300 for a refurb 1.2GHz Celeron box at that time and it was a good deal and used to run my Geforce 256 SDR, with its whole 32Mb of SDRAM and 120MHz clock. IMHO things only started getting ape shit with regards to processing power with the whole P4 VS Athlon on the CPU side (still keep a couple of those around for loaners, still surf the web quite nicely even after 7 years) and the Radeon VS Geforce on the GPU end. Both of those only really started cranking and leapfrogging around 2004-2005 IIRC, which would have made the PS2 4 years old already.
So if you look at the specs from the context of the time they really weren't bad. One thing that always struck me as weird is why the original Xbox didn't just slaughter everybody. I mean you had COTS X86 parts, so porting should have been laughably easy, with none of the long "learning curve" you see on most consoles, it had good specs and a low resource OS and used DirectX, which most game houses had plenty of experience in. The only thing I thought they'd done wrong was not include some "OtherOS" style functionality, to where those that had an Xbox could use it like a Netbox for basics like checking email or posting on forums.
Ya know, just as we saw Google just show up and blow the doors off with Android I'm really shocked somebody hasn't done the same with game consoles. Just imagine how nice of a console you could have with one of those really affordable Bulldozer APU, maybe put in the 4 core/8 thread model with the 65xx GPU built in? It would be ultra low power, have 2Gb of DDR3 RAM, a 500Gb or 1Tb HDD, use Streams for full HD acceleration of just about any format, and use a low resource OS like an embedded Linux with a lightweight GUI like LXDE. Seems like it would be a no brainer, and could be an all in one media center/game console that would be easy to port just about anything to. Hell buying in bulk you could probably sell them for under $300 to start and still make a healthy profit and just have an encryption chip to keep the hackers from modding the games while giving them access to the rest.
But just the fact that they are still making and selling PS2s and folks are buying them after the other two of that generation are long gone shows that folks thought the graphics are decent enough to still play after all this time, and giving the developers credit they did manage to squeeze some pretty sweet gaming goodness out of the PS2. But when it was released I'd say it wasn't no wimp, just MOR compared to the competitors that came later.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Or they could sell read-only SD cards. They're cheap and arbitrarily large.
Just in case they listen to you, can I request that they do upgrade the GPU? Many games are rendered at lower-than-screen resolution, presumably because their graphics are limited by fill rate. They could all be rendered at-or-above screen resolution and downsampled to avoid aliasing, but that requires moar horsepower. That's a common argument against consoles from the PC gaming crowd.
year-to-year business has been profitable since 2008, with revenue ($$$ for licenses, games and peripherals) ahead of expenses (cost of making the console units themselves) - so it would seem to me that the model itself works just fine.
All that actually proves is that it hasn't failed yet. When Microsoft entertainment has finally made more than it has spent over all time, wake me up.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Ha. Sorry that's just plain ridiculous. A high PC would have out visually outpreformed
No, ironically *this* is just plain ridiculous, were you "high" when you wrote this? ;-)
The difference is today on a nice rig vs a PS3 is like a a PS1 vs Atari 2600.
Sloppily-written English aside, this is the *real* part that's "just plain ridiculous." I very, *very* much doubt it's anything like that big a difference, regardless of how much better the PC is. It would have to offer borderline photo-realistic, fully-immersive VR-style 3D for this to be the case and even a non-games expert like me knows that there's nothing out there that's that good and won't be for a long time yet.
(And please don't say that you were exaggerating or using hyperbole to make a point- the only point you were trying to make there was to illustrate the alleged *scale* of the difference, so if that wasn't meant to be accurate, there was no point to it).
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
One recently released example is L.A Noire. The game is 23.5GB. The game fits on a single Blu-ray. The Xbox360 counterpart fits on 3 DVDs. Im not sure how much was cut from the Xbox version, but i wouldnt expect the visuals to be nearly as good. The Bondi dev team talked about a 40-angle focus on facial features alone,
- Final Fantasy 13 is a whopping 40GB or so. Its a MMO that relies heavily on cut scenes though, so that is to be expected.
- Dead Space 2 is some FPS my brother plays. That weighs in at 12.7GB
- My favorite hack and slash fighter Dynasty Warriors 7 is surprisingly 20.7GB
- Arcade fighters Tekken 6(11.4GB) and Mortal Kombat(9.8GB) bigger than I thought they would be.
Im sure there are plenty of games that are smaller, but thats not to say that developers dont make good use of the disc space they have.
1) SPUs are not FPUs. They're full-fledged CPUs with limited local memory.
2) The PPE is double-threaded.
3) The PS3 has bluetooth connectivity.
4) The PS3 has wifi connectivity.
5) The PS3 has a built-in hard disk.
6) The PS3 has a blu-ray drive.
7) The PS3 has a web browser.
8) The PS3 can use off-the-shelf accessories.
9) The PS3 controllers recharge themselves while you use them.
10) The PS3 has a built-in power supply, and is still slimmer and more quiet than the matching Xbox 360 models.
11) The PS3 can play back most kinds of media without requiring PSN access or special-purpose storage devices.
12) The PS3 doesn't have the Xbox 360 reliability problems.
Kinect is definitely cooler than the Move, but having no buttons, it's more useful for "social" games than traditional ones.
Sony spent a lot on developing Cell, and especially on developing Blu-Ray. They can use both of those technologies in a new console without suffering anything like PS3 development costs.
Sony has been paying for die shrinks of Cell and RSX this entire generation, as they've been lowering the cost of the PS3s they are selling. Cell itself was designed to be a scalable architecture, with support for multiprocessing (i.e., multiple Cells) from the beginning. They could put a 28nm next gen Cell chip with 2 PPEs and 16 SPEs and have something decent, or they could do 4 PPEs and 8 SPEs (for backwards compatibility), or perhaps they could even take handful of Power 7 cores along with the 8 SPEs to get good branchy behavior along with the vector processing of the SPEs for backwards compatibility.
None of that should cost anything like what it cost to develop the first Cell chip.
As far as Blu-Ray, that was *expensive* when the PS3 launched. Those 405nm laser diodes were hard to come by, with really poor yield, and they cost a *lot*. Nowadays, they could put in an 8x BD drive "off the shelf", and get better performance with far, far lower costs than they had to come up with Blu-Ray in the first place.
With such a system, they could bring forward all of the software they developed in coming up with the PS3, as well. PS2 had basically no operating system, so Sony had a lot of software development costs to bring PS3 out. All that is paid for and ready to go if they wanted to go with a next gen Cell and Blu-Ray.
The GPU is going to be something modern and fast from AMD or Nvidia, so that's not development costs they'll have to incur, either. And remember that consoles don't have to worry about driving 4k monitors at higher than 60hz or anything crazy like that. Just a nice, simple 1920x1080 x 60 frames. That's easy for modern GPUs.
All in all, Sony should be able to spend far less on development costs while still fielding a very powerful next gen system. They just have to take advantage of the very significant investments they have already sunk developing PS3.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX