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Playstation 2 Outperforms Everything?
Emperor Palpatine writes "This article in Wired talks about the soon to be released Playstation 2 from Sony. Some pretty impressive talk. If they work it out so we can hook these up to a 10baseT, I may have to give it a try. "
Actually, the 80M polygons you say are needed for life-like images is for a single frame. PSX2 does 70M polygons/sec, but image quality is split over ~30 frames/sec, which leaves you 2.3M polygons/frame roughly. Still pretty far from the "perfect image", but way better than anything out there...
One advantage that consoles nowadays have over PCs is that they are usually a lot cheaper! Sure computers are decreasing in price, but good highend hardware is still expensive. Some people simply can not afford to buy their kid a $2000 'Quake Machine' for their birthday.
If all you plan to do is play games, do you really need a computer? And although you can play old games, are you sure you will be able to play next months game? next years game? without spending hundreds of dollars on upgrades and new graphics cards?
--intol
That's the benchmark for flat polygons. Expect a significantly lower count for textured and shaded polygons, like the ones used in most games today. I can't recall the exact figures quoted before, but something like 15-20 millions polygons for textured, which is still pretty excellent.
Daniel.
I have always been almost proud of nintendo's hard-rock systems. I have dropped my gameboy out of a car-window, dropped a chair on my NES, spilled soda on my SNES, and dropped my N64 off the coffee table. They all work perfectly fine (yes even the 10 year old NES!). The only thing that seems to break sometimes with N64 is the joystick control. Other than that, I'd say N64 was made pretty damn well.
ul|tma -At least we all use linux-
3.68 MHZ in the SNES and 7.1 something mega hertz in Genisis. For comparison 4 MHz Z80 in game boy, and a earth shattering 10 and 6 MHz in the TI-89 an TI-83 respectivly. My 3 MHz SNES still outperforms my 25 MHz 486 for games.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Doesn't matter what Hardware Nintendo has. Nintendo WILL come out later than PSX 2 (It is a Nintendo tradition SNES, N64, etc.) That worked fine when it's competition was Sega, but now, it's go Sony to deal with, and sony is no about to let Nintendo win, (PSX is a big money maker for sony)
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Ever heard of a MULTI tap. BTW. The average age of a PSX gamer is something like 2-3 years higher than the average age of an N64 gamer, hmm, makes you wonder. Also, the lack of RPGs is what made N64 bomb in Japan.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I use Frotz for my IF games under Linux. It's fairly advanced and powerful (as much as that is relevant to IF). The if-archive address has already been given, so I won't repeat it, but you might want to check out http://ifarchive.org. If you dig around on ftp.apple.asimov.net, you can find disk images of alot of old infocom games, if there are any you don't have. It takes some work, but you can make Z files from 'em which you can run right in Frotz. Or you can email me at infocom@devzero.org, and I'll hook you up. :)
Too bad that dreamcast has been a big turkey in Japan!
What may seem to be cool to all of us, is rumored to be a nightmare to game developers.
(kick me for no links here)
I heard that Koei (Romance of the three Kingdoms, and others) is spending inordinate amounts of money developing for this thing already.
If they have to spend that much money.. how much will it cost us to buy their games.. not to mention the $400 price tag for the system.
Say it with me.... S U P E R F A M I C O M
or NeoGeo and all those other things that the rich kids in my suck-ass private school had.
Good Lord! Reminds me of the days when the introduction of the CD-Rom games meant crappy "choose a plot" "interactive" movies.
Umm, let's see. Those people will make the same salary regardless if I copy a game or not. Perhaps even if thousands copy that same game. In fact, more people may end up playing their game because they circumvented the prohibitive pricing. Any self-aware programmer knows why he/she programs, so that people use their programs. More people are playing their games, which could in turn, benefit their careers. Yes, I am a programmer, and I don't call it stealing. I would be elated if many people were pirating my game, because that means it was worth pirating.
What do you call it when Blockbuster rents games? How do the programmers make money then? From the one copy my video store buys? How about the zillion rentals? They answer is they don't. But, because it's legal, it's ok.
Don't judge me from your moral pedestal, come back down and live with the rest of us.
I really didn't want to post up a reply. I really, really didn't. But seeing how there is so much confusion over the Playstation 2, I felt forced to. Playstation 2 will be great, regardless of anyone's predictions. Sony has a loyal following worldwide, and Sega has consistently failed to deliver quality games or consoles since the Sega Genesis. The sales in Japan are dying quickly because everyone is waiting for the new Playstation. American gamers, typically the 'gotta have the newest now' market segment, are preordering at 'unprecedented rates'. 200,000 preorders is nothing compared to Japanese market numbers (low), which basically define a consoles success rate. If it doesn't sell like mad in Japan, it won't sell like mad here. About the price of the new Playstation, Sony will do whatever they feel is necessary when the time comes. They spent over a billion dollars constructing new facilities to build the specialized processors at the heart of the new PSX. What does this mean? Well, it basically says that Sony truly believes in the new system, and will do ANYTHING to ensure it's success. Remember when the original PSX debuted? It was $300 bucks, more expensive than other systems at the time, and sold like hotcakes. Keep in mind that Sony lost close to $100 per unit but made up the difference in software sales with an even 1/1 console/game sale ratio. Sony may be the M$ of the console world, but at least they deliver the goods. They made RPG's more available than ever for console gamers. They formed a brilliant alliance with Square. They even let some low-selling wacky games out (Irritating Stick? come on now)just because there were a few people that would buy it. At this point, Sony has little to worry about. Their console will sell millions, will be able to play older games and use older peripherals, and they'll retain their market share while providing kickass games. Nintendo and Sega will have their respective niches (Nintendo is typically for junior gamers) and will succeed in their own small ways. Hats off to them all, I love having a choice.
I agree completely that Sega has done too much wrong in the past. I too bought the SMS, Genesis, Game Gear and Saturn. The specs of these machines were fine for their time. What separates a great console from a crappy one is the number and quality of the games out there. Sega systems always had the least number of games compared to Nintendo and Sony. ALWAYS. I've been burned too many times by Sega and hopefully, I will have finally learned my lesson. The Dreamcast will be a tasty looking machine. It will be cool. VF3 will rock. But check back two years from now. There will only be a trickle of games compared to a continuing flood of games for the N64, PS and PS2.
For some reason, Sega has never gotten it. I have seen no evidence yet that they have finally figured it out.
The current system is a psx on *several* cards, which sucks because *you* have to the cards to work right with your hardware (oh, and it's dos/windows only--not even NT is an option). The new system is an entire Sony system, which is then networked and shared among developers. All you need on *your* workstation is an X server running on your OS of choice. Happiness. At least that's the theory.
Let's cover those points one at a time, shall we?
According to the tech specs, PSX2 has 32MB of main memory (in addition to the 4MB of memory on the GS, and a little bird tells me that there's also quite a bit associated with the IO chip). You won't be running Windows NT in it, especially once you've got the overhead of an emulator running on there, but it should be enough to play with.
As for the hard disk option, there are plenty of expansion ports to plug it into. Take your pick. The same goes for keyboard and mouse: I don't know about you, but I already have a USB keyboard which should work fine with PSX2. Between USB and IEEE1394 there shouldn't be much need to emulate peripherals. Not to mention that PCMCIA slot for the modem.
Yes, you'd be very hard pressed to emulate a PC on today's consoles, but believe it or not, things have advanced in the last five years.
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
"My PSX kicks ass!" "Well, my N64 kicks your PSX's ass-kicking ass!" "Yer stoopid!" "Not as stupid as your PSX!" "That's what your mom said last night!" "F**k you!"
(That's what they all degrade to.)
>1) Game review internet sites.
Hard to get really good info about the game from them. Many tend to be biased, not-up-to-update, and I can't help but think that some are on the payroll of gaming companies.
>2) Downloaded demos.
They're always going to give you the very best of the game in the demo. Almost all games (except Quake III) are over-positively shown in the demo.
>3) Rent a game first to try it.
Fine. But 2 big problems. First, it is hard to find places to rent PC games, so it only works for console games. Secondly, why should I, the consumer pay for the protection against inferior product from the game companies? The car dealership lets you have a test drive, they don't make you rent the car.
>4) Gaming magazines.
Firstly, always too late. Secondly, most of them are owned by the companies themselves. And most importantly, these things run like 8 bucks an issue. For what? A pile of biased reviews, pretty screenshots and 80% ads! For the amount of advertising revenue they must rake in, they should be giving them away. At least make them affordable. Also the same why should I pay argument exists as with #3.
Warez allow you to get a full, playable and in most cases, highly complete version of the game to try. Lots of them are missing speech and movies, so you'll probably buy the game to get them. (If you like it.) If you don't like it, you delete it and it didn't cost you.
They also benefit the companies indirectly. Either you like the game and buy it, or you don't like the game, but at least you tried it. This will encourage you to try perhaps a sequel, and if they improved it, you'll probably buy it. Let's say you buy the game and it sucks. Chances are very low you'll shell out for the sequel or another game from the company. You are much more likely to buy an improved game after playing the ware because you weren't bitten by the first release.
Pirating in this context, which I believe most pirates operate under, helps everyone involved. Don't let legal issues confuse you. There are plenty of laws in this world that are unjust, or skewed to favor the powerful. Pirating is the gamer's only means of protection against an industry that is far too likely to dupe them and remorselessly take their hard-earned cash.
First, my qualifications: None. I haven't played more than an hour total on console games since I gave up (regular) NES' Super Mario Brothers.
Next: my response to the post above is confusion. Yes, you can do multi-player with your friends. But are you really content with the proprietary gaming networks that it will require to do multi-player on the new Sony or the DreamCast? With PC-based gaming, you can do your multiplayer gaming over a local area network or over the Internet
Insight appreciated, this is somwhat of a random comment I know, but relying on the console makers for multi-play network capabilities seems a lot like WebTV or AOL for email service.
Just a thought,
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
That's debatable on earlier systems, and while clearer on the last gen (N64/Saturn or Dreamcast/Playstation), it's still debatable.
- For a change, Sony has produced real quality with their Playstation, and hopefully with the sequel. How long has Playstation been around? Ages. Sega and Nintendo have inundated the market with various "revisions" of their machines, all trying (STILL!) to beat the old workhorse, the Playstation.
Playstation is going on about 5 years at this point, IIRC. While Sega's machine release practices have been a bit less than stellar, Nintendo has had a pretty smooth path. I'd hardly call the N64 a "revision" of the Super Nintendo, or the SNES a "revision" of the NES 8-bit machine. By the same token, there is a pretty clear cut difference between Sega Master System, Genesis, and Saturn. Why is it ok if Sony wants to do this, but not the other guys?
- Sony's licensing for games is practically nonexistant. Look at the myriad of playstation titles out there... They definately don't have to go through the hoops that game developers have to produce Nintendo and, to a lesser degree, Sega games.
You know not of what you speak. Sony of America has to approve all games for release in America, though sometimes crap like Fantastic Four gets through. It may be easier to release games than Nintendo, but there are hurdles.
That's my take, anyways... Not that I really _use_ consoles. :) long live interactive fiction!
Obviously. Get yourself a subscription to Next Gen or check out their website at next-generation.com - they'll help you see the error of your ways. I myself am platform agnostic - I like pretty much any gaming system I've played with. They all have their advantages and disadvantages. In my house, we have a good chunk of the mainstream systems from 2600 on. My roommate has pre-ordered a Dreamcast (Sega Jesus) from 3 different places to make sure he can get one. He and I won't be living together when the Sony Jesus (PSX2) comes out, so I'm sure we'll both buy one. :) We don't have a Saturn right now, been looking for a good cheap one now that they're discontinued. We have never actually had an N64, but that's mostly due to lack of games.
As far as Infocom goes, while I was never very good at them (or any RPG or similar game), I can't deny they were fun. Anyway, this is all about games. Good games are good games, right?
I tried out the dreamcaat at Best Buy (preview model) with sonic all I can say is wow I didn't like how the game played but the graphics were flawless
I seem to remember an exploit printed in a gaming magazine for TMNT2 to turn your turtle graphic into the guy from that vampire hunting game that they made /way/ too many sequils to (can't remember the name), but when I got it home, there wasn't nearly enough pause on the splash screen to enter it.
After several hours trying to squeeze it in, I noticed the exploit letter was written by "A. P. Rilfools"
Man, I was pissed. Burned my allowance & a few hours.
Beowulf of these!!!
I think you mean UUDDLRLRBA start (or select start for two players). At least for Contra on the NES.
I imagine it has something to do with the deal they (likely) cut with Cygnus to develop their tools:
"Hi, we need gcc ported to this CPU."
"No problem. Here's your Linux executable."
"Uh, can we get a WIN32 binary?"
*snicker* "Not easily. Besides, there's no decent make for Windoze."
"Can't you integrate it with Visual C?"
"No. Micros~1 won't tell us how to integrate it, and VisualC isn't Open Source. Their make syntax is completely non-standard, anyway."
*sigh* "Okay, how much does this Linux thing cost?"
"It's free."
"...You're kidding."
"Nope."
"Well then the tools must cost extra."
"Nope, it comes bundled with a compiler, industry-standard make, perl, bash, and EMACS."
"...For free."
"Yes."
"You're not bullsh*tting us?"
"No."
"Why didn't we know about this before?"
"We wonder that ourselves a lot..."
I suspect a *BSD port is a simple matter of a recompile...
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
It makes all of the hardware used for rendering for movies look like a waste, doesn't it?! (Makes 3dfx and the rest look pretty bad as well!)Playstation 2 could probably do a fairly convincing job rendering something along the lines of Toy Story in real time (and well beyond what's needed for shows like South Park, which also uses some pretty serious hardware). This may be one of the most significant electronic products ever. I want to figure out how to set their chips up in parallel (like you can do with TNT2 chips) to render a real movie in real time.
Sound like the Street Fighter 2 crack to me ;)
UUDDLRLRBABA
Only for Player 2 though...
Well, there is the built-in USB and FireWire (or I-Port) stuff. I'm sure that if you can use the USB subsystem on a PC for networking (not sure how well it works, but I've seen solutions for it), then I'm sure some wizard will find a way to network these puppies.
The only problem that I see with them is that I can't find any hard specs on the processor, so all that I'm hearing sounds like a lot of hype, and the fact that the bus and the IO are likely slow (oh, and don't forget that it won't have all that much memory, from what I've heard).
So, in my opinion, things could go either way, but I'm really doubtful about this one. If sony has invented the be all and end all of graphics chips, then why don't I see the big rendering machine folks beating down their doors? When I hear of a partnership between SGi and Sony Electronics, then I'll start to credit the hype a bit more.
How does it compare with "professional" graphics accellerators, like the HP FX6+, or one of the fancy SGI chipsets? I have a hard time believeing that it can touch the FX6+ on geometry accelleration...
I bet what they mean is that it will run on a linux based OS, but the complier and a visual programming tools will be proprietary. Also the hardware is going to be proprietary, so while the OS that they build for this special hardware can't legally be proprietary, it won't do you much good if you don't have the hardware which will likly be kept under lock and key from non developers
"The other major constraint is total memory of 32 MBytes with no hard disk for swap space..."
Why would this be an issue? The advantage to having a set top unit like a video game system is that the programmer can program for one set of hardware specs and that is it and not worry if certain boot time programs are using space or not. If 32 Meg is it, I would guess this would be an advantage since one would not have to worry about every little configuration on each desktop.
Bryan R.
Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....
The article makes it sound like the workstation runs on a PS2 chip, but I suspect that it is in fact a custom hardware job with an intel workstation and a "playstation on a card". Bundle that with a cross compiler for PS2, and you have a "development workstation". Write code, run make, load binary onto card, instant playstation game. It sounds like the "old approach" was probably to hook up a hot SGI to a playstation with a serial cable/adaptor or something, and do all the data transfer that way.
Sega's Dreamcast is due for release in the US next month. It's been out in Japan since early this year (or even late last year?) It's lot's more powerful than the current playstation, but about the same as a high end pc/3d accelerator (costing 1/10 as much of course). It runs a version of Windows CE of all things. Not a bad system otherwise, if you really need a new console to tide you over until PS2 comes out.
Nintendo has announced a system named "Dolphin" but hadn't given any dates the last I heard. 2001 seems likely. They say it will use a PowerPC. I don't remember any other details. And of course the N64 has been around for a couple of years.
Color gameboys are kind of fun too, but not exactly the same thing.
FFVII is unplayable on the PC, it's a terrible port. Save your money and get the PSX version.
>> thanks to a 2560-bit (!) on-chip bus :P Besides, powers of 2
>
>theyve GOT to mean 256-bit bus (2560-bit would be a very weird bus width to choose
>are generally used for bus widths... 1024, 2048, 4096, etc)
I've seen this spec in several places, I thought it was a typo at first too. My impression it really is 256 x 10 bits wide, which would explain why the video ram and processor are on the same chip. Cool.
Isn't the NV10 supposed to have hardware transformation and lighting (and it is due out this fall)? And, I read somewhere that OpenGL handles transform and lighting, so, if nVidia releases new drivers for NV10 that uses hardware transforma and lighting, new and old OpenGL games take advantage of it automatically. Oh yeah, MS and SGI are supposedly working on Farenheit (sp?) API, a merging of the good of OpenGL and DirectX, so if that work actually goes somewhere, it's likely that will be the standard.
Furthermore, real-life polygons aren't only 3 pixels, and they're not solid colour. They're larger, and they're textured.
-----
Real life tends to use splines and fractals--the advantage of which is infinite resolution with high (effectively infinite, eh?) compression;)
-rozzin.
I certainly hope they can produce a decent racing game.
How much is the NV10 supposed to cost? I haven't seen any projections on it.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
being slightly out of this playsataion business (more of the computer-only games) i've been wondering if there were any other alternatives to playstation out there...
...sie sind nicht grün
Anyone have a sploit for this Playstation yet? Or should I old school it and left right left right up up down down left right left B A it?
Want Root?
Um...I have it and it works fine. What exactly is your problem?
I am not an idiot. Please use my name to email me.
"That's right, I'm quoting myself."
-Upsilon
They mentioned Linux, will these things run some sort of linux...
----
I noticed an interesting entry in the the POV-Ray benchmarks, recently:
http://www.haveland.com/cgi-b in/getpovb.pl?search=psx
-rozzin.
Erm... but what does this have to do with developing Playstation games? I can see where it'd be useful for rendering motion-JPEG sequences for inclusion on the DVD-ROM, but other than that??????
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Dolphin= better overall
Dolphin= cheaper
Dolphin= best choice
Even though this reads like a press release, if it actually lives up to the hype I envision the 3D Net of cyberpunk fame starting out as networked PS2's.
They mentioned Linux, will these things run some sort of linux or will the development kit be linux based? Free?
.
so you cant copy them with cdrwin? you would need a dvd-r suck
Buy the games you lousy pirate. If they didn't have to count on people like you stealing the games, they could afford to sell them for alot less.
Hardware transforms aren't that difficult at all. It's probably just like the PSX, which has a unit to do matrix multiplies and lighting calculations. You just loop through your display primitives and call the hardware function instead of a coresponding software function.
oh yeah, what about copying those game cds (uh.. backup purposes.. yeah) and what about pc emulators for those playstation games?
...sie sind nicht grün
Also, both Saturn and PSX retailed at $300 at the time of PSX's release (the Saturn debuted at $400 and dropped in time to compete with Sony). Price wasn't a major factor since the only other "next generation" consoles at the time (3D0 and Jaguar) were going downhill at that point and never recovered.
The PSX's success is due largely to its ease of development, which attracted new developers in droves. Once it became a success, the cheapness of CD media for gaming meant a lot less needed to be sold to break even - which lets "fringe" titles onto store shelves without driving anyone into bankruptcy. n64's expensive cartridges, for example, have a much lower profit margin per cart and less margin for lousy titles.
The real battle will be one of attracting developers early on. Once all the software makers take sides, the consumer's follow. It should be an interesting fight for the "next-next generation" consoles :)
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
of course consumers can get DVD burners ($425 last time i checked) , but of course the media is almost as expensive as the games.
$30 -- 5.2 gig
www.pricewatch.com
...It didn't come out in time enough to stem the record setting 200,000+ pre-orders for the Sega Dreamcast...
(http://www.infiniteplanes.net/segaworld/news/n
...It's going to cost the US equivalent of $391 dollars to $199 for the Dreamcast (which looks awesome!)...
(http://psx.ign.com/news/9498.html)
(http://headline.gamespot.com/news/99_08/17_vg_
...It'll hit more than a year after the Dreamcast starts out, and with the above mentioned advantages...
I don't care how good it is, I still prefer playing quake 3 with some serious hardware acceleration at 1024x768. Which runs above 30 fps. Until televisions become that high resolution (even HDTV can't compare to monitors) playstation will suck.
People, their what's for dinner.
uhm... yeah, but which one will I have Linux running on with compilers and doing my work on for non PS2 people and be able to upgrade without invalidating the warrantee - *and* be able to play games on.
--
these things are going to be huge.
"Why will they have to release the source?"
At the very least, they will have to release the architecture-specific mods they've done to the kernel - this is a radically different architecture from most out there, so this will probably be a fair bit. I suspect there will be more than this available, though. Why would they re-invent the USB and Firewire drivers that are already out there, for instance? No, I think they will modify/improve and release. It could only help them.
Cheers,
Bun
"Anyone that has ever gotten an idea based on any of my work and done something better with it-good for you."--J.Carmack
Fresh meet for the emulator community. I want in on this project. Now we get to hear how bitchy sony will be when they find out that someone wants to make an emu of it(not just me)
The Secret Government Ego Project
I was wondering how the Playstation does on the GOJS benchmark?
Also, Sony claims memory bandwidth of about 49 Gbyte/sec. But that only applies to the 4 Mbyte of embedded RAM. The other 28 Mbyte of external RAM is much lower bandwidth. I've seen some of the demos, and they are quite impressive, but it just seems to me that 4 Mbyte is pretty limiting.
The cool thing about consoles is they really are plug-and-play. They are designed to do one thing, and have all of the necessary components to do so. You don't need to worry about drivers, OS patch levels, or different capabilities of graphics cards. This is nice for end users, but it is wonderful for developers. Developing a game to run on Win 95, Win 98, Win NT, with 3dFX, TNT2, or non-accellerated graphics, plus worrying about filesystem layout issues (DOH! someone put \WINDOWS on D:!) is a nightmare. Second, since game consoles dont have to be general purpose computers, they are designed with the features programmers like, such as high resolution timers, specialized graphics API's and so on. All of this reduces development time and costs for console games, which theoretically makes them cheaper to the end user. Because of the standardized hardware platform, consoles are much less likely to crash than PCs. Consoles "boot" faster than PCs. Of course, the only console in my house is an original nintendo that I got for free. I don't play games so much that it seems worthwhile to get a console, but I can definately see the advantages.
Oops. That's not right. Further reading and pondering enlightened to the fact that there's 80 million polygons in a *still* life-like image. Soo.. to do 60 fps in life-like detail would require 4.8 trillion fps. Damn.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Well, it sounds like the workstation is going to have an integrated PS2 unit (probably just a PCI card), and the interface code might be OS specific, but that evades the real point, which is the Sony is applying the same philosophy to the dev workstation as the console itself... You buy the machine, and you get everything you need.. the PC, the software, the interface, all in one black box. Hell, it probably even boots right into some custom development environment, and you never even see that you are running linux (unless you are clever enough to hit alt-shift-1 ;)
Intersting that you'd say Starcraft and Alpha Centauri are impossible on a console. Warcraft, Command and Conquer, and Civilization II all exist in Playstation versions. I haven't even seen Warcraft or C&C in action, I can't imagine how they did the controls. Civ2 I've seen but not played, it looks like it works pretty well. I don't see any reason SMAC couldn't be done in a console format too. I wouldn't want to do it on today's PSX though, 2MB of memory is a LITTLE cramped.
I just spurted a big wad of goo all over my 17" monitor. How does that compare to the PlayStation 2?
www.cfug.org/infocom/
has some information (just a site i found in a search) about linux and infocom games.
I really dig the atmosphere you get with text-based games, though I've never actually gotten very far in any of them.
"A go-kart is still a go-kart even if powered by a formula 1 engine."
That sounds like one very fast go-kart. It would definitely beat the other go-karts. Your point?
Mike van Lammeren
It will challenge your head, your brain, and your mind.
Like this would replace the 1400 CPU Sun rendering farm that was used for "Its a Bugs Life." And your PS2 would do it in real time. Yeah right. Don't forget PS2's resolution of ~320x200 vs a movie image's resolution of 2000-4000 lines. Thats 64k vs 10M-40M pixels per frame.
AFAIK not quite that much.
You get to look at a still picture for ages and examine all the detail. A frame in a 60 fps video is gone in 1/60th of a second, you don't need anywhere near 80 million polygons per frame.
*After* a new shot has started, where you have objects which have been in view for a while (half a second) you need to be up to nearer the full 80 million polygons per frame. When a complex object is new in the scene, you need far fewer polygons for it, so you can average out the rendering.
I would *guestimate* that depending on the sequence, you'll only need to render about 2 trillion polygons per frame. Still big, but much more acheivable, of course some scenes will need hardware capable of near the full 4.8 trilion.
A good mpeg encoder will make use of this to reduce the size of an I-frame and the next couple of frames - adding detail in a few select places as the eye needs it.
--
N64 blew away the current PCs when it came out. (P166 with Voodoo 1) The dreamcast was much more powerful than PCs a year ago (when it came out) and is still a match for current PCs. PSX 2 will blow away an Athlon/NV 10 combo becuase of its specialization.
Blew away? No. Superior? Depends. But with the consol market you get a big advance every few years - and in between those advances you get stagnation.
Even if the PSX2 does leave top-of-the-line PC's in the dust, in two years it will look like cheap crap next to a 2 gigahertz K7 with a 256 video card.
Which brings me to another point: the Playstation 2 is vaporware. It is silly to compare future consols to current PC's without factoring in the rabid pace of PC hardware and software development.
Then their is ease of use, quality of games (when was the last time you saw a PSX game with a patch? How many times has Mario 64 crashed on you.)and a broader gaming library.
And when was the last time you downloaded a new level for Mario 64? A mod for Madden 98? Designed your own map for Final Fantasy 7? Create a new physics model for Tekken 3?
Consols will never come close to PC's for speed of development or flexibility of using mods. To do that, they'd have to become computers.
I would have consider myself at one time but, Sega has made too many mistakes for me to get behind anything they do. I bought the SMS,Genesis,SegaCD,32X,GameGear,Nomad, & a Saturn. I feel like I have been screwed over on all but the SMS, Genesis & the Nomad. I've seen a Dreamcast and yes it looks sweeet but, I'll never plop out the ducats for one. I like my playstation but, I think I'll just be content with my computer.
stealth
BTW The Phantasy Star series is what made me loyal to sega for so long so if they make a sequel on the dreamcast I'll probably eat my words.:p
I agree that this is not going to replace the primary machine that any real geek uses. But there is a huge market for consoles because their is a huge section of the population that doesn't want compilers and text editors because it confuses them. They want to plug in a cartridge or pop in a cd, hit the on button, and start playing.
Unless they decide to shoot themselves in the foot again and go with a cartridge based console.
Good riddance to them anyways. Greedy bastards.
> Why would a machine designed to play games need a text editor? It doesn't. COnsoles are for games, and only for games.
And only for games with the most primitive of input methods I might add. I can't see myself playing TAK on a console. Lessee, all the number keys are used, as well as ctrl, shift, alt, pause, several fkeys, and several keys on the keyboard. Arrow keys scroll the screen so you don't have to whip the mouse (or in a console's case, the stick) around to do it.
Heck, a game like Longbow 2 probably uses every single key on the keyboard.
Yes perhaps the PSX2 can theoretically use the keyboard. But the average console game will never use one. Thus most are joystick jigglers where complexity is in these ridiculously hard to sequence "combos"
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
As always, Microsoft giving people what they want now.
Think about this. That many polygons, at a TV resolution, you could probably do much of the texturing with polygons Now that's 3d :)
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
From a link in the article:
"Software developers looking to write games for Sony's next-generation PlayStation console will do
their work on a proprietary, Linux-based workstation built by Sony, the company said Friday."
I took that to mean that Sony was going to build workstations using the new cpu/architecture. I see now that it was probably wishful thinking.
Cheers,
Bun
"Anyone that has ever gotten an idea based on any of my work and done something better with it-good for you."--J.Carmack
While completely possible from a technical perspective, it's just not practical. Sure you can emulate the CPU and BIOS but a computer is more than that. There's RAM (most game systems only have a few megs), hard disk (no virtual mem and a few megs of RAM and you'll have a hard time doing anything), keyboard, mouse, etc... Peripherals are what make todays computers. You can't emulate those.
>I really didn't want to post up a reply. I really, really didn't. But seeing how there is so much confusion over the Playstation 2, I felt forced to. Playstation 2 will be great, regardless of anyone's predictions.
.18 micron chip. All others have failed so far - Intel, AMD, 3Dfx, NVidia, Ericsson (Bluetooth)...
How do you know?? At this point, it is still vapourware. You give lots of good reasons why Playstation 1 was a hit, but there are LOTS of things that can go wrong with PSX2. I mean, a lot of companies try to do ANYTHING to ensure the success of their products, but sometimes the product just isn't good enough.
Some serious pitfalls Sony have to avoid:
1) They fail to do the promised 128 bit
2) The PC or other consoles beat it before it comes out. When Playstaion 1 came out, it beat the PC hands down in graphics, no argument. 3Dfx released something called the Voodoo 1 around then, but it took quite a while for it to catch on...two or three years while Sony could consolidate their position. Now, the 3D cards race is going at insane speeds on the PC. The fourth generation of 3d cards will be out for the PC THIS year. Sony will not go into a virgin market, and even if they beat the others they can not count on being safe 2-4 years this time.
3) It will be too expensive. The NEO-GEO was great for its time, but no one wanted to pay the price (what was it...$100-200?) per game. Same thing here. They are doing the Emotion Engine which will not be cheap. DVD player. They will have to pay for using USB and Firewire. This time they will add a keyboard and other peripherals. Good quality comes with a price...gamers will not be happy if Sony choses low quality.
4) Marketing wise, it will "fall between two chairs", it won't have a clearly defined market. There have been machines before that have been undecided if they are gaming consoles, computers or "home entertainment centers". Philips CD-I, Commodore's CD-TV, and what was its name....3DO? They tried to do everything and consequently they did nothing really good. They all crashed and burned on the market so fast you hardly had time to blink.
5) Difficulty and cost of developing=fewer games. Sony sold the hardware for the PSX1 for a lot less than they actually cost, and made up for it by licensing the rights to make games. A brilliant move. But this time, the hardware cost will be a lot higher, and the developers fewer since developing games will be more difficult and expensive. Sure, Square is good, but can their games alone support all the gamers and Sony?
6) Sony has underestimated the time and difficulties of development. I have seen the attitude from some console makers that being in the console market is the hardest thing you can do with all the cutthroat competition and all. Computers is actually seen as being easier to develop. But "Will this work on my PSX2 if it has an Apple USB mouse, a no-name Firewire modem and no keyboard?" is a question Sony have never had to answer before. This time they will have to do an entire operating system. Think not? Remember that they have promised that this will be a email and web client extraordinaire. They have talked about making Everquest available! If you are going to surf the net or play Everquest, you need a keyboard. You need a harddrive. You probably need a mouse. So its not just new hardware, they have to develop and test software as well, like a secure web browser, an email client, a chat program, something to show the nice picures you take with the included digital camera, probably an ICQ client, and so on and so on....
7) Game programmers will have same problem they have with PCs now - different hardware and software configurations. There goes the BIGGEST console advantage.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
You know, corporations always have these huge R&D budgets on copy protection. This has gone on for over two decades now and they still haven't realised that IT DOESN'T WORK!! They should keep that dough and spend it on the system or advertising, or even to lower the cost of the product...
Even if they have some proprietary storage device, someone will come up with a way to grab it's information onto another format (ROM images anyone?). Then either run it on an emulator on a computer or create a peripheral for the device which has similar storage capabilities and store it there.
If you ask me, the PSX was so much more popular than the N64 because of the fact that the games could be copied. I know many people who bought the system for that reason. They wound up buying a few games as well. That's money Sony got that they typically wouldn't have because these people don't normally buy game systems to begin with.
The solution to piracy is simple:
Make it more cost effective to buy the product than to copy it. Case in point, VHS tapes. You can buy a movie now for $10-$15 on tape. Considering the cost of a blank tape, the rental of the original move, and the time needed to dub it.. It's worth my time to buy the movie instead.
By that time, it will be Sony vs. Intenga, or is that SetendoCE.
Cy
It really isn't a terrible port other then being
;)
for windows and using directX. When I first
started playing it, I found it unusable due to
extensive loading times which were fixed by
replacing my broken cdrom drive (full install
would have worked if my hd wasn't full, and if
the AVI's weren't loaded from cd)
Also, my Voodoo2 was bought for one reason...
FFVII and it spead it up considerably.
The biggest drawback I found was the sound which
was horrible without that yamaha synth that
killed my system resources, that could have been
fixed by a sb64 or better.
These days you can probally get:
$100 - Voodoo3 (or find a tnt)
$60 - SB64
$40 - 50x cdrom drive
$30 - FFVII
:$230
# I paid $200 for my 8 meg voodoo2,
# $80 for my sb128, and $30 for my 40x cdrom drive
# and $50 for FFVII.. and no longer even run
# windows so you got a good deal
--
Eric Windisch
> thanks to a 2560-bit (!) on-chip bus
:P Besides, powers of 2 are generally used for bus widths... 1024, 2048, 4096, etc)
theyve GOT to mean 256-bit bus (2560-bit would be a very weird bus width to choose
"There is no spoon" - Neo, The Matrix
It will be using the IBM 400MHz copper PPC chip (actually a subset of the PPC arch) and an ArtX (companmy formed by old SGI workers) chipset, using a Matsushita DVD drive, but wont play DVDs. the Matsushita version of the drive will (because the DVD alliance people want $20 for each system that plays DVDs, idiots) so just to clarify a few things (and it WONT have a cartridge port to play yer old n64 games)
If you have ever had the priviledge of using an emulator for older computer games (C64, AppleII) then you would appreciate what the pirates have done. Protection on games usually prevented the game from being placed on an image that was readable by an emulator. Sometimes the protection would result in incompatibilites with the emulator and sometimes even the original system itself (Descent 3 did this on my system with the original CD!). Now that it's been stripped, the game can be enjoyed 20 years later rather than forgotten.
The reverse engineering and stripping of protection is the tool. Tools are not good or evil. Only their usage by Man tends to dictate that.
According to a number of different, collated sources and things I saw at Siggraph, the reason the PSII is so fast is because the CPU is devoted almost entirely to the needs of graphics. This includes things like vector and matrix mul-add instructions (just like a DSP chip) and putting the entire thing on a single chip. Internally, the bus width is either 2560 or 4960 bits (can't remember exactly now). The real specs are around 66 million textured and lit polys per second. That is, texturing and lighting make almost no speed difference due to the huge bus width.
Considering that the top of the line IR2 does around 10-12M polys a second the Nvidia chip is still going to fall far behind. Why? Well the IR2 does almost the entire GTXSR pipeline on separate hardware. Consumer level cards don't do that. Although the TNT2 et al claim to do 5-6M polys/sec that is only if nothing else needs to be done. Add in some lighting calcs, alpha blended textures and partially obscured polygons that a real world app uses and watch those figures plummet (due usually to bus bandwidth or CPU limitations). The current cards are raster only. Geometry accelaration will help, but it won't go all the way to beating an SGI pipeline. Besides, if I need more graphics grunt for my SGI, I just add another card or two and I instantly double/triple/etc my polygon performance.
At Siggraph, there was a really interesting panel about large scale data visualisation. This was run by the people from Los Alamos, NCSA etc. They were talking about the PS performance wrt other architectures. They had some really interesting things to say about it - ie, expect to see (or not see, depending on your security clearance) Blue Mountain and the other ASCI computers using PSIIs and other similar boxes doing some of the real time interactive rendering of the data sets. That I find really amazing.
Life is complete only for brief intervals in between toys or projects -- John Dalton
The original PSX and N64 both used MIPS processors (so standard, many schools teach you how to design one from scratch). I think I saw a diagram somewhere showing the PSX2 might be a MIPS chip with integrated graphics hardware.
BTW, the current PSX has a 33MHz or 40MHz CPU, whereas the N64 is at (I think) 90MHz... clock speed isn't all there is to it (as I'm sure you know). Integrating the graphics into the same chip as the CPU should be GREAT for performance.
This is an embedded architecture designed to run a specific set of programs. What do you intend to do with it - run some other OS on it? :) Again, a hair-trigger response to any piece of hardware coming out: "duh, will it run Linux?". Stop being silly people. I'm gonna be buying this system to _play games_, not to "hack it". If you want a box for rendering I'd suggest you buy a 800Mhz Athlon (or PPC) + fast OpenGL accelerator instead of a hacked PSX2 - you'll get much more mileage out of it. Anyway, its structure is quite different from that of the Dolphin (which I believe will probably be another flop like the N64 was - Nintendo never learn: they're reviving their "dream team" bullshit strategy again); and it probably will be a tough match for the Dolphin, even if it _does_ come out a couple of months later.
As some others have already commented, the numbers are just there so clueless reporters can gush about them. And they have, in Wired, New York Times, The Economist... "The future of entertainment is here. It will be 100 000 times faster than a PC, come with a DVD player, a ADSL line, a HDTV and a built in washing machine! And it will only cost $100! The PC will be dead come winter."
.18 micron 128 bit processor...is it finished yet? I would be really impressed if they managed, but considering all the other chip manufacturers having great difficulties getting .18 micron technology to work I am sceptical. Also, the Playstation 2 is going to load all these wonderful textures from a CD each time the scenery changes if I have understood correctly? Wow. It will be like the opening doors sequences in Resident Evil...times 10!
I am sure the demos such as the famous dancing couple, or the dinosaur, or this new bathtub demo are gorgeous, but again...a demo is not a real game. A current PC can do some pretty impressive demos too if you dedicate it only to do graphics without bothering about stuff like AI. We have not seen what the NV10 and Voodoo 4 can do yet together with an Athlon. And they will be out THIS year.
This is the first time that you will be able to add stuff like (possibly) harddrives, modems, different gaming units to a Playstation via USB, Firewire and what have you. This time they will have to do a complete OS for their gaming console, and "Will this game work on my Playstation 2 if I have X connected through USB, Y through Firewire but no Z connected?" is a question Sony have never had to answer before. Perhaps they underestimate the difficulties involved. As for their claim of the
Here is an interesting article from Next-Generation Online. They have been covering the Playstation 2 from the start.
>Perhaps it was the comparison PlayStation 2's
>demos drew to other games on the show floor --
>whereas all prior public appearances had been
>the demos by themselves. Perhaps it was the
>quality of the demos. Perhaps it was the dying
>down of the initial post-announcement hype of
>Sony's new machine.
>
>Whatever it was, PlayStation 2 was not the end
>all be all at last week's E3. More than one show
>attendee we spoke to mentioned that the demos,
>which looked quite pretty, were not as exciting
>as they had hoped.
[...]
>For a system being touted as superior to the PC,
>or any PCs coming down the line soon, the
>PlayStation 2's demos did not graphically
>lambaste the gorgeous Black & White or
>Freelancer for PC, nor did the demos' graphics
>look significantly superior to those of many
>Dreamcast titles, such as Shenmue and NBA 2000.
Read the article here.
There are some more sceptical voices here. The articles are from March, but I think the criticism is still valid.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
why can't it be proprietary?
Grrr. my nick is "Forward the Light Brigade"...
To the people who are making sense here, I've heard too much "It can do Toy Story" and "It can do x more polys than Y". (although I've haven't heard any PSX2 Beowulfs yet!) ;)
And I'm sick of it. FYI, I have all four games machines under my TV : Saturn, Playstation, N64 and an import Dreamcast. I doubt I'll get an import PSX2, I just don't like enough playstation games.
People need to remember that Sony are the M$ of the videogame world, they came in late, looked at what the other companies were doing and said "us too!"
I prefer a company that is willing to take chances with games, not just pump out another tired Tomb Raider.
[EOF]
yes, www.dotcomforwardslash.com is my real URL.
>Why would this be an issue? The advantage to having a set top unit like a video game system is that the programmer can program for one set of hardware specs
That is the thing with the PSX2. It will have USB and Firewire. Sony has mentioned that a harddrive would be a good peripheral to have, and I believe one is being developed. But not all will buy it. So the programmers will have to program one version where you can cache textures and save game to the HD, and one without. And then some people will have additional memory cards, and some not.
Sony, welcome to the messy world of the PC...
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
I remember reading somewhere that sony hired cygnus to make a playstation 2 emulator so that developers could run the games (while developing) on high end mations. It emulated the 128 bit core and such, but I wonder what the actual requirements would be.
To my experience, the normal reaction of a big company's purchasing rep. would be: It's free? No thanks, then we don't take it (thinking: free ==> crap).
Understanding is a three-edged sword. --Kosh
>PSX allows for 4 controllers with the Tap add-on.
>And since most people don't have 4
> controllers or always 3 or 4 friends
>to play with, it seems a waste to include the 4
>player ability
> by default which would increase the
>cost of the system.
The 4 controllers built in was one of my favorite
features of the N64, and I have used it numerious
times. Back when N64 was still project reality,
I was bored and started making concept designs
and sure enough I put 4 controller ports on it.
The addition of 2 controller ports is cheaper in
the long run, as the "taps" are usually expensive
however cheap to manufacture.. just more money
to the company and less to you.
With the use of "taps", I found that 3rd parties
were less willing to write games that made use of
the 3rd and 4th players as many did not own the
multi-player "taps".
>>3) Rent a game first to try it.
>
>Fine. But 2 big problems. First, it is hard to find places to rent PC games
Gee, have you wondered why that might be the case?
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
A word to the wise: until you can buy one at the local store, all talk about price is speculation. Sony hasn't said, Nintendo probably doesn't know yet. Rejecting anything out of hand based on rumored price is the ultimate in foolishness.
Exactly my thoughts.. anyone remember sega vs nintendo when the genesis and supernes were going at it? I was an avid sega fan, blinded by the numbers. Sega's was faster, when you spoke of MHZ (wasn't it 2-3 times as fast?) But then I played a SuperNES... let me tell ya, it played better than the genesis.. better sound, gfx, etc. I think Sony knows what they're doing, and although I think Nintendo still has a good fight left, I hope Sony comes out the winner yet again...
Karnal
This same logic could also be used for the DC. The PS2 is coming after the DC, so it does that mean the DC will automatically win? No. Same thing then.
Liquor and tobacco are very inexpensive to produce. The booze and tobacco industry don't set these high prices either. It's all the tax the goverment decides to impose on it and it's accepted because these products are "inherently evil" and therefore deserve to be taxed.
If they are going to take this route, then they should shit or get off the pot. Legalize marajuana and reap the tax benefits that will no doubt be placed on it.
But that.. is another story..
Dolphin = no working silicon Dolphin = no confirmed specs Dolphin = no confirmed price Nintendo = Games like Banjo Kazooie.....enough said... Its the best choice if you have a 10 year old kid to entertain.
Yeah, but which one is capable of more. Lesse you write your resume on a PSX2 after playing the latest Tomb Raider. Probably not. If you don't need the features a computer provides, then a game system is fine I suppose.
Me, I like games as well as the many other features a computer provides. I believe a computer is a better gaming system anyways due to upgradability. Hard core consolers buy a $300 console every few years and the games are now completely different meaning you can't run your old games unless you hook up the old system again. Computers don't have this limitation and are upgradable on a component basis.
You disregard the true economics of the situation. Sony (Nintendo, etc.) doesn't make money off the hardware. In the console industry, the hardware is generally a loss leader for the first few years of its life and a break-even proposition thereafter. The real money is in the software. Therefore, Sony in no way wants people to buy hardware but not software. I think the PSX is more popular because it is both cheaper (even if you don't pirate) than the N64 and has a much larger selection of games.
The Dreamcast uses some kind of high-density CD variation. It looks like a really cool system. The games available at launch are among the best lineup yet, although most people question whether it will have a second generation of games.
Not every programmer gets reimbursed by salary alone.
Have you ever heard of STOCK OPTIONS, PROFIT SHARING, etc.??
You are just a drag on the entire industry. You steal things that you don't need. Unless you start jonesing when you can't play the latest game you have absolutly no need to take this.
I'll tell you what. Why don't you try going out and mowing a few lawns this summer to PAY for those games. Oh wait. You can't do that. That would require you to get off of your lazy/fat/cheap ass and do some real work.
Ingrate.
The PSX II itself will probably NOT run Linux, even though the development env will be linux. How you may say? Easy, PSX II is an embedded type system, and how do you develop on an embedded system? Cross-compile. For example, say you're doing assembly for a TI calculator (one of the ones w/o builtin assembler, TI-82, 85, 92 w/o pluse module). You don't actually develop on the calculator. You use a regular text editor, a Zilog or m68000 assembler, then you create a backup image and load it onto the calculator (to exploit a hole so you can use assembly on the calculator).
PSX II doesn't have to be running linux, and I don't think it will be.
what? I would have to believe if they programmed a game to not use the hard drive, they just wouldn't use it. Kind of like the analog controllers -- hmmmm, analog doesn't work on all games....
Now, you could use the hard disk as a big memory card for all games -- just have the programmers call a "memory save" and redirect to the hard disk.... same for loads...
Karnal
Shenmue is like a graphically brillant incarnation of Dragon's Lair. You know, watch the pretty movie and when the light flashes, hit the button. If you don't, you die otherwise you go to the next movie. Yippee. I saw this at E3 and was NOT impressed.
you know what all this is crazy fast shit. ill keep my year old pII-400 with the TNT for my development c++, java, html shit and upgrade the ram once in a while. i think i will abandon the PC for games unless the NV10 is as good as expected and cheaper than a sega dreamcast or psII arent they gonna be on DVD format? so you cant copy them with cdrwin? you would need a dvd-r suck
with what, the Hal 9000?
Just looking at the hardware alone sets me to drooling, but cmon, what home pc/ppc/etc could support emulation of something like this?
The extra vid chips alone.. sheesh.
Awfully spendy though, so I think I'll wait to see some good games first. (though w/ the entire line of old psx games to run on it.. well it's a nice headstart hmm?)
What I want to know is, does the thing suuport DVD playback? Or is that just rumour.
If the PSII capable of playing DVD's $400 would be well worth it.
~WDM
What we wish, that we readily believe.
-- Demosthenes
...when it gets down to fundamentals, do what you have to do and shed no tears. Dr. Matson in Tunnel in the Sky
One method I heard about talked about introducing small pinholes into the DVD layer, much like the old Apple II bad sector copy protection.
Well, I don't really think that will matter, if I understand what you mean.
You might know that Playstation CDs have some kind of information on them that cannot be written by a CDR. So what people have done is copied the CDs and "modchipped" their playstations. A simple soldering job of a $10 chip onto the mobo of your PSX can accomplish this.
Moral: ANY copy protection scheme can and will be defeated. As long as DVD-copying hardware is available at the consumer level, people will rent games from blockbuster and copy them.
-Furious
Does anyone know whether the Ps2 will support the HAVI standard? Now that would be a PC killer. The moment some brave soul wrote a Linux "game" to "play" on it, I'll never look at a PC again.
Running linux like those dev-boxes of course.
Since the OS for the development stations will be Linux, they will have to release the source for the port to this new hardware. Everything will be available to the Linux community. No doubt, there is no doubt going to be some VERY interesting code in there.
Cheers,
Bun
"Anyone that has ever gotten an idea based on any of my work and done something better with it-good for you."--J.Carmack
Bullshit! The TV doesn't "know" anything about the number of polygons --- it just writes out each line of the display.
Last April 1 Cringely had some interesting remarks about this thing's future.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Proof that it's not so easy to develop with may lie in the fact that the demos reported in this article are the same ones that have been showing for many, many months ... I saw them in mid-April, same Sony exec, same city. (And the chips had individual fans ...)
On the other hand, maybe they're just having the game developers do that stuff and there will be some way cool things to show sometime next month? Hmm.
One smart thing Sony's doing is getting a third party market of graphics engines going. I understand that didn't exist with the PS-1; but we know the model works with Quake, Doom, and so on. After all, you only need a few good engines that can work with those parallel vector engines. And Sony doesn't need to be demonstrating more than a basic one, so long as someone else is working on that ...
- Jojo
Nintendo 64 failed because they used cartridges and didn't have the space that developers wanted (eg. SquareSoft) and thus didn't have games that everybody wanted (eg. FFVII). If they had been smart and used CDs like Sony, then they would have done much better. According to the Dolphin specs. they are using DVD's so the capacity should not be a problem.
The spec's say it will have a Firewire connection.
--
"All that is visible must grow and extend itself into the realm of the invisible."
I swear by MacOS X. Although I use to swear *at* MacOS 9...
i had a chance to do development on a game for the DC, late last year (game engine), but the whole shit was to be in DirectX (for porting to windoze), and I decided against it (even though it woulda been a dream job) I guess I'll wait for the PSX2 and see wht kinda APIs it has etc, and give me time to hone my programming some
"There is no spoon" - Neo, The Matrix
Your TV is limited to displaying
(num_of_pixels / sizeof(polygon)) * refresh_rate
polygons per second. Since the original poster stated that the size of a polygon in a typical benchmark is 3 pixels, it becomes a simple calculation to solve.
Thats why I got FF7 for Winblows
The refresh rate should be 1/2 of the one stated by the TV since TV's are interlaced.
The last I heard, Sega was saying that any Internet connection would work for Dreamcast. Sony hasn't said anything, yet.
Actually, most Playstation development environments are based around gcc and make. This has changed with the creation of Codewarrior for PSX, but not much.
How could you possibly believe that the playstation is the best console? Playstation cannot hold a candle to the Nintendo 64. The performance difference on both is negligable. The playstation may have more games, but they mostly are just clones of eachother. On the other hand, the Nintendo has FOUR CONTROLLERS, allowing for far much more multiplayer fun. The N64 also doesnt waste so much time on those crapy role-playing games and instead pumps out such quality games as Goldeneye and (dont laugh) Super Smash Brothers. And lastly the N64 doesnt suffer from those annoying loading waits. While the playstation may be better for some nerdy kid with no friends who finds pride in beating a stupid computer program in a 1 player game, the Nintendo blows it away in every other category.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Most pirates use their methods to provide protection (as mentioned in a previous person's statement.) Hey, if you like the game, then you'll support it. In fact, these methods likely stimulate more renevue in the industry (I doubt we'll ever get a study on this.)
Pirates aren't lazy, fat or cheap (necessarily). They are just sick and tired of getting jerked around by corporations dictating high pricing and not delivering on the product. If every game was a Starcraft, Quake or of that quality, there would be no need for pirates. But as long as high-priced, low-quality games are being rammed down our throats, we need 'em.
Hell, I bet you even like 'em.
Don't forget this is basically vaporware at this point. Remember when people talked about how amazing the PS was? By the time it was available, it wasn't very impressive anymore. In two years (when it's available at some very high price in the US), what do you expect a $300 (the PlayStation 1 price, when it was intro'd in the US) 3D card to do?
Companies can are too idle with pricing. They are content to sit with 'what the market can bear.' Lower pricing/better products can eliminate piracy.
Case in point: Baldur's Gate. 4 or 5 CD's. You want to pirate it? By the time you get the files, get the CD's, burn them, your out-of-pocket expense in time and money is way more than what you needed to shell out to buy the game. And buying it gives you a nice manual and box.
The industry can slash prices and sink the pirates, and if that happens, it's better for all gamers.
But there is danger in the reverse happening. If they increase the cost of copying, (ie. raise CDR prices, impose taxes, etc.) they are using a heavy-handed approach that could really hurt legitimate users of the technology.
Two interesting points to consider.
The bus isn't slow, and there are several of them, each specialised to it's own task. The DMA controller alone is sex on a stick. Oh, and 32meg of main ram in a console is huge. You should see what we get out of 2 meg.
However, it's not the be-all, and end-all by any means. There's a couple of gotchas, but then there always are. For example, there's a remarkably usefull blend mode missing, oh and it's gonna be a nightmare to debug the low level stuff.
Or so reliable sources have it...;)
> 5) Two years max before the PC will be able to surpass the capability having already been demonstrated.
Combined rasteriser & vram cards have already been anounced, now the only real bottleneck is the speed of the bus between the transform engine (processor currently) and rasterisers.
Card accelerated transformation is a nice idea, but it's going to be tricky to get it useable.
Besides, you've got to get all the IHVs, Microsoft, and the games development community to agree on something. It's not gonna happen for a while.
Just like the porn industry, the video games industry is larger than the film industry.
matt
The Nintendo Dolphin, according to Nintendo, will out perform the PSY. Nothing is really known about the Dolphin, that info is expected to be released at Space World 99, in about 15 days. But, the rumored price point is as low as $99, with a more reasonable one being $150. Plus, one of the editors at IGN64 has stated that the Dolphin has something that will "slaughter the competiton". No one but him knows what it is yet, but I like that statement : ).
The article didn't give much information though. Does anyone know why they chose to use a Linux based workstation instead of using BeOS, NT or FreeBSD? Wasn't FreeBSD used to render the special effects in the 'Titanic' movie?
According to a friend of mine who works for the Bitmap Brothers at the moment (and was lead Dev on Sentinel Returns), it's because Linux is (and has been all along the line) the preferred development platform for Japanese games developers.
However, he also said that it would probably move to Visual Studio for European/US programmers, as that's what happened with the first Playstation.
FreeBSD being used for Titanic has no relevance here; 3D Studio Max tends to be the tool of choice for 3D modellers, and most people run that on NT.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Get off it buddy. YOU shell out the ridiculous prices they are asking for these things, and maybe you won't be so quick to judge others. Why do video games cost so much? Not because of the development costs, it's because people are too greedy and the market will bear it. The average PSX game has 4-5 companies taking a slice of the revenues and hiking costs for us, the gamers. If you're an addict like me, they can break your bank.
Actually, if you had been at Siggraph a week ago, you would have noticed that Maya (made by Alias/Wavefront) seems to be getting a lot more hype than 3DSMax. For one thing, Maya 2.0 comes with a _huge_ number of features, the one that I found most amazing is the ability to "sketch" with your tablet or even mouse to generate stuff like grass, pasta, or whatever you desire... you need a plugin to do this, which comes with the full version of Maya. Basically, you can generate a complete animation of a landscape scene (with wind, rain, etc) in 10 minutes or so... 3DSMax doesn't even come close to it. Also, Maya 2.5 is coming out soon, and will presumably fix the bugs still present in 2.0. AFAIK Kinetix/Discreet has no intention to release official bug fixes of Max 3.0 anytime soon... These and other features of Maya have seemed to make it a much more desirable tool for modellers. My company is writing translation software for 3d rendering systems, and most of the requests, by far, were for a converter to import their Max files into Maya...
Toodles
Most of the stuff you are complaining about, are changing for this coming generation. They will have internet gaming. The now defunt (in the US anyway) 64DD was going to allow you to update cars, sports teams, or new tracks to your games. Maybe Nintendo will release a harddrive like device for the Dolphin that will write stuff like that, or download it off the internet. That would be neat. And the big reason I like console gaming, is it's cheap, and multiplayer with my friends. I can have a great time being together, playing Mario Golf or Smash Brothers, and don't have to be sitting alone staring at the computer by myself.
It is unlikely that anyone here has never installed a piece a software illegally on their computer, or downloaded an MP3, or watched a pirate VCD, or left some shareware beyond the expiration date, or something along these lines. Newsflash: YOU'RE ALL PIRATES!! Each one of you is just as guilty (morally) as the piratez, d00dz and everyone else you bash so readily.
regardless of the #'s, it is common sense that one needs a computer monitor and not a TV to appreciate a video game system these days. TV's are terrible. and who knows when HDTV will be affordable or if HDTV will even be worth it. give me a 19" monitor with .22 dot pitch any day.
-fixe
Unfortunately price is pretty much all that matters. Look what happened to the Neo Geo. Nobody wanted a $400-$500 console with $70-$80 games. The only place you see it now is in the arcades. (or more recently resurrected on PC's using emulation)
The real question, of course, is how well will Sony's console stack up against Sega and Nintendo? Histortically, the actual power of the console has had little bearing on its market dominance. (Sega's Master System outperformed the NES, the Genesis and SNES were roughly equivilent with the SNES having better graphics/audio and the Genesis having a faster processor, the PSX and Saturn were almost identical in overall capability, and so on)
The real winner will be the console that can get the most market dominance, and that will invariably be the one that's easier to get good performance out of from the developer's point of view. More games means more consoles sold. More consoles sold means more developers sign on. More developers means more games. A nice vicious cycle.
The specs don't mean much. It's the games that'll make the difference, and it's the games we should be looking at.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
It runs out of gas very fast and wont be able to take corners.
>hiking costs for us, the gamers. If you're an >addict like me, they can break your bank.
Interesting that you refer to gaming as an addiction, making the social significance of stealing to support your habit even more apparent. Do you think other addictions should be enabled in this fashion? We should force the liquor and tobacco producers to reduce their prices, then. Capitalism be damned, it is imperative that we make it as easy as possible for people with impulse-control problems to indulge in their preferred vices.
Yeah, right. What you're doing is theft, in part from your fellow programmers...assuming you're a programmer yourself. Get a life/clue/whatever.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
That's the main thing I want to know. I'll be renting Playstation II games at Blockbuster and "backing up". :) Also, I don't get why people like to waste their time with a crappy operating system for games (Win9x). Use a friggin' console, that's what they were designed for - games.
my guess is when the PS2 hits the streets, an Athlon 1000 coupled with an Nvidia NV10 based 3d card will do everything this bad boy will do :)
supposedly the chip really is pretty weird, big, and nuts though. will be interesting for sure.
-I go to Rice, so figure out my email address
Lets see... Do i want the $400 PSX2 with a non- standard 300MHZ processor or the $250 - $300 nintendo dolphin that has a 400MHZ copper G3 processor and a 200MHZ graphics coprocessor? Thats a hard choice!
Umm, are you asking me why the linux OS can't be proprietary? Well the kernal itself can't be proprietary as long as they use any of the linux code that has been currently developed. The only way you could make a proprietary linux would be to make a completly cleanroom kernal only based upon the current kernal specs. But I doupt sony cares to create its own kernal, and they definatly wouldn't be calling it linux cause callig it that would pretty much define it to be linux, which is under the GPL and can't be proprietary
Wow, How are they acheving such speeds? Why can't our accelerators do this? Bus speed limitations?
I saw a demo not too long ago, and it was pretty amazing, but I did not see any smoothing effects in the demo- all the triangles were pretty rough looking. Perhaps they are choosing quanity over quality. A good trade off?
I've always been against consoles only because they grow obsolete just as fast as computers do. At least I can still play older games with my PC.
First of all, no one knows what Sony or Nintendo will do. So since no one knows, how can you come to those judgements? Also, it's rumored that the DC will eventually come with a NIC so us cable modem users can use our cable modems, I don't think they could even require us to pay them for an ISP then. So the point is, NO ONE KNOWS!!!!!!
...instead of stealing them.
Just a thought.
Well Nintendo has several very good reasons to keep with cartridges for the N64. Oviously in hinesight they were wrong, but while everyone wants to say Nintendo picked cartidges just to be greedy, that isn't the whole story. The space available on a single normal old system cd wasn't enough for much growth in games. Saturn and Playstation both have several games that require 2 cds. Nintendo oviously didn't understand that such oddities were acceptable to the average gamer. Its a combination of stupid desisions and not understanding that the gamer audience had grown up. But I'm not willing to assume anything about Nintendo till I see the dolphin.
Actually, Sony (and Sega and Nintendo and just about every other manufacturer out there) are pouring money into copy protection to prevent things like this from happening. One method I heard about talked about introducing small pinholes into the DVD layer, much like the old Apple II bad sector copy protection.
They are also picking and choosing some of the 'small guys' and going after them, hoping to make examples of them. There's a really interesting article on this in this month's Next Generation (print only) - which is one of the only video game magazines out there that doesn't talk in d00d-speak.
The most interesting part of this article is the last para:
"Our real goal is to come up with new forms of creative expression that reach an audience of people not interested in videogames," Harrison (VP of R&D) said.
It will have fast net access (as long as you do). It has USB. It wil even have firewire...what it does with all this is up to the developers...
Ff7 for pc is actually better looking for the pc, it uses direct3d(*CRINGE*), which gets rid of the blockiness that you will see on the playstation. FF8 for the playstation will be here VERY soon, pc port should be within the next few weeks also, just hope they use a api such as glide / opengl so we have a better change of playing it in wine ;)
Let us pause for a moment and reflect on life during the days of the Atari 2600.- -----------------
------------------------------------------
When's the linux kernel going to support it and the almighty question: can I have a beowolf clustering playstation - that would be cool :) yeah I know I asked it, but someone had to.
http://www.jonmasters.org/
Games have high development costs, and they're only going to get higher. The game industry is rapidly turning into a larger beast than the movie industry, and it's likely interactive entertainment will replace static cinema in the next few decades. So I am completely disgusted by people who steal videogames -- a luxury they don't even need. The absolute epitome of arrogance, self-deception and greed. A CLI operating system written by hobbyists to run efficiently even on outdated machines is one thing. A videogame with production values reaching into the multimillions is another.
At least we'll have that brief blissful period of freedom from piratez, while DVD writers are out of the price range of your average 'leet garage-dwelling dork.
Bleem said it couldn't play FF7, (but can play 6 ect.) That's about the only PSX game I know and care, so I didn't buy it. humm... Final Fantasy, use Virtual Dirve to play the cd on harkdrive, on my libretto...
CY
The PlayStation 2 is supposed to render lots of little poly's, as opposed to a few big ones. More detail don'tcha see. If the hype is to be believed, this thing is capable of rendering a girl's face with real-life detail, even down to every strand of hair on her head... and still have enough cycles left over to give her thoughts and emotions. (You will hear the word "Emotion" a lot when Sony suits discuss the PSX2... the way they describe it it's just about AI-complete which tripped off MY hype alarm... how 'bout yours?)
Furthermore, real-life polygons aren't only 3 pixels, and they're not solid colour. They're larger, and they're textured. Also, although your scene could theoretically contain more than 75 million polygons, you're relying on your application to be able to calculate which ones are visible, and pass their coordinates to the renderer at a rate fast enough to keep up. Although possible, I'd guess this is unlikely to be the case with PSX2.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
No, Linux was used to render in "Titanic". Not FreeBSD.
I notice a lot of people calling this thing the PS2. We'd better be careful, or we're going to relegate this thing to an expensive, monstrous piece of computing machinery that, while it can withstand falls from heights of 1000 feet, costs boatloads of money every time you want to add a new game. If we keep using the acronym PS2, they'll be IBM^H^H^HSony's biggest marketing blunder ever, and end up relegated to doorstops in a matter of months... Better call them the PSX2.
Console games are mainly coming from Japan, and so are totally different than current PC games. That's the reason I would buy a console, good games.
Hardware doesn't count so much in comparison to games you run on it. See for example Pokemon etc.
To be able to render 80M polygons you would need *very much* memory to store 3D-world (you cannot read 80M polygons from DVD for each frame, can you?):
If you consider case where each triangle (polygon) is made of 3 vertexes (and vertex has only x,y,z and color values) it means 3*4 floats per triangle (I think we can store one RGB value in one float) - it means 80M*(3*4)=960M floats to store whole scene. Now if we are using double precision we need about 960M*(8 bytes)=7.7GB memory. Now add all textures, mapping coordinates and vertex normals and we can easily triple it! I think we need to buy some extra memory for our PS2 box...
Of course (some) vertexes can be calculated in real-time, but in that case scene is highly probable to look un-natural.
When was the last time you played a 3D-PC game in 640x480? That's basically the limit of a console as it uses a TV for it's display. I won't play a game in less than 800x600 and with my next video card, I'll be playing in 1024x768 and above. Can't do that on a console.
Can't download demos or join a multiplayer server on a console. Can't download mods, new cars, new tracks, new whatever to modify your game. Look at quake, you can download CTF, Rocket Arena, Jailbreak, etc, etc, etc, literally dozens of mods, can't do that on a console. I'll never buy a console again.
Stability and hardware compatibility can be frustrating on a PC but that one downside doesn't offset all the downsides of a console.
I'll take that money and buy a G400 MAX.
If people take the time to actually look up the technical details (see Microprocessor Report April 19, v15 i5) they'll probably get a more realistic idea of the capabilities instead of third-hand info from marketing flacks (not that I've got anything against salesdroids but slashdot is suppose to be targetted at a technical audience).
You can think (very broadly speaking) of the EmotionEngine as a R5K (like in SGI O2) coupled with 2 vector and 1 image unit. I wish people luck in developing partly asynchronous parallel/threaded algorithms that can get anywhere near the "peak" 6.2 Gflops. Also the I/O processor (ie the old Sony chip) only has space for 1 PCMCIA card on a 32 bit I/O bus. The other major constraint is total memory of 32 MBytes with no hard disk for swap space unless some bright spark can do some magic with an IEEE-1394 peripheral. As one wag noted, its easy to create a fast chip when you don't need to worry about memory hierarchies. At least it will have a lot of graphic functions built in (fog, sprites, particles, etc) so you can dazzle people with gee-whiz effects.
A go-kart is still a go-kart even if powered by a formula 1 engine. It will be a very useful and amusing console toy but don't expect it fufill your fantasties of having a supercomputer in your bedroom.
LL
It looks like it's debuting at $400, and even if the graphics do beat Dreamcast, one will be hard pressed to see the difference on a TV anyway. (BTW, for those that still doubt Sega, take a look at some clips from Shenmue, then try to say with a straight face that Dreamcast sucks.) If they come out with an Ape Escape sequel on PS2 it may be a must-buy though
If this box actually performs as they claim it does (and I wouldn't bet on that, *cough cough Nvidia*), then this will be interesting. It has been theorised that it takes eighty million polygons per second for "life-like" pictures. Basically if you could take a snapshot of whatever your eyes are seeing right now, and model the whole scene in 3D, it'd take 80mil pps to model it just as smoothly as you see if you turn your head, etc. If the PS2 can really do 70mil pps, then we're in for something that's just completely unprecedented here, folks. Imagine watching a full length feature film and being able to pan and turn, and basically control the camera at a whim, while still remaining smooth and photorealistic. Granted, it depends on the skill of the modeller, but for once something exists that we can use to harness all of our creative powers.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Check out bleem!. I almost tried, didn't. I have one real playstation game Final Fantasy VII (why I bought it, dang credit cards), which if you missed it is right up the best of Wizardry and Ultima for Ultimate Roleplaying Adventure game, tons of kick ass CGI too.
+&x
There's a link in the article to another article that says the development console is proprietary and based on Linux. Surely they mean something other than the OS is proprietary, right? Does anyone know?
The only advantage a console has nowadays is that they offer better graphics than a current PC. There is no current possability of multiplayer or game expansion. What I mean by game expansion is that you can't add or change things to a console game. For instance, I play NFS4 a lot on my computer. I like that I can add new cars and maps. You can't do that with a console. There are also a lot of really good computer games out there with crappy graphics, such as Starcraft or Alpha Centauri. It would probably be impossible to have such a game on a console. Another advantage that a computer has is that you can play old games, even though you may have new hardware.
>LOS ANGELES -- Software developers looking to
>write games for Sony's next-generation
>PlayStation console will do their work on a
>proprietary, Linux-based workstation built by
>Sony, the company said Friday.
I must say i was surprised to read this!
The article didn't give much information though. Does anyone know why they chose to use a Linux based workstation instead of using BeOS, NT or FreeBSD? Wasn't FreeBSD used to render the special effects in the 'Titanic' movie?
This is great publicity for Linux.
--intol
....But that is to be expected since the Dolphin is still on the drawingboard, Nintendo will make damn sure that it'll outperform the PS2.
I'm amazed that most of Slashdot forgets about the Dolphin. I guess it shows how arrogent they are, since Nintendo hasn't got it's own story, yet (I intend to submit the Dolphin specs when they are released) so most Slashdotters automatically assume the PS2 is the end all of videogames. The Dolphin specs haven't been announced yet, but according to Nintendo, they will beat whatever our Sony can do, which is expected.
I see the posts here commenting on how the speed of the emulator would in no way be reasonable, but that's not the point!
Emulating isn't about just playing the games, it's about learning about hardware, increasing your skills, and providing something useful (an emulator on your PC could be useful for development, if you wanted to make your own games).
Anybody ever heard of SPIM? (Okay, it's a simulator, but who really cares about the difference between emulation and simulation?). "1/25th of the performance and none of the cost" of a MIPS R2000 CPU. CS and EE classes use this program to teach assembly on MIPS (as well as other classes, like compiler design). In a similar way, you could have a PSX 2 emulator to teach yourself assembly for it or do short tests of small functions if you were a developer.
...But that is to be expected (ducks the mudslinging) Since the PSX2 was/is still on the drawingboard, Sony'll make damn sure that it'll outperform the Dreamcast.
;)
;)
But that's not what's important, is it? Both systems have their pro-and-cons. Sega'll have games that the Sony won't, and vice versa. ((I doubt Sony'll have Fighting Vipers, and am praying the DC will have a new version.
Quit whining and buy both. That'll keep you happy, and we can look forward to the next round, between the PSX3 and the Dreamcast2.
> It runs a version of Windows CE of all things.
Actually, just to clarify. Dreamcast has two operating systems. A native Sega OS, for maximum graphics performance, or it can run a version of Windows CE, which makes it easier (though not trivial) for game companies to port PC games to the Dreamcast.
My understanding is that Windows CE is not _in_ the Dreamcast, but instead is on the CD with the game.
I think Sega's trying to learn from their Saturn disaster by covering as many bases as possible.
All in all, a way cool system.
> Nintendo has announced a system named "Dolphin"
Nintendo is rumored to be considering a (I think) 400 MHz PPC chip and a custom graphics chip. My impression is that they're trying for a simple, but blazing fast system that they can undersell Sega and Sony (rumored US$100) on release. Good luck to them.
Go to http://www.chipcenter.com /circuitcellar/july99/c79su5.htm to see what's inside that beast:
----------
Peeking under the hood reveals the secret: a high-performance chip set combining the Emotion Engine and the Graphics Synthesizer. The Emotion Engine, pictured in Figure 3, whose name aptly reflects its lofty ambition, might best be described as a single-chip Cray. It contains a beefy 64-bit MIPS CPU supplemented with two vector processing units with a total of ten floating-point multipliers and four dividers. Running at 300 MHz and exploiting 128-bit on-chip buses, the Emotion Engine blows through 3D graphics at a stunning pace. A floating-point matrix routine, consisting of 7 multiplies, 12 multiply-adds, and a divide takes only 7 cycles.
The image data is passed to the Graphics Synthesizer (see Figure 4), which integrates both the rendering engine and the 4-MB DRAM frame buffer using the latest embedded DRAM process. The reason for putting the DRAM on the same chip isn't to save a few bucks, but to achieve ultra-high 48-GBps bandwidth thanks to a 2560-bit (!) on-chip bus.
----------
Suffice to say, I want one of these on a graphics card for my PC...
-Adam
"Walking on water and developing software to specification are easy - as long as both are frozen" - Edward V. Berard.
/.
nuff said
Think about it. A N64 blew away the current PCs when it came out. (P166 with Voodoo 1) The dreamcast was much more powerful than PCs a year ago (when it came out) and is still a match for current PCs. PSX 2 will blow away an Athlon/NV 10 combo becuase of its specialization. And don't say that this 5X -10X faster than a PII is bunk becuase it isn't. Look at the top 500 super compters. Number 3 (I think) is a 64 Hitachi processor, while with half the performance of a 9200 Pentium Pro processor machine. Sure these Hitachis only can do one thing (floating point on arrays) at that speed, but guess what 3D geometry consists of. I strongly think that if Sony is pimping 25 million poly's per second with PSX 2 that it can deliver. In any case so much for speed. Then their is ease of use, quality of games (when was the last time you saw a PSX game with a patch? How many times has Mario 64 crashed on you.)and a broader gaming library. And better use of technology becuase there is no blasted OS in your way, just some support librarys and a lightweight kernel. Plus since all hardware is the same, better code quality, optimization, and stability.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
GOJS is short for an important graphics industry benchmark: Gallons Of Jizz Spurted.
Hope this helps.
First off, I would like to say that, even though I am a Sega-head (VF3tb cannot be beat!!!), I have hopes that Sony will be able to pull off this grand feet. Since they are targeting the unit for so many purposes, and being a casual console gamer besides a die hard computer user, I would like to make some predictions and observations about the 'ol PS2:
1) From what I have been reading, it is going to miss that first expected release date. I just don't see how they can have the hardware done to the level that they can mass produce it and get it to the consumer. I know all about the demos that were displayed a while ago, but I bet these things are scripted and they had some level of prep. I only need to site the first demo of the Atari Lynx. They had the little demo unit out, but in actuallity, it was controlled by some regular computers in the back room someplace. I am not saying that is what went down in this case, but I still wonder....
2) It will initially face the same problem that plagued the CDi and the 3DO set top machines, that of identity. I have read that they are expecting to create different units for each consumer level and function, but there will be an initial confusion about what the target function of the machine will be. I just hope they will be able to handle it better then 3DO and CDi did....
3) The initial price of $400 for the basic unit will really hurt the 'gamer' out there, but maybe that is not the target for the new machine. As with all bleeding edge technology, the techhead will be the first, and then a dry spell. I had hoped that they had learned their lesson (Sega appears to) from the launch of the PS at $300 and the relatively cold response it got. I know that they have to cover their butts, but that is what the software sales are for, right?
4) This is one that I hope catches on, and I predict that it will. The use of standardized ports (ie USB, Firewire, PCMCIA) as the connection point for the joystick, light guns, and other such fun stuff will find its way into other set top boxes, be it games, WebTV hardware upgrades, or the like. This is important and one that will succeed (yikes, I hope). This is one area that I feel that the Dreamcast will lack in is the peripheral expansion. Running a Windows based OS would mean that using USB or PCMCIA would have been a no brainer. Sadly, that is not the case and those of use with cablemodems will be stuck looking at the 56k modem and waiting for the Ethernet addition which has been promised.
5) Two years max before the PC will be able to surpass the capability having already been demonstrated. That is two years from now, not when the unit ships. 'Nuff said.
Like mentioned before, I am not anti-PS. I feel that, if done properly, this could be bigger then the Dreamcast launch has been. I just hope that they don't screw it up.
Bryan R.
Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....