My point was that the original poster was implying that the PS3 was more complex than a 360 when it isn't. Both are what they are and both have technical issues that need technical knowledge. I've read the Cell whitepapers and APIs for programming SPUs and walked through code samples that show how you do it. There is nothing particularly earth shattering about how it works from a programming perspective. The rest of the PS3 is also very straightforward for programming since it has a raft of standards compliant APIs to work with. It doesn't make sense to imply it's more complex than for me to imply the 360 is more complex because you need knowledge of COM to use DirectX, or programming HLSL because of the language extensions.
And yes I'm against people stating it's complex to program when it plainly isn't. People who say such things aren't programmers, or if they are they clearly haven't much experience of realtime or multi-threaded programming. I would hope that virtually every lead games developer worth their salt already has enough experience that would make programming a PS3 old hat. Does it mean its simple to write games? No. Does it mean the PS3 is technically more complex or difficult to programme than a 360? No. Proper abstraction would mean that 95% of the code would be identical for both.
As for the 20% stuff, you definitely are missing the point. Franchise games rarely ever take advantage of a specific platform in a significant way. They might stick some extra features in on the periphery such as achievements, or XBox Live tables but the core game, the core mechanics are identical. Turn your question around and ask why MS bothered adding those "complex" extra cores because the ports will use the lowest common denominator. The fact is that each console has its own unique selling points and those strengths will be exercised more by the exclusive titles than by the ports. It doesn't mean that because a handful of 1st gen ports don't bother with the extra capabilities that it "removes the point of ever adding it in the first place".
Erk, but DVDs have DRM so what other video format are you talking about? VHS? Good luck trying to sell that to people.
Besides, I fully expect that you'll see a flood of DVD players capable of playing high definition DIVX / AVC content from a burnt DVD before long, with tools and rippers to extract them from the source material.
Batman Begins is a great movie, as is the Bourne Supremacy. Can't say I think much of the other two although MI:III was supposed to be a fairly good popcorn flick even if it did contain a diminuitive AC:DC weirdo in its lead role.
When talking about high def tv's, you're mostly talking about progressive displays (plasma, lcd, dlp, lcos, etc...) and in the US those displays are running at 60hz or 60 frames per second. Movies on the other hand are shot and encoded at 24fps.
Except that some TVs can output in 1080p/24. So they can show the movie at the same frame rate as it appeared in the cinema. Getting a player to output in that is another matter. The PS3 can't (at the moment), but allegedly a firmware patch will add that support (see here for details).
That's my point. Yes the PS3 is "hard" if you want to get absolutely the maximum performance out of it since that implies lots of things happening in parallel. But that is no substantially different than if you wanted to achieve the same on a 360. The PS3 has a hyperthreaded core which implies it's optimal design is to have 2 main threads and 6 SPUs busy decompressing, translating, shading etc. The 360 has 3 hyperthreaded cores so its optimal design is 6 threads. In either case you still have to think about how you farm off work to these threads, how you keep them fed with new work and so on. I expect most games would logically break down work for decompression, shading, physics, AI, background music, networking and so on.
For each the major headache is coordinating all those threads / SPUs but I don't see it being any easier for the 360 simply because the threads are symmetric.
So while I find Harrison's point true but somewhat baffling (100% efficiency is theoretical for every system), I don't agree that has anything to do with the Cell per se, simply that once you start going parallel things get complicated fast. I'm going off the IBM libspe & Cell SDK documentation, but programming an SPU is relatively straightforward, involving writing C code for the SPU in a standalone file, a special gcc-spu compiler, and an API similar to posix threads to launch it.
My other point is that the vast majority of games would never need anything approaching 100% efficiency. My guess is that the 1st gen of franchise / port games (Call of Duty 3, Tony Hawks Project 8 etc.) didn't even bother with the SPUs. When faced with porting a 360 game in a short timeframe I expect they chose avoid risk by ignoring them. That might explain why EA claim they're only using 20% of the Cell's power - because they are. I expect 2nd gen ports will farm some of the more intensive stuff off to a SPU or two, and that will be good enough to make both systems behave identically, including framerates.
If anything it will be the exclusives that push the envelope. Resistance & Motorstorm demonstrate that the PS3 is capable of handling masses of physics and onscreen action in parallel when those SPUs are put to use. If 1st gen titles can achieve such amazing results, imagine what games could be like in a few years from now.
Why do people say the PS3 is complex? It has a GNU toolchain and supports a ton of 3rd party APIs (Unreal Engine, OpenGL, Collada, PhysX, Havok, etc.). If you can program a computer then you can program the PS3. Even if you want to get your hands dirty with SPU programming, it doesn't look that hard. If the libspe API in the Cell SDK is anything to go by, then SPU development is pretty straightforward and very familiar to anyone who has had to spawn a thread before.
The hardest thing would be figure out which parts of the program should go on SPUs. But that's a problem that all multi-threaded apps face, and it's not specific to the PS3. A 360 which intends to use its 3 cores to their full potential has similar issues. If there is something "hard" about it, it is that so few games need the full potential of the system that it's hard to know what it is.
Just look at the games appearing for the PS2. I doubt anyone would have imagined when the PS2 launched that you'd see games like Shadow of the Colossus, Bully or God of War by the end. I expect Harrison is just alluding to that.
I suppose it depends on want you intend to do with Linux when you get it. Yes you can write games (+ play an enormous number already written), but you could also use Linux for MythTV, VLC, web browsing, email, or any other use imaginable. Where the PS3 Linux sucks is the video driver is a frame buffer, however I believe that if you dedicated a handful of SPUs on the backside of Mesa that the performance would be pretty good.
Besides XNA has drawbacks even for writing games. a) It uses.NET, thereby hobbling its performance, b) you have to PAY to publish your games c) You have to PAY to see and play them d) You don't get paid for either. To me it looks more like vanity publishing than a legitimate means of encouraging games development.
The problem is that the Bible says whatever you want it to say because it contains lots of contradictory, intolerant, nonsensical things in addition to things which might make you act nice. Thus you have self-proclaimed Christians who hate Jews, Muslims, blacks, gays and anyone with a different religion, race or belief set than them. They're bigots obviously but they could quote you the verses and the rationalisations of the other bits to justify their beliefs.
Basically that is what comes from believing the bible or any other religion in the first place.
Is it my imagination or is Sony's strategy for their playstation line to attempt to make their product 'cool' rather than to make it a good product for gamers.
The PSP is a good product for gamers. In fact it's an EXCELLENT product. That's not to say it doesn't have faults, but mostly its been blighted by too many bad PS2 ports, shoddy "team B" franchise efforts, unoptimised loading times and not enough titles aimed at truly portable gaming. As it happens despite that it has built some excellent titles and especially in the last 12 months or so.
The reason is simple. Microsoft chose to reimplement just about everything in their architecture from the CPU out. It's not even the same instruction set. And as the original XBox was basically a PC, they couldn't just shrink the whole lot down onto a chip and ship that as a component of the 360. Therefore the only other option is emulation.
I expect that MS secretly hoped that Sony would say the PS3 was not backwards compatible. But when Sony announced full backwards compatibility Microsoft was forced to plan B - emulation. Which is why you see the half-assed support the 360 offers for last-gen games. MS basically have to emulate every single entry point in the XBox API plus x86 emulation plus copy protection plus fix visual / audio glitches caused by using different hardware.
I expect some games use APIs that are easier to emulate than others which is why you see support added for weird titles while some popular games still don't work. Meanwhile the Wii and PS3 have almost total backwards compatibility aside from a handful of titles.
I've never used iTunes 7.0 for downloading music, but I use it for managing podcasts. That functionality was seriously broken until 7.02 (frequent occurences included downloads hung forever, stuck video, 100% CPU) and even without bugs lacks any easy way to manage subscriptions. This was a surprise to me since Apple software usually works properly.
Concerning iTMS, my theory is that CDs are so cheap (or rather iTMS et al are so expensive) that there is little incentive for people to download songs. $9.99 for an album really is a scam when often it is on Amazon on CD for $9.99 and sometimes less. It's easier to buy and rip the CD. A CD that you then own forever.
1) Nobody's shipped a DVD/Blu-Ray combo disc yet. DVD/HD-DVD titles are already available.
It's a very clever idea but 2 of the layers either have to be DVD or HD-DVD. That means you'll either end up with a shitty DVD transfer or a shitty HD-DVD transfer. There is no magic bullet providing superior performance for both, at least until a quad layer disc appears. Anyway, Blu-Ray has its own virtually identical solution too. http://www.jvc-victor.co.jp/english/press/2004/bd- dvd.html
2) You can write a HD-DVD format filesystem to DVD.
Both formats have a largely similar software stack, including what video formats they support. [As an aside this is what makes the "format war" all the more perplexing since they're virtually identical except for the physical aspect]. If you were mastering HD content and it all fit onto a DVD, then there is nothing to stop you writing it to a DVD from a suitably equipped BD/DVD-+RW burner. After all, video formats such as H264 / MPEG-4 AVC are not tied to the disc capacity. I have no idea if such things as BD/DVD writer combos exist yet but sooner or later they will.
All in all I have absolutely no urge to root for either side except pragmatism. Blu-Ray offers more capacity but the reader heads are apparently more finnicky to make. HD-DVD offers simplicity but lower storage capacity. Both use blue laser diodes and are subject to virtually identical production costs. Otherwise they're much of a muchness. What drives me to think Blu-Ray will win is simply because there are something like 500,000 PS3s in the world and the figure is expanding faster per month than the entire HD-DVD user base.
I believe that the only way HD-DVD can win is if Microsoft integrate the HD-DVD into their XBox 360. But I suspect they daren't do that unless they want to end up in the same boat as Sony - production issues, higher costs. If such an upgraded 360 did appear I expect that the current "premium" model will become the "core" and the new premium will sport an internal HD-DVD player + HDMI, Wi-fi, 60Gb hd and the other bits and pieces to bring themselves into line with the PS3. But if they leave it too long, HD-DVD will be dead and buried and it will be a waste of time to even bother. Perhaps that's why they're sitting on the fence at the moment.
Re:Sony's dumb decision, with historical precedent
on
No Love For The Blu-Ray
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· Score: 2, Interesting
The Blu-ray drive is heinously expensive
As was the DVD player in its day. So what? Prices for players will fall through the floor in the next few years. Doubtless the PS3 will sink in price too over time.
The Blu-ray drive is hard to manufacture
As I'm sure the DVD player was hard to manufacture in its day. Doesn't mean that it is hard now. The component that was (and probably no longer) makes the Blu-Ray hard to manufacture is the blue laser diode. This is a component shared with HD-DVD. So Blu-Ray's teething troubles are also HD-DVD's teething troubles.
There wouldn't be a so-called "format war" which has turned into, basically, Sony vs. the rest of the world.
Except it isn't Sony vs the rest of the world. Blu-Ray has more backers than HD-DVD. Blu-Ray also has many more players in the hands of consumers thanks to the PS3. The reality is that unless MS stick an HD-DVD into their XBox 360 or the PS3 tanks it is hard to see how HD-DVD can possibly win.
People will buy a game console that happens to also play movies, but they're not going to be force-fed a whole new movie format just to own it. And I may end up eating crow for saying it if history proves me wrong, but I think that when all is said and done, people are really going to resent Sony imposing such a high premium on their gaming for something that has nothing to do with gaming.
The lower PS3 is only only $100 more that the premium XBox 360. For that $100 you get free online access, a blu-ray movie player, more content for your games, bluetooth, HDMI, web browsing, video playback (from disk), region free games, Linux support and a bunch of other bits and pieces. $100 is not much more for all that. Personally I don't think what the 60Gb version offers justifies another $100 expense unless you need wi-fi.
Now even if you think it is too expensive, consider Blu-Ray for what it offers games. The 360 & PS3 output in HD and need 4 times as many polygons, textures and other graphical content to cover the screen. Which means 4 times the disk storage. Then you have HD FMV at 10x NTSC, localization, sound effects and so on. Microsoft chose to constrain their device to DVD-9 discs. That means they get 2 times the disk storage capacity of the last gen for content that needs at least 4 times the space.
Obviously many games won't fill DVD-9 so it makes no difference but those that do will have to span multiple disks. Or they'll slash the content. Or they'll put episodic content up for download (for $$$). Already Blue Dragon needs THREE DVDs and it's likely that other games will need it too. What will it be like in 3 years on from now? Will "please insert disc 2" become a familiar sight half way through 360 games? Even if MS chose to put an HD-DVD into their XBox 360, they can't abandon DVD-9 for games because of the 8 million non-HD-DVD consoles out there.
Sony put themselves in a world of hurt by forcing Blu-Ray into the PS3, but that is because it has a massive potential payoff. Not only is it good for games, but every PS3 is a Blu-Ray player to boot. So Sony scores sales of BD movies, as well as sales of HDTVs to watch them on. The downside as you say is production issues and increased cost. Assuming the Sony can overcome the obstacles it will make a lot of money, most of which wouldn't have materialised if they had stuck with DVD.
The PS3 issue is minor, and certainly not worth the coverage given to it. People with nonstandard 480p/1080i TVs fall back to 480p when playing 720p games. Big deal. Yes your resolution is less, but it still plays. It would be nice if were scaled up to 1080i but its hard to see how it would happen unless the PS3 has an upscaler. Does it have a hardware upscaler? If not I don't see the point of continued complaining - there is no fix for the issue without a hardware revision.
And if its possible to fix in software, the fix will appear in due course. Again there is no point in continued complaining since they are doubtless working on the issue.
And there aren't "many known problems" with the console. There is the 1080i issue, a few other scaling issues which are already known to be worked on (e.g. DVD scaling) and that's about it. Certainly nothing that stops the console from working and nothing that can't be incrementally improved.
I don't see why you're prepared to let Nintendo off the hook if you're bitching about lower resolution on the PS3. After all, the PS3 has yet to be responsible for smashing TVs, windows or other people's faces.
As for Microsoft being "more caring", if they're repairing 360s for free, it may be because they're aware of quality issues or a design flaw that broke them in the first place. See also, overheating PSUs, bricked 360s.
Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony are all heartless global corporations. They don't care about you, they care about your money, profit margins and avoiding expensive lawsuits. At the end of the day they couldn't give two shits about anyone as long as they keep paying and good support / publicity is a means to an end. I don't see Sony as being any worse or better than Microsoft or Nintendo in that regard.
It didn't "just work". Every console had firmware updates - you were just stuck with the version your machine came with. Now console makers have the opportunity to add new features or fix annoyances with live updates.
This is a double edged sword. On the one hand it means you can get massive new functionality, but on the other it lowers the QA threshold. Personally I love firmware updates. My PSP has gained huge features such as a web browser, remote play, AAC, WMA, Flash, PS1 support through updates. The PS3 will do likewise in time. It's why all the bitching about some missing feature is rather strange since the OS is not set in stone. Sony have been very good with the PSP and I see no reason that it will change with PS3. For example they are known to be working on 1080p/24 support for the Blu-Ray and improving SACD dynamics.
I don't even mind much with games, however I would be disturbed if games were buggy when released and it was assumed that it was okay to patch them afterwards. Not everyone has a network connection. However if the patch introduced major new functionality, fixed multiplayer issues or added new content then I have no problem.
The wii remote has gyroscopes and accelerometers. It doesn't need a sensor bar to know you're moving the thing left, right, up or down. It wouldn't allow you to point at a spot on the screen and put the cursor there, but then neither do conventional mice - I can pick up my mouse and deposit it a foot away and the computer doesn't know since it just tracks movements.
Besides which having to point at the screen would be totally impractical, frustrating and just a waste of time. Presentations are usually done from laptops with a projector. People tend to be talking at the audience, or reading notes for the most part. Having a device that required constant pointing at the screen would be total waste of time. Hence the reason that no presentation remotes or gyro mice actually have that requirement.
I'd also add that even if someone did get the wii sensor working, it would absolutely rotten accuracy. Nintendo might be able to get away with shakey cursors on a 480p display, but it would absolutely blow on a PC.
should not be any record in your possesion that proves who you voted for.
Which is why I said it should be placed in a box on your way out. The purpose is so that a manual paper count (either done on a random basis or by court order) should be possible. Though if you want a piece of paper to take home with you, a number of straightforward ways of doing this have been proposed by people on the crypto scene.
I can walk into a store and buy a postage stamp and get a receipt for it. The receipt uniquely records my transaction and is my proof that I bought a stamp. So how come a voting machine cannot do likewise? It isn't rocket science. It isn't difficult. All it has to do is print a receipt that I put in a box when I walk out of the voting booth. If there is any dispute, the paper receipt can be used independently count the number of votes which should tally with the electronic total.
I do not understand why anybody would object to this unless they had 100,000 paperless machines sitting in a warehouse somewhere.
You don't need a "sensor bar" or calibration. PCs and Macs have a thing called a cursor. You can move the remote to move the mouse. It doesn't allow you to aim where you want the cursor to appear, but that would be totally impractical anyway.
Except why would iTV take the living room by storm? The device is pointless unless you already own another Mac / PC which happens to be turned on, running the streaming software. Not many people would be inclined to go through all that.
Besides, if you want to watch movie downloads on your TV, then both the 360 and the PS3 will do it from a single box. The 360's service has already started and Sony's can't be far behind. And both the 360 and PS3 cost less than buying an iTV and even a Mac Mini.
Apple's position in the living room is looking incredibly tenuous. It's hard to see how they could possibly compete there. Their best bet would be to buddy up with either Sony, Nintendo or Microsoft because they'll be picking up scraps otherwise. Of the lot I'd say their "vision" is most closely aligned to Nintendo, but the Wii is such a godawful underpowered system that doesn't even offer HD that Sony might offer a better technical fit.
If I were Sony I wouldn't be worred about PS2 sales. Every sale means profit and more potential converts to the PS3. Maybe not today but in a few years from now. Perhaps they even see the PS2 as a good way to stay in a holding pattern until the price of the PS3 becomes more reasonable.
PC have demanded the graphics, processor, content performance of a 360 or a PS3 for years now AND the games sell for less for retail AND the games are pirated more. What exactly makes consoles with built-in copy protections and higher price points so crazy expensive?
Google certainly has some useful tools, but when they don't work you are screwed. I have a site which I won't name which is not indexed by google and I have absolutely no idea why. I've submitted the url, built a sitemap using their own tools, validated it and even submitted the site for relisting. It still isn't there. What have I done wrong? The tools say everything is fine except it isn't. I could go to the web forum but other postings suggest the employees will likely just tell me wait for indexing. Except its not indexing me.
The sick thing is that I have Google Adwords on that site so each day that Google don't list me, THEY are losing money. I estimate I get 10x the click through business from MSN search than I do from Google. I'd probably make 3x the profit (as would Google) if they'd index.
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And yes I'm against people stating it's complex to program when it plainly isn't. People who say such things aren't programmers, or if they are they clearly haven't much experience of realtime or multi-threaded programming. I would hope that virtually every lead games developer worth their salt already has enough experience that would make programming a PS3 old hat. Does it mean its simple to write games? No. Does it mean the PS3 is technically more complex or difficult to programme than a 360? No. Proper abstraction would mean that 95% of the code would be identical for both.
As for the 20% stuff, you definitely are missing the point. Franchise games rarely ever take advantage of a specific platform in a significant way. They might stick some extra features in on the periphery such as achievements, or XBox Live tables but the core game, the core mechanics are identical. Turn your question around and ask why MS bothered adding those "complex" extra cores because the ports will use the lowest common denominator. The fact is that each console has its own unique selling points and those strengths will be exercised more by the exclusive titles than by the ports. It doesn't mean that because a handful of 1st gen ports don't bother with the extra capabilities that it "removes the point of ever adding it in the first place".
Besides, I fully expect that you'll see a flood of DVD players capable of playing high definition DIVX / AVC content from a burnt DVD before long, with tools and rippers to extract them from the source material.
Batman Begins is a great movie, as is the Bourne Supremacy. Can't say I think much of the other two although MI:III was supposed to be a fairly good popcorn flick even if it did contain a diminuitive AC:DC weirdo in its lead role.
Except that some TVs can output in 1080p/24. So they can show the movie at the same frame rate as it appeared in the cinema. Getting a player to output in that is another matter. The PS3 can't (at the moment), but allegedly a firmware patch will add that support (see here for details).
For each the major headache is coordinating all those threads / SPUs but I don't see it being any easier for the 360 simply because the threads are symmetric.
So while I find Harrison's point true but somewhat baffling (100% efficiency is theoretical for every system), I don't agree that has anything to do with the Cell per se, simply that once you start going parallel things get complicated fast. I'm going off the IBM libspe & Cell SDK documentation, but programming an SPU is relatively straightforward, involving writing C code for the SPU in a standalone file, a special gcc-spu compiler, and an API similar to posix threads to launch it.
My other point is that the vast majority of games would never need anything approaching 100% efficiency. My guess is that the 1st gen of franchise / port games (Call of Duty 3, Tony Hawks Project 8 etc.) didn't even bother with the SPUs. When faced with porting a 360 game in a short timeframe I expect they chose avoid risk by ignoring them. That might explain why EA claim they're only using 20% of the Cell's power - because they are. I expect 2nd gen ports will farm some of the more intensive stuff off to a SPU or two, and that will be good enough to make both systems behave identically, including framerates.
If anything it will be the exclusives that push the envelope. Resistance & Motorstorm demonstrate that the PS3 is capable of handling masses of physics and onscreen action in parallel when those SPUs are put to use. If 1st gen titles can achieve such amazing results, imagine what games could be like in a few years from now.
The hardest thing would be figure out which parts of the program should go on SPUs. But that's a problem that all multi-threaded apps face, and it's not specific to the PS3. A 360 which intends to use its 3 cores to their full potential has similar issues. If there is something "hard" about it, it is that so few games need the full potential of the system that it's hard to know what it is.
Just look at the games appearing for the PS2. I doubt anyone would have imagined when the PS2 launched that you'd see games like Shadow of the Colossus, Bully or God of War by the end. I expect Harrison is just alluding to that.
Besides XNA has drawbacks even for writing games. a) It uses .NET, thereby hobbling its performance, b) you have to PAY to publish your games c) You have to PAY to see and play them d) You don't get paid for either. To me it looks more like vanity publishing than a legitimate means of encouraging games development.
Basically that is what comes from believing the bible or any other religion in the first place.
Why stop at 3D? I think next gen games should be played on line printers using the postal system for turn based gaming.
The PSP is a good product for gamers. In fact it's an EXCELLENT product. That's not to say it doesn't have faults, but mostly its been blighted by too many bad PS2 ports, shoddy "team B" franchise efforts, unoptimised loading times and not enough titles aimed at truly portable gaming. As it happens despite that it has built some excellent titles and especially in the last 12 months or so.
I expect that MS secretly hoped that Sony would say the PS3 was not backwards compatible. But when Sony announced full backwards compatibility Microsoft was forced to plan B - emulation. Which is why you see the half-assed support the 360 offers for last-gen games. MS basically have to emulate every single entry point in the XBox API plus x86 emulation plus copy protection plus fix visual / audio glitches caused by using different hardware.
I expect some games use APIs that are easier to emulate than others which is why you see support added for weird titles while some popular games still don't work. Meanwhile the Wii and PS3 have almost total backwards compatibility aside from a handful of titles.
Concerning iTMS, my theory is that CDs are so cheap (or rather iTMS et al are so expensive) that there is little incentive for people to download songs. $9.99 for an album really is a scam when often it is on Amazon on CD for $9.99 and sometimes less. It's easier to buy and rip the CD. A CD that you then own forever.
It's a very clever idea but 2 of the layers either have to be DVD or HD-DVD. That means you'll either end up with a shitty DVD transfer or a shitty HD-DVD transfer. There is no magic bullet providing superior performance for both, at least until a quad layer disc appears. Anyway, Blu-Ray has its own virtually identical solution too. http://www.jvc-victor.co.jp/english/press/2004/bd- dvd.html
2) You can write a HD-DVD format filesystem to DVD.
Both formats have a largely similar software stack, including what video formats they support. [As an aside this is what makes the "format war" all the more perplexing since they're virtually identical except for the physical aspect]. If you were mastering HD content and it all fit onto a DVD, then there is nothing to stop you writing it to a DVD from a suitably equipped BD/DVD-+RW burner. After all, video formats such as H264 / MPEG-4 AVC are not tied to the disc capacity. I have no idea if such things as BD/DVD writer combos exist yet but sooner or later they will.
All in all I have absolutely no urge to root for either side except pragmatism. Blu-Ray offers more capacity but the reader heads are apparently more finnicky to make. HD-DVD offers simplicity but lower storage capacity. Both use blue laser diodes and are subject to virtually identical production costs. Otherwise they're much of a muchness. What drives me to think Blu-Ray will win is simply because there are something like 500,000 PS3s in the world and the figure is expanding faster per month than the entire HD-DVD user base.
I believe that the only way HD-DVD can win is if Microsoft integrate the HD-DVD into their XBox 360. But I suspect they daren't do that unless they want to end up in the same boat as Sony - production issues, higher costs. If such an upgraded 360 did appear I expect that the current "premium" model will become the "core" and the new premium will sport an internal HD-DVD player + HDMI, Wi-fi, 60Gb hd and the other bits and pieces to bring themselves into line with the PS3. But if they leave it too long, HD-DVD will be dead and buried and it will be a waste of time to even bother. Perhaps that's why they're sitting on the fence at the moment.
As was the DVD player in its day. So what? Prices for players will fall through the floor in the next few years. Doubtless the PS3 will sink in price too over time.
The Blu-ray drive is hard to manufacture
As I'm sure the DVD player was hard to manufacture in its day. Doesn't mean that it is hard now. The component that was (and probably no longer) makes the Blu-Ray hard to manufacture is the blue laser diode. This is a component shared with HD-DVD. So Blu-Ray's teething troubles are also HD-DVD's teething troubles.
There wouldn't be a so-called "format war" which has turned into, basically, Sony vs. the rest of the world.
Except it isn't Sony vs the rest of the world. Blu-Ray has more backers than HD-DVD. Blu-Ray also has many more players in the hands of consumers thanks to the PS3. The reality is that unless MS stick an HD-DVD into their XBox 360 or the PS3 tanks it is hard to see how HD-DVD can possibly win.
People will buy a game console that happens to also play movies, but they're not going to be force-fed a whole new movie format just to own it. And I may end up eating crow for saying it if history proves me wrong, but I think that when all is said and done, people are really going to resent Sony imposing such a high premium on their gaming for something that has nothing to do with gaming.
The lower PS3 is only only $100 more that the premium XBox 360. For that $100 you get free online access, a blu-ray movie player, more content for your games, bluetooth, HDMI, web browsing, video playback (from disk), region free games, Linux support and a bunch of other bits and pieces. $100 is not much more for all that. Personally I don't think what the 60Gb version offers justifies another $100 expense unless you need wi-fi.
Now even if you think it is too expensive, consider Blu-Ray for what it offers games. The 360 & PS3 output in HD and need 4 times as many polygons, textures and other graphical content to cover the screen. Which means 4 times the disk storage. Then you have HD FMV at 10x NTSC, localization, sound effects and so on. Microsoft chose to constrain their device to DVD-9 discs. That means they get 2 times the disk storage capacity of the last gen for content that needs at least 4 times the space.
Obviously many games won't fill DVD-9 so it makes no difference but those that do will have to span multiple disks. Or they'll slash the content. Or they'll put episodic content up for download (for $$$). Already Blue Dragon needs THREE DVDs and it's likely that other games will need it too. What will it be like in 3 years on from now? Will "please insert disc 2" become a familiar sight half way through 360 games? Even if MS chose to put an HD-DVD into their XBox 360, they can't abandon DVD-9 for games because of the 8 million non-HD-DVD consoles out there.
Sony put themselves in a world of hurt by forcing Blu-Ray into the PS3, but that is because it has a massive potential payoff. Not only is it good for games, but every PS3 is a Blu-Ray player to boot. So Sony scores sales of BD movies, as well as sales of HDTVs to watch them on. The downside as you say is production issues and increased cost. Assuming the Sony can overcome the obstacles it will make a lot of money, most of which wouldn't have materialised if they had stuck with DVD.
And if its possible to fix in software, the fix will appear in due course. Again there is no point in continued complaining since they are doubtless working on the issue.
And there aren't "many known problems" with the console. There is the 1080i issue, a few other scaling issues which are already known to be worked on (e.g. DVD scaling) and that's about it. Certainly nothing that stops the console from working and nothing that can't be incrementally improved.
I don't see why you're prepared to let Nintendo off the hook if you're bitching about lower resolution on the PS3. After all, the PS3 has yet to be responsible for smashing TVs, windows or other people's faces.
As for Microsoft being "more caring", if they're repairing 360s for free, it may be because they're aware of quality issues or a design flaw that broke them in the first place. See also, overheating PSUs, bricked 360s.
Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony are all heartless global corporations. They don't care about you, they care about your money, profit margins and avoiding expensive lawsuits. At the end of the day they couldn't give two shits about anyone as long as they keep paying and good support / publicity is a means to an end. I don't see Sony as being any worse or better than Microsoft or Nintendo in that regard.
This is a double edged sword. On the one hand it means you can get massive new functionality, but on the other it lowers the QA threshold. Personally I love firmware updates. My PSP has gained huge features such as a web browser, remote play, AAC, WMA, Flash, PS1 support through updates. The PS3 will do likewise in time. It's why all the bitching about some missing feature is rather strange since the OS is not set in stone. Sony have been very good with the PSP and I see no reason that it will change with PS3. For example they are known to be working on 1080p/24 support for the Blu-Ray and improving SACD dynamics.
I don't even mind much with games, however I would be disturbed if games were buggy when released and it was assumed that it was okay to patch them afterwards. Not everyone has a network connection. However if the patch introduced major new functionality, fixed multiplayer issues or added new content then I have no problem.
Besides which having to point at the screen would be totally impractical, frustrating and just a waste of time. Presentations are usually done from laptops with a projector. People tend to be talking at the audience, or reading notes for the most part. Having a device that required constant pointing at the screen would be total waste of time. Hence the reason that no presentation remotes or gyro mice actually have that requirement.
I'd also add that even if someone did get the wii sensor working, it would absolutely rotten accuracy. Nintendo might be able to get away with shakey cursors on a 480p display, but it would absolutely blow on a PC.
Which is why I said it should be placed in a box on your way out. The purpose is so that a manual paper count (either done on a random basis or by court order) should be possible. Though if you want a piece of paper to take home with you, a number of straightforward ways of doing this have been proposed by people on the crypto scene.
I do not understand why anybody would object to this unless they had 100,000 paperless machines sitting in a warehouse somewhere.
You don't need a "sensor bar" or calibration. PCs and Macs have a thing called a cursor. You can move the remote to move the mouse. It doesn't allow you to aim where you want the cursor to appear, but that would be totally impractical anyway.
Besides, if you want to watch movie downloads on your TV, then both the 360 and the PS3 will do it from a single box. The 360's service has already started and Sony's can't be far behind. And both the 360 and PS3 cost less than buying an iTV and even a Mac Mini.
Apple's position in the living room is looking incredibly tenuous. It's hard to see how they could possibly compete there. Their best bet would be to buddy up with either Sony, Nintendo or Microsoft because they'll be picking up scraps otherwise. Of the lot I'd say their "vision" is most closely aligned to Nintendo, but the Wii is such a godawful underpowered system that doesn't even offer HD that Sony might offer a better technical fit.
If I were Sony I wouldn't be worred about PS2 sales. Every sale means profit and more potential converts to the PS3. Maybe not today but in a few years from now. Perhaps they even see the PS2 as a good way to stay in a holding pattern until the price of the PS3 becomes more reasonable.
PC have demanded the graphics, processor, content performance of a 360 or a PS3 for years now AND the games sell for less for retail AND the games are pirated more. What exactly makes consoles with built-in copy protections and higher price points so crazy expensive?
The sick thing is that I have Google Adwords on that site so each day that Google don't list me, THEY are losing money. I estimate I get 10x the click through business from MSN search than I do from Google. I'd probably make 3x the profit (as would Google) if they'd index.
Good catch - A9. I was listening to A3 (the band) a few days back and my brain slipped a gear :)