Erm complete BS. You not only need cart manufacturing, you need a license from Nintendo. You _need_ a devkit (with compiler/linker and binary signing tools) and you _need_ a marketing/packaging company. Unless you have a million lying around, this is _well_ beyond your average homebrew and indie effort.
In fact, the license from Nintendo is one of the most expensive components - and usually why you go through a licensed publisher to get the appropriate licensing. The marketing and manufacturing of the cart is also higly expensive - Nintendo and other manufacturers also require a minimum run of 10,000 units.
To actually do all this from scratch, is pretty rare. Usually happens when people with lots of stock options leave Nintendo or EA and startup their own little studio. Btw - the NDA for Nintendo doesnt bind you to not giving the price per cart - last time I checked its not even posted on the devsite (warioworld) - just checked again, nope. Devkits, and components are, not manufacturing carts for sell through.
There is no Myth here - access to game development is not easy if you are not well financially backed, or/and dont have good association with Nintendo (usually via publishers). First party titles especially, you need to be good friends with Nintendo.
And to all the nuggets that say homebrew is 'easy on DS with GCC' - you obviously havent tried to do it yet, have you. Debugging IPC anyone? riiiight...
Im afraid Python would be one of the last languages to choose for teaching young kids programming. 1. Explaining why 'whitespace' is really important and controls 'scopes' would be nightmarish at best. 2. Python is not based on a simple syntax, its heavily symbol driven and would be the cause of more problems teaching it. 3. Python itself is not a tool - youd need something like pygame or similar, a suite of utilities also to get something going - waay too much mucking around for this age group, and far to complex for most kids attention spans.
Id seriously consider a Logo, Hypercard, or MindStorm. I have also taught some children (less than 10yrs old) some basic programming principals with Blitz Basic. There are quite a few good basic's that provide builtin gfx and such. VB of course is probably a little too complex, but if you have simple constructs like "DrawLine x1, y1, x2, y2" you'll find kids will be making all sorts of things in rapid time.
My suggestion is to steer clear of specific programming semantics, and concentrate on getting a package that kids can use straight up, with minimal tuition. The fact is, that programming languages change, so its more important they manage to 'make something' with it. And ideally make something with a connection to the kids themselves (ie games are a top idea).
The sheer apathy of this article, and sarcasm shows Zonks colours again. If this wre and Xbox presentation he would have been lauding every little bit of gfx he saw. I find the commentry around the game demonstrations as the most hilarious I have read - Obviously he wasnt in the same room as the Kokatu and Digg editors as he claimed, they posted quite different overviews.
Get off your anti Sony spooge box Zonk.. its pretty sad.
Classic Halo fanboy..
on
Black Review
·
· Score: 1
Very typically a Halo fanboy review: search for Zonks and Halo - my god, youd think its the only game hes ever played. The review makes alot more sense after seeing that.
"Its not Halo, so it must be crap".
Some of his comments are almost hilarious:
"That physical environment could have looked better, though. In the graphics department, the game looks merely adequate. Screenshots of the Xbox version seem quite polished, but I had to play the PS2 version. I sold my Xbox to offset my purchase of a 360, which won't play this game at all. The PS2 version of Black has the jaggies problem that plagues many titles on that console. Though that distracted from the experience, the quality of the textures throughout the title match up with the best the PS2 has to offer."
So which is it, the PS2 is crap, the Xbox rocks, the X360 roks, but its the best textures on PS2. Man, what a complete fanboy dribble. Be a little bit unbiased? Could you?.. although maybe not.
Also, the score - "Curiously, the occasional musical stings are nowhere near as polished. Ostensibly used to heighten tension, they come across as mostly annoying. After the first few levels I turned them off, and didn't miss them a bit."
Damn, you need a hearing test - this has one of the best scores around. Full stop. I dont know what game you were playing, but it sounds like you cut an pasted someone elses review, because that is a redic statement.
I think Zonk needs to have a little bit of perspective - get off his fanboy wagon and look at the game for its _actual_ merits and worthiness. Im sure Zonk finds Halo the most brilliant FPS ever made - however, imho Black stomps all over it. The only serious issue I had with Black, is that it is short. Thats it. And if you dont beleive me, go rent it, play it through, then comment. This guys comments lead me to beleive he either played it on easy, or didnt play it at all.
It unfortunately turns out that electricity power generation contributes a relatively small fraction of the total CO2 output.
It doesnt matter if you replace ALL of the generation of electricity with nuclear you wont dent the CO2 output hardly at all (Read the article). On top of that you have generated a waste product, that has been proven impossible to contain an store, and needs to be stored for some 10,000 years of its radioactive lifespan. High level waste, still has no solvable safe storage method - and it has been many many years of discussion what to do with it - meanwhile it continues to build up at 78 Nuclear Plants, which are dure to run out of storage space in 2010.
Not even vaguely a decent choice - replace one destructive measure with another destructive measure our decendants have to deal with, although thats essentially what the baby-boomers have done to us. Lots of ticking time-bombs.
How to get as many people inflamed as possible. Post an anti-apple/iPod article. Whats funnier, is all the apple fanboys that took the bait. damn funny. Its just a little piece of electronics people.. with a badge on it?
According to all the slashdot experts.. Sony wont sell a thing, and Apple are dominating the audio, hifi market. Geez.. Its amazing to see anything useful said here anymore.. Slashdot really is the new Fatbabies.
Good post. I agree, its sad to see so many slashdot experts out again trying to show how google should do it. Like anyone on this thread has even been near managing a billion dollar company.. and all we see is 'do it this way'.. 'do it that way'...'no no youre wrong'.. 'its like this'.. ad infinitum.
Great stuff google. Heres hoping more american people think and act like them.
Now I can put it with all my room temperature superconducting devices.. does techno babble ever stop.. and all the promises of cheap this, and huge that ever end... in 5 years I'll have a fusion power source driving my car.. .
Erm. Huh? You have developed for NDS and GBA but not PSP, and are saying the PSP development cycle is difficult. what the? Having developed on both, and knowing many coders who have developed on both, the general consensus is that Nintendos support is horrendous. Their devkits - erm.. half assed at best (did you even have a GBA Nintendo devkit? - they are slower to use than the USB Carts!!!). And the NDS systems are really no better. Then if you want to talk about features the DS and GBA are sorely missing many many things that devvers have been asking to put on their ARM chips for YEARS!!.. an FPU for example - if you are a Nintendo developer, visit their forums, and read the _huge_ list of people asking for this (btw ARM chips with FPU are not much costlier either!!).
Then there is the VRAM issues, the DMA issues.. man.. talk about a complete mess. And everyone thought theyd clean it up with the DS.. bzzzt. Even the damn 3D is an utter pain.. two sets of normals?? come on!! After spending a single day devving on PSP.. I was hooked. We ported our code in just a couple of days.. and the huge amount of extra resources we now have, means our systems can have many extra features added.. how the heck can you say that is bad?..
Console.. and handheld wise, the DS is a horrible dinosaur of hardware (dont get me started on IPC..) and shows how much Nintendo listen to their developers. Also, since I changed my IDE to code::blocks (I develop PC, PSP, DS all from the one IDE now.. its nice) I dont have to deal with the el-stupido metrowerks anymore (although I did like their debugger.. but their IDE sucks to hell).
As for submission and feedback etc.. I really dont think you have done many games before at all. Nintendo simply give you a tick or a cross, if you pass or fail. With a nice doc explaining.. what silly bit of crap they didnt like. Sony are NO different in their QA.. its exactly the same.. detailed report.. about some obscure text siting in the wrong spot.
Also, you NEVER submit concept submissions to Nintnedo unless you are a tier 1 developer - which is a handfull of the top of the line developers, and they actually get to write their own rules for QA.. I have seen so many breeches of the QA docs in the 1st tier games.. but its because they can. As a 3rd party developer, you go through a publisher, and guess what, you dont deal with Nintendo at all, or Sony. You simply get their reports and thats it. The publisher does all the submission, feedback, testing and approvals with Nintendo.
Please explain... Nintendo Nazi's?
on
20 Years of NES
·
· Score: 1
"When the NES launched, America hated videogames" - wtf is this? 1982? Remember anything that happened that year? try... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C64
So please explain.. how in hell did Nintendo some how be come a gaming saviour? what a complete load of utter crap. There were many thousands of fantastic games on _non_ Nintendo platforms that made the whole industry what it was.. Nintendo (like always) came in quite late in the picture and decided to reap some money from the games market..
On top of that the Atari 2600.. is waaaaaay earlier than the SNES.. by almost 10 YEARS!!! Wtf are you lot on... ffs.. use some wiki.. for crying out loud.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_2600
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_ST... the Amiga and Atari ST were released in the same year as the SNES.. these machines sold more games than SNES.. and many more classics were dervied from them.. The silly one eyed Nintendo fanboy thing is so typically ignorant.. and there were many more great machines around too at the same time..
Its hilarious that people even put the SNES up as some amazing fore runner to the gaming industry, thats just a complete fabrication.. Nintendo were scammers.. and still are.. ppl typically blinded by bs marketing..
You use the tool that allows the most people to be able to do the most work in the shortest possible time. Regardless.. and VS does this better than any programming tool. Dont spam with emacs and so forth.. it takes eons to become a hugely efficient emacs user. And on top of that, there is no better tool for project management - make files, ant and the like are just horrible 70's excuses that should have been burnt and shredded ages ago.. Having been involved in everything from SGI, Sun, Linux, and Windows OS's VS is head an shoulders above all the other available programming IDE's around. Poster needs to get a brain.
For crying out loud, quit with the hype and speil and write a balanced and well thought out discussion about the controller for the Rev. All I have seen is crazy fanboy rants.
Few have mentioned things like haptic lag issues, accuracy problems, fatigue problems.. and alienating people with poor motor skills? Surely Nintendo want as big as audience as possible? How does this achieve those goals?
And on that note.. how are Nintendo seen as innovative? When Sony releases the eye-toy people scream 'gimmik!!'.. how is this not a gimmik then?
I pray for Nintendo that this really is a great leap in innovation. But I worry more about how everyone has jumped on the hype bandwagon without some thought. I think if they dont make it completely accessible by everyone, then they are stuck, and they will only shrink their already disappearing market.
MMO's are one buzzword that is well past its used by date. Developers have been trying to sell the idea of a profitable MMO to publishers for year - look at the results. Almost 90% of all MMO projects that get underway, get canned due to unrealistic expectations of the audience.
You need massive amount of money to run decent resources to serve large MMO's, and that usually mean monthly fees. Casual gamers will _never_ be interested in this sort of setup.. because they are... oooh.. CASUAL.. Once developers quit with this damn annoying and money wasting buzz word.. the game dev industry will be a much better place to work in...
Only few developer can afford.. and understand the implications of MMO's and pull them off business wise.. short of developing similar studios.. theres stuff all point in attempting these games..
The average lifespan of a game is extremely short these days. And the gaming community is an extremely mobile community. Look how quiet WoW is at the moment while BF2 servers are full all over? This is the problem.. until people realise the economic model for MMO's doesnt work.. we will see more stupid failures..
After reading the article, this is a typical Anadtech 'nothing' article, even the one they did previously on the Cell was horrible, and so full of incorrect 'guesses' that they make themselves look insanely stupid.
The last one alone shows just how much data can be operated on.. and only 6 SPE's were being used for it.
Personally I think Anadtech should stop taking drugs.. and read around a bit.. maybe they might be able to be a bit more thorough with their articles then - youd think google was broken looking at the crap they are putting up.
Guantanamo bay.. apparently the US _does_ hold people without rights.. and to top it off.. they werent even on US soil? You want to list the abuses the US has been involved in around the world? The US has been the source of political governments oppression of their citizens for year.. and there are many countries that the US applys it 'will' over to make sure this happens. Egypt, Morroco, Many South American countries, various middle African countries (Nigeria, Sudan, and so on).. and various other South East asian countries like Thialand, Indonesia and so on.
If anyone need to get off their high horse, its Americans. The use of corp power to control _other_ countries is the source of alot of these governments that are applying strict control on information to try and curb the 'capitalist pig' doctrination the rest of the world suffers.
America has been a Fascist state for the last 50 years at least!! Some of your greatest people have had common liberty's removed from them, just because they spoke out against a government or against a powerful citizen. Read your history books, the US is far from a wonderful benevolent government you beleive it to be. And your citizens continue to apply racist attitudes towards peoples in your own country!! Look at the anti muslim and anti arabian attitude in your country? Are you saying these people dont feel in some way despised, and hated? Are you saying they are not being jailed and beaten up for no reason!! Read your news..
America is no better than anywhere else.. and more so.. since its corporate greed that is currently enveloping the globe. A country has its own soverign rights.. there is no justification for any other country to apply their laws to them..
Btw I guarantee you have never even seen/been involved in what you are talking about.. you really think that mentioning the president in bad terms in Iran will get you locked up.. this is typical of Americans "Everyone else is worse than us" attitude..
Its fuuny that people cant even see Facism occuring in their own country.. and claim its morality and democracy above all others.. complete BS..
The last part about programming architecture.. is interesting reading. From job queuing.. to micro kernels to streaming.. multi-cores are are a very good way to do things. And on Cell.. they are all seperate cores.. And for a server with 14 of these in one box.. coming soon.. http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20050 525/105050/
Its pretty obvious why Intel and AMD are going multicore.. because it works.. and they have to catch up before they are lost in the dust.
Having 4 times the carbon output of Russia surely means they have the ability to have the most profound effect - and can _lead_ by example. It is only an ignorant person who cannot see the sheer insanity of the pollution the US is creating in comparison to all other countries. Surely being a free democratic nation full of intelligent people, it makes it obvious to try and curb waste and pollution?
If you look at any pollution statistics on the US (even plain garbage) there is no justification for _not_ doing something to reduce it.. and make for a good example..
It doesnt matter whether you think global warming is happening or not. It is time however to realise that our rates of pollution will result in some resulting effect - regardless of any scientific theory. http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/env_pol_car_di o_199
The US needs to curb its pollution _now_.. and lead by example, rather than act as an ignorant, "we can do what we ant" monolith of corporate greed.
It definitely seems that the Cell is aimed at massive data throughput, rather than optimised execution pipes. Imho this is something I have always found a little odd with the way Intel and Amd CPUs have been growing their execution pipeslines to improve their prediction capabilites - essentially the Cell moves the prediction up to the compiler/assembler level and just runs flat out:-) Alot like an extremely quick treadmill.. the only problem I see is feeding it:-)
The XBox 360 looks like it is using a variant of the PowerPC (I read somewhere about it being related to some of IBM's server systems). If thats the case, then it is relying on cache.. than raw throughput.. its almost a test to see which really does work best. Nothing like a field test...
Also, the Cell is slated to go to 60nm SIO too..(or thats what IBM/Sony/Toshiba were aiming for soon). That obviously means higher clocks.. and would maybe suggest maybe some more cores on die? dunno.. hype.. speculation.. well.. its the flavour of the day.. Id say:-)
PS3 devkits have been out at developers since Nov last year (to a select few).. dont doubt that Sony might even jump the gun with the PS3.. In fact.. having MS in a position where they just dont know what Sony is doing is an ideal marketing strategy.. and if they have something ready even around XBox360 release time.. what a coup.. and thats the sort of thing Sony like to pull.
Slashdot Mirror
Erm complete BS. You not only need cart manufacturing, you need a license from Nintendo. You _need_ a devkit (with compiler/linker and binary signing tools) and you _need_ a marketing/packaging company. Unless you have a million lying around, this is _well_ beyond your average homebrew and indie effort.
In fact, the license from Nintendo is one of the most expensive components - and usually why you go through a licensed publisher to get the appropriate licensing. The marketing and manufacturing of the cart is also higly expensive - Nintendo and other manufacturers also require a minimum run of 10,000 units.
To actually do all this from scratch, is pretty rare. Usually happens when people with lots of stock options leave Nintendo or EA and startup their own little studio. Btw - the NDA for Nintendo doesnt bind you to not giving the price per cart - last time I checked its not even posted on the devsite (warioworld) - just checked again, nope. Devkits, and components are, not manufacturing carts for sell through.
There is no Myth here - access to game development is not easy if you are not well financially backed, or/and dont have good association with Nintendo (usually via publishers). First party titles especially, you need to be good friends with Nintendo.
And to all the nuggets that say homebrew is 'easy on DS with GCC' - you obviously havent tried to do it yet, have you. Debugging IPC anyone? riiiight...
Im afraid Python would be one of the last languages to choose for teaching young kids programming.
1. Explaining why 'whitespace' is really important and controls 'scopes' would be nightmarish at best.
2. Python is not based on a simple syntax, its heavily symbol driven and would be the cause of more problems teaching it.
3. Python itself is not a tool - youd need something like pygame or similar, a suite of utilities also to get something going - waay too much mucking around for this age group, and far to complex for most kids attention spans.
Id seriously consider a Logo, Hypercard, or MindStorm. I have also taught some children (less than 10yrs old) some basic programming principals with Blitz Basic. There are quite a few good basic's that provide builtin gfx and such. VB of course is probably a little too complex, but if you have simple constructs like "DrawLine x1, y1, x2, y2" you'll find kids will be making all sorts of things in rapid time.
My suggestion is to steer clear of specific programming semantics, and concentrate on getting a package that kids can use straight up, with minimal tuition. The fact is, that programming languages change, so its more important they manage to 'make something' with it. And ideally make something with a connection to the kids themselves (ie games are a top idea).
The sheer apathy of this article, and sarcasm shows Zonks colours again. If this wre and Xbox presentation he would have been lauding every little bit of gfx he saw. I find the commentry around the game demonstrations as the most hilarious I have read - Obviously he wasnt in the same room as the Kokatu and Digg editors as he claimed, they posted quite different overviews.
Get off your anti Sony spooge box Zonk.. its pretty sad.
Very typically a Halo fanboy review: search for Zonks and Halo - my god, youd think its the only game hes ever played. The review makes alot more sense after seeing that.
.. although maybe not.
_ 1.x
"Its not Halo, so it must be crap".
Some of his comments are almost hilarious:
"That physical environment could have looked better, though. In the graphics department, the game looks merely adequate. Screenshots of the Xbox version seem quite polished, but I had to play the PS2 version. I sold my Xbox to offset my purchase of a 360, which won't play this game at all. The PS2 version of Black has the jaggies problem that plagues many titles on that console. Though that distracted from the experience, the quality of the textures throughout the title match up with the best the PS2 has to offer."
So which is it, the PS2 is crap, the Xbox rocks, the X360 roks, but its the best textures on PS2. Man, what a complete fanboy dribble. Be a little bit unbiased? Could you?
Also, the score - "Curiously, the occasional musical stings are nowhere near as polished. Ostensibly used to heighten tension, they come across as mostly annoying. After the first few levels I turned them off, and didn't miss them a bit."
Damn, you need a hearing test - this has one of the best scores around. Full stop. I dont know what game you were playing, but it sounds like you cut an pasted someone elses review, because that is a redic statement.
I think Zonk needs to have a little bit of perspective - get off his fanboy wagon and look at the game for its _actual_ merits and worthiness. Im sure Zonk finds Halo the most brilliant FPS ever made - however, imho Black stomps all over it. The only serious issue I had with Black, is that it is short. Thats it. And if you dont beleive me, go rent it, play it through, then comment. This guys comments lead me to beleive he either played it on easy, or didnt play it at all.
For a little more open and thought provoking review visit a decent gaming site:
http://www.shacknews.com/extras/2006/030106_black
Hey Zonk.. Halo isnt the only FPS in the world btw.
It doesnt matter if you replace ALL of the generation of electricity with nuclear you wont dent the CO2 output hardly at all (Read the article). On top of that you have generated a waste product, that has been proven impossible to contain an store, and needs to be stored for some 10,000 years of its radioactive lifespan. High level waste, still has no solvable safe storage method - and it has been many many years of discussion what to do with it - meanwhile it continues to build up at 78 Nuclear Plants, which are dure to run out of storage space in 2010.
Not even vaguely a decent choice - replace one destructive measure with another destructive measure our decendants have to deal with, although thats essentially what the baby-boomers have done to us. Lots of ticking time-bombs.
How to get as many people inflamed as possible. Post an anti-apple/iPod article. Whats funnier, is all the apple fanboys that took the bait. damn funny. Its just a little piece of electronics people.. with a badge on it?
According to all the slashdot experts.. Sony wont sell a thing, and Apple are dominating the audio, hifi market. Geez.. Its amazing to see anything useful said here anymore.. Slashdot really is the new Fatbabies.
Crikey.. who knew there were that many Anon Cowards that even cared..
Good post. I agree, its sad to see so many slashdot experts out again trying to show how google should do it. Like anyone on this thread has even been near managing a billion dollar company.. and all we see is 'do it this way'.. 'do it that way'...'no no youre wrong'.. 'its like this'.. ad infinitum.
Great stuff google. Heres hoping more american people think and act like them.
Now I can put it with all my room temperature superconducting devices.. does techno babble ever stop.. and all the promises of cheap this, and huge that ever end... in 5 years I'll have a fusion power source driving my car.. .
when you need him.. so many experts, so few answers.
Erm. Huh?
..
You have developed for NDS and GBA but not PSP, and are saying the PSP development cycle is difficult. what the?
Having developed on both, and knowing many coders who have developed on both, the general consensus is that Nintendos support is horrendous. Their devkits - erm.. half assed at best (did you even have a GBA Nintendo devkit? - they are slower to use than the USB Carts!!!). And the NDS systems are really no better. Then if you want to talk about features the DS and GBA are sorely missing many many things that devvers have been asking to put on their ARM chips for YEARS!!.. an FPU for example - if you are a Nintendo developer, visit their forums, and read the _huge_ list of people asking for this (btw ARM chips with FPU are not much costlier either!!).
Then there is the VRAM issues, the DMA issues.. man.. talk about a complete mess. And everyone thought theyd clean it up with the DS.. bzzzt. Even the damn 3D is an utter pain.. two sets of normals?? come on!! After spending a single day devving on PSP.. I was hooked. We ported our code in just a couple of days.. and the huge amount of extra resources we now have, means our systems can have many extra features added.. how the heck can you say that is bad?
Console.. and handheld wise, the DS is a horrible dinosaur of hardware (dont get me started on IPC..) and shows how much Nintendo listen to their developers. Also, since I changed my IDE to code::blocks (I develop PC, PSP, DS all from the one IDE now.. its nice) I dont have to deal with the el-stupido metrowerks anymore (although I did like their debugger.. but their IDE sucks to hell).
As for submission and feedback etc.. I really dont think you have done many games before at all. Nintendo simply give you a tick or a cross, if you pass or fail. With a nice doc explaining.. what silly bit of crap they didnt like. Sony are NO different in their QA.. its exactly the same.. detailed report.. about some obscure text siting in the wrong spot.
Also, you NEVER submit concept submissions to Nintnedo unless you are a tier 1 developer - which is a handfull of the top of the line developers, and they actually get to write their own rules for QA.. I have seen so many breeches of the QA docs in the 1st tier games.. but its because they can. As a 3rd party developer, you go through a publisher, and guess what, you dont deal with Nintendo at all, or Sony. You simply get their reports and thats it. The publisher does all the submission, feedback, testing and approvals with Nintendo.
"When the NES launched, America hated videogames" - wtf is this?
... the Amiga and Atari ST were released in the same year as the SNES.. these machines sold more games than SNES.. and many more classics were dervied from them.. The silly one eyed Nintendo fanboy thing is so typically ignorant.. and there were many more great machines around too at the same time..
1982? Remember anything that happened that year? try...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C64
So please explain.. how in hell did Nintendo some how be come a gaming saviour? what a complete load of utter crap. There were many thousands of fantastic games on _non_ Nintendo platforms that made the whole industry what it was.. Nintendo (like always) came in quite late in the picture and decided to reap some money from the games market..
On top of that the Atari 2600.. is waaaaaay earlier than the SNES.. by almost 10 YEARS!!! Wtf are you lot on... ffs.. use some wiki.. for crying out loud.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_2600
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_ST
Its hilarious that people even put the SNES up as some amazing fore runner to the gaming industry, thats just a complete fabrication.. Nintendo were scammers.. and still are.. ppl typically blinded by bs marketing..
You use the tool that allows the most people to be able to do the most work in the shortest possible time. Regardless.. and VS does this better than any programming tool. Dont spam with emacs and so forth.. it takes eons to become a hugely efficient emacs user. And on top of that, there is no better tool for project management - make files, ant and the like are just horrible 70's excuses that should have been burnt and shredded ages ago.. Having been involved in everything from SGI, Sun, Linux, and Windows OS's VS is head an shoulders above all the other available programming IDE's around. Poster needs to get a brain.
Just what the world needs.
For crying out loud, quit with the hype and speil and write a balanced and well thought out discussion about the controller for the Rev. All I have seen is crazy fanboy rants.
Few have mentioned things like haptic lag issues, accuracy problems, fatigue problems.. and alienating people with poor motor skills? Surely Nintendo want as big as audience as possible? How does this achieve those goals?
And on that note.. how are Nintendo seen as innovative? When Sony releases the eye-toy people scream 'gimmik!!'.. how is this not a gimmik then?
I pray for Nintendo that this really is a great leap in innovation. But I worry more about how everyone has jumped on the hype bandwagon without some thought. I think if they dont make it completely accessible by everyone, then they are stuck, and they will only shrink their already disappearing market.
The beer googles were on.. and drugs were being passed around the office for free that morning.. pity few actually read about the Cell which IBM has provided quite a bit of info for ages (over 6months old now):C 05/index.html
http://www.research.ibm.com/cell/
Along with Sonys webby:
http://www.research.scea.com/research/html/CellGD
I guess slashdot modders find it hard to google these days..
MMO's are one buzzword that is well past its used by date. Developers have been trying to sell the idea of a profitable MMO to publishers for year - look at the results. Almost 90% of all MMO projects that get underway, get canned due to unrealistic expectations of the audience.
... oooh.. CASUAL.. Once developers quit with this damn annoying and money wasting buzz word.. the game dev industry will be a much better place to work in...
You need massive amount of money to run decent resources to serve large MMO's, and that usually mean monthly fees. Casual gamers will _never_ be interested in this sort of setup.. because they are
Only few developer can afford.. and understand the implications of MMO's and pull them off business wise.. short of developing similar studios.. theres stuff all point in attempting these games..
The average lifespan of a game is extremely short these days. And the gaming community is an extremely mobile community. Look how quiet WoW is at the moment while BF2 servers are full all over? This is the problem.. until people realise the economic model for MMO's doesnt work.. we will see more stupid failures..
After reading the article, this is a typical Anadtech 'nothing' article, even the one they did previously on the Cell was horrible, and so full of incorrect 'guesses' that they make themselves look insanely stupid.
C 05/index.html C 05/17.html
0 525/105050/ t ails.html?&L=1&talkid=156 0 425/104149/?ST=english
.. and only 6 SPE's were being used for it.
If they had talked to _anyone_ working on the Cell they would have pointed them to this nice article, which I wish people would read before crapping on about the Cell:
http://www.research.scea.com/research/html/CellGD
This isnt some marketing junk, it actually has some pretty decent info about how the Cell _works_. Unlike what everyone has been saying, the SPE's ARE general purpose processors:
http://www.research.scea.com/research/html/CellGD
I wish people would stop with the "everyone chooses the Xenon because its more general purpose", what a load of. The Xenon has issues.. one being they dont have many pressed yet!!! The Cell _has_ been tested in various forms, as a Linux Server:
http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/2005
As a Linux Workstation:
http://www.linuxtag.org/typo3site/freecongress-de
As a TV mpeg-2 stream decoder:
http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/2005
The last one alone shows just how much data can be operated on
Personally I think Anadtech should stop taking drugs.. and read around a bit.. maybe they might be able to be a bit more thorough with their articles then - youd think google was broken looking at the crap they are putting up.
Guantanamo bay.. apparently the US _does_ hold people without rights.. and to top it off.. they werent even on US soil? You want to list the abuses the US has been involved in around the world? The US has been the source of political governments oppression of their citizens for year.. and there are many countries that the US applys it 'will' over to make sure this happens. Egypt, Morroco, Many South American countries, various middle African countries (Nigeria, Sudan, and so on).. and various other South East asian countries like Thialand, Indonesia and so on.
If anyone need to get off their high horse, its Americans. The use of corp power to control _other_ countries is the source of alot of these governments that are applying strict control on information to try and curb the 'capitalist pig' doctrination the rest of the world suffers.
America has been a Fascist state for the last 50 years at least!! Some of your greatest people have had common liberty's removed from them, just because they spoke out against a government or against a powerful citizen. Read your history books, the US is far from a wonderful benevolent government you beleive it to be. And your citizens continue to apply racist attitudes towards peoples in your own country!! Look at the anti muslim and anti arabian attitude in your country? Are you saying these people dont feel in some way despised, and hated? Are you saying they are not being jailed and beaten up for no reason!! Read your news..
America is no better than anywhere else.. and more so.. since its corporate greed that is currently enveloping the globe. A country has its own soverign rights.. there is no justification for any other country to apply their laws to them..
Btw I guarantee you have never even seen/been involved in what you are talking about.. you really think that mentioning the president in bad terms in Iran will get you locked up.. this is typical of Americans "Everyone else is worse than us" attitude..
Its fuuny that people cant even see Facism occuring in their own country.. and claim its morality and democracy above all others.. complete BS..
Try 9 cores. Yes, its a Cell. And yes the SPE's _are_ general purpose cores - read some more if youd like: http://www.research.scea.com/research/html/CellGDC 05/index.html
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The last part about programming architecture.. is interesting reading. From job queuing.. to micro kernels to streaming.. multi-cores are are a very good way to do things. And on Cell.. they are all seperate cores.. And for a server with 14 of these in one box.. coming soon..
http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/2005
Its pretty obvious why Intel and AMD are going multicore.. because it works.. and they have to catch up before they are lost in the dust.
Have a look at the link.
Having 4 times the carbon output of Russia surely means they have the ability to have the most profound effect - and can _lead_ by example. It is only an ignorant person who cannot see the sheer insanity of the pollution the US is creating in comparison to all other countries. Surely being a free democratic nation full of intelligent people, it makes it obvious to try and curb waste and pollution?
If you look at any pollution statistics on the US (even plain garbage) there is no justification for _not_ doing something to reduce it.. and make for a good example..
It doesnt matter whether you think global warming is happening or not. It is time however to realise that our rates of pollution will result in some resulting effect - regardless of any scientific theory.i o_199
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/env_pol_car_d
The US needs to curb its pollution _now_.. and lead by example, rather than act as an ignorant, "we can do what we ant" monolith of corporate greed.
Maybe you dont get it, because its a different way to handle data and code. Try reading a bit about the Cell before making all sorts of incorrect assertions. Heres a link to help:C 05/index.html
http://www.research.scea.com/research/html/CellGD
Make certain you read about the _various_ uses of the SPE's and the huge number or programming models you can use to drive the Cell..
To answer you question - these are insanely fast data crunching servers.. geee.. thats almost any server.. nugget..
It definitely seems that the Cell is aimed at massive data throughput, rather than optimised execution pipes. Imho this is something I have always found a little odd with the way Intel and Amd CPUs have been growing their execution pipeslines to improve their prediction capabilites - essentially the Cell moves the prediction up to the compiler/assembler level and just runs flat out :-) Alot like an extremely quick treadmill.. the only problem I see is feeding it :-)
:-)
The XBox 360 looks like it is using a variant of the PowerPC (I read somewhere about it being related to some of IBM's server systems). If thats the case, then it is relying on cache.. than raw throughput.. its almost a test to see which really does work best. Nothing like a field test...
Also, the Cell is slated to go to 60nm SIO too..(or thats what IBM/Sony/Toshiba were aiming for soon). That obviously means higher clocks.. and would maybe suggest maybe some more cores on die? dunno.. hype.. speculation.. well.. its the flavour of the day.. Id say
PS3 devkits have been out at developers since Nov last year (to a select few).. dont doubt that Sony might even jump the gun with the PS3.. In fact .. having MS in a position where they just dont know what Sony is doing is an ideal marketing strategy.. and if they have something ready even around XBox360 release time.. what a coup.. and thats the sort of thing Sony like to pull.