I'll actually concede my remark about ~4 years, as I had forgotten that the iMacs are now G5 based as well. However I'd like to still consider my posting more on the mark than the other post in question. For one, the 400k number he states is much lower than reality because the sales at the 10 day mark was nearly that and there have been at least two stock refreshes since, as well as the launches in other territories. Secondly he has compared an entire year of Apple sales to one month of 360 sales. Yes, its launch and a lot of consoles get sold, but with supply much lower than demand at this time, sales should be strong for the next 3-6 months. I also doubt that margins on the G5 are all that much higher, its a far more complex chip than the xenon CPU or what will likely be in the Revolution. Cell is a different matter perhaps, but toshiba and sony have thrown huge amounts of money at it as well, minimizing the risk for IBM there. Console sales are all but guaranteed because people love games, and regardless of which console manufacturer wins IBM is supplying the CPU. Even the Gamecube and Xbox, this gen's "loosing" consoles have better than 30 million units each worldwide. PS2 will probably approach or even surpass 100 million units before it ceases to be sold in ~2008. Also, the comparably long life of the consoles allows for manufacturing technology to make the chips cheaper to produce over time as opposed to desktop chips which are always evolving needing both new designs and processes. I think thats a key point to remember here, the console CPUs will be essentially static for the 7 or so years they will be in production. They'll only need minimal rework as the die shrinks in the years to come, an investment that will pay for itself with haste. When the last of the consoles are being produced in 2011 or so they'll likely be on a 65nm or even 45nm process, more than halving die size, which can allow for both cheaper unit price and higher margins at the same time.
Apple was never IBMs biggest customer, PPC is everywhere, cars, routers, smart devices of all types, granted that Freescale has the majority of these markets, but IBM has more than enough share to outweight Apple. I'll grant that Apple was IBMs highest-profile customer, but I've seen numbers that place revenue generated by Apple at fewer than 1% of IBMs business. Not only that, but they're going to be manufacturing CPUs for all of the next generation game consoles. The Xbox 360 has already sold more units than Apple would have over the ~4 years or more (keep in mind that the only IBM processor in the Macs is the G5, The G4s are still provided by freescale.) How many PS2s, Xboxes, and Gamecubes have been sold worldwide? 150+ million combined, and that number is growing with each new generation (plus we're not even at the end of this generation's sales!) So IBM is looking at basically guaranteed sales of ~200 million PPC-based parts over the next 5-6 years. Apple doesn't even drive PPC development, its driven on both ends by the embedded and big-iron/server markets.
IBM won't be hurting by loosing Apple, neither will PPC. I am a bit sad to loose the only "mainstream" consumer-level PPC hardware, but there are some smaller PPC manufacturers such as Genesi to provide for the hardcore PPC fan market.
All the production Intel Macs will be 64bit capable. Theres absolutely no reason to support a 32bit code base on intel when its on its way out. Bet your bottom dollar that the consumer Intel OSX will be 64bit, which has 16 registers. Eight might be a little tight for some programs, but I'd bet that most programs don't even make use of more than 16, let alone all 32.
Sorry about the name, I was posting too hastily to run a quick check:)
One thing that immediately jumps to my mind is this-- I'm a digipen student, and every year a lot of games get made in the labs. The students do their best, but with limited time and often being very new to Direct3D or openGL there ends up being a lot of incompatibility issues with various hardware. This would easily solve the problem, if not for a primary renderer(since most student games don't need bleeding edge performance, particularly in the earlier, less knowlegable years) at least as a known-working backup.
Personally, of my Digipen portfolio, two of the games I participated in have known issues with certain video hardware. So, when I send it off with my resume to a potential employer I have no idea whether it will work well or not. Ideally I'd like them to run well on all hardware, but given the constraints I stated above thats often not possible, but swiftShader could solve that.
When will it be available for licensing? Is there any chance of an educational or even student liscense that could help my fellow digipeners? Even a liscense restricted to classwork and portfolio use would be a godsend.
Now that I've gotten through to the site, it actually does appear that Transgaming has either liscensed swShader and/or hired Nicholas Cappens(again, spelling) to do the product as the source forge site for swShader now forwards to the swiftShader page. Congratulations Nicholas! In the brief time we exchanged messages It became readily appearant that you are indeed very good at what you are doing with sw(ift)Shader. Best of luck!
I wonder if this is possibly a take off of an open source project called swShader (its on source forge.) I've had some contact with the author of swShader, Nicholas Cappens(spelling likely incorrect), we discussed the unique approach he has taken to polygon filling/texturing. swShader also has DX 8 & 9 interfaces and a dll which could stand in to interface with regular DirectX games. While its an interesting piece of work, I hate to see when an OSS project, particularly one with one primary author(the owner if you will) gets taken and then commercialized becuae I'm sure he'll never see a penny, despite having written most of it. I don't know that thats the case here or not, but I hope it isn't. I guess its part of the deal when you open it up to OSS but it would still stink. Then again, maybe he's commercialized it himself or got hired to produce it, which I would be all for.
The bigger issue here is his stance on being a lawyer.
At this point, I wouldn't have this guy defend me on an air-tight first amendment case with cenematic quality video evendence, George C. Scott in its leading role, and supporting supporting expert testimony from Benjamin Franklin as to the true intention of The Constitution.
Actually, he did just the opposite. While the interviewer brought up Soul Caliber and implicitly Namco, Itagaki brushed those details aside to speak specifically on the "palette swaps." Sure he calls it dispicable (and it is, from a game design point of view) but he puts it out there in the broader sense of games in general, not just Namco or any specific designer. Sure rivalries exists, but they're professional rivalries for the most part, not personal ones. Actually, the section you quoted doesn't even mention a specific designer anywhere. You're reading something into it that simply isn't there.
Sweet, I just hope that after this and the Bone game, that they can get their hands on some of the other LucasArts classics that have been so sadly neglected. In addition to the catalog of excelent adventure games, I'd also love to see someone create a sequel to the SNES's little-known classic Zombies Ate My Neighbors.
Further speculation for the fan-boys:
V- Roman numeral 5
1- Gameboy/Gameboy Pocket
2- Gameboy Color
3- Gameboy Advance
4- Nintendo DS
5- 5th gen Nintendo handheld w/ video capabilities.
or... the alternate theory where Gameboy pocket is slot #2 and the DS falls into another catagory since Nintendo says its not a successor to the Gameboy line.
Anyhow, Dance my fanboy monkeys! DANCE!
Slashdot Mirror
I'll actually concede my remark about ~4 years, as I had forgotten that the iMacs are now G5 based as well. However I'd like to still consider my posting more on the mark than the other post in question. For one, the 400k number he states is much lower than reality because the sales at the 10 day mark was nearly that and there have been at least two stock refreshes since, as well as the launches in other territories. Secondly he has compared an entire year of Apple sales to one month of 360 sales. Yes, its launch and a lot of consoles get sold, but with supply much lower than demand at this time, sales should be strong for the next 3-6 months. I also doubt that margins on the G5 are all that much higher, its a far more complex chip than the xenon CPU or what will likely be in the Revolution. Cell is a different matter perhaps, but toshiba and sony have thrown huge amounts of money at it as well, minimizing the risk for IBM there. Console sales are all but guaranteed because people love games, and regardless of which console manufacturer wins IBM is supplying the CPU. Even the Gamecube and Xbox, this gen's "loosing" consoles have better than 30 million units each worldwide. PS2 will probably approach or even surpass 100 million units before it ceases to be sold in ~2008. Also, the comparably long life of the consoles allows for manufacturing technology to make the chips cheaper to produce over time as opposed to desktop chips which are always evolving needing both new designs and processes. I think thats a key point to remember here, the console CPUs will be essentially static for the 7 or so years they will be in production. They'll only need minimal rework as the die shrinks in the years to come, an investment that will pay for itself with haste. When the last of the consoles are being produced in 2011 or so they'll likely be on a 65nm or even 45nm process, more than halving die size, which can allow for both cheaper unit price and higher margins at the same time.
Apple was never IBMs biggest customer, PPC is everywhere, cars, routers, smart devices of all types, granted that Freescale has the majority of these markets, but IBM has more than enough share to outweight Apple. I'll grant that Apple was IBMs highest-profile customer, but I've seen numbers that place revenue generated by Apple at fewer than 1% of IBMs business. Not only that, but they're going to be manufacturing CPUs for all of the next generation game consoles. The Xbox 360 has already sold more units than Apple would have over the ~4 years or more (keep in mind that the only IBM processor in the Macs is the G5, The G4s are still provided by freescale.) How many PS2s, Xboxes, and Gamecubes have been sold worldwide? 150+ million combined, and that number is growing with each new generation (plus we're not even at the end of this generation's sales!) So IBM is looking at basically guaranteed sales of ~200 million PPC-based parts over the next 5-6 years. Apple doesn't even drive PPC development, its driven on both ends by the embedded and big-iron/server markets.
IBM won't be hurting by loosing Apple, neither will PPC. I am a bit sad to loose the only "mainstream" consumer-level PPC hardware, but there are some smaller PPC manufacturers such as Genesi to provide for the hardcore PPC fan market.
64-bit applications which will have access to all 16 registers ;)
All the production Intel Macs will be 64bit capable. Theres absolutely no reason to support a 32bit code base on intel when its on its way out. Bet your bottom dollar that the consumer Intel OSX will be 64bit, which has 16 registers. Eight might be a little tight for some programs, but I'd bet that most programs don't even make use of more than 16, let alone all 32.
Sorry about the name, I was posting too hastily to run a quick check :)
One thing that immediately jumps to my mind is this-- I'm a digipen student, and every year a lot of games get made in the labs. The students do their best, but with limited time and often being very new to Direct3D or openGL there ends up being a lot of incompatibility issues with various hardware. This would easily solve the problem, if not for a primary renderer(since most student games don't need bleeding edge performance, particularly in the earlier, less knowlegable years) at least as a known-working backup.
Personally, of my Digipen portfolio, two of the games I participated in have known issues with certain video hardware. So, when I send it off with my resume to a potential employer I have no idea whether it will work well or not. Ideally I'd like them to run well on all hardware, but given the constraints I stated above thats often not possible, but swiftShader could solve that.
When will it be available for licensing? Is there any chance of an educational or even student liscense that could help my fellow digipeners? Even a liscense restricted to classwork and portfolio use would be a godsend.
Now that I've gotten through to the site, it actually does appear that Transgaming has either liscensed swShader and/or hired Nicholas Cappens(again, spelling) to do the product as the source forge site for swShader now forwards to the swiftShader page. Congratulations Nicholas! In the brief time we exchanged messages It became readily appearant that you are indeed very good at what you are doing with sw(ift)Shader. Best of luck!
I wonder if this is possibly a take off of an open source project called swShader (its on source forge.) I've had some contact with the author of swShader, Nicholas Cappens(spelling likely incorrect), we discussed the unique approach he has taken to polygon filling/texturing. swShader also has DX 8 & 9 interfaces and a dll which could stand in to interface with regular DirectX games. While its an interesting piece of work, I hate to see when an OSS project, particularly one with one primary author(the owner if you will) gets taken and then commercialized becuae I'm sure he'll never see a penny, despite having written most of it. I don't know that thats the case here or not, but I hope it isn't. I guess its part of the deal when you open it up to OSS but it would still stink. Then again, maybe he's commercialized it himself or got hired to produce it, which I would be all for.
The bigger issue here is his stance on being a lawyer.
At this point, I wouldn't have this guy defend me on an air-tight first amendment case with cenematic quality video evendence, George C. Scott in its leading role, and supporting supporting expert testimony from Benjamin Franklin as to the true intention of The Constitution.
Actually, he did just the opposite. While the interviewer brought up Soul Caliber and implicitly Namco, Itagaki brushed those details aside to speak specifically on the "palette swaps." Sure he calls it dispicable (and it is, from a game design point of view) but he puts it out there in the broader sense of games in general, not just Namco or any specific designer. Sure rivalries exists, but they're professional rivalries for the most part, not personal ones. Actually, the section you quoted doesn't even mention a specific designer anywhere. You're reading something into it that simply isn't there.
Sweet, I just hope that after this and the Bone game, that they can get their hands on some of the other LucasArts classics that have been so sadly neglected. In addition to the catalog of excelent adventure games, I'd also love to see someone create a sequel to the SNES's little-known classic Zombies Ate My Neighbors.
Here's hopeing.
In Communist China, Game bans you!
...Oppressive Communist Régimes!
Further speculation for the fan-boys: V- Roman numeral 5 1- Gameboy/Gameboy Pocket 2- Gameboy Color 3- Gameboy Advance 4- Nintendo DS 5- 5th gen Nintendo handheld w/ video capabilities. or... the alternate theory where Gameboy pocket is slot #2 and the DS falls into another catagory since Nintendo says its not a successor to the Gameboy line. Anyhow, Dance my fanboy monkeys! DANCE!