"With multicore+hyperthreaded CPUs coming out very soon, the physics engines can be offloaded to extra processing units in your system rather than having to fork out money for a card that can only be used for a special purpose."
I think the same argument used to be made for 3D acellerator cards many years ago. Still hasn't come to pass. The basic problem is that dedicated hardware will always be more powerful than a generic processor. The real question is whether or not the physics problems that are offloadable are significant enough to use this sort of hardware.
"We have what could be an awesome console that's going to be handicapped by a ridiculously high price point (reminds me of the Saturn)"
Irrelevent Nitpick: The Saturn cost more, and the PS's hardware still blew it away. Not a totally bad example, though. The Saturn's original goal was to improve upon the 2D 16-bit graphics, instead of wandering into 3D. Sony announced their move to 3D, and Sega over-reacted by trying to band-aid in some 3D processing hardware. The result was a more expensive machine that still didn't manage to do 3D like the PS did. Not that far off from Sony's sudden 'innovation' with their controller.
"this is the E3 knockout blow. MS wins in the first round!"
Not exactly. Sony and Microsoft are getting the game the same day. Okay, not as exciting, but anybody who didn't want to play San Andreas on the PS2 had to wait something like six months. GTA was actually one of the games that made me consider a PS3, but it's nice to know I have more of a choice now.
I'm still a little saddened, though. I really really want this game on the Wii. I loved San Andreas, but the PS2 controls were exactly the reason I jumped on-board the Nintendo-hype-parade.
"There's really nothing that appeals to a non-Nintendo fan like me contrary to what they are preaching. Playing is believing? No thanks."
So... yer not even going to try it?
"Besides I heard there's some secret in Wii but it turned out it's a speaker in the wiimote, which I don't think will be better utilized by game developers."
Huh? Why not? We've got developers going out of their way to do surround sound on games, but an extra audio stream into the controller would be neglected? Audio's easy. If Nintendo had shown some R2D2'esque holographic projector, well then yeah, I'd believe you.
"As for games, there were nothing that appealed to me in the lineup of 27 Wii games shown today. I don't play games to appreciate the "revolutionary" gameplay of wii, I just would like to play interactive contents."
So why hasn't Red Steel impressed you?
"If you've watched the Sony conference it has Warhawk demo, which looks 100x beautiful and fun."
Okay. A higher-detailed game sequel appealed to you. Nothing wrong with that, but I do wonder if you're unimpressed because you won't let yourself be impressed. Mind you, I cannot cast any stones here. Sony hasn't impressed me, but I haven't stepped forward to try to be impressed. Hehe.
"Might be great games, but... It's still a silly name."
Oh wow... I never saw it that way. Thanks for mentioning that, I think I'm going to spend $600 on a Playstation 3. It's a lot cooler cos they use the Spider Man font.
Well, I agree with you there. Everything about the PS3 was amazing. The price was amazingly high. The controller was amazingly ripped off from Nintendo. The game demos were amazingly unamazing...
"Don't forget to take into account the cost of developing those game assets. 25GB worth of game (or however much a single-layer Blu-Ray disc holds) would cost a lot of money. It's already ridiculously expensive to develop a game that fills up a DVD."
Erm... I don't know how true that is. I'm a texture artist by trade. I don't typically work on games, but the work is basically the same. More often than not, I start out bigger and work my way smaller. My limitations have to do with CPU and RAM. A year or so ago, I'd do 2048^2 textures, and Photoshop would keep up with it. More recently, with a modern computer, that limit (by limit I mean the time spent saving or processing was a severe hit) was 3072^2. I'd even go as high as 4096^2, but that didn't happen as often because it'd take a little longer to save. (And believe me, I save FREQUENTLY.) As I understand it right now, 2048^2 is the higher end of texture resolutions for the XBOX360 or PS3, before that it was 512^2. (Of course, I'd appreciate corrections on this.) If I were asked to do 1024^2 textures, it wouldn't happen significantly faster than 2048^2. I'd just scale it down before saving.
It's easy to want to do this when your source material comes from multi-megapixel cameras, etc. Which, from what I've seen so far, is where most of these textures are coming from. (i.e. the racing games we've seen.) Okay, this doesn't empirically prove that you're wrong, but I'm not expecting it to take that much longer to fill a 25 gig disc with textures.
Although... after writing this post, well shit I'm going to backtrack a little. Sorry. The big difference now is that these machines will use multiple textures per polygon. Specularity, bump, normal maps, etc, will all need to be generated. *That* will take time, but that has more to do with the development of the maps than the actual filling up the drive. Whether that's a rebuttal or not depends on whether we're talking about simply longer development times for the next generation, or if we're talking about the extra space causing it. I wouldn't say it'll take that much longer to work on a PS3 game than an XBOX360 game, at least from a content creation point of view. Maybe management of the assets will become one of those things that gobbles up the budget, but then we start getting into the ins and outs of a particular development company working on a particular game. Either way, you'd be surprised at the options these developers have to deal with storage issues. They've got it much better these days than they did 15 years ago.
"Yeah? And what games are you most excited about? Extra credit if you'll talk about why those games will be worth the extra $200 or so you'll spend getting them up and running?"
Okay, I admit my tone was a bit inflammatory. I apologize for that. However, I stand by my question. Potential is nice and all, but the games are the reason to own a system. I'd like to know: What games are coming out for it that would make him want to pay $500 for the system?
To be fair, that picture came out on the DAY that Nintendo publically unveiled the Rev Controller. You're right, it didn't take long to surface, but it's really telling that it surfaced when Nintendo first announced the controller.
"I know it might be expensive for some of you, and you'll have to wait to be able to afford it, but in the long run it'll be nice to have all those features in the baseline system so game authors can design around them. This definitely looks like the best-of-breed for this generation to me."
Yeah? And what games are you most excited about? Extra credit if you'll talk about why those games will be worth the extra $200 or so you'll spend getting them up and running?
To recap: Some features of the Nintendo controller ripped off. Games that don't look any better than the XBOX360 versions. Price tag of $500+ just for the system.
I'd like to thank Sony for rinsing the taste of Wii out of our mouthes.
"Sony actually did Nintendo a big favor by introducing a (somewhat) similar control style: the extreme difficulty in porting games to the Wii will now be somewhat alleviated. Just one less excuse for the 3rd parties."
They Sony controller is missing a key super important ingredient that the Wii has: Spatial sensors. Nintendo didn't add that just for the sake of adding it, they added it because it's a crucial aspect to gesture-based games.
I'm worried people are going to play the PS3 version, realize it's not all that good, and think that for half the price it couldn't possibly be any better. Grr.
"Step 1: Copy Wii's motion tracking and put it in a clunky two-handed dual shock interface"
They didn't even copy it very well. There's a reason Nintendo has a sensor that goes under the TV. These dimwits probably just hooked up a couple of accellerometers to the controller.
What annoys me about this isn't that they're copying Nintendo (we ALL knew it would happen), but rather that their inferior knock-off of it will probably make people think the Nintendo's version will be worse!
"Does anyone else feel a little ripped off every time they buy a new sequel to a game called "final fantasy"?"
I read somewhere that you don't actually have to buy a Final Fantasy title when it comes out. It's sorta like that 'suggested donation' sign in front of the museum.
"I don't understand why people judge success of a console based on number of consoles sold and not the number of games sold for that console."
I haven't been able to find information on the total games sold for either platform, so the best I've got is the number of consoles sold with the assumption that each console sells a game or two. That would be the main reason. I'd love to see sales numbers for games. The DS has had quite a few million+ titles. I don't know if the PSP has had anything like that. Lumines, maybe.
In any event, the rationale isn't totally flawed. We're talking about a system that's alive and breathing today, as opposed to a system that has already come and gone. The PSP has plenty of potential. It has enough units out there that developers can take it seriously and expect to get a good number of sales.
"I'd rather sell half a million consoles and 10 million games than 10 million consoles and half a million games. Wouldn't you?"
I think Nintendo would have a lot to say on that topic.;)
I hope you don't mind, but I'm going to be a little nitpicky: It's difficult to imagine any PSPs were sold without games. 10 million units, 10 million games sold. You're right that 20 games sold per system would be killer, but a company would have to f'up pretty bad in order to sell 10 million units and half a million titles.
It's the math, not the rationale I'm picking on. Nintendo has picked the strategy you're talking about and they've reaped substantial rewards from it.
I remember going to a big dinner for a family reunion. I told them all about this game I was playing, 'Day of the Tentacle'. It wasn't until I noticed that everybody had stopped eating and all eyes were on me that I realized I had said 'testicle'.
"After the huge success that the PSP is (not!), I'm sure that's the right horse to bet one."
I'm not a fan of the PSP, in fact I had one and ended up taking it back. There are lots of things about it I don't like and that I feel Nintendo did a much better job on. Heck, I'm a foaming-at-the-mouth Nintendo fanboy. With that in mind, I really cannot call the PSP unsuccessful. They've got millions of machines out there and a decent library of games. No other non-Nintendo portable has done this well.
"If Sony can't get it right - what will Microsoft come up with? A 3-pound ugly box that runs out of batteries after 30 minutes of playing the latest DX10 game on a 320x200 screen?"
I didn't get the impression from reading the article that Microsoft was doing much more than tinkering around with the idea. I wouldn't put it past Microsoft to do exactly what you're describing, but the optimist in me says they cannot be ignorant of the fact that the DS is mopping the floor with the PSP. Somebody there has to be asking "Why?". If they seriously think about the answer to that question, I cannot imagine Microsoft actually green-lighting this thing unless there is some secret about it that would give them an edge. Of course, knowing them, they'll put a hard drive in it and claim that makes all the difference. Heh.
Slashdot Mirror
"With multicore+hyperthreaded CPUs coming out very soon, the physics engines can be offloaded to extra processing units in your system rather than having to fork out money for a card that can only be used for a special purpose."
I think the same argument used to be made for 3D acellerator cards many years ago. Still hasn't come to pass. The basic problem is that dedicated hardware will always be more powerful than a generic processor. The real question is whether or not the physics problems that are offloadable are significant enough to use this sort of hardware.
"It's bated breath, not baited.
Bated as in masturbated."
We value your expertise on masterbation breath. Thank you.
"We have what could be an awesome console that's going to be handicapped by a ridiculously high price point (reminds me of the Saturn)"
Irrelevent Nitpick: The Saturn cost more, and the PS's hardware still blew it away. Not a totally bad example, though. The Saturn's original goal was to improve upon the 2D 16-bit graphics, instead of wandering into 3D. Sony announced their move to 3D, and Sega over-reacted by trying to band-aid in some 3D processing hardware. The result was a more expensive machine that still didn't manage to do 3D like the PS did. Not that far off from Sony's sudden 'innovation' with their controller.
"this is the E3 knockout blow. MS wins in the first round!"
Not exactly. Sony and Microsoft are getting the game the same day. Okay, not as exciting, but anybody who didn't want to play San Andreas on the PS2 had to wait something like six months. GTA was actually one of the games that made me consider a PS3, but it's nice to know I have more of a choice now.
I'm still a little saddened, though. I really really want this game on the Wii. I loved San Andreas, but the PS2 controls were exactly the reason I jumped on-board the Nintendo-hype-parade.
"There's really nothing that appeals to a non-Nintendo fan like me contrary to what they are preaching. Playing is believing? No thanks."
So... yer not even going to try it?
"Besides I heard there's some secret in Wii but it turned out it's a speaker in the wiimote, which I don't think will be better utilized by game developers."
Huh? Why not? We've got developers going out of their way to do surround sound on games, but an extra audio stream into the controller would be neglected? Audio's easy. If Nintendo had shown some R2D2'esque holographic projector, well then yeah, I'd believe you.
"As for games, there were nothing that appealed to me in the lineup of 27 Wii games shown today. I don't play games to appreciate the "revolutionary" gameplay of wii, I just would like to play interactive contents."
So why hasn't Red Steel impressed you?
"If you've watched the Sony conference it has Warhawk demo, which looks 100x beautiful and fun."
Okay. A higher-detailed game sequel appealed to you. Nothing wrong with that, but I do wonder if you're unimpressed because you won't let yourself be impressed. Mind you, I cannot cast any stones here. Sony hasn't impressed me, but I haven't stepped forward to try to be impressed. Hehe.
"Does anyone have a copy of the event? "
Try this link. It takes a bit to load.
"My gut feeling was that it was going to be $249 but now Nintendo might try for $299."
If they pull that, I hope they put more RAM into the machine.
"Might be great games, but... It's still a silly name."
Oh wow... I never saw it that way. Thanks for mentioning that, I think I'm going to spend $600 on a Playstation 3. It's a lot cooler cos they use the Spider Man font.
"Will it be a pr0n movie with naked night elves ?"
*Ow* My desk doesn't support crossed legs.
"The Playstation 3 Was F'n AMAZING"
Well, I agree with you there. Everything about the PS3 was amazing. The price was amazingly high. The controller was amazingly ripped off from Nintendo. The game demos were amazingly unamazing...
"Don't forget to take into account the cost of developing those game assets. 25GB worth of game (or however much a single-layer Blu-Ray disc holds) would cost a lot of money. It's already ridiculously expensive to develop a game that fills up a DVD."
Erm... I don't know how true that is. I'm a texture artist by trade. I don't typically work on games, but the work is basically the same. More often than not, I start out bigger and work my way smaller. My limitations have to do with CPU and RAM. A year or so ago, I'd do 2048^2 textures, and Photoshop would keep up with it. More recently, with a modern computer, that limit (by limit I mean the time spent saving or processing was a severe hit) was 3072^2. I'd even go as high as 4096^2, but that didn't happen as often because it'd take a little longer to save. (And believe me, I save FREQUENTLY.) As I understand it right now, 2048^2 is the higher end of texture resolutions for the XBOX360 or PS3, before that it was 512^2. (Of course, I'd appreciate corrections on this.) If I were asked to do 1024^2 textures, it wouldn't happen significantly faster than 2048^2. I'd just scale it down before saving.
It's easy to want to do this when your source material comes from multi-megapixel cameras, etc. Which, from what I've seen so far, is where most of these textures are coming from. (i.e. the racing games we've seen.) Okay, this doesn't empirically prove that you're wrong, but I'm not expecting it to take that much longer to fill a 25 gig disc with textures.
Although... after writing this post, well shit I'm going to backtrack a little. Sorry. The big difference now is that these machines will use multiple textures per polygon. Specularity, bump, normal maps, etc, will all need to be generated. *That* will take time, but that has more to do with the development of the maps than the actual filling up the drive. Whether that's a rebuttal or not depends on whether we're talking about simply longer development times for the next generation, or if we're talking about the extra space causing it. I wouldn't say it'll take that much longer to work on a PS3 game than an XBOX360 game, at least from a content creation point of view. Maybe management of the assets will become one of those things that gobbles up the budget, but then we start getting into the ins and outs of a particular development company working on a particular game. Either way, you'd be surprised at the options these developers have to deal with storage issues. They've got it much better these days than they did 15 years ago.
"Yeah? And what games are you most excited about? Extra credit if you'll talk about why those games will be worth the extra $200 or so you'll spend getting them up and running?"
Okay, I admit my tone was a bit inflammatory. I apologize for that. However, I stand by my question. Potential is nice and all, but the games are the reason to own a system. I'd like to know: What games are coming out for it that would make him want to pay $500 for the system?
Hehe. Oh yes. It's just funnier to me that everybody said Sony would copy it ... and they did.
"It didn't take long for this pic to surface: http://hood.filefu.com/sonysteals5dq.jpg"
To be fair, that picture came out on the DAY that Nintendo publically unveiled the Rev Controller. You're right, it didn't take long to surface, but it's really telling that it surfaced when Nintendo first announced the controller.
"I know it might be expensive for some of you, and you'll have to wait to be able to afford it, but in the long run it'll be nice to have all those features in the baseline system so game authors can design around them. This definitely looks like the best-of-breed for this generation to me."
Yeah? And what games are you most excited about? Extra credit if you'll talk about why those games will be worth the extra $200 or so you'll spend getting them up and running?
To recap: Some features of the Nintendo controller ripped off. Games that don't look any better than the XBOX360 versions. Price tag of $500+ just for the system.
I'd like to thank Sony for rinsing the taste of Wii out of our mouthes.
"It won't affect non-fans very much (especially at $499 USD), but it insures that their existing fanbase stays loyal to them."
If the Sony fanboys have any decency what-so-ever, they'll hang their heads in shame the same way we did when Wii was announced.
"Sony actually did Nintendo a big favor by introducing a (somewhat) similar control style: the extreme difficulty in porting games to the Wii will now be somewhat alleviated. Just one less excuse for the 3rd parties."
They Sony controller is missing a key super important ingredient that the Wii has: Spatial sensors. Nintendo didn't add that just for the sake of adding it, they added it because it's a crucial aspect to gesture-based games.
I'm worried people are going to play the PS3 version, realize it's not all that good, and think that for half the price it couldn't possibly be any better. Grr.
"Step 1: Copy Wii's motion tracking and put it in a clunky two-handed dual shock interface"
.. SonEs Evil
They didn't even copy it very well. There's a reason Nintendo has a sensor that goes under the TV. These dimwits probably just hooked up a couple of accellerometers to the controller.
What annoys me about this isn't that they're copying Nintendo (we ALL knew it would happen), but rather that their inferior knock-off of it will probably make people think the Nintendo's version will be worse!
Enos Lives
"Does anyone else feel a little ripped off every time they buy a new sequel to a game called "final fantasy"?"
I read somewhere that you don't actually have to buy a Final Fantasy title when it comes out. It's sorta like that 'suggested donation' sign in front of the museum.
"That's why Halo 2's opening day of sales was better than any opening day of sales for any movie in history."
Well that and Halo 2 costs 4 or 5 times that of a movie ticket.
"I don't understand why people judge success of a console based on number of consoles sold and not the number of games sold for that console."
;)
I haven't been able to find information on the total games sold for either platform, so the best I've got is the number of consoles sold with the assumption that each console sells a game or two. That would be the main reason. I'd love to see sales numbers for games. The DS has had quite a few million+ titles. I don't know if the PSP has had anything like that. Lumines, maybe.
In any event, the rationale isn't totally flawed. We're talking about a system that's alive and breathing today, as opposed to a system that has already come and gone. The PSP has plenty of potential. It has enough units out there that developers can take it seriously and expect to get a good number of sales.
"I'd rather sell half a million consoles and 10 million games than 10 million consoles and half a million games. Wouldn't you?"
I think Nintendo would have a lot to say on that topic.
I hope you don't mind, but I'm going to be a little nitpicky: It's difficult to imagine any PSPs were sold without games. 10 million units, 10 million games sold. You're right that 20 games sold per system would be killer, but a company would have to f'up pretty bad in order to sell 10 million units and half a million titles.
It's the math, not the rationale I'm picking on. Nintendo has picked the strategy you're talking about and they've reaped substantial rewards from it.
Completely OT:
I remember going to a big dinner for a family reunion. I told them all about this game I was playing, 'Day of the Tentacle'. It wasn't until I noticed that everybody had stopped eating and all eyes were on me that I realized I had said 'testicle'.
"After the huge success that the PSP is (not!), I'm sure that's the right horse to bet one."
I'm not a fan of the PSP, in fact I had one and ended up taking it back. There are lots of things about it I don't like and that I feel Nintendo did a much better job on. Heck, I'm a foaming-at-the-mouth Nintendo fanboy. With that in mind, I really cannot call the PSP unsuccessful. They've got millions of machines out there and a decent library of games. No other non-Nintendo portable has done this well.
"If Sony can't get it right - what will Microsoft come up with? A 3-pound ugly box that runs out of batteries after 30 minutes of playing the latest DX10 game on a 320x200 screen?"
I didn't get the impression from reading the article that Microsoft was doing much more than tinkering around with the idea. I wouldn't put it past Microsoft to do exactly what you're describing, but the optimist in me says they cannot be ignorant of the fact that the DS is mopping the floor with the PSP. Somebody there has to be asking "Why?". If they seriously think about the answer to that question, I cannot imagine Microsoft actually green-lighting this thing unless there is some secret about it that would give them an edge. Of course, knowing them, they'll put a hard drive in it and claim that makes all the difference. Heh.
"Ooh, imagine Punch Out with a controller in each hand. :)"
The teaser trailer showed a dude using two remotes to play a drum game. That looked pretty slick.