@wegster

Thanks for the post, interesting points and I agree.

@BrianK

Quote:

Mike instead of attempting to make this a tit for tat instead look at your statements. You claim rock solid performance of games.

Pretty rock solid, the vast majority of users don't seem to experience any major issue with those games.

Quote:

And your favorite site for confirmation bias. If it's not at NeoGAF, even if on Sony Playstation boards, it just doesn't exist right?

That's putting words into my mouth. I said that thread is far more representative than two people within the little thread on a major website you were posting about. That original post linked to a reviewer who experienced problems with a pre-release copy as he clarified in the forums and the other issue was a minor bug in the US version which is very easily fixed manually if you encounter it without the need for a patch.

Really there's no comparison.

Last edited by MikeB on 04-May-2008 at 06:29 PM.

@jtsiren

Quote:

I guess more than definitely better performance - and cross-platform titles don't seem to benefit from any inherent performance difference, since PS3 requires so much specialization to get it to play ball.

I stated years back 360 and PS3 cross platform games won't differ that much. It will be for the exclusives you will see big differences, better graphics with GTA IV or Oblivion on the PS3, better audio in the PS3 version of DiRT, etc is a very similar case as with many Atari ST to Amiga games from the past.

360 lead platform => Usually inefficient code and game engine design, which can lead to subpar PS3 ports without significantly redesign. Like early ST to Amiga ports were subpar.
PS3 lead platform => Potentially better on PS3, but will usually be dumbed down to fit the 360's requirements (DVD, processing capabilities, etc), will make more efficient use of both 360 and PS3 hardware.

"Terminal Reality president Mark Randel admitted that Ghostbusters on PS3 has been held back by the fact will also release on 360, saying that the game would have double the amount of objects on screen if it had been PS3-only"

PS3 exclusive => Rome wasn't build in a day, but here's where the true potential lies. Games can be pushed far beyond what can be achieved on the 360 and even in some ways (Cell and Blu-Ray related) to a PC.

Ideal situation, building game engines from scratch. Roadblock, years of development time required to get to the stage of currently off the shelf game engine which have been under development for sometimes over a decade.

Alternative route, the Insomniac approach, taking this transition process step by step. Each follow-up game will have less in common with the original legacy engine, major technical improvements for each following release.

Just compare the Motorstorm and Resistance sequels out this year to the original games which were also the most impressive PS3 games available at the time.

Last edited by MikeB on 04-May-2008 at 08:11 PM.
Last edited by MikeB on 04-May-2008 at 06:36 PM.
Last edited by MikeB on 04-May-2008 at 06:32 PM.

@jtsiren

Quote:

C'mon, Brian, you know better than to waste time arguing MikeB. He puts things into his own view of the world (collecting what supports it and disregarding what does not) and you can exhaust all reasonable avenues of discussion and fact - and still not make a dent into how he sees things.

I do try hoping he'll find some source other then NeoGAF worthwhile. If he'd google on freezes he'd see the games he claims are 'solid' have users who have experienced issues. I agree they aren't as large as GTA but they are there.

Quote:

As for the quite reasonable point that the model of gaming delivery has changed, I agree. The ability to fix games must on some level come to affect the decision to ship, at least on subconsciously. It is a whole lot easier to issue a patch via Internet than to recall a game or ship replacement discs

In the business world the first job of a business is to make a profit, else they aren't there tomorrow. I hope the drive for money keeps the internal QA process and stamps of approval tight. One thing I don't want to see and fear we will, is simply games with less QA and less details figuring they'll fix it in a patch.

I agree with you that Sony online will at sometime look like Xbox Live. It's clear the later is the superior online system. $50/year for gaming? Cheap and well worth the value added by Xbox Live. If my PS3 cost to get online with the state of their software I think they'd find a much lower % of willing to pay consumers then Microsoft has.

Quote:

PS3 is probably the higher powered one, but a year down the road I still don't see the Xbox 360 devastator that was announced way back then. It all comes back to games: which system has the best games and which has the versions people enjoy most. Both are certainly capable of producing some excellent entertainment.

MikeB and some others make it sound like the reason the PS3 is doing better in Europe is the hatred for Microsoft and love of Sony. Now that very well may be. But if we scratched off the label it's certainly clear the 360 currently has the gaming advantage. Heck even the 2007 reviews in Japan, where the 360 is sucking in sales, gave an advantage to the 360 games over the PS3. I wish I could remember the name of their mag I'd look it up. Again Sony will get there they have some good titles coming out this year.

Quote:

The only system that is truly different is Wii. I continue to be tempted by it, now once again reading all the Mario Kart reviews. :) Xbox 360 and PS3 in my system have really lost much of their system-specific appeal and now both are just game consoles, each getting a game here and there

I've played the Wii and historically I do like Mario Bros games. But having a PS3 and 360 that alone isn't enough to compel me to buy a 3rd system. The Wii online store for old games is good but Microsoft's Live has the same sorta thing with different classic games.

Quote:

Did I make the right call buying both? Probably not. I could well do with just one

I agree my PS3 doesn't do as much gaming as my 360. The Blu-Ray is nice but my PS3 has a jet engine sound problem about 1 hour into a movie so that turns me off. It is louder then my 360 for movies at that point. Games don't seem to have this effect. If it wasn't for my love of Final Fantasy I might sell the PS3. At this point it's not worth selling and rebuying when FF makes it to the PS3. Square's Infinite Undiscovery for the 360 is one I'll be getting.

It's interesting to me to see people latch onto things. GhostBusters is one where one comment about how the 360 version impacted the PS3 version is reguritated. Does anyone doubt the PS3 has more potential? No. Has the PS3 proven it? Not quite and not consistently. The Ghostbuster game is coming for the PS2 and Wii. Certainly the 360/PS3 versions were limited in some aspects to make porting for the PS2 easier, too.

...

Week of GTA is interesting. USA 360 sales up nearly 20% and PS3 sales up 10% from the week before. GTA was a game on the PS2 and I expected a larger bounce in the PS3 market because of this.

@MikeB

Quote:

That's putting words into my mouth. I said that thread is far more representative than two people within the little thread on a major website you were posting about.

Mike it seems here when anyone makes a point you use NeoGAF to attempt to deny that it actually happened. NeoGAF doesn't track everyone in the world. Also you missed my point. My point was people have had freezing on your list of rock solid games. You simply need to use google to find the reports. True the problems aren't as extensive as GTA but they are problems for those users none the less.

Maybe GTA's issues aren't solely about GTA. Reports are now coming in that disconnecting from PSN and/or removing the network allows users with problems to play without them. It could be that Sony has a role to play.

Sony came out with numbers. Unlike Microsoft and Nintendo their gaming division lost money again this year. Not as bad as last so an improvement. This year Sony experienced a 1.52B loss. PS3 is still eating into their business.

Last edited by BrianK on 05-May-2008 at 06:36 AM.

@BrianK

Quote:

My point was people have had freezing on your list of rock solid games.

I hate to give English lessons to Americans as English isn't even my native language. But if stating "pretty rock solid", "pretty" refers to "fairly" and/or "relatively". Look it up in a dictionary. Sure I can look up things in google, but one problem is for example one guy reports a problem and an army of blog websites and then some news websites report on this issue, then many people report this issue on forums, so many google hits for a single report... This has happened many times regarding PS3 "news".

IMO NeoGAF is a pretty good overall indicator (as biggest multiplatform gaming forum on the internet) and thus it seems the bulk of buyers have had a great experience with the game without experiencing any major issues. The only thing to take into account it's mostly people from the US posting to this forum, but there are more than enough Europeans posting there as well.

Quote:

his year Sony experienced a 1.52B loss

Sony's profits were up more than 5 fold, about 3.6 Billion dollar profit. Strong HDTV and skyrocketing Blu-Ray sales helped their business. Like I explained before to Wegster, the PS3 hardware is still losing them money like was expected years ago. I don't know the exact figures for their gaming business, but I'll keep you guys posted when Sony presents the figures.

Last edited by MikeB on 05-May-2008 at 08:23 AM.

@MikeB

Quote:

MikeB wrote: @Lou Quote: the 360 image should have a higher pixel density on the same 1080p screen That's not how it works for most scaler chips, the most basic scaler would simply enlarge the image to fit the screen. (more pixels to represent one source pixel, will look like larger pixels) However most scaler chips have other more advanced abilities, for example add additional averaged pixels, so the end result is the same amount of pixels, the amount of pixels native to the display. And it may well be both versions are actually rendering in the same resolution anyway. Scaler chips are often designed to enhance image quality and thus hide signs of scaling.

I understand what scalers do, the bottom line is the PS3 640p image is scaled 1.6875x where as the 360 image's native 720p is only scaled 1.5x to 1080p...now you tell me which one is supposed to scale nicer and then go look back at those images... The 360 image if taken from the same exact ingame camera position should have had a higher apparent pixel density. The example is just bogus. It looks like there is more detail in the PS3 version and that has nothing to do with the filter/scaling etc... All a filter/scaler will do is affect color-bleeding between adjacent pixels when scaled. There is a definite lack of detail in the 360 image vs. the PS3 image which it infact should have more but with no fancy filter applied to the stretching...

@wegster

Quote:

wegster wrote: @jtsiren [quote]IThe Wii - well, it simply doesn't matter. It's not competing in the 'HD or nearly HD' games arena, but on it's unique controller and games. While an HD capable version of the Wii would be welcome, it isn't in the same 'head to head' based on graphics that the PS3 and 360 are, so they can pretty much decide if and when to release their post-Wii console without too much worry, unless the PS4 and XBox '720' completely rip off the Wii controller as well as clone the games, something likely tough to do with at least some of them like Mario, etc.

Well, I guess this means Nintendo will have to innovate something else to differentiate themselves. I definitely see the next Nintendo console being HD-capable. They could simply scale up their gpu with more internal memory, a faster clock speed and perhaps had a secondary shader unit alongside the TEV. Switching to the Power6 cpu would certainly give them some computing muscle and maintain some backwards compatibility...

The next thing up for the Wii is a storage solution as even President Iwata has mentioned the lack of storage that some users are complaining about...

@MikeB

Quote:

MikeB wrote: @jtsiren Quote: I guess more than definitely better performance - and cross-platform titles don't seem to benefit from any inherent performance difference, since PS3 requires so much specialization to get it to play ball. I stated years back 360 and PS3 cross platform games won't differ that much. It will be for the exclusives you will see big differences, .

CELL has to fix G70/RSX’s issues e.g. lack of early-Z culling, concurrent pixel and texture operations, smaller vertex shader resource (i.e. resource not being recycled for other type of operations) and lack of seperate tessellation resource.

Both GPUs has 8 ROPS.

Quote:

better graphics with GTA IV or Oblivion on the PS3, better audio in the PS3 version of DiRT, etc is a very similar case as with many Atari ST to Amiga games from the past. .

Unlike the old days, modern consoles has access to optimised middleware.

Quote:

360 lead platform => Usually inefficient code and game engine design, which can lead to subpar PS3 ports without significantly redesign. Like early ST to Amiga ports were subpar. .

Name an XBOX 360 game that use Xeno's seperate tessellation resource.

Quote:

PS3 lead platform => Potentially better on PS3, but will usually be dumbed down to fit the 360's requirements (DVD, processing capabilities, etc), will make more efficient use of both 360 and PS3 hardware. "Terminal Reality president Mark Randel admitted that Ghostbusters on PS3 has been held back by the fact will also release on 360, saying that the game would have double the amount of objects on screen if it had been PS3-only" .

How about concurrent pixel and texture operations?

Quote:

PS3 exclusive => Rome wasn't build in a day, but here's where the true potential lies. Games can be pushed far beyond what can be achieved on the 360 and even in some ways (Cell and Blu-Ray related) to a PC. .

The entire PS3 is a joke compared to AMD's Radeon HD 3850/3870. This is not factoring soon-to-be released Radeon HD 48x0. When GTA IV comes out for the PC, I'll be running it beyond 640p and 720p.

The X86 PC has the luxury of a large hard disk, larger primary memory and fast transfer rates (disk capacity density). ATI Radeon X1900 exceeds the computation performance of CELL by twice over in non-gaming application e.g. Fold@Home.

In where GPUs are specifically optimised in a specific gaming application, CELL is killed by 2007**and 2008 era “fat” GPUs. CELL's simply doesn't have the bandwidth.

**Remove G7x, since this GPU family has architectural flaw in concurrent pixel and texture operations.

Last edited by Hammer on 05-May-2008 at 01:46 PM.
Last edited by Hammer on 05-May-2008 at 01:38 PM.
Last edited by Hammer on 05-May-2008 at 01:34 PM.

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@Lou

Quote:

I understand what scalers do, the bottom line is the PS3 640p image is scaled 1.6875x where as the 360 image's native 720p is only scaled 1.5x to 1080p...now you tell me which one is supposed to scale nicer and then go look back at those images... The 360 image if taken from the same exact ingame camera position should have had a higher apparent pixel density. The example is just bogus. It looks like there is more detail in the PS3 version and that has nothing to do with the filter/scaling etc... All a filter/scaler will do is affect color-bleeding between adjacent pixels when scaled. There is a definite lack of detail in the 360 image vs. the PS3 image which it infact should have more but with no fancy filter applied to the stretching...

What????
Did you do As I suggested and step well back from the images???

The PS3 image only looks nicer close up because it has had some from of low pass filter applied to it. There is actually less real information in the PS3 image. Do a Fourier transform on the images and it will be clear that what I am saying is correct. Go and do some study on DSP (Digial Signal Processing) if you don't understand what I just wrote.

Edit:
Sorry for the bluntness I have quite a few beer tonight.

Last edited by Bit7 on 05-May-2008 at 01:47 PM.

@Lou

Quote:

Lou wrote: @wegster Quote: wegster wrote: @jtsiren [quote]IThe Wii - well, it simply doesn't matter. It's not competing in the 'HD or nearly HD' games arena, but on it's unique controller and games. While an HD capable version of the Wii would be welcome, it isn't in the same 'head to head' based on graphics that the PS3 and 360 are, so they can pretty much decide if and when to release their post-Wii console without too much worry, unless the PS4 and XBox '720' completely rip off the Wii controller as well as clone the games, something likely tough to do with at least some of them like Mario, etc. Well, I guess this means Nintendo will have to innovate something else to differentiate themselves. I definitely see the next Nintendo console being HD-capable. They could simply scale up their gpu with more internal memory, a faster clock speed and perhaps had a secondary shader unit alongside the TEV. Switching to the Power6 cpu would certainly give them some computing muscle and maintain some backwards compatibility... The next thing up for the Wii is a storage solution as even President Iwata has mentioned the lack of storage that some users are complaining about...

Power6 design is not quite a near mobility class processor.

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@wegster

Quote:

wegster wrote: @jtsiren Quote: I wouldn't be surprised if PS3 is the better performer in the long run, but if this difference is hugely appreciable or clear-cut remains to be seen. The bigger learning curve on PS3 perhaps masking some of this benefit, or perhaps having to bypass the less than stellar GPU another. I'm sure MikeB would like to contend all this with a barrage of links and quotes, but I have been reading up as well and this is how I see it. PS3 is probably the higher powered one, but a year down the road I still don't see the Xbox 360 devastator that was announced way back then. It all comes back to games: which system has the best games and which has the versions people enjoy most. Both are certainly capable of producing some excellent entertainment. Quality arguments aside, I pretty much agree, and expect most others do as well, at least with respect to - they're effectively pretty close right now. The 360 has more games, and more exclusives. Whether or not that matters to someone is up to them. I think the bigger question is this - will the PS3 be 'good enough' by the time MS releases the next XBox. Sony has the habit of producing 'unique hardware,' which has ramp-up time, and if people are only just starting to 'get it' by the time MS' next gen console is out, can it hold up? MS, on the other hand, is likely to release something not far off from a PC, with the same or very similar dev tools. I expect we'll see some games, Crysis perhaps, that get released on PS3 that are 'wow' games, and may finally take advantage of the PS3 Cell. But, if 6 months later, MS releases the '720' as effectively the same system, with faster CPU, and a more modern graphics card, while PS3 still has years on it's roadmap before we see PS4, or if Sony releases the PS4 as something once again 'totally different than PS3,' it's unlikely to ever achieve numbers like PS2, and PS3 will be technically inferior at that point in time. Of course, if instead, Sony finally realizes the name 'Sony' doesn't mean superiority, and time to market matters, they could release PS4 as a dual Cell system, with doubled RAM and gfx card better than RSX, within 6 months of MS' next console. Such a system should be powerful enough, while people will finally know enough on how to write code for it gained from PS3, and might even retain PS3 backward compatibility without too much hassles, as well as having people produce 'competitive' games shortly after launch. So, this should be interesting, to see if Sony 'learns' anything from 'this round,' or not. It's possible we see a period of time where PS3 games are 'out-doing' 360 games, but if 6 months later, MS releases it's '720' or whatever, while Sony has PS4 two years from then...does it matter? The Wii - well, it simply doesn't matter. It's not competing in the 'HD or nearly HD' games arena, but on it's unique controller and games. While an HD capable version of the Wii would be welcome, it isn't in the same 'head to head' based on graphics that the PS3 and 360 are, so they can pretty much decide if and when to release their post-Wii console without too much worry, unless the PS4 and XBox '720' completely rip off the Wii controller as well as clone the games, something likely tough to do with at least some of them like Mario, etc.

Can PS3 compete against AMD's Radeon HD 3830 (RV670) or NV's Geforce 9600 (G92) GSO (i.e. “fat” GPUs on a fast (>30 GB/s) value priced 128bit wide bus)?

XBOX releases roughly parellels DX releases i.e. XBOX 720 may have AMD DX11 era GPU.

Hopefully, next- console releases wouldn’t cut-down on the ROPS units.

Last edited by Hammer on 05-May-2008 at 02:09 PM.

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@Hammer

Quote:

Can PS3 compete against AMD's Radeon HD 3830 (RV670) or NV's Geforce 9600 (G92) GSO (i.e. “fat” GPUs on a fast (>30 GB/s) value priced 128bit wide bus)? XBOX releases roughly parellels DX releases i.e. XBOX 720 may have AMD DX11 era GPU. Hopefully, next- console releases wouldn’t cut-down on the ROPS units.

I'm unsure what your obsession is here, really - I've never claimed PS3 or 360 > PC. This may be the case for a brief amount of time when a console is introduced, but it never holds up past a few months.

Comparing them to one another, as fixed hardware, is worthwhile, and mostly the subject of debate here, but why are we back to comparison against PC hardware? What point does it serve, and how does it contradict anything I've stated in my post?

_________________
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@MikeB

Quote:

I hate to give English lessons to Americans as English isn't even my native language. But if stating "pretty rock solid", "pretty" refers to "fairly" and/or "relatively

So you now agree that users have had the freezing problems they reported?

Quote:

Quote: @Briank This year Sony experienced a 1.52B loss Sony's profits were up more than 5 fold, about 3.6 Billion dollar profit

Let me redo this...
Quote:

@BrianK -- Sony came out with numbers. Unlike Microsoft and Nintendo their gaming division lost money again this year. Not as bad as last so an improvement. This year Sony gaming experienced a 1.52B loss. PS3 is still eating into their business.

Fixed. Hopefully that explicit makes it clearer to our loyal readers.
Last year's loss was 2.2B.

Article: Calcuated here the loss for gaming was 1.3B so a bit less then the other article I read. Heck with the US $ issues it might simply be a timing of calcuation and rounding issue.

The good -- Reduced cost PS3 does look to have stemmed the losses, made a profit in Dec, and analysts are expecting profits fo the PS3 this next year.

The next question is will the PS3 gain enough marketshare so it could possibly offset the $3.7B losses and break even over it's life? It'll be hard work but it just may. When the next gen ships and what it is, will undoubtably influence that possiblity.

@Lou

Quote:

The 360 image if taken from the same exact ingame camera position should have had a higher apparent pixel density. The example is just bogus.

Pixel density is the same, if Games Radar is correct the source has the same amount of detail as well. The PS3 image looks cleaner most likely due to filtering as it's a 360 port.

You cannot claim all scalers do the same things as there are different algorithms involved. Scalers can remove artifacts in various ways, adjust colors in various ways, enhance perception of detail, smoothing, edge enhancement, etc.

@MikeB

Quote:

MikeB wrote: @Lou Quote: The 360 image if taken from the same exact ingame camera position should have had a higher apparent pixel density. The example is just bogus. Pixel density is the same, ...

But I've been saying it shouldn't.

@Lou

Detail should be different, pixel count the same. Scaler chips can for instance make a low resolution low detail picture look very smooth and more detailed in a higer resolution. For instance a console game emulator can make a game look better than it originally did. Doing a pixel count you will notice many more pixels being displayed compared to the original source. You're probably a Nintendo and Amiga fan, this can also be done WinUAE or Snes emulators. Game will look a lot better, but no extra details are added, Mario's eye won't suddenly have a highly detailed iris, but the roundness of the iris can be made to look more high res and smooth.

Comparison:

This is what Super Mario World looks like on an emulator (on a TV this looks smoother due to scanlines, basically pixels aren't directed connected but seperated by black areas, that's also why Amiga games often look better compared to emulated results):

http://whiggles.landofwhimsy.com/funbag/top10games-mario.jpg

This is what the game looks like with bells and whistles on, in a higher resolution:

http://www.gamethink.net/IMG/jpg/snes_super_mario_world_2.jpg

Scalers can often do similar things on the fly with images. Scaler chips can be found in game console, video players and are present in HDTVs themselves. Scaling can also be performed in software, but this at a processing cost like you need a decent PC to upscale emulated games properly.

Last edited by MikeB on 05-May-2008 at 05:44 PM.

@Hammer

Of course there are more advanced GPUs available for the PC than the RSX. The RSX however is more powerful than the 360 GPU in RAW specs. The RSX performs well without aid from the Cell, but using the Cell you can get a lot of additional performance out of the GPU (for example note the HouseMarque comment that they will push 50% more graphics performance by using this approach for the next game).

The big distinguishing features between PCs and consoles are:

A fixed core specification, this allows for better software optimisation for the long run. Most PC devs have also stated they will be styling their games with the 360/PS3 game consoles in mind. Windows and Direct X are inefficient and waste a lot of potential performance. Even the Crytek devs won't be releasing PC exclusives from now on.

Why PCs are becoming less relevant with regard to gaming according to various PC games developers (the most important reasons I think based on interviews):

1) Piracy
2) Lots of different configurations to take into consideration.
3) Best selling PC games the less demanding games.
4) Windows / Direct X inefficiency.
5) Many people prefer a more seamless experience (using a HDTV, audio equipment and wireless controller, no hassle to determine if the PC is up to the task to run a game well enough, needing upgrades).

Regarding the PS3, millions of people own Cell (far more 'general purpose' processing power, although achieved by redesign) and Blu-Ray (more storage for games) technology. These are the main technical advantages.

@BrianK

Quote:

So you now agree that users have had the freezing problems they reported?

That's always possible as there are different firmware versions installed (may introduce temporary bugs and incompatibilties) and an amount of units will become defunct in course of time. Overall though Sony published titles so far seem to run pretty rock solid so far and I expect this trend to continue.

Quote:

The next question is will the PS3 gain enough marketshare so it could possibly offset the $3.7B losses and break even over it's life?

Certainly that's Sony's intention and long term strategy. If they sold more PS3 hardware they would have lost much more money. If they stopped selling the profitable PS2 and the PS3 wouldn't have aided them in winning the Blu-Ray format war and sell more HDTVs Sony as a company would probably have been in the red for the PS3's first year on the market (only mammoth companies like Sony or Microsoft can sustain selling products way below actual costs, small companies cannot compete in term of specs (PS3) or reliability (360) and keep such a product alive for greater long term gains).

The startup losses were anticipated, they designed the PS3 from a long term perspective. This meant high specificiations and top class innovative technology. But for the long run the benefits for the company as a whole seems very beneficial. More Blu-Ray releases and more compelling and impressive games will push many more people to upgrade towards HDTVs.

The PS3 will pave the way for a distant future Cell based PS4, the PS4 will not have to endure similar issues as the PS3 did. Developers will be comfortable with the Cell and IMO all major game engines which will survive this generation of consoles will have been redesigned.

Last edited by MikeB on 05-May-2008 at 10:18 PM.
Last edited by MikeB on 05-May-2008 at 09:53 PM.

@MikeB

GTA4 freeze on YouTube -- user here indicates he was told there are 2 problems. 1) Network interface on newer hardware (non-60GB issues) and 2) full PS2 hardware causing conflicts and Sony will have to patch hardware along with Rockstar patching the game. We'll see who/how this is fixed.

Quote:

The startup losses were anticipated, they designed the PS3 from a long term perspective

I'm sure some losses were anticipated. But, as large of a loss and as quick of a hardware revisions to stem the loss? I'm dubious they planned exactly that. I think the loss of executives in this area backs up my view that things aren't as rosey as you seem to believe.

Quote:

The PS3 will pave the way for a distant future Cell based PS4

While this is a safe bet things are quiet right now and supposedly Sony divested from the Cell to Toshiba and IBM. Maybe in a couple years they'll dive in for a Cell 2. But, we have seen 3 consoles with 3 different processors so I wouldn't be too surprised if they shifted gears for the PS4.