Quote:

According to Sony the initial production issues are now resolved and more units should appear on the Japanese and US markets on a regular basis.

Related info:

"Asustek Computer’s consolidated sales in November soared 81 percent month on month to New Taiwanese $83.52 billion (US$2.59 billion), from NT$46.17 billion in October. The figure was also 114 percent higher than November of last year, it reported Friday.
Sony PlayStation 3


The company would not comment officially on why its revenue in November rose, but one executive confirmed that it is manufacturing the PS3 on behalf of Sony Computer Entertainment (SCEI).

Stock market analysts, who have been pumping Asustek stock in Taiwan, had expected its revenue to rise around 40 percent to 50 percent month on month in November due to the start of PS3 sales globally, but their estimate was far short of the actual increase."

"The company has said it is continually shipping new consoles to retailers as they become available."

http://www.cio.com/blog_view.html?CID=27321

@MikeB

Brand new games are brand new games regardless of platforms.
There are new titles for PS3 out now, but still the attachment rate is extremely low.

The attachment rate has nothing to do with production numbers - merely how many games are sold compared to the number of sold machines.

@MikeB

Sorry if you are sick about the ps3, but this doesn´t allow you to manipulate my words to continue believing your own madness:

I didn´t say

Quote:

@vision Quote: less detail has nothing to do with knowing how to improve the use the SPEs,

I said:
Quote:

having TEXTURES with less detail has nothing to do with knowing how to improve the use the SPEs, it is just because the RSX is not as powerful as the Xenos

So, even it disturb your theories of happy world and the salvation of the human kind trough the holy ps3, please respect what I try to communicate:

Final Round 3 was released almost as a launch title for the 360, and its developers had more than half a year more to improve it for the ps3 (the development kits of both systems were launched at similar dates for the big companies), similar cases apply to other games of this review (I repeat it because I am sure many people didn´t realise about it):

A FAIR COMPARISON OF THE GRAPHICS OF THE PS3 AGAINST THE XBOX360:

http://www.gamespot.com/features/6162742/p-1.html

(Please check carefully each page)

Instead of improving it, the real TRUTH (not speculations or wet dreams) is that they cannot stand the power of the Xenos

REMEMBER, and take carefully into account that this review focuses on the GRAPHICS of the games, NOT on the FPS, AI, or load times... (although it makes references to them, and not specially positive for the ps3). Why is this point important?: because all the other ones would get perfectly justified by the lack knowledge of the SPEs, in fact, I agree that in the future we will get much better results in many areas when we can learn how to use them in the best way (although not as this representative from EA says to the public, 20% is a CHEAP LIE).

But all this DOES NOT apply for the features of the graphics like the detail of the textures, or the amount of detail of some characters on screen, because they are all consecuence of the limits of the RSX.

SAD, BUT TRUE: We already found some limits of the graphics chip. basically because it is a well known technlogy from the pc world (although more powered btw), it is not something new that we have to explore or don´t know how to program.

It happened something similar with the ps2: Sony started claiming that it was 66 times as powerful as a Dreamcast (later 10 times), that Saddam ordered various hunderds to control his missiles, and that it was in fact increasing your #### since the same moment you buy it.

The professionals realised that having just 4 megas for the graphics (even using them just as a cache) was a big failure, sony fanboys said it was enough and when the first games appeared, the truth came contradicting them, but they keep saying it would get better with time. Now that we are at the end of its life cycle, we see how far they got: a bit better, but what's the big difference?

It is just the history repeating.

Last edited by vision on 10-Dec-2006 at 11:02 PM.

@vision

Regarding Fight Night R3 I was kind of surprised. The really nice "dust in the air"-effect that kind of looks like a particle effect was entirely removed from the PS3. Some lighting effects had been improved slightly while they were weaker in other areas. Apparently the frame rate also stutters on the PS3 (I guess from now on we should rather make a point about games NOT stuttering since poor frame rates seem to be the standard rather than the exception).

Results of side by side comparison

Everything I try to type about this, I keep coming back to the same thing.

1) All talk of power is guesswork
2) It's close enough not to matter
3) Graphics have become a REALLY boring topic

The big competition that nobody mentions is the previous gen. If my favourite game is Tiger Woods, why on earth should I bother upgrading my PS2? The incentive just isn't the same as it was 5 years ago.

The only console that offers a different experience besides the customary 10 minutes of "wow! isn't it pretty?" is the Wii.

That makes it a 4 horse race.

As for the two powerhouses, maybe one machine will slightly hold back the other. If you can't decide which, it probably doesn't matter:

( Rising development costs + similar consoles ) * law of diminishing returns = identical ports.

They're both powerful enough to produce great new innovative games. And they're both powerful enough to produce the 3000th FPS sequel in shinier clothes.

Chris

@clebin

Quote:

The big competition that nobody mentions is the previous gen. If my favourite game is Tiger Woods, why on earth should I bother upgrading my PS2? The incentive just isn't the same as it was 5 years ago.

By that logic: If your favorite game was Leaderboard Golf on the C64, why should you bother upgrading?

I still see your point, but personally it was a case of the games selling it - just like it was the case in earlier generations. If I see a game I want to play badly enough I'll get the machine to play it.

I must admit it has spoilt me a bit, though, because now it feels rather painful to play games in standard definition. It's not that I can't appreciate what you can do within 480i/p, but it's just as bad as going back to a PAL monitor after having used a high resolution SVGA display.

At the end of the day it's all really simple. People will buy consoles when there are games they want to play. They might also use them as media players and I for one intend to use the movie rental service once it launches in Europe. If they get decent titles on it of course.

While it's easy to point to the Wii and say "that's new" (which is entirely true), there has also been a lot of under the bonnet work on the other machines - especially the 360. It's the little things that you appreciate. I've mentioned achievements in earlier threads, and it seems like a tiny thing, but to me it makes a huge difference and most of my friends feel the same about it. It's just plain old-fashioned fun.

As an example there are achievements for collecting all Ferraris in Project Gotham Racing 3. If there hadn't been I probably wouldn't have bothered to do so, but because it was there as an objective, I went for it - the same way I would go for a regular in-game goal. The same goes for GUN which - besides the resolution - is pretty much an identical game to previous platforms. But because there were all kinds of achievements, I completed it totally on normal mode with all side quests and intend to take on the higher difficulty levels later. Would I have bothered to do the same on the old Xbox or PS2? No. Why? There was no sense of achievement.

That is just one example of where innovation has taken place, even if you can't look at the box and see it. There are many more examples I could point out, but suffice to say I have not been even near disappointed after buying the machine. In fact I thought it was just going to be "ok", but I love it to bits.

For me the Live Arcade also delivers the same pick up and play fun that I expect the Wii will deliver when I get it. It's not entirely comparable, true, but isn't it all about "fun" at the end of the day?

I guess "subjective value" is what's ultimately most important. If you're perfectly happy with the games you have and don't feel a need to get new ones, then by all means stick with what you have. I would have loved it if Amiga games had continued to improve in the 2D realm, but 3D made its advances and these days you rarely see the kind of production values in 2D games that you used to. Am I bitter? Sort of. On the other hand there are positive sides too - lots of technical advancements and fun games that wouldn't have been possible on the platforms back then.

You can always argue the same for any change of platform. Why should I get it? What I have is fun. But I wonder if you'll think the same, when you're a couple of years down the line, your standard definition tv has given up the ghost and once you get that sparkling new hi-def tv, the old consoles look... well, rather horrible. I'm sure you'll appreciate the tech upgrade by then - and I'm sure you'll have lots of reasons to upgrade when it comes to the plain old fun factor too.

My personal issues with Wii are these:
1. It's standard definition. Sure, call me a graphics whore. I'd have done the same some months back. It's just that once you had a taste of something better going back is damn hard - even if it is a lot of fun.

2. The games. I got the DS because there were a lot of wacky games that were throwing new ideas around and it's been great fun. One of my favourite console purchases. So far, however, I can't really see anything in the line-up that just stands out and screams "BUY ME!". Sure Zelda is always great and I'd probably enjoy it, but on the other hand I haven't completed the previous titles on GameCube. I might enjoy some of the others as well, but since the machine will cost me more than my 360 I have to think really hard about what I want to get - especially since the Virtual Console games (not sure if it's all of them, but some do) suffer from "bad PAL port" syndrome here in Europe. I really wanna try Wii Sports, but the price of entry is pretty high. Basically the things I was the most psyched about on the Wii (getting a proper online service unlike the DS one, access to old Japanese import games, region free games) have all been shot down over the last months.

I'm most likely gonna get one eventually when either the price drops or the must have title comes out.

Oops. Kinda long post. Thanks for your patience if you bothered to read this far.

Quote:

Another advantage of such media is that they don't get dirty or damaged that easily. Which IMO is a major Pro when small children are operating the gaming device.

Does the PS3 have a higher tolerance for scratched discs?

"So on a lark I moved the disc over to the PS3, and to my surprise it played fine. The rest of the movies did as well. All the discs that the 360 choked on, the PS3 played without a problem. While I was talking about this with some of the other Ars editors, it turns out that Ken has noticed this as well. His one-year-old loves to destroy discs, but the PS3 plays on when the Xbox 360 chokes. Of course Ken also raised a good point, which is the fact that the PS3 is also quieter during playback.

Based on this anecdotal evidence it seems like the PS3 has a much higher tolerance for beat up discs than the Xbox 360. Does Sony have the secret sauce or is Microsoft skimping on the DVD drive in the 360?"

http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2006/12/10/6237

@clebin

The PS2 is the clear winner for this year. However during next year's christmas there will be many PS3 exclusives available, and if you want to play those a PS3 upgrade will be without too much hassle as it's already near fully backwards compatible.

For example FFXIII was originally developed for the PS2, this until the dev team knew how much more could be done with the PS3.

A short Final Fantasy XIII dev video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xct7VrBOJuc&eurl=

Screenshot:
http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/5407/finalfantasyxiii2006100rt1.jpg

I am sure at least many Japanese will upgrade to a PS3 for this game alone.

@BrianK

Quote:

You seem to be very glad you didn't do the update? There was a 99% chance that on 10/31 nothing bad would have happened and if you waited a couple days nearly a 100% chance nothing bad would have happened. Egads run the sky is falling.

Yep, partly because I've not had my XBox 360 for long - about 2/3 months, and secondly because knowing my luck I'd have been affected

My first purchased 360 had a broken HD and went back to the store the day after I purchased it (couldn't take it back the same day as we purchased it at closinf time more or less straight from work).

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One big advantage I think the 360 will have over the PS3 is Windows Media Center, The 360 version of Windows Media Center comes with Windows Vista Ultimate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEKUtxQRIMc

Last edited by DaveyD on 11-Dec-2006 at 09:32 AM.

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@MikeB


Quote:

I think the GPU specs you are worrying about is somewhat of a non issue if you optimise the game for the PS3 specificly. The SPEs can be used to take a lot of workload off the GPU

It has to use SPEs since RSX doesn’t have vertex shaders. SPEs running OpenGL is not pretty.

SPU/RSX’s resource is statically split between vertex (SPEs), pixel shader (RSX) task, while Xenos dynamically allocates vertex and, pixel shader tasks across its 48 unified shaders. Xenos includes "Ultra-Threading" (SMT for GPU)....

The fight is basically between Ruby vs Dawn….

Last edited by Hammer on 11-Dec-2006 at 11:31 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 11-Dec-2006 at 10:40 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 11-Dec-2006 at 10:32 AM.

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@DaveyD

Another dark horse is the Live tie-in with Games for Windows. I'm not sure how much it will mean and I'm not going to start playing games on Windows, but it's interesting none the less.

It seems to be a step on the way towards what they were talking about with the first generation of XNA - that you could for instance have a strategy game where a PC player controlled the main game and the individual soldiers were played by console players and they would see it as an FPS.

There is one title on the way that will have cross-platform online multiplayer which allows you to go head to head between 360 and PC. Of course they've tweaked the controls so it will be a level playing field.

Quote:

PS3 have a higher tolerance for scratched discs

I think that's a good thing. Today 'Gears of War' suddenly stopped playing and I was asked to clean the disk and *reboot*. After inspection the disc seemed clean, cleaned the disc anyway, rebooted, seems to work OK now. But there were no fingerprints, scratches or anything on the disk as far as I could tell...

@MikeB

There are different drive models in 360s and some are better than others. So far my 360 has happily played everything I've thrown at it.

There's one model in particular I'd like to have instead of my current one, though, since it actually spins down from 12x when it's not necessary. I'm sure you can imagine the benefits.

I think in the end the PS3 or the Wii will be the winner in the Next Gen system contest for a couple of reasons.
PS3:
-> Sony has created the ultimate entertainment hub for your entertainment centre
-> DVD/CD/Blue-Ray/PS/PS2/PS3/...
-> There is more integration between the PS3 and other devices (mainly the PSP) helping Sony create the "complete package"
WII:
-> This compact little party machine is a perfect family entertainment centre
-> Anyone can play with little to no experience in video games
-> It is super cheep making it an easy buy to parents around the world

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@Trezzer

How to tell which drive drives this XBox 360 premium? I had this happen to me once before during another game.

@DaveyD

The Windows Media Bar looks a lot like the XMB for the PSP and PS3.

hmmmm

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@Trezzer

Thats cool 360 users playing Windows users via Live. Yeah I wish my 360 would spin down when disc access stops, though I dont usually hear the disc because of my 5.1 surround sound system. Btw MS are doing a new rev that will support HDMI, thought I am happy using the component connection, I doubt HDMI will improve the picture much more.

Last edited by DaveyD on 11-Dec-2006 at 01:22 PM.

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@DaveyD

There can be noticeable differences:
http://www.hifi-writer.com/blog/20040408.htm#20040423-2032

However I guess it all depends on the source player, the used media as well as the display device. On a sizeable and good 1080P display, using high quality HD content and using a good player, I think it should make a very noticeable difference.

@DaveyD

Quote:

One big advantage I think the 360 will have over the PS3 is Windows Media Center

No doubt there are people who don't want Windows (~5-10% of the current market doesn't have Windows) so this won't be attractive. I do have a MCE system which records my DirectTV, and stores about 200 CDs. Being the 360 is in a different room then the MCE box it's really a nice option to have that connectivity. There's little to no difference between direct use of the MCE or use of it through the 360. They did a great job.

Yes there are other solutions out there and they compare well. Sony should actually work with Apple to setup a PS3-iTV interaction as a competing product, IMO.