@jtsiren

Quote:

I'm just bummered that Apple isn't yet competing in all this. Now THAT would promise some good things...

They've already enteredd the game. They have the leading online movie store and have announced their player for TVs. I'm sure we'll hear more in a few days.

@jtsiren

Quote:

Well, the noise-signal ratio at the moment is high as this is a hotly contested topic, but I don't think I am mistaken in my disappointment. The PS3 did not deliver to my expectation that was it would blow away the Xbox 360 on arrival - again, maybe that was too high an expectation

I wasn't expecting anything special at launch, the fact that it's pretty much even with the 360 quite surprised me (aside from GoW - but it's engine is way more mature than anything out on the PS3 yet).

Quote:

Sure, but it is still a disappointment and something the Xbox 360 has and PS3 lacks. It may also improve quality for those whose television's scaler is worse than that of the Xbox's.

It appears the PS3 does have a scaler - but for some reason it's not used and developers are not allowed to use it (I assume it doesn't work). It can do scaling but only in software which of course imposes a cost.

Quote:

Also, the point about more graphics chip grunt in the Xbox 360

That's something of a contested point!
It's big advantage is the EDRAM as it saves bandwidth, but even there the PS3 has it's own bandwidth saving techniques.

That said MS appears to have put most emphasis on the graphics than Sony who put their effort into the CPU.

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- this coupled with the scaler just surprised me in the way the Xbox 360 really shines over the PS3 in this regard. I was expecting Xbox 360 to get a beating. Do you think the Xbox 360 got a beating?

No, but I didn't expect to see any difference for a while yet anyway.

Quote:

You have probably read the comments from a developer on AVS Forum (expressing real disappointment in PS3's graphical power but also excitement over Cell) and I've seen other comments suggesting the same. I doubt it's all FUD or misinformation, really. I do acknowledge the EA comments and other people also complimenting the PS3.

The idea of Cell helping out RSX came up as a theory on Beyond3D but one of the developers promptly shot it down saying it was unnecessary.

There are developer disagreements though, PC devs seem to pretty much hate Cell PS2 developers seem to love it. I think the dev you are referring to did post on B3D and there was quite a debate, one of the PS3 devs was in complete disagreement with him. The conclusion (if you could call it that) was the differences of opinion were due to one being a cross platform dev and the other being a PS3 only dev.

Quote:

Sure, but I guess this discussion here has evolved into mostly discussing the technical superiority aspect and hence my comments.

Another voice is welcome

Interesting to hear your perspective, here's mine:

Firstly I'm not a gamer...
I'm got interested in PS3 because I'm interested in Cell and it turned out B3D was a very good source of info on Cell. Of course being a console forum it's mostly games related I used to play games a bit so I got interested again...

The BluRay is a bonus, so I'm perfectly happy with it. I think it was the right move having a larger drive because if there's one thing software does well it's expand. I think 360 sticking with DVDs will (eventually) turn out to be a mistake.

I plan on getting a PS3 when they come out here but first thing I'm doing is installing Linux and getting coding - IBM are seemingly selling (exceedingly expensive) Cell blades like hot cakes and they're going to need (highly paid) programmers

That said Motorstorm does look fun...

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From Afterdawn.com

Wii beat 1.2 million estimate in U.S.?
5 January 2007 6:46 by Dela

Nintendo's new Wii console is reported to have beaten analyst predictions in the United States. Analyst Lazard Capital, had predicted the console to sell 1.2 million consoles in the U.S. in 2006. Sony is believed to have sold around 700,000 PS3 units in the U.S. in 2006 while the analysts predicts that sales figures for the Xbox 360 in North America will have reached 4.5 million by December 30th.

"Our checks indicate that Nintendo's Wii console continues to sell well, while Sony's PS3 supplies improved somewhat towards the end of the holiday period," said Colin Sebastian of Lazard Capital. The firm also predicted that U.S. software sales will have increase by about 5% over the previous year, "driven by incremental sales for next-generation software and ongoing solid PS2 and DS game sales."

Among the list of best selling titles offered by the analyst are Guitar Hero 2, WWE Smackdown Vs RAW 2007, Gears of War and Legend of Zelda: The Twilight Princess.

Source:
GamesIndustry.biz


XBOX 360 gets IPTV

Xbox 360 10 million sold? IPTV support?
7 January 2007 7:34 by Dela

At a keynote speech at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Microsoft's Bill Gates and Robbie Bach are expected to confirm that the console has reached over 10 million units sold and speak about IPTV functionality. The Xbox 360 being able to serve as a set-top box for Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) would be neat. Microsoft's own video download store has gotten praise for its performance so far, especially with HD content.

Not many details are available about the announcement just yet but the functionality is set to appear sometime later this year. Also, apparently no customers would be "left behind", meaning all Xbox 360 consoles out will be able to participate in the service at some level.

Source:
Gaming Bits

@BrianK

Thanks for calling me a jerk, you are the one that failed to answer my question multiple times and to be really honest, you still haven't! Who's the jerk here?

Now I'll just take the link from Trezzer. http://www.primediahometech.com/dlpseeit/1105viewing/

Quote:

In the old days, the going rule was to sit between 7 and 9 times the picture height away from a 480i TV. This was so one was unable to see the scan lines of the interlaced image. Now, most new TVs don't have scan lines, they have pixels. The same principal technically applies, but the resolution is often much higher, so closer seating distances are possible. On the other side of the argument are those that say with HD and HD resolution TVs one can sit as close to 3 times the picture height away from the display. This is very, very close. With an excellent TV always playing a perfect source, this could work. In the real would, sitting around 5 times the picture height is far more realistic. At 5 times the picture height, the screen may appear a little smaller than some would like, but your eye won't be picking up as many artifacts and noise in the image. At this distance you can resolve 720p, what most TVs are right now, with perfect detail.

It looks like the calculations are made, based on the limiting factor of the resolution of the TV. I see nowhere in this article that there would be an issue sitting 3' from your TV.

Why is it so hard for you to admit you will see a noticeable difference between 720p and 1080p when you sit 3' from your TV? Because you use the phrasing of "may" I feel that's not real admitting, but I guess if you don't see a difference in that situation, you might as well buy new glasses, or you shouldn't bother about HDTV at all.

But at least now I know how you have felt "discussing" things with MikeB, but it looks like you are making the same mistakes here too. And in a way that's not such a bad thing, because in the background, that was exactly the point I was trying to make.

Last edited by jiyong on 09-Jan-2007 at 03:16 AM.

@Trezzer

Quote:

Trezzer wrote: @jtsiren Quote: I'm just bummered that Apple isn't yet competing in all this. Now THAT would promise some good things... They've already enteredd the game. They have the leading online movie store and have announced their player for TVs. I'm sure we'll hear more in a few days.

Yeah, but not with a gaming console at least yet.

@minator

Quote:

That's something of a contested point!

Not with shader operation per cycle and keeping shader co-processors busy i.e. lack of GpGPU hypertreading in G7x class GPUs. This issue was fixed in G80.

RSX’s G7x architecture is well known.

Quote:

The idea of Cell helping out RSX

The interconnection between Cell and RSX would it's bottleneck.

Quote:

That said MS appears to have put most emphasis on the graphics

Like it or not, Microsoft and AMD (ATI) drives the shader model development.

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@jiyong

Quote:

Why is it so hard for you to admit you will see a noticeable difference between 720p and 1080p when you sit 3' from your TV? Because you use the phrasing of "may" I feel that's not real admitting, but I guess if you don't see a difference in that situation, you might as well buy new glasses, or you shouldn't bother about HDTV at all

Post #745 says explains 'may'. I'll leave you with a thought from your included article to chew on. 'If you are planning on getting a set that is smaller than your viewing distance needs, you don't need to get the highest resolution out there ' -- add into this the source material makes a difference. For an extreme example making the point of why -- I'm highly highly doubtful that your 20" screen in 1080p will be drastically better then a 20" 720p for the classic black and white pong with your 3' foot seating difference.

Last edited by BrianK on 09-Jan-2007 at 04:04 PM.
Last edited by BrianK on 09-Jan-2007 at 04:03 PM.

The 360 looked to have a decent year --- Recent stats

* 10.4 M units sold
* Est 13M+ by end of 2007 -- since this thread was about winner by 2007 the PS3 is going to have to average 1M+/month next year in order to beat the 360. Sony is still claiming 6M+ by March.
* Highest attach rate in the industry w/ 5.3 games per console
* 2.7M copies of Gears of War sold in 8 weeks
* 5M+ Xbox Live Gold members
* 100M+ pieces downloaded from Xbox Live
* 20M+ games dowloaded from Xbox Live


Guitar Hero II on the 360 has 10 more tracks then the PS2 version. So far 8 have been announced Billion Dollar Babies (Alice Cooper), Dead! (My Chemical Romance - Emo sucks), Hush (Deep Purple), Life Wasted (Pearl Jam), Rock N Roll Hoochie Koo (Rick Derringer), Possum Kingdom (Toadies), Salvation (Rancid) and The Trooper (Iron Maiden). The other 2 are unlockable and unannounced. The Online service includes your typical stuff - achievement points, themes, picture packs, and downloadable songs. Personally if they made Stairway to Heaven a downloadable song I think we'd definitely see some buying this game again and the 360.

@jtsiren

Quote:

Yeah, but not with a gaming console at least yet.

Oh I doubt they'd make that mistake again

@BrianK

About Guitar Hero 2: They've announced that songs will be available for download at launch.

Sad to say it's sorely needed as the song selection in GH2 positively blows compared to the first one. At least some of the extra tracks on the 360 version help a lot.

In an IRC channel someone suggested that it could be kind of cool to do pack-ins where you'd get extra songs for Guitar Hero when you buy other games - like Megadeth's Gears of War tune for instance.

@BrianK

Quote:

10.4 M units sold

Shipped just like the 1 million units Sony shipped for North America (1 Million units sold to retail).

Sony: "What the sell-in number refers to is that we’ve shipped it, we’ve sold it to retail, and the fact that we got to a million was possible because we were air shipping these products in."

Quote:

ince this thread was about winner by 2007 the PS3 is going to have to average 1M+/month next year in order to beat the 360.

The global winner regarding home console christmas sales seems to have been the NIntendo Wii, the global alround winner for 2006 clearly is the PS2.

Next christmas I will look again at market shares. This of course without counting previously sold units, else the winner would already be known, namely the Sony PS2.

Comparisons considering the product's 'lifecycle' will IMO be more interesting. The PS3 is already doing better than the XBox 360 during a similar part of its 'lifecycle', even without selling in Europe. The PS3 is expected by Sony to have a shelf viability for about 10 years!

More interesting info from CES:

- "Sony presented a survey of 10,000 PS3 households in which 82% said they plan to purchase Blu-ray movies to watch on the console."

- "Similar to Ken Kutaragi's proclamation that the PS3 is a "supercomputer," Gates said that the Xbox 360 is "a general purpose computer.""

Last edited by MikeB on 09-Jan-2007 at 03:22 PM.

@BrianK

Quote:

since this thread was about winner by 2007 the PS3 is going to have to average 1M+/month next year in order to beat the 360

Research firms predict the PS3 and XBox 360's market share will be about equal at the end of 2007.

But how accurate can their predictions be if for 2006 they list 1 million PS3 sales, while in fact we know it's above that figure and XBox 360 sales listed sales of 10 million while we know it's actually way below this figur?? I also highly doubt the XBox 360 will top 40 million unit sales, if not already discontinued in 2010.

http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4498&Itemid=2&limit=1&limitstart=1

@MikeB

I think we're all good on the sold numbers. It's been repeated ad nauseum that manufactures count 'sold' as shipped to retailers. Here you can find Xbox360s and PS3s, Wiis are hard to find yet.

Quote:

Next christmas I will look again at market shares. This of course without counting previously sold units, else the winner would already be known, namely the Sony PS2.

I think in 2007 we'll see the PS2 win if you're counting all consoles. It's making Sony cash so why cut it? Likely I think we'll see the DS platform to win if you count all platforms. Rumors are a DS Lite II is coming this year. Speaking of marketshare I'm still strongly doubtful that the PS3 will enjoy the 70% marketshare that the PS2 has been able to accomplish.

Quote:

Comparisons considering the product's 'lifecycle' will IMO be more interesting. The PS3 is expected by Sony to have a shelf viability for about 10 years.

I doubt Nintendo or Microsoft is planning on a 10 year lifespan for their console. I think external market forces with 3 player field is going to force Sony to lauch a PS4 before 10 years is up. Likely without the Xbox360 Sony wouldn't have launched the PS3 this year. Microsoft has said they are going to do a 3rd console but I'm doubtful it'll be the 3 year lifespan of the Xbox to 360 transition since the 360 loses less and is actually estimated to now be making money for Microsoft.

@MikeB

Quote:

Research firms predict the PS3 and XBox 360's market share will be about equal at the end of 2007.

Some other links on the same page have a 2010 outlook. Seems to be the PS3 wins the world but the 360 wins the US, by 2010. Though again we don't see Sony controlling 70% of the market.

@MikeB

Quote:

Comparisons considering the product's 'lifecycle' will IMO be more interesting. The PS3 is already doing better than the XBox 360 during a similar part of its 'lifecycle', even without selling in Europe.

The 360 had much more challenging logistics considering it was a near-simultaneous worldwide launch. That was also why supplies continued to be limited (besides the ram yield issue at first). If supplies had been higher sales had been higher as was evident from the continued demand>availability in the following months.

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This of course without counting previously sold units, else the winner would already be known, namely the Sony PS2.

That would be the GameBoy series.

Quote:

"Similar to Ken Kutaragi's proclamation that the PS3 is a "supercomputer," Gates said that the Xbox 360 is "a general purpose computer."

Oh look! Another bullsh*t quote from Kutaragi. I'm still waiting for the supercomputer in my PS2.

@BrianK

Quote:

I doubt Nintendo or Microsoft is planning on a 10 year lifespan for their console.

I don't think Sony are either. They know very well that they will have to upgrade it before then to keep up with their competition. It's just yet another lie from Sony really. Just wait and see.

Quote:

Likely I think we'll see the DS platform to win if you count all platforms.

Considering that availability is currently almost as low as the Wii and how long we are into the lifespan of the console I'd say that's a good bet. Wii and DS are going to pwn this generation of consoles.

Last edited by Trezzer on 09-Jan-2007 at 05:07 PM.

@Trezzer

Quote:

Quote: "Similar to Ken Kutaragi's proclamation that the PS3 is a "supercomputer," Gates said that the Xbox 360 is "a general purpose computer." Oh look! Another bullsh*t quote from Kutaragi. I'm still waiting for the supercomputer in my PS2.

My understanding is there's customs rule in Europe where a computer would not be tarrifed as much as a console would. From what I recall Sony claimed the PS2 was a computer and lost a court case to the EU. Perhaps they're trying it again or did the EU change the law?

Also in the US wasn't the Apple G5 techincally a supercomputer at that time? If so certainly the Cell and Xenon processors would fit under that definition too.

One additional though is that the supercomputer comment may be to help convince people that spending $600 for Linux and ending up with the performance of what a $300 Intel Linux solution does is a good value for the end user.

Some end-user Resistance screenshots to show that next to being an excellent overall game, it's graphics are pretty cool as well:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v514/Gambit166/PS3/RHD01.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v514/Gambit166/PS3/RHDSS21.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v514/Gambit166/PS3/RHDSS06.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v514/Gambit166/PS3/RHDSS05.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v514/Gambit166/PS3/RHDSS19.jpg

A low quality image but provides some insight on how nice windows break in this fine game:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v514/Gambit166/PS3/RRSD02.jpg

It's a pretty big and hard to finish game which wouldn't fit on a single DVD. I think well worth buying for any FPS enthusiast! You will be amazed by the amount of things happening simultaneously during later parts of the game without dropping a frame.

@MikeB

Rumble is back on the PS3!

1) Install Linux
2) Load the Linux driver for the Xbox360 controller
3) Plug the USB cord of the Xbox360 controller into the PS3

Supposedly it works so you may now play all your Linux games w/ rumble on the PS3 using the 360 controller.

@BrianK

For this to be of possible use with PS3 games, I think Sony first has to release its multitasking version of Cell OS (there has to be otherOS game OS interaction). The multitasking version is sheduled for prior to the European launch.

I think a good option may have been to add an optional switch to Nextgen controllers, which would easily allow to turn on or off rumble for people who like the feature in some games, but not in others. I would probably hate to have rumble in a game like Mario64 like, I did with Ape Escape, rumble with resistance could be cool if not overused, solely emulating the 'vibration of guns'. IMO there are better feedback methods than offering them through vibration, such as using surround sounds and onsreen indicators (blood splatting on the screen from the direction you are hit, etc).

I hope someday we will see a console which makes good use of VR headsets.