@Trezzer

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If PS3 manages 300000 It's at least only 218500 units from the number of sales the PS2 had after three months on the market.

According to MikeB the 360 is not doing well because it didn't best the PS2 sales.. In the same vein it appears the PS3 is not doing well either.

@BrianK

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at the same time we're going to see Sony retain #1

Depends on whether you count the Wii or not.

@BrianK

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The 360 is gaining users faster then the Xbox

Certainly not in Japan. Globally it's estimated to do 7% better, which is not amazing.

As for the original XBox I don't have sales data, but Microsoft's target for the first 3 months (without Holiday season) was:

"Microsoft Australia has set a target of 150,000 sales in the first three months."

Most certainly they haven't reached this figure in a lot more months in Australia (including Christmas sales!) with regard to its successor, the XBox 360.

@AMiGR

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You still do not get what we do not like about your posting style. It's the fact that when you are wrong or when a technical fact you cannot contest gets presented to you, you totally and fully ignore it and reply to the rest of the post instead, even if what you ignored was the whole point of the post. Your posts are too proud. I've personally apologised for arguing while I was wrong on quite a few occasions. You seem to be totally unable to do this.

I will not address everything, what do you want me to address? The RSX? IMO the RSX offers advantages as well as disadvantages compared to the XBox 360 Xenos. IMO one of the RSX's most important advantages is that the GPU was designed to share workload with the Cell processor.

@MikeB

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The PS3 has significantly outperformed the orginal Playastion

Yes, but you're supposed to sell more units once you have an established brand - not less than a third of what you sold the last time around.

In the Americas the 360 has sold 2,5 times as many units as the original Playstation at this point. If this ratio is sustained the 360 will have sold around 70 million in five years on the market in the USA.

I'd say that's a decent amount of machines for this round - and that's not even counting Europe where sales of the machines will likely explode come April and onwards. In Japan it will obviously remain a niche machine, but I think it will eventually far surpass the original Xbox in raw numbers - even if it will take some time. Not that it will bring it near PS3 or Wii in Japan. Well, unless Japanese developers start taking chances like Capcom (who had great success) and go after the western market - that could cause unpredictable results.

On a happy related note: Capcom's Clover Studios has more or less reformed as "Seeds". Good news to gamers everywhere.

Last edited by Trezzer on 17-Feb-2007 at 02:47 PM.
Last edited by Trezzer on 17-Feb-2007 at 02:47 PM.

@MikeB

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There is no doubt in *my mind*, the PS3 can be pushed by competent developers way beyond the XBox 360's capabilities for the long run!

Personally, I think an objective observer would at least have some level of doubt. I find it very, very hard to believe you hold such unbiased information from both sides, as well as the technical acumen, to come up to such a definite conclusion. Reminds me of the difference between Bush and Blair on Iraq, the latter when asked do they ever second-guess themselves had doubts as a reasonable person IMHO would, the former said he had absolutely no doubts about the course of action taken.

It also reminds me of those people who said OS4 would never ship or that Amiga Inc. would go down a long ago. I never shared these definite opinion, no matter how justified from some perspective back then (and even if they would have nicely fit my personal bias), because you never know what may happen. Not that either OS4 or Amiga Inc. have made a splash since, but they are still somewhat around unlike those harshest doom-mongerers predicted.

I'm sure you feel strongly as you say you do. All I'm saying is, maybe you should throw in a healthy dose of doubt. Keeps you grounded and keeps you honest. PS3 may well end up being the technically superior console (and its fine to continue to discuss all minutiae to find out if it is), but it also might not turn out that way. Same thing for Blu-ray (not aimed really at you, but some other people on this thread) - it may well wipe out HD-DVD completely like some have predicted, but what if something happens and it doesn't. Can we really say for sure yet?

Personally I'd back away, and have backed away, from too definite predictions in all these cases. It is one thing to discuss how likely something is or is not, but saying something definitely will happen (even if its just a personal belief like yours), that I find unhealthy and will unavoidably lead to the distortion of the entire discussion, because some people participating will want to see all the events from their definitely-so perspective.

@jtsiren

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I doubt most of the consuming public or gaming world do

Most Playstation owners seem to care about how well Sony is doing in general. Good overall financials allows them to invest huge amounts of money into their gaming devision (while running huge devision losses) without the company actually running into financial problems (a la Commodore).

It's clear the Playstation 3 is not only important to their gaming devision, but also with regard to their television (HDTV) and consumer electrionics (Blu-Ray). IMO it's not wise to adopt a tunnel vision and not look at the whole picture.

@MikeB

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I will not address everything, what do you want me to address?

Then you do not know how to argue, you cannot PARTIALLY counter someone's argument and ignore the rest, as you have been doing for 5 threads now. I asked you to address certain things on quite a few occasions in the first thread but you did not, including technical arguments.

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The RSX? IMO the RSX offers advantages as well as disadvantages compared to the XBox 360 Xenos. IMO one of the RSX's most important advantages is that the GPU was designed to share workload with the Cell processor.

It is? Would you care to explain to me what feature exactly it's got that allows it to share workload better than the Xenos or any other GPU for that matter?

Last edited by AMiGR on 17-Feb-2007 at 02:58 PM.

_________________

@MikeB

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IMO one of the RSX's most important advantages is that the GPU was designed to share workload with the Cell processor.

What on Earth does this mean? Obviously Xbox 360 can also use its cores and multi-threading features (in both CPU and GPU) in co-op with the GPU. CPU's and GPU's have been working together and designed to work together for ages. I think Cell is an interesting piece of technology which we can discuss as a benefit separately, but I don't know how you can attribute this as a benefit of the RSX?

I am yet to read on any benefit for the RSX that the Xbox 360 graphic chip doesn't have or exceed. I'm sure there may be some, but I haven't seen those yet.

@Trezzer

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Yes, but you're supposed to sell more units once you have an established brand - not less than a third of what you sold the last time around.

It's still too early to come to any long term conclusions, but feel free to write complaint letters to Atari (40 million Atari 2600s sold, current console market share 0%), Nintendo (60 million NES sold, Snes dropped to 20 million units sold) and Sega (Mega Drive 29 million units sold, Sega Saturn and Dreamcast dropped to 10 million units sold, current market share 0%).

@MikeB

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IMO it's not wise to adopt a tunnel vision and not look at the whole picture.

But corporate fandom is always tunnel-vision. It is assuming Sony must succeed for the benefit of us all. I say the electronics industry as a whole must succeed to benefit us all, Sony is - in the grand scheme of things - only one fish in a pond of many. Why attach special loyalty or interest to it, it is not like its some special loveable small company one can personally care about?

I certainly don't attach any special value on Microsoft, even if I do appreciate many of their products and may even wish well for various reasons on some of those products.

On a lighter note: Apple and much of their product portfolio I do "love", but I would never engage in a debate about Apple because I would be a raving loonatic fan who wouldn't see right from wrong or trees from the forest in that discussion...

@MikeB

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MikeB wrote: @Trezzer Quote: Yes, but you're supposed to sell more units once you have an established brand - not less than a third of what you sold the last time around. It's still too early to come to any long term conclusions, but feel free to write complaint letters to Atari (40 million Atari 2600s sold, current console market share 0%), Nintendo (60 million NES sold, Snes dropped to 20 million units sold) and Sega (Mega Drive 29 million units sold, Sega Saturn and Dreamcast dropped to 10 million units sold, current market share 0%).

...and isn't that exactly what some are predicting will happen to Sony PlayStation soon too?

Not that I'm making such a prediction, but that was just a silly counter-argument on your part. Clearly established brand can be lost, but that was what Trezzer was implying - that the PlayStation brand is not doing as strongly as it should when doing great.

Or maybe it wasn't a counter-argument and you agree Sony is headed the way of Atari, Nintendo and Sega. Actually the Nintendo fate wouldn't seem to be too bad, just go through a lack-luster lack of success for PS4 and PS5 and we'll get a great success for PS6.

(Just kidding. Again, I don't think PS3 will *fail*. It might do worse than PS2, though.)

Last edited by jtsiren on 17-Feb-2007 at 03:09 PM.

@jtsiren

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I'm sure you feel strongly as you say you do. All I'm saying is, maybe you should throw in a healthy dose of doubt.

Look, I accept you and others have doubts. Please understand that I may have well grounded reasons to not be doubtful with regard to this. So please accept that I don't share your point of view. On a technical hardware level in terms of power and feature wise IMO the PS3 wins hands down.

The same goes with regard to the Amiga, when I still only owned an AtariST and C64 as a kid. I was excited about the Amiga, despite the fact that the initial software base of the Atari ST was more impressive and outperformed the Amiga ports.

@MikeB

Yeah, Atari was the undisputed ruler of home consoles with 2600s.

Nintendo was the undisputed ruler of home consoles with NES.

Sony was the undispited ruler of home consoles with PS and PS2.

What caused Atari and Nintendo (and Sega for that matter) to fail?

Complacency and arrogance. See a pattern yet?

At least the Dreamcast is still getting new games 9 years later. Did the Playstation even manage that?

(insert note about how good it is for Dreamcast gamers to still see support while they wait for Sega's next console that will rule the world and no doubt be far more powerful than anything on the market - even if current Dreamcast Next screenshots look remarkably like Dreamcast screenshots).

@MikeB

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Reasons for current Japanese sales figures: 3) High definition TVs are still expensive and therefore not yet that widespread.

If this really is the reason it doesn't portend good things for Europe. My understanding is the # and % of HDTVs in Japan is greater than in Europe. Additionally the Japanese market is more gadget crazy then Europe.

Quote:

Despite huge investment these last couple of years, Sony is doing well and is making good enough profits, They are the global market leader with regard high definition TVs, Blu-Ray's position in the market has improved significantly. To me the future outlook seem very good indeed!

Luckly those divisions carry enough profits to support the gaming divison's losses. They have to keep the PS2 in 2007 it brings in profits. Sony stated March 08 they believe their gaming division will break even. However, the statements appear that they are not considering price cuts for their console this year. Sony does need to drop to 65nm scale, remove the PS2 hardware, and hopefully downsize the RSX, this should help them in the break even goal.

Microsoft? The goals are different here. They have profits the size of Sony's yearly revenue. They can sustain losses. But the 360 supposedly now makes money on each console sold. They're looking for marketshare and the 360 is doing well in their eyes because it's making marketshare. Moving to 65nm may encourage them to drop the price a bit, especially if they believe it'll further help the 360 make market penetration. Sony may likely have to follow Microsoft's price drop to better ensure their marketspace.

@MikeB

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The same goes with regard to the Amiga, when I still only owned an AtariST and C64 as a kid. I was excited about the Amiga, despite the fact that the initial software base of the Atari ST was more impressive and outperformed the Amiga ports.

The big difference here, though, is that the 360 may well outperform the PS3 by a small margin. The opposite may also be true. Plenty of developers have expressed this opinion, so I certainly prefer to listen to what they say. There were also PS2 developers who were really excited about the potential of the machine in the early days, but only the last couple of years have seen games that matched the visuals on its competing consoles - and often only just.

I'm not willing to say that it's impossible that the PS3 has more power in total - but it's also entirely possible that the 360 used to its full extent will deliver a crushing blow to PS3. Who knows? I don't and nor do you. Some speculate but don't be blinded by developers who may well be fanboys themselves - as with the early PS2 developer remarks.

PS2 was not the photo-realistic power-house that was promised. It was not the movie content delivery system it was promised. It was not the PVR that was promised. It was not far more powerful than its competitors in spite of what was promised - in fact it was lagging behind.

Blindly trusting a few developers (who may well have agendas) is IMO dangerous. Listen to what lots of developers say instead and try not to write common sense off as "lack of vision" - perhaps consider it "being realistic".

@BrianK

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Moving to 65nm may encourage them to drop the price a bit, especially if they believe it'll further help the 360 make market penetration. Sony may likely have to follow Microsoft's price drop to better ensure their marketspace.

I don't think MS will drop price substantially unless PS3 drops a lot in price first. I doubt they see Wii as direct competition and as long as they are selling hundreds of thousands of machines a month and sustaining their current lead they have no good business reason to lower prices. They may as well stay as profitable as possible for as long as possible - if they can keep the current price till the new CPU is done they can lower the price and still keep earning a profit.

If I were them I'd feel pretty comfortable about machine prospects - well, except for in Japan, but while Japan is important, it's not as important as it has been. Western developers are growing stronger and Japanese developers have been focusing more on their native market than the western markets.

Previously you needed the Japanese developers on-board to hold your own in the console market. These days this is still preferable but no longer essential. The currently most interesting Japanese developers (outside Sony's pockets) Sega, Square-Enix and Capcom already support all the consoles.

@MikeB

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Look, I accept you and others have doubts. Please understand that I may have well grounded reasons to not be doubtful with regard to this. So please accept that I don't share your point of view. On a technical hardware level in terms of power and feature wise IMO the PS3 wins hands down.

I doubt your well grounded reasons too. I doubt anyone who says they know for sure, because IMHO it is simply too early to tell how well the practical applications on these consoles work or even how to interpret the specs as to which one has more juice. PS3 has already been dealt many setbacks compared to the original hype. Historically the PS2 did/does not live up to the potential it was said it would, the Xbox was still superior in the end.

Again, one can IMHO have good reasons to feel it to be likely this ends one way or the other, and I'm all ears for those reasons, but I think you have dug deep into your position prematurely. I can't help but wonder why that is.

Quote:

The same goes with regard to the Amiga, when I still only owned an AtariST and C64 as a kid. I was excited about the Amiga, despite the fact that the initial software base of the Atari ST was more impressive and outperformed the Amiga ports.

Oh, I was excited with Amiga when I was a kid for sure. I did sing its praises for over a decade too, wise or not. With the benefit of hind-sight we can probably safely assume Amiga was the more powerful one, although Atari ST did on the "A500 level" benefit from a slightly faster processor (most apparent in applications that required things like vector calculations).

But then, depending on ones point of view, either Xbox 360 or PS3 could be the new "Amiga" of this console generation. I don't think either can justifiably assume that title just like that. Nor is it just about initial software base for me either... It is about which one is more powerful.

In the end, Amiga likely was more powerful than Atari ST. Clearly Amiga did boast superior graphics/colour at least, the OS was superior. It had some nice innovation in its chips. But both Xbox 360 and PS3 include vast amounts of high-end innovative technology, neither are off-the-shelf things like the Atari ST was. Xbox 360 has more cores and a different kind of processor than usual desktops do, just like PS3 - even when different. Both have dedicated chips for graphics and the like. Neither has a clear upper-hand in things like resolutions, colour or processing power. PS3 has the clear upper-hand in capacity only and the benefits of that remain to be seen.

One of these two consoles WILL be more powerful than the other, just like Amiga was more powerful than Atari ST in many ways, although even then Atari ST usually had faster moving graphics in simulations due to processor speed. The questions IMHO are, which one and when can we really say for sure?

I think both consoles, technically, have a lot of reason to be excited about. The Xbox 360 is no PC a in a box (and these days even PCs are quite exciting at their best technically, even if bland otherwise).

Look, I understand excitement and fandom. Apple computers made me feel the same buzz after years that Amiga orginally did. I sense you are very excited about the PS3, and good for you. I think its great. Just don't get carried away by it all.

You may well end up being right on the PS3. It may even be likely, who knows. But it doesn't invalidate my point that there is a possibility you may also end up being wrong.

@Trezzer

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The big difference here, though, is that the 360 may well outperform the PS3 by a small margin. The opposite may also be true. Plenty of developers have expressed this opinion, so I certainly prefer to listen to what they say.

Quote:

'm not willing to say that it's impossible that the PS3 has more power in total - but it's also entirely possible that the 360 used to its full extent will deliver a crushing blow to PS3. Who knows? I don't and nor do you.

Is there an echo here?

While I doubt Xbox 360 will deliver a crushing blow, I agree with everything you say. It is really not yet known which console will end up being the most powerful one. Nobody can say for sure how the technologies they have end up being used and clearly the numbers game alone doesn't determine the winner. This isn't Xbox vs. PS2 where the numbers clearly were in favor of one of the consoles (in that case the Xbox... and even then Sony talked bold about the untapped potentials of their machine).

@AMiGR

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Then you do not know how to argue, you cannot PARTIALLY counter someone's argument and ignore the rest[quote] Sure you can, you haven't been paying attention people within various threads at AmigaWorld respond to parts of messages. This is nothing new. [quote]It is? Would you care to explain to me what feature exactly it's got that allows it to share workload better

That was the design goal to allow the Cell / SPUs to talk directly with each other at high bandwiths. CELL and RSX have close relationship and both can access the main memory and the VRAM transparently. CELL can access the VRAM just like the main memory, and RSX can use the main memory as a frame buffer.

http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/game/docs/20060426/3dhd15.jpg

RSX 20GB/s (write) + 15GB/s (read)
SB 2.5GB/s (write) + 2.5GB/s (read)

For comparison:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/af/X360bandwidthdiagram.jpg

The XDR RAM and FlexIO is impressive:

"The Cell BE employs an architectural strategy of extremely high-bandwidth access to main memory in lieu of large on-chip memory cache. The XDR memory controller interface (XIO) on the Cell BE is 72 bits-wide and is capable of operating at 3.2Ghz data rates providing 25.6 GB/s of total memory bandwidth. Four 512Mb XDR DRAM devices provide for 256MB of high-performance main memory for the Cell BE."

"The Cell BE employs a similar strategy of extremely high-bandwidth connections to companion chips to achieve unprecedented levels of performance. Rambus’ FlexIO processor bus provides the high-bandwidth connectivity between the Cell BE and the RSX and South Bridge chips. In the PLAYSTATION®3, the FlexIO interfaces connecting the Cell BE to its companion chips provide an aggregate bandwidth of 40 GB/s."

So let's compare:

PS3:
GPU -> CPU 15 GB/s
CPU -> GPU 20 GB/s
XBox 360
CPU < - > GPU 10.8 GB/s

PS3:
CPU < - > Main (3.2GHz) RAM 25.6 GB/s
XBox 360:
- 700 Mhz unified RAM
- Between the eDram die and the GPU, data is transferred at 32 GB/s
- The memory interface bus has a bandwidth of 22.40 GB/s.

PS3 I/O bridge x2: 2.5 GB/s
XBox 360: southbridge a bandwidth of 1 GB/s.

Last edited by MikeB on 17-Feb-2007 at 06:16 PM.
Last edited by MikeB on 17-Feb-2007 at 04:42 PM.
Last edited by MikeB on 17-Feb-2007 at 04:02 PM.