@jtsiren

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and even then Sony talked bold about the untapped potentials of their machine

Yeah, but is it really potential if it is never used?
That's another thing worth considering - especially with the increased complexity of hardware and development.

@MikeB

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MikeB wrote: Quote: 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.

Weren't we talking about Australia at that time? But if you want to move it global okay.. 7% is definitely more amazing then say losing marketshare, ala PS3 vs PS2.

@MikeB

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So let's compare: PS3: GPU -> CPU 15 GB/s CPU -> GPU 20 GB/s XBox 360 CPU 10.8 GB/s

A comparsion is interesting but does little good without taking everything into account. Here's an example: PS2 is twice as powerful as the Xbox, according to Sony. Do we see graphics or gameplay that's twice as impressive. Nope. The 360 and PS3 are closer in performance terms then the PS2 vs Xbox.

@MikeB

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

Eh, you do realise that both the GPU and CPU writes to the same RAM at the same speed on the XBox, meaning that the GPU doesn't have to go through the CPU to access its data and vice versa, do you?

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

Irrelevant.

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@Trezzer

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

Yes in 2005, Phenomedia released a 'Schnappi' game for the Playstation, also a few other Playstation games were released that year. In 2004 still millions of PSX copies were sold at stores worldwide.

Last edited by MikeB on 17-Feb-2007 at 04:30 PM.

@Trezzer

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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.

When you see Microsoft's statements they acknowledge Nintendo but I don't believe they see it as their direct competition either. It is in many ways and not in ways either. Why would they? Halo3 is on the way surely will sell more then a few thousands consoles on it's own. I doubt Microsoft is going to lower pricing this year. Though I'd like to see a new premium bundle w/ HDMI and the current premium move to the core dropping the core all together. ,

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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

While the 360 didn't have the launch in Japan the Xbox did I think we'll see the 360 ultimately beat the Xbox in Japan. Microsoft has enticed more Japanese developers and Japanese seem to buy more 360s when the Japanese style games are released. In addition, Square-Enix is making a Mmorph for the 360 this will undoubtably attract those people into Anima and Japanese style gamings.

There is, of course, China. It'll be interesting to see what in roads Microsoft makes into that country while Sony focuses on Europe.

@BrianK

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If this really is the reason it doesn't portend good things for Europe

I ranked available games higher than HDTV penetration. Of course, the higher price and current HDTV penetration are limiting factors, more high profile games are needed for consumers to justify the purchase and maybe a TV upgrade.

But the PS3 was designed with an eye on the future. Of course, eventually the price is going to drop and HDTV penetration is going to increase. PS3 owners should be happy to know they have invested in a relative future proof multi-functional device.

Of course if you are also interested in high definition movie players, the PS3 is an ultra cheap and good solution.

@Trezzer

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Yeah, but is it really potential if it is never used?

It's potential just unused potential. The question is not which system has more potential it is can the developers actualize the potential and make good use of it. I think with the PS3 we'll see games that less of the overall potential then the 360 but in the end they'll pretty equivalent.

@MikeB

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But the PS3 was designed with an eye on the future. Of course, eventually the price is going to drop and HDTV penetration is going to increase. PS3 owners should be happy to know they have invested in a relative future proof multi-functional device. Of course if you are also interested in high definition movie players, the PS3 is an ultra cheap and good solution.

Of course the same stuff can be said about the 360 and one would be just as right.

@BrianK

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It's potential just unused potential.

If it's never utilized I'd say it's unattainable potential - which makes it irrelevant potential which in turn could arguably not be potential at all - and that could be very relevant for both 360 and PS3. I'd dare to say that PS3 is more likely to fall into the unused potential category for a number of reasons whether they be developer tools, impractical hardware or a number of other reasons.

That is why I hate the talk of potential in terms of consoles. We can judge potential in some respect by looking at foundations. We can see PS3 has lots of storage. We can see Xbox 360 has amazing online capabilities. We can see Wii has brand new methods of control.

We can't see if MS has something up its sleeve with the GPU. We can't see if the Cell can be utilized efficiently. We can't say whether or not Wii will be capable of outputting hi-def graphics eventually. There are too many unknown factors to believe hype in either direction.

@BrianK

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A comparsion is interesting but does little good without taking everything into account.

That's what I said in relation to earlier RSX and Xenos comparisons. The combination Cell / RSX / 'high bandwidth' communications, with the Cell taking workload of the GPU is what I believe makes the PS3 by far more powerful. Still the RSX is a powerful chip, compared to the Xenos there are both advantages as well as disadvantages.

For example many framebuffer effects probably the RSX will have an edge over Xenos. The RSX is connected to two seperate buses instead of just one, the RSX supports 128-bit pixel precision for rendering of scenes with High Dynamic Range imaging.

Of course if we look at the whole picture larger storage media, faster RAM, HDMI 1.3, etc, etc, should also be taken into account.

Last edited by MikeB on 17-Feb-2007 at 06:15 PM.
Last edited by MikeB on 17-Feb-2007 at 06:12 PM.

@MikeB

I really don't think the power levels will affect which way the market numbers sway this time around. They appear to be far too close. What will make or break the 360/PS3 is developer support.

@Trezzer

i think for the long run this will matter, but it will take time, money and effort for developers to make the differences become apparent. Developing exclusively for the PS3 at this point is less viable unless you have help from Sony.

I think if the XBox 360 would have a clear small edge over the PS3, many XBox 360 fans (you included) will make a big deal about this as many have based on incomplete data! Blu-Ray is now considered to be "irrelavant" for gaming, but I believe if the XBox 360 would come with a 2x speed HD-DVD drive for gaming and the PS3 only offered a DVD drive, XBox 360 fans would suddenly think differently. I have seen such things happening in many discussions.

Actually I think it's kind of funny to witness.

@Trezzer

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Trezzer wrote: @jtsiren Quote: and even then Sony talked bold about the untapped potentials of their machine Yeah, but is it really potential if it is never used? That's another thing worth considering - especially with the increased complexity of hardware and development.

I guess the real question is, did the PS2 ever have the potential hype lead us to believe. While its greatest games are beautiful for hardware its age, Xbox's lauch title Halo still pretty much beats it all - and that's saying a lot.

This time around the PS3 and Xbox 360 are definitely more closer, neither has kicked the other as hard as Halo kicked PS2... so far. Rest remains to be seen.

@MikeB

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I think if the XBox 360 would have a clear small edge over the PS3, many XBox 360 fans (you included) will make a big deal about this as many have based on incomplete data! Blu-Ray is now considered to be "irrelavant" for gaming, but I believe if the XBox 360 would come with a 2x speed HD-DVD drive for gaming and the PS3 only offered a DVD drive, XBox 360 fans would suddenly think differently. I have seen such things happening in many discussions.

I speak only for myself, but lets make one thing clear: Blu-ray is definitely an asset for PS3 tech-wise (it may be a hinderance price-wise, but that's another story). You can never have too much capacity and in this regard the Xbox 360 is limited and PS3 is better. However, it remains unlikely that the limitation will limit the content and kinds of games which the Xbox 360 can offer. If and when PS3 boasts games that are impossible on the Xbox 360 due to this, you can tell us different, but until then it is no more than inconvenience of disc swaps (and even then on just some games, sometimes - this is not the floppy/casette swapping of our youth).

Personally, I think at least for a few years the Blu-ray drive in PS3 is its greatest asset because of movies and because it is an attractive movie player (until Blu-ray players become commodity), I think benefiting games may be a secondary feature. It was an interesting quote somewhere that said, it is possible PS3 will become a relative failure as a gaming platform, but a success as a movie player. I'm not sure I agree (especially since the movie player aspect is likely remain a strength over stand-alones for only a couple of years), but it was an interesting notion nevertheless.

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Actually I think it's kind of funny to witness.

And you have NEVER done anything of the sort with regards to PS3, explain away some definciency...?

I dislike fans in debates. Emotions vs. facts rarely work.

@Trezzer

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I really don't think the power levels will affect which way the market numbers sway this time around. They appear to be far too close. What will make or break the 360/PS3 is developer support.

Microsoft is known to give developers love. They are good at that. But PS3 will, I'm guessing, likely win the numbers game based on brand alone - and it is not a bad product anyways.

Like you and others have noted though, Xbox 360 will, again guessing, just as likely win more market-share than Xbox and that is a huge thing.

It is quite likely that the playing-field is much more level come PS4 and Xbox III.

Of course I could guess wrong and PS3 fails miserably, but I find that unlikely.

@MikeB

We can easily agree that having more storage is a good thing generally speaking. If it comes at the cost of read access speeds/reading speeds it's not necessarily the best choice in all cases.

Some developers always want more (like Kojima) while others find it interesting to create games that fit within the current 50 MB XBLA limit (sort of like the demo scene limitations). A game like Roboblitz is kind of mind-blowing. Unreal Engine 3 and physics along with procedural synthesized textures mean they can fit a retail quality game within 50 MB.

Anyway, it was a choice and I think MS made the right choice: Get the console out a year earlier and let people choose for themselves if they want to play for hi-def video playback. Apparently it made a large enough part of its developer base happy that they stuck with DVD - otherwise they could of course have waited for HD-DVD and put that out as soon as possible while still retaining an edge time-wise.

Currently Microsoft are at the point that's generally considered critical mass: 10 million machines. Historically that's been where a console would win the race over its competitors for that generation. Whether that happens this generation (if we don't count Wii) will be interesting to see.

Sure it's a bummer if you want it all (Linux machine, Blu-Ray player, console) at once, but for a good while I think people will mostly be on the lookout for a games machine - the Wii certainly indicates that.

There is such a thing as "too expensive" for a games console and Sony needs to get below that limit really fast. At the moment the main reason the PS3 is so hideously expensive as a gaming machine is the Blu-Ray drive, so it can both be its savior and its Achilles heel.

Last edited by Trezzer on 17-Feb-2007 at 09:14 PM.
Last edited by Trezzer on 17-Feb-2007 at 09:12 PM.

@MikeB

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I think if the XBox 360 would have a clear small edge over the PS3, many XBox 360 fans (you included) will make a big deal about this as many have based on incomplete data!

Not everyone hated PS3 and loved Xbox 360 from the get-go. There is a reason PS3 has been failing to impress:

It has failed to impress!

Especially compared to the pre-launch hype Sony gave us. Don't blame it just on fandom. There is much more reason here to give Xbox 360 credit in comparisons to PS3 than just platform loyalty - Xbox 360 actually seems to deserve the credit. It came out a full year early and it still rocks compared to PS3 - not just in our imaginations or want-to-belief comparisons, it actually holds its own against PS3 and at times does better too. Huge for a machine that came out year early.

It would do you well to actually give Xbox 360 kudos when it is warranted. It would make your position much more believable.

Personally, I have no blind loyalty towards Xbox 360. I will throw it in the dumpster if Sony comes out with something I want to replace it with. So far they haven't, so Xbox 360 has deserved its place. PS3 will certainly improve, as will its games, so we'll see what the end-result is, but why not just place the blame on Sony's corner for bringing out a product that failed to match the hype at launch instead of pointing fingers towards Xbox 360 fanboys.

Hey, maybe there is a shiny PS3 in place of that Xbox 360 of mine come that magical Christmas 2007 you keep referring to... We'll see. So far the Xbox 360 is deserving its place and that 120 GB black HDMI version remains on my tentative shopping list this spring.

@MikeB

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MikeB wrote: @AMiGR Quote: 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.

Since XBOX360 is bias towards the GPU, it’s logical to design the Xenos with most of the system bandwidth e.g. 32GB/s from eDRAM and 22.4GB/s from system memory.

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Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB
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Amiga 500 (Rev 6A, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3a/Emu68)

@jtsiren

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It would do you well to actually give Xbox 360 kudos when it is warranted. It would make your position much more believable.

I have given the XBox 360 more than enough Kudos, why do I have to repeat this fact over and over again? The XBox 360 is so much more impressive to me than the cut down consolified PC the original XBox was.

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PS3 will certainly improve, as will its games, so we'll see what the end-result is, but why not just place the blame on Sony's corner for bringing out a product that failed to match the hype at launch instead of pointing fingers towards Xbox 360 fanboys.

For me the console more than lives up to its hype. Linux already runs like a charm, the Cell is as impressive as I expected this processor to be, the PS3 is a great Blu-Ray movie player actually more so than I was expecting.

With regard to games, I thought it would take longer before we would see games which take good advantage of the Cell processor (I quoted myself earlier as reference of this fact). Also I wasn't expecting any 1080p games for launch again beating my expectations.

Maybe my expectations were too low as compared to your's, but I based this on the Playstation 1 and 2 so-so launch titles (I expected most ports to be roughly on par with the XBox 360, mostly they are except for a few dissapointments). But Resistance actually beated my expectation for a launch title (great lenghty challanging single player, amazing 40 player multiplayer) and Motorstorm is a game of such quality I wouldn't have expected for the first generation of PS3 games to appear, at least at the time when I became aware of the Cell's potential a couple of years ago.