@BrianK

Quote:

Sony sells the PS3 as the must have HDTV console, which is good for those 10% of homes that have HDTV, effectively artifically shrinking their own market let alone killing us with high pricing.

Of course the price plays an important role, that's an important reason why the Playstation 2 is currently the best selling home console. Sure a cheaper Playstation 2.5 would have sold better for the short run, especially if the PS2 would have been retired. But personally I would have lost all interest, I wasn't interested in the PS2 in the first place. With the PS3 and PS2, Sony is addressing both the highend and lowend market. Eventually PS3 will be much cheaper combined with an impressive PS3 and legacy software library.

IMO a few killer games could start to sell the PS3 like hotcakes, IMO it was really surprising how people heavily upgraded their PCs or buy new ones just to play a game like Doom, which IMO was a good game, but certainly no real killer game for me personally. But the original Quake was much more impressive game for me though.

Last edited by MikeB on 23-Apr-2007 at 08:11 PM.

@MikeB

Quote:

IMO a few killer games could start to sell the PS3 like hotcakes,

A few killer games are not gonna give people the money to buy it. A price cut will make it sell and no matter what Sony is claiming now in order not to #### off existing buyers and make others wait, one *will* come soon, it has to.

_________________

@itix

Quote:

I doubt your friends bought Amiga because it had shared libraries or because it had 25 DMA channels. They bought it because it had good games

Well we were just kids back then, so the games played a crucial part. A few days ago we had a few friends over for the night, we showed them the pictures stored on the PS3 (MPS3 playing in the background), they were really impressed by the quality and face recognition & virtual photograph implementation and we watched a Blu-Ray movie, Walt Diney's The Wild..

Of course we also played some games, like Motorstorm and Super Ruba Dub, one XBox owner converted. His girlfriend loved Super Ruba Dub just like my girlfriend, we already earned gold medals for all 63 levels, so luckily online ranking keeps things interesting.

Last edited by MikeB on 23-Apr-2007 at 08:09 PM.

@MikeB

It sounds a lot like you really don't want to admit that your £400 toy is actually a toy.

Of course this is part of the reason that Sony did so well in previous generations. They were able to tap into the FHM reading, Stella drinking segment because, they promised them a toy that could play with that was 'grown up'. Of course kids will want it anyway, because it's a toy.

I feel that part of Sony's problem this time around is that they believed thier own hype and have created the machine accordingly. I feel that the PS3 might have a hard time penetrating the market segment consisting of 12 year olds who want to play GTA on thier 14" portable TVs in their bedroom.

Both the PS and PS2 really took off once they hit the £150 mark. I can't see the PS3 being able to hit that for a long time (or at all).

Last edited by Hannibal_Smith on 23-Apr-2007 at 10:18 PM.

@BrianK

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Thanks for the info. All I could find was that multiple (I assumed more then 2) dot products was required in software to accomplish the same goal.

That's what I thought as well but not according to one dev.

Quote:

As for the Cell's execution units I assume you're talking about the 7 SPEs vs the 3 VMX128.

Just 6, they're the only one's available to devs.

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So how does the double threadedness of those 3 cores play into this issue?

It doesn't, there's only 1 dot product unit per core.


BTW you don't need an HDTV to use a PS3, it works fine on a SDTV (I know, I don't have a HDTV).

_________________
Whyzzat?

@Hannibal_Smith

Quote:

It sounds a lot like you really don't want to admit that your £400 toy is actually a toy.

You are right, I see the device as a center piece of a multimedia audio-visual setup together with showing lots of parallels with homecomputers like the Commodore 64 and Amigas. A much more powerful tool at this than the CDTV and Amiga CD32 were, which in the case of the CD32 could also be expanded to a full homecomputer setup.

Quote:

I feel that part of Sony's problem this time around is that they believed thier own hype and have created the machine accordingly. I feel that the PS3 might have a hard time penetrating the market segment consisting of 12 year olds who want to play GTA on thier 14" portable TVs in their bedroom. Both the PS and PS2 really took off once they hit the £150 mark. I can't see the PS3 being able to hit that for a long time (or at all).

But that time will come eventually and when the time comes many current PS2 kids will be happy to finally being able to afford the more adult orientated PS3, many of the current kids will start to prefer more mature games and uses eventually. Also note that the 600 dollar PS3 did greatly outsell the 500 dollar basic version, so at least most current customers do seem to be well aware of and value better system specifications.

One out of warranty XBox 360 premium repair together with the cost of online play would already beat the PS3 premium price point, I think people are getting more aware of this and if the PS3 continues to be this sturdy and XBox 360 problems remain at the current levels, I think this may alter people's perspectives on both devices, including the actual costs, for the long run.

I like the current diversity and choice being offered by PS2 / Nintendo Wii all the way up to PS3 specs. I would not have liked a PS2.5 product, IMO there's not enough evidence to diss the PS3's long term potential at this point. For instance I prefer a more complex and visually stunning Pirates of the Caribbean in full 1080p vs the not too impressive 480p version for the Nintendo Wii and maybe eventually for the PS2 as well. Maybe an eventual PS2 version would sell best, but personally I am not interested in such a version. People will have a choice, considering their budgets and I think that's good.

Pirates of the Caribbean at 1080p
http://ps3.ign.com/articles/782/782169p1.html

@minator

Quote:

It doesn't, there's only 1 dot product unit per core.

If what you're saying is true then does multithreaded not play any role in anything?

Quote:

BTW you don't need an HDTV to use a PS3, it works fine on a SDTV

You seem confused about this statement as I never said one couldn't play on and SDTV.
@Briank Quote:

Sony sells the PS3 as the must have HDTV console, which is good for those 10% of homes that have HDTV, effectively artifically shrinking their own market

What I mean is Sony has sold the PS3 for the HDTV as the next gen console. Very little to nearly no marketing has been put forward that the PS3 works fine on the SDTV. In turn many people out there don't know that the PS3 can't be played on the SDTV. Joe average consumer is not as knowledgeable as techie things as we Amiga users that are used to the DIY market. Amazingly this is true one of the guys I know bought a Wii but said he'd like a PS3 but since they have no HDTV they couldn't use one. OUCH! Sony and Microsoft both need to do a better job explaining their consoles work great on SDTV and ensure your investment because when you buy a HDTV you can still use them.

Pirates of the Caribbean will run 1080p on both of the consoles. I guess the benefits of healthy competition is already showing benefits for Xbox 360 users too, more 1080p titles are coming. Interesting to see how these compare.

As for the BD vs. HD battle, one more reason to think the war has only just begun:

Wal-Mart Names HD DVD the Winner (Analysis)
http://news.digitaltrends.com/talkback184.html

Who knows how the format battle will play out and how BD will respond. I don't think this war will end this year.

PS3 upgraded to 1.70 fine.

Last edited by jtsiren on 24-Apr-2007 at 06:39 AM.

@jtsiren

Quote:

Pirates of the Caribbean will run 1080p on both of the consoles. I guess the benefits of healthy competition is already showing benefits for Xbox 360 users too, more 1080p titles are coming. Interesting to see how these compare.

I agree, the XBox 360 version would else likely have been 720p only.

But I also think if there would be no XBox 360s and instead a few million extra PS3s, they would have been able to push the PS3 version much further. For many such larger projects there are sacrifices to be made if you want to have your PS3 game running on the XBox 360 as well.

The Wii version is a very different game, if they wanted to use the same game engine on the high end console, these versions would most likely have been far less impressive.

From the article you link to:

Quote:

So, if this move by Wal-Mart is true , and it appears to be (but we won’t know for sure for a few months yet), the format war is likely over and Wal-Mart has declared the winner.

That's a pretty big if and a pretty hasty and weird conclusion. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players have many overlapping components, if the production costs would drop this much, this fast, this would also affect Blu-Ray player costs.

Much more factual:

"Home Media Magazine says the contest wasn't even close, with some 70 percent of high-definition discs sold being in Blu-ray format.

According to the figures, consumers purchased nearly 1.2 million high-definition discs in the first quarter of 2007; of those, 832,530 were Blu-ray titles and 359,300 were HD DVD discs. Home Media Magazine says Blu-ray took the sales lead on February and that, by March, the format accounted for nearly three out of every four high-definition discs sold, racking up 335,980 disc sales compared to HD DVDs 119,570 discs."

@MikeB

Quote:

That's a pretty big if and a pretty hasty and weird conclusion.

Anybody, be that the Blu-ray group announcing itself winner at CES, or some forum members here whom I've discussed this with (not you) announcing Blu-ray winner, or that article announcing HD DVD winner alltogether... are IMHO premature. I don't think we can call a winner yet and this is all I've been trying to say personally.

We just don't know yet. Just like we don't know whether or not PS3 will end up being more powerful (in result) than Xbox 360. We can continue to discuss facts and opinions pointing here and there, sure, but it is just too early to call the end-result.

So on that, I agree with you.

Last edited by jtsiren on 24-Apr-2007 at 08:15 AM.

@MikeB

Quote:

I agree, the XBox 360 version would else likely have been 720p only.

Agreed. (Now the question about that is, would it have been better at 720p? Does the added resolution take away something that would otherwise have been there. We'll have to see about anti-aliasing for example.)

Quote:

But I also think if there would be no XBox 360s and instead a few million extra PS3s, they would have been able to push the PS3 version much further.

I don't think we can say conclusively. I know this has been your opinion for a long time now, and I still don't know we can say for sure which platform is more powerful when measured in gaming results. I do agree that in general, aiming for one particular platform instead of several does allow you to optimize for that - so in reverse, it might also be true that this game would be better if made solely for Xbox 360.

Last time around it was the PS2 that was pulling everyone back as far as multi-platformers were concerned. I think the main competitors are more even this time around.

I don't claim to know which one ends up being the more powerful one in practice. Maybe it is PS3. Maybe not. Maybe the difference is insignificantly small. We need more experiences and, I guess, time to determine this. Don't worry, the results will start showing themselves in the coming years and if PS3 really unequivocally is the more powerful platform, it will become evident.

Quote:

The Wii version is a very different game, if they wanted to use the same game engine on the high end console, these versions would most likely have been far less impressive.

Of course.

@jtsiren

Quote:

So on that, I agree with you.

Like I said before, I don't expect to see a true winner this year, but IMO currently the cards are clearly in favour of the Blu-Ray camp.

WIth regard to which platform is more powerful I have no doubt the PS3 is overall by far more powerful with regard to gaming. Although I think it will take up to christmas for many people to agree with me, which if so would be a lot qucker than was the case for the classic Amiga.

@MikeB

Thank you for illustrating my first point so beautifully.

@MikeB

Quote:

Like I said before, I don't expect to see a true winner this year, but IMO currently the cards are clearly in favour of the Blu-Ray camp.

This has been my opinion so far as well. If the Wal-mart deal turns out to be true and if (a big if) Blu-ray fails to respond in kind, that does at least lessen the underdog position of HD DVD though. We'll just have to wait and see. Feature-wise HD DVD is much more mature and BD is still fiddling with the specs, so there are reasons to wish well for HD DVD too.

Quote:

WIth regard to which platform is more powerful I have no doubt the PS3 is overall by far more powerful with regard to gaming. Although I think it will take up to christmas

Fortunately that is a pretty easily measurable goal post, if the difference indeed is significant. I will gladly agree with you come Christmas if this is how plays out.

I don't really think I'm personally in a loosing situation if it goes either way (just give me my rumble for PS3 so I don't dislike playing some types of games on it), but from a discussion stand-point it would certainly be nice to eventually know for sure. The saddest thing (from a conversation point of view) would be if the performance difference remains ambiguous with really mixed results, then we may never really be able to say for sure. Like GC and Xbox really never duked it out till the end and that situation was left a bit ambiguous, PS2 I think was clearly the lesser of the three.

Last edited by jtsiren on 24-Apr-2007 at 09:48 AM.
Last edited by jtsiren on 24-Apr-2007 at 09:47 AM.

@jtsiren

Quote:

jtsiren wrote: As for the BD vs. HD battle, one more reason to think the war has only just begun: Wal-Mart Names HD DVD the Winner (Analysis) http://news.digitaltrends.com/talkback184.html

That's huge. That's the alot of the same reasoning the Wii is winning. Who wants to spend $500-$600 when you can spend $250?

Microsoft needs to lower the price on their HD-DVD player addon to $100 now just to compete with Walmart.

With the recent announcement of plenty of blue laser diodes, Blu-Ray players will probably drop to $400 soon.

Last edited by Lou on 24-Apr-2007 at 12:53 PM.
Last edited by Lou on 24-Apr-2007 at 12:50 PM.

@Lou

Quote:

Microsoft needs to lower the price on their HD-DVD player addon to $100 now just to compete with Walmart.

It's doubtful Microsoft sees a lower cost HD player at Wal Mart as their competition. They see the PS3 as their competition. Once other stores carry such player and if it proves itself perhaps the HD add-on might drop in price. I doubt they'll drop it because Wallyworld is now carrying something lower cost.

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With the recent announcement of plenty of blue laser diodes, Blu-Ray players will probably drop to $400 soon

Won't the PS3 have to drop by $100 just to compete?

@MikeB

Quote:

IMO currently the cards are clearly in favour of the Blu-Ray camp

Let's look at those cards...
Blu-Ray players 20:1 over HD-DVD players due to PS3.
Blu-Ray Studioes 4: 2 over HD DVD studios
Universal (HD-DVD) is the largest studio followed by Fox and Disney who both do Blu-Ray.
PS3 almost no games so the BR movie option is a less expensive per item and easier per item use.

Yet BR is ahead 10-20% at best in a market that's about 1% of the total DVD market.

BR seems to have the advantage but things are changing. HD DVD players are getting cheaper faster. BR is changing their mind w/ 1GB on newer players and Java but not until around Christmas time. Also Sony cut the lowest cost BR player off the market - 20GB PS3.

07 won't prove to be the decider perhaps Christmas 08 at the earliest. Also don't count out digital downloads. One can get a $35 BR move or a $5 HD digital download seems likely the later will be attractive to many due to price.

@AMiGR

Some more technical insight from the game experts developing Lair for the PS3, a very impressive 1080p game with unique massive worlds. From Gamasutra:

"How far do you think there is to go, graphically, on PS3?

JE: It's huge. I think (PS3 GPU) RSX isn't a big secret. What's really interesting is that we're starting these days in the optimization process for Lair to use Cell to do certain things on the graphics side, which you normally wouldn't expect.

I think there is a huge room for growth. RSX, as well as the GPU in the 360, are known quantities. Around the middle of the cycle, most people will have figured out what you can do with them. But then you suddenly have the connection between Cell and the SPUs and RSX, and you can do a lot more with that, graphically."

"How are you splitting stuff up to the SPUs? What sorts of things are you finding you're able to stick in there?

JE: We initially started out by saying, "Wow, we're going to do physics," and everybody should do that at least. But it very quickly became a matter of "oh, let's put this on the SPUs, and now let's put this on there." We've got the fluid dynamics, all of the physics including ragdoll, and all of the collisions.

In a game like Lair, if you've got a couple of thousand soldiers running around and hundreds of dragons, one of the big issues you have is a ton of collision checks, which other games simply don't have. It's always been a big issue, and the SPUs are perfect for number-crunching like that. Other things which you can do nicely on the SPUs is to prepare tasks for the RSX, which normally you'd have to do with the CPU, because the GPU really can't do it at that moment. "

"How important do you think first- and second-party titles are to Sony's and the PS3's future?

JE: I think they make all the difference. That's why it's important that you have a strong first-party slate throughout the year. The fact that the other games are multiplatform inherently means that most of them probably won't take advantage of the platform the way they should."

"What is important about progressive mesh?

JE: Progressive mesh is not only the mountains. Every single thing you can see on screen is running through the SPUs' progressive mesh code. On the landscape, it's basically using more traditional techniques. It is progressive mesh, but we've had landscape generation since the GameCube days. We never had a CPU which was strong enough to do it for the whole world, though. It's really cool.

The big thing on the landscape is the detail level. I don't think any landscape has been done with that level of detail. Back in the day for the GameCube landscapes, the typical approach was to tediously hand-texture everything on the landscape. What the RSX does in Lair is we give the graphics chip a pixel-shader program which is actually a rule set. That makes texturing of landscapes an extremely quick thing."

AMiGR, I hope you start to see why I couldn't agree with you on most occasions when our opinions differed so much regarding for instance the Cell processor, details in 1080p, etc.

@MikeB

Quote:

I think there is a huge room for growth. RSX, as well as the GPU in the 360, are known quantities. Around the middle of the cycle, most people will have figured out what you can do with them. But then you suddenly have the connection between Cell and the SPUs and RSX, and you can do a lot more with that, graphically."

Again, we shall see about that as development for all system progresses.

Quote:

In a game like Lair, if you've got a couple of thousand soldiers running around and hundreds of dragons, one of the big issues you have is a ton of collision checks, which other games simply don't have. It's always been a big issue, and the SPUs are perfect for number-crunching like that. Other things which you can do nicely on the SPUs is to prepare tasks for the RSX, which normally you'd have to do with the CPU, because the GPU really can't do it at that moment. "

Nice to see that you did not get a single thing I asked you. It doesn't matter, minator's reply was more than enough.

Quote:

E: Progressive mesh is not only the mountains. Every single thing you can see on screen is running through the SPUs' progressive mesh code. On the landscape, it's basically using more traditional techniques. It is progressive mesh, but we've had landscape generation since the GameCube days. We never had a CPU which was strong enough to do it for the whole world, though. It's really cool.

This is not unique to the PS3, as they state themselves. As they said, they just didn't have the hardware to pull it off for everything on older *consoles*. Now, go back and tell me where I have stated otherwise. The interesting thing is that they have it running on the SPUs, freeing CPU time elsewhere. That's pretty cool.

Quote:

The big thing on the landscape is the detail level. I don't think any landscape has been done with that level of detail. Back in the day for the GameCube landscapes, the typical approach was to tediously hand-texture everything on the landscape. What the RSX does in Lair is we give the graphics chip a pixel-shader program which is actually a rule set. That makes texturing of landscapes an extremely quick thing."

Wow, Normal mapping, etc on the landscapes? Never been done before... Right? Not...

Again, of course they couldn't do it on the Gamecube. They can do it on any PC, the PS3 and the XBox360.

Quote:

AMiGR, I hope you start to see why I couldn't agree with you on most occasions when our opinions differed so much regarding for instance the Cell processor, details in 1080p, etc.

Myself and other people have been busting our asses describing technical stuff as we see them and how the relate to the issues at hand and some people have written some extremely informative posts, like minator and Hammer. I have learnt a lot from the discussions here, both by other people's posts and the research I had to do on the issues myself. For instance, I wouldn't have read Hugues' Progressive Mesh paper had it not been mentioned here. You however always reply to any posts like that either with quotes or with vague answers. Understand for once that not knowing about something is not a bad thing. I am glad to be told I am wrong usually, as I learn stuff out of it more than when not. Try it. It does not hurt.

When people ask you what calculations the SPUs can do quickly, with examples, a reply such as "Heavy calculations" and a few random terms thrown in do not cut it. You have to provide examples, explanations and references. Without them your word is not valid and you should understand that for once.

Admitting you are wrong at something is the most definitive step in learning.

_________________

@AMiGR

Quote:

You however always reply to any posts like that either with quotes or with vague answers. Understand for once that not knowing about something is not a bad thing. I am glad to be told I am wrong usually, as I learn stuff out of it more than when not. Try it. It does not hurt.

Although I do know, as seeing is believing, but that doesn't per se make me the best person in the world to educate you. For one I am no code-wizard, however I do want to understand what is going on as much as possible and so I will ask the ears off of people who actually are. Sometimes you experience things you cannot quite explain in detail yourself but you know are correct. For instance the average person may have difficulties explaining to people who never saw a TV before how the device actually works, but that doesn't make this person wrong, a liar, dumb or anything like that.

I never had a problem with you or others telling me that they believe I was wrong, but I do dislike disrespect being shown when I simply don't agree with your perspectives, IMO treat others the way you yourself would like to be treated. For example the whole 1080p discussion between us wasn't really necessary as in the end we generally both agreed on what I wrote within the first message regarding this topic. Any disrespect or insult was really uncalled for, the things Factor 5 stated here were pretty similar to my replies to you. You could shout at Factor 5 as much you want, but they won't listen to you and would simply drop your email in their SPAM trashbox, I however do listen as I care and did try to take you serious.

Quote:

When people ask you what calculations

Coding is all about complex formulas and calculations, you cannot narrow down the Cell's strenghts to just a few kinds of formulas and calculations, it's a far too wide of a strenght to be narrowed down to just a few examples, within a few years there will probably be uses nobody thought about yet. So stating single precision calculating performance is the PS3\s ultimate strenght IMO would be a more accurate statement, and for a gaming platform these kind of calculating performance usually matters the most.

Quote:

You have to provide examples, explanations and references.

I do and I did, for instance some of the things you complimented Minator on for listing as references, I actually linked to earlier myself as well.

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Admitting you are wrong at something is the most definitive step in learning

You may want to take a look in the mirror though.