@MikeB

This news is old but you do have a bit of updating to do...
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Remember when the news hit that Berthesda used data duplication on the version of much better looking Oblivion PS3 version

The 360 game was patched with the engine updates the PS3 version was released with. The 'better' has been mostly reduced to some better cloud rendering.

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XNE firmware update which further removes data duplication from some more games when you install it to the XBox 360's overly expensive harddrives.

There was also a firmware update which removes the necessity of overly expensive harddrives by enabling 16GB flashdrives to hold content including games.

@BrianK

Quote:

BrianK wrote: @MikeB This news is old but you do have a bit of updating to do... Quote: Remember when the news hit that Berthesda used data duplication on the version of much better looking Oblivion PS3 version The 360 game was patched with the engine updates the PS3 version was released with. The 'better' has been mostly reduced to some better cloud rendering. Quote: XNE firmware update which further removes data duplication from some more games when you install it to the XBox 360's overly expensive harddrives. There was also a firmware update which removes the necessity of overly expensive harddrives by enabling 16GB flashdrives to hold content including games.

Seriously.

Remember when he said that the PS3 would overtake the 360 in world wide sales by 2008? Then 2009? Then 2010?

Natal already has more hype than Move.

I predict the PS3 will overtake the 360 in world wide sales by 2016...when the 360 has been out of production for a # of years.

BluRay players are now $130 yet a PS3 'Slim' with less media and USB ports, no 'Other OS' option, no PS2 b/c is still $300.

Wii now bundled with Wii Sports + WiiSports RESORT + WiiMotionPlus is $200. WiiMotionPlus is more accurate than MOVE. It's now bundled with the Wii. Good luck with that.

@Lou

2008 wasn't a very good year for the PS3 with the economic problems (especially for Japanese consumer electronics companies), but PS3 sells very well at this point.

2010 looks to become a very solid year for PS3, LittleBigPlanet 2, Gran Turismo 5, Ape Escape 4, Playstation Move, 3D Blu-Ray support, Sony's E3 presentation is something to look forward to.

@MikeB

Not you again.

Another PS3 marketing deluge and more playground name-calling. Thanks for spoiling a thread I enjoy lurking in. Your reasons for starting this (OS4 support) is dead in the water, so why did you come back to bore us with this one-sided promotion again?

Chris

Last edited by clebin on 12-May-2010 at 03:43 PM.

@clebin

I think without me, this thread becomes very one-sided actually.

Some recent comments:

> According to Final Fantasy XIII producer Yoshinori Kitase, the challenge that the PS3 sets developers is an exciting one of just how far they can push themselves. “When you talk about graphics you can see immediately that the hardware of the PlayStation 3 offers a much higher capacity and is much more powerful,” he told NowGamer, comparing PS3 with Xbox 360.

> BioWare’s Ray Muzyka: “Well, you know every platform has its pros and cons and they’re all challenging in different ways,” he explained to us. “The interesting thing about approaching a new platform like PlayStation is that it’s very powerful and it’s just different from anything else. You have to embrace that and make sure that you’re fully aware of the technology differences and make use of all the strengths of the platform.”

Some more:

Ian Bickerstaff (SCE), regarding stereoscopic 3D:

"Anything really subtle like transparency and reflections won't work with this approach, so what you need to do is combine it with existing 3D rendering techniques to use it properly," Bickerstaff suggests.

"Fortunately what you can do while you re-project your RGB values is that you can also re-project a new depth buffer as well and use that for your other rendering. We've been implementing it on the SPUs and found it takes around 3 per cent of total SPU time for a 1280x720 60Hz image. That isn't allowing for transfers between buffers and other things like that but it's not bad and certainly a big time-saver."

Richard Ham (credited work on Fable series, Syphon Filter and joined Splash Damage in 2008:

> “Because id Tech 4 was Mac compatible, there was some PowerPC code in there that we could utilise,” Ham revealed to NowGamer, referring to the id Software engine Splash Damage has been using since developing Enemy Territory: Quake Wars in 2007. “And since some of the Mac PPC code optimisations worked well for PS3, it gave us a little bit of a head start.”

> “It’s amazing what developers have done so far, but we haven’t seen all that the PS3 is capable of,” said Richard Ham. “By comparison, just look at the last PlayStation generation. Shadow Of The Colossus came out near the end, and no one could have predicted such a thing of beauty in the early days of the PS2 life cycle. The same thing is true for PS3. Killzone 2 and Uncharted 2 are incredible milestones, but there’s still more to squeeze out of the big black box!”

A slide from Toshiba regarding their CellTVs:


From an interview with Housemarque regarding the stereoscopic version of Super Stardust HD (120 picture per second, 60 per eye in high definition):

"That was of course just the beginning: after that we had to optimise a lot, as we now had 8.3ms instead of 16.7ms to render a frame. Luckily we had 50 per cent of the SPU power left, so we tapped into that. The current version of the game heavily pre-processes the data that goes to RSX to make sure it can chew through it as quickly as possible."

"For SSHD it was mainly drawcalls and polygons - we have lots of objects with lots of polygons and massive particle effects. I solved the issue by moving vertex processing from GPU to SPU and merging as many objects as possible to one drawcall. Previously every asteroid chunk and every enemy was in a separate drawcall; in the stereo version they go out in a few fell swoops."

Crytek;

"We haven't found it more difficult to develop for PS3," he told CVG sister magazine PSM3.

"We're lucky in the fact that we've come to the generation slightly later than other people - the ones who were trying to build the first technology and games were surprised at how different the PS3 was. We took our time and worked out the right way to approach it.

"At the moment, we're getting slightly more performance from PS3 compared to 360. I'm very confident that products using CryEngine 3 are going to come out as the best looking, or at least in the top three, on every platform."

I think plenty of stuff to keep us entertained until this thread becomes boring again!

@MikeB

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Onto to high profile PS3 exclusives vs 360 exclusives wars: Uncharted 2: Amongst Thieves

Nice 1 year event. But if it's exclusive wars, wars are won over time not by 1 battle.

Guinness World Records 2010 Gamer's Edition
Lists of favorite franchises ranked by players
1) HALO
2) Call of Duty
3) Legend of Zelda
4) Guitar Hero
5) Metal Gear
6) Super Mario
7) Worlds of Warcraft
8) Gears of War
9) Super Smash Bros.
10) Grand Theft Auto

Not a single PS3 exclusive franchise in the top 10.

@Lou

Quote:

Remember when he said that the PS3 would overtake the 360 in world wide sales by 2008? Then 2009? Then 2010?

To be fair I too predicted the PS3 would overtake the PS3 by 2009. Will it happen in 2010? I wouldn't bet on it.

BluRay players can be found on sale here for $75. I'd bet Christmas has a $50 BR player.

As for Nintendo -- the Wii is #1 by a clear margin. The 360 is #2 and PS3 is #3.

E3 will bring excitement to all consoles. The PS3 has a decent line up. However, the 360's line up is no slouch. The 360 also bring's the highest ranked exclusive franchise back out. Halo: Reach -- I wish I had more time to spend on the Beta.

Now my 3 year old son wants a 360 so he can play games on his TV. He has the PS3 but doesn't want to use it anymore. Oh the humanity.

@BrianK

That list is seriously flawed, certainly from a worldwide perspective, everyone knows Mario is at the top.

Final Fantasy and Gran Turismo are extremely popular franchises, both beating Halo worldwide.

@ BrianK

Talking about the Halo series, it's interesting to note Bungie, the creators of Halo has signed a 10 year exclusive publishing partnership with Activision and will be making PS3 games in the future as well.

@MikeB

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Gran Turismo are extremely popular franchises, both beating Halo worldwide.

IMO GT didn't make it in the top 10 because they haven't shipped a game in nearly 6 years.

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it's interesting to note Bungie, the creators of Halo has signed a 10 year exclusive publishing partnership with Activision and will be making PS3 games in the future as well.

Bungie said the new IP could be multiformat. They announced Wii at the same time as the PS3. Halo, AFAIK, remains a Microsoft property which can be made by other developers.

Will Bungie have another huge hit in their next IP? Perhaps, time will tell.

@Lou

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By the way, how does your PS3 feel now that Sony has ripped you linux install away? So much for potentially installing OS4, aye?

I think having Linux with the Cell SDK on the Amiga was very positive. Everyone with a PS3 and a little coding experience thus knew XBox 360 fanboys were talking #### about the Cell's SPUs. Sad to have to see it go though, but Linux on the PS3 didn't advance well considering the prime distribution YDL didn't even install into an environment which shows the default micro fonts readable on my HDTV. I criticized this in the past, I had to do a lot to customize it into a workable environment installing all kinds of seperate pieces.

AmigaOS4 on the PS3 would have been a great idea IMO, so many people could have had a cheap alternative to get a taste of AmigaOS4 on a cheap and widely available product. Now with this option removed the AmigaOS4 designers could probably even have gotten compensation from Sony, a couple of million dollars isn't a big deal for them. IMO a missed oppertunity.

@BrianK

Famitsu's most wanted list from the end of may, just one single XBox 360 game in the top 25...

1 # Dragon Quest X (Wii)
2 # Final Fantasy Versus 13 (PS3)
3 # Ni no Kuni (DS)
4 # Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2 (DS)
5 # Final Fantasy XIV (PS3)
6 # Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker (PSP)
7 # Pokemon (Generation 5) (DS)
8 # Last Ranker (PSP)
9 # Last Remnant (PS3)
10 # Ghost Trick (DS)
11 # Final Fantasy Agito XIII (PSP)
12 # Etrian Odyssey 3 (DS)
13 # Metal Gear Solid: Rising (PS3)
14 # Monster Hunter Frontier Online (360)
15 # NieR Replicant (PS3)
16 # The Last Guardian (PS3)
17 # Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask (DS)
18 # Gran Turismo 5 (PS3)
19 # Super Street Fighter 4 (PS3)
20 # Monster Hunter Diary: Poka Poka Airu Village (PSP)
21 # Xenoblade (Wii)
22 # Okamiden (DS)
23 # Sengoku Basara 3 (PS3)
24 # Pro Baseball Spirits 2010 (PS3)
25 # Super Robot Wars OG Saga: Masou Kishin The Lord of Elemental (DS)

Last edited by MikeB on 13-May-2010 at 10:18 AM.

Nintendo's, Sony's and Microsoft's results for the quarter ending March 2010 are in.

Until the end of 2009 the results were as following regarding PS3 vs XBox 360 (360 shipped vs PS3 sold to retail, although this is not entirely fair to the PS3 as it launched later than the 360 in PAL regions / rest of the world taking equal timeframes):



For the latest quarter it's worth noting Microsoft overshipped the market with cheap arcade units and the PS3 had significant shortages in Europe and North America at the end of March 2010.

The XBox 360 shipped 1.5 million units last quarter.
The PS3 sold 2.2 million units to retail last quarter.
Also worth noting is the PS2 outsold the amount of 360s shipped at 1.7 million units last quarter!

This makes the total amount of XBox 360s shipped by the end of March 2010 40.2 million.
This makes the total amount of PS3s sold to retail by the end of March 2010 35.7.

The gap taking equal timeframes was 5.5 million more PS3s than 360s.
The gap today is a mere 4.5 million to the 360s advantage.

Analysis for fiscal year 2010:

- The XBox 360 shipped 600K fewer units in 2009 than in 2008 and sales are further declining.
- The last half year of 2009 PS3 sales jumped to 9.7 million sales, up from 6.9 million the same period the year before (slimline introduction), up about ~41%.
- Sony forecasts the PS3 to sell 15 million for this fiscal year (exactly what I anticipated a year before the slimline's release which I predicted to launch in 2009.

If Sony's forecast holds through and the XBox 360 shows sales equal to those in 2009, the PS3 will have overtaken the 360s total installbase by 300K by the end of this fiscal year. But more likely XBox 360 sales will slow further this year.

@MikeB

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although this is not entirely fair to the PS3 as it launched later than the 360 in PAL regions / rest of the world taking equal timeframes

Why do we have to excuse Sony's inability to ready a console for the start of this gen? IMO it's just as fair to excuse the Wii and 360 because they didn't have enough available stock when they launched.

PS3 shortages were lack of manufacturing not increase in popularity. It created artificial demand as those wanting a PS3 cried louder because Sony had decreased manufacturing.

The thing I find your analysis lacks in consideration is the Sony Wii Controller vs the Natal. The popularity is with the Natal right now. IMO it's anyone's guess how this will impact Christmas sales. I predict Microsoft will retain #2 at year end and Nintendo will retain #1.

It is sad to see Sony, which can make good consoles, miss the market and fall from a clear #1 PS2 to a struggle for 2nd place. I think we'll see new consoles around 2012. As we move into next gen the PS3 will not have regained #1 nor have the market % of the PS2. Sony took their award winning team and hit a double, at best.

@BrianK

Quote:

IMO it's just as fair to excuse the Wii and 360 because they didn't have enough available stock when they launched.

The PS3 as well didn't have enough stock at launch. Regarding the PS3 this is well understandable as there was a lack of Blu-Ray components at the time, hence probably the delayed release for Europe as well.

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PS3 shortages were lack of manufacturing not increase in popularity.

That's plain wrong, Sony perfectly matched their fiscal year forecast, but that was not enough to meet demand.

Quote:

The thing I find your analysis lacks in consideration is the Sony Wii Controller vs the Natal. The popularity is with the Natal right now. IMO it's anyone's guess how this will impact Christmas sales. I predict Microsoft will retain #2 at year end and Nintendo will retain #1.

LOL at your Wii prediction, that's not very daring. So if the XBox 360 is overtaken by the end of this year you can still claim you were at least half right.

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miss the market and fall from a clear #1 PS2 to a struggle for 2nd place.

Even the PS2 outsold the XBox 360 last quarter!

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The thing I find your analysis lacks in consideration is the Sony Wii Controller vs the Natal. The popularity is with the Natal right now.

Maybe for the US it's more hyped due to that fake Milo demonstration, lots of hype with regard to that created by the US media. Worldwide not so much and Microsoft is set to underdeliver compared to what was promised...

The Natal tech demos have been remarkably unimpressive so far. The painting demo looked like a kindergarten painting while Move is highly precise at this.

The car driving demo did not look comfortable at all, holding your arms up for a normal gaming session will certainly strain your muscles.

The other demos were laggy too, so far it does not look too promising. I guess people interested in this kind of gaming probably already own a Live Vision Camera, is it really worth it to upgrade for this?

It's also interesting to note, despite the 4.5 million installbase gap between the XBox 360 and PS3 by the end of March 2010, more software was sold for the PS3 during this period.

This may be due to piracy on the XBox 360 or the average PS3 owner having more cash to buy games, but that's just speculation.

@MikeB

Quote:

The PS3 as well didn't have enough stock at launch. Regarding the PS3 this is well understandable as there was a lack of Blu-Ray components at the time, hence probably the delayed release for Europe as well.

Coming out 3rd, short manufacturing, and expense shows me that Sony didn't fully understand the market. Hence not #1 again.

Quote:

That's plain wrong.

The truth is likely somewhere in between. Sony warned in Jan of coming shortages. Were they unable or unwilling to ramp up production? Often during these times consoles are hard to find in places. Gamestop didn't have PS3s in March. Best Buy and Target, near me, did. Though the later two didn't have 360s and Gamestop did. Wii? Don't know as I don't follow it.

Quote:

LOL at your Wii prediction, that's not very daring.

Didn't mean it to be daring. It was a fair prediction. And it highlighted the fight for 2nd that the old #1 Sony is in. Clearly Sony wasn't able to recapitalize on the PS2 market.

As for the PS2 selling -- Great for Sony. As the slim came out we saw more predictions that perhaps this time Sony won't lose money on manufacturing the PS3. It'd be deterimental for Sony to cut the PS2. It's where most of their gaming profits are.

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I guess people interested in this kind of gaming probably already own a Live Vision Camera, is it really worth it to upgrade for this?

Live Vision Camera has no controller features. It's essentially a webcam. Certainly people are going to get the controlelr that matches their system. The question is what new users will be encouraged by these controllers. Sony and Microsoft are trying to move into the casual gamer market owned by Nintendo.


Have you seen Windows Phone 7? Xbox Live features may be compelling to gamers. You now have 3D chipsets and Direct X 11 on a phone. (Hits the phone before the console?) In related items Nintendo cited that Sony is not competition but Apple is. Why? Again mobile gaming. If Apple picks up more and WinPho7 takes off then Nintendo and Sony will be behind the 8-Ball on their mobile gaming. They'll have to add phones to the DS and PSP. Sony's attempt to make a new PSP, the PSP Go, has been a failure. Even in the Sony popular Japan the PSP Go sold about 1/3 of the PSP in the same # of weeks.

Summary: Fall 2010 we see the #2/#3 console makers in a fight to get to the causal gamers via their new controllers. We also will see Microsoft launch into a fight for the mobile gamer. Time will tell how either of these are accepted.

@BrianK

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Coming out 3rd, short manufacturing, and expense shows me that Sony didn't fully understand the market

They understand the market very well, they wanted to have Blu-Ray in the PS3. With this Sony had an easy victory over Toshiba's HD DVD and they knew more capacity is needed for developers to work with.

You don't seem to understand Sony's market. Sony sells HDTVs, own movie studios, they create audio equipment, etc.

It's easy to understand a PS2.5 (similar to the Wii) wasn't an option and it's easy to see why they opted for so many extras. It makes perfect sense for the long run.

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The truth is likely somewhere in between. Sony warned in Jan of coming shortages. Were they unable or unwilling to ramp up production?

It's interesting to note Sony is introducing more efficient PS3s sporting 40nm RSX GPUs. Financially it could make sense to phase out older units.