@MikeB

Quote:

MikeB wrote: @wegster http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/18379/November-2008-NPD-Sonys-Take/ NPD is the source, so US sales.

So, looks like you're agreeing with the other article, and sales from Nov '08 are DOWN fro Nov '07, then?

From Yo's link:
Quote:

Sony was only able to sell 378,000 PS3s this November, compared to 466,000 last year.

From yours:
Quote:

PLAYSTATION®3 (PS3™) has continued its strong momentum during the holiday season with 378,071 hardware units sold in November,

It would have been nice if you simply agreed, instead of trying to misrepresent the statement and data.

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@BrianK

it will be interesting to see if Sony is once again, the last out of the gates, on the next gene, if they show typical Sony attitude, in thinking the PS3 can compete against the next gen '720' and next gen Wii. I suspect if they're last out of the gate, *again*, this will be the last games console from them.

Regarding the 'PS4,' I'd expect to see a faster Cell, with much improved GPU, more RAM, likely more SPUs, but the real question is whether or not it will hold up...there's a point of which more CPUs, even limited like the SPEs, don't add significant value, as tasks can only be distributed or parallelized so much. For a given task, the number of computing tasks in parallel will differ, and we've seen the start of games being forced to do this more than previously due to the PS3 and 360, but it will be interesting to see how it plays out.

Of course, if Sony goes to off the shelf, or perhaps for PS5, that could keep them in the business, but I suspect they'll have alienated enough game dev companies by then, as well as already losing their former exclusives, that few will care.

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@wegster

I agree that the PS4 will be the last out of the gates. IF this works for Sony or not only time will tell.

Regarding the Cell something it could use besides what you listed is another PPE. We'll see PC consoles with 6-12 cores by 2012. So programming multithreaded games will certainly only improve from here. But yes too many SPEs and they simply set there idle waiting for something to do. This harkens back to the PS3 is the most powerful console on paper, which is great for them. Myself I don't care today we see 360 and PS3 games performing pretty much the same and if it's 5% idle process or 25% idle processor it really doesn't matter.

Do you skip a PS4 and go to PS5? I think they could take that approach IF the PS3 held the PS2 marketshare and the #1 position. With the PS3's position today I don't think they could sustain themselves on the PS3.

2009 appears to be when Sony slipped in the gaming marketplace. Their gains were impressive compared to last year on the PS3. However their PS2 sales slipped and the increase in PS3 sales I don't believe fully compenstated. What we see is PS2 owners going to the Wii, mostly, and many to the 360. Sony was really dumb to cut out backwards compatibility IMO. With the size of the PS2 market what a great thing to continue to piggy back on their console. One can argue the point that the cost for the PS3 wasn't worth it. What the loss of backwards compatibility did was give PS2 users an oppurtunity to consider other options because after all the 360 and Wii can't play their games either. This put the PS3 on a more even footing, marketwise, from less expensive options. Throw in the economic recession where people look to spend more wisely and Sony is in a hard place for the next year. It appears the 16,000 jobs they are cutting will take until 2010. 2 years? Sorry Sony needs to cut thsoe jobs now else their 2009 profits will be even more negatively impacted.

@BrianK

Quote:

Regarding the Cell something it could use besides what you listed is another PPE.

I did think about that, and it certainly may happen, but with the SPEs already being used *somewhat* for generic tasks, AFAIK, and the PPE being effectively the scheduler or dispatcher, I suspect it would be of more benefit in beefing up the computing power of the SPEs, over another PPE.

And yes, I agree, the 360 and PS3 are roughly on par from what we're seeing today in *reality*, fanboy statements excluded, another reason I don't think Sony will survive well if they prolong the PS3 lifespan significantly longer than the 360s.

The advantage there I believe is Microsofts - Sony has few notable exclusives any longer, nor the massive library of the PS2 (with the PS3), although it will be interesting to see where the Xenon goes, or if MS hits the wall with IBM that others have (notably Apple), and reverts back to a more off the shel solution for their CPU.

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@whoever...

Quote:

although it will be interesting to see where the Xenon goes, or if MS hits the wall with IBM that others have (notably Apple),

What do you mean by "hit a wall"? As far as I'm aware IBM gave Apple exactly what they asked for.

If the rumours are correct and Intel are pushing MS to go with Larrabee, if that's the case there'll be a lot more cores then 12. If people think programming Cell is "difficult" they ain't seen nothing yet...

Quote:

Regarding the Cell something it could use besides what you listed is another PPE. We'll see PC consoles with 6-12 cores by 2012. So programming multithreaded games will certainly only improve from here.

The last I heard of Cell rumours were a leaked IBM presentation that showed a Cell with 4 PPEs and 32 SPEs. They are new designs as well, the PPEs use POWER7 technology and the SPEs have new instructions and possibly more RAM. Sony may not go for something quite so big though.

I don't think programming them will be much more difficult than the first Cell, they already use a job queue system which is basically agnostic to the number of cores. A lot of game stuff is parallelisable, it's serial PC control code that isn't broken up easily, there's not much of that in games.

Last edited by minator on 15-Dec-2008 at 09:10 PM.
Last edited by minator on 15-Dec-2008 at 01:26 AM.

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@minator
Note you had @BrianK but the first quote was @Wegster's.

The 2nd quote is mine. ... I haven't heard about the QuadPPE 32SPE Cell. I did hear of Tobshiba's PPE+4SPE smaller Cell. Personally I don't see Sony dropping the Cell for another architecture. Thinking of this more perhaps their answer is to modernize the PS3. Sony could have a 2012 console too. PS3.5 -- take the current Cell and bring it down to 32nm and bring the clock up to 6Ghz, add a bit more memory, and throw in a modern GPU.

@minator

Quote:

What do you mean by "hit a wall"? As far as I'm aware IBM gave Apple exactly what they asked for.

G5 laptops? Not quite 'all they asked for'

I'm *sure* Intel is pushing...I've worked places where Intel was doing anything they can to stop releases with AMD chips, and they'll cut pricing to get what they want. The '720' would certainly give them a PR win, at the very least.

I figured the SPEs would have more RAM, just not sure how multiple PPEs would work, I suppose one is still used to schedule jobs, and the others act as secondary/additional regular cores available for use, or some sort of shared memory architecture where they all handle tasks to the SPEs?

Do you have more info on how the job queuing system works with multiple PPEs? I think it would be interesting, as I have done some distributing computing some time back..

No real argument if games are more easily parallelized than regular PC apps..but there's still a limit in there somewhere, as well as the programmers heads, depending on how much the dev kits may improve or abstract things from them, I suppose.

Look at current PS3 games vs at launch, and you'll see it's already taken time to deal with 'just' multiple SPEs, etc...I could certainly see the SPEs getting new instructions, anything making them more useful as 'general purpose cores' or added RAM based on their 'typical' usage would make sense.

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@wegster

Quote:

So, looks like you're agreeing with the other article, and sales from Nov '08 are DOWN fro Nov '07, then?

No I don't agree with that article and yes I agree sales were down for November in the US, but overall still up considerably for the year, due to no price cut for the holiday season regarding the PS3 and cheaper 360s (the majority of 360s sold were cheap arcade units).

Last edited by MikeB on 15-Dec-2008 at 09:53 AM.

@BrianK

Quote:

BrianK wrote: @minator Note you had @BrianK but the first quote was @Wegster's. The 2nd quote is mine. ... I haven't heard about the QuadPPE 32SPE Cell. I did hear of Tobshiba's PPE+4SPE smaller Cell. Personally I don't see Sony dropping the Cell for another architecture. Thinking of this more perhaps their answer is to modernize the PS3. Sony could have a 2012 console too. PS3.5 -- take the current Cell and bring it down to 32nm and bring the clock up to 6Ghz, add a bit more memory, and throw in a modern GPU.

...hmmm... GC 1.5x = Wii .... Hey, it's worked before.

I think this is what will happen with the next 'PlayStation'. They can't afford the R&D levels that brought about the PS3 this time. They will follow a Nintendo-like development cycle.

I'm more curious as to what Nintendo is going to do as they are in serious need of a hardware overhaul in the gpu-soc...

@Lou

What Nintendo will do for next gen Wii....

IMHO, looking at all the money they are getting and looking at why they are getting them...

They'll power up the technical specs, yes... but without making it too costly to produce as Sony did with PS3. It will have maybe 1.5x a Xbox360 horsepower, not more.
Will it have BlueRay support? It will depend mostly on the BlueRay reader cost.
The thing I'm sure Nintendo will do with Wii2 will be improving the controls, something that exceeds the WiiMote+WiiMotionPlus combo. Maybe even a Headset or a VRGlove.

Only the future will tell...

Last edited by ErikBauer on 15-Dec-2008 at 12:31 PM.

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@Thread

Wow! PS3 saved!!!


Red Alert 3 in 2009

The PS3 has turned into the Mac of games consoles Games ship unto a year late but get there in the end

Now if only these belated games had some worthy additional extras or had all the bugs ironed out. Sadly like Bioshock this is likely to be too little too late.

ALL THEY NEED TO DO IS ADD SUPPORT FOR KEYBOARDS & MICE AND RED ALERT 3-PS3 WOULD SELL LIKE PANCAKES!!!

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@BigD

Quote:

The PS3 has turned into the Mac of games consoles

Never, IMO the PS3 gets the best games exclusively:

Uncharted 2 screenshots:
http://img139.imageshack.us/img139/7674/capture10iq2.jpg
http://img266.imageshack.us/img266/4184/capture1if9.jpg

A good quality God of War 3 trailer is available on the PSN, a HDTV pic:
http://i38.tinypic.com/33bl7qd.jpg

Add some Killzone 2 and Final Fantasy XIII madness for Japan and we're set for a fantastic games year for the PS3.

@MikeB

I used to be a Sony fan boy like yourself , but what's the point. They don't care about us! They think the Playstation brand is indestructible and they don't need to court the likes of Rockstar for exclusives! Well Playstation is not indestructible and they do need more exclusives. Killzone is so overhyped it's untrue and Final Fantasy is for RPG geeks. Yelllow Dog Linux is under utilised because of GPU restrictions and lack of Ram. Keyboard and mice have failed to be widely supported even though the PS3 'COULD' do RTS far better than XBox 360 if properly supported. Microsoft have Sony just where they want them and it's firmly in third place losing a tonne of money!

Last edited by BigD on 15-Dec-2008 at 06:36 PM.

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@wegster

Quote:

G5 laptops? Not quite 'all they asked for'

According to an IBM press release after the switch they never asked for laptop chips. Actually they probably did but weren't willing to pay the $$$ IBM would want.

That said later versions of the G5 were lower power than the G4 at similar clock speeds so they could have done a G5 laptop if they really wanted to. Turns out they were talking to PASemi who would have been lower power than not only the G5 but also the Intel chips they switched to!

That said that was a few years ago now, I just got a new Macbook and this thing barely even gets warm...

Quote:

Do you have more info on how the job queuing system works with multiple PPEs? I think it would be interesting, as I have done some distributing computing some time back..

I don't but there's vast amounts of stuff on IBM's site so there's probably something there. There are 2 Cells in the IBM blades so I'd imagine there's something.

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@BigD

I have never been a Sony fanboy and probably never will be. I do like many of their products though. All things equal I would wish this was Philips we're talking about instead.

More Uncharted 2 screens:

http://i34.tinypic.com/huhhjq.jpg
http://img266.imageshack.us/img266/5697/capture2yo2.jpg
http://jay-t.com/public/gaf/un2b.jpg

We should be happy this is a PS3 exclusive, this is well beyond what the 360 can handle.

@MikeB

Quote:

MikeB wrote: @wegster Quote: So, looks like you're agreeing with the other article, and sales from Nov '08 are DOWN fro Nov '07, then? No I don't agree with that article and yes I agree sales were down for November in the US, but overall still up considerably for the year, due to no price cut for the holiday season regarding the PS3 and cheaper 360s (the majority of 360s sold were cheap arcade units).

And which of those do you think matters to game developers, if there are more 360s, some of which are arcade or not, versus PS3 install base?

Sadly, Sony's already lost there, check the 'exclusives.' And I expect that to get worse if/when Sony delays PS4 to compete with the next gen Xbox.

I'll have to go look for '07 numbers versus '08, as no one's seemed to posted them that I've seen from an authoritative link, preferably including 360 vs PS3 install base as well.

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@MikeB

Quote:

No I don't agree with that article and yes I agree sales were down for November in the US, but overall still up considerably for the year, due to no price cut for the holiday season regarding the PS3 and cheaper 360s (the majority of 360s sold were cheap arcade units).

There are problems in the article. For example the 2nd paragraph starts with the statement that the problem for Sony isn't the recession and then the first point is the PS3 is too expensive and impacted by the recession. Huh?

The Blu-Ray statement seems to be right. People aren't flocking to Blu-Ray as expected. When they do it'll be the $100 player not the $400 PS3 that does the job as Blu-Ray moves into the mainstream consumer.

EDIT--- It appears this Black Friday the number of Blu-Ray players increased 30%. Alas so did the # of DVD players. Consumers who bought Blu-Ray mainly purchased $200 units.

Last edited by BrianK on 16-Dec-2008 at 05:04 AM.

@minator

Quote:

minator wrote: @whoever... Quote: although it will be interesting to see where the Xenon goes, or if MS hits the wall with IBM that others have (notably Apple), What do you mean by "hit a wall"? As far as I'm aware IBM gave Apple exactly what they asked for. If the rumours are correct and Intel are pushing MS to go with Larrabee, if that's the case there'll be a lot more cores then 12. If people think programming Cell is "difficult" they ain't seen nothing yet...

Would Intel license its X86-GPU IP to Microsoft? Recall XBOX 1 and NV debacle.

Refer to Intel's whitepaper on Larrabee's estimated performance.
http://softwarecommunity.intel.com/UserFiles/en-us/File/larrabee_manycore.pdf

The inability to bring 1st gen XBOX360 era games to 1080p would not threat the current ATI Radeon HD 4830/4850/4870 and NV Geforce 9800/GT-260/GT280 let alone DX11 era ATI Radeon HD 5870 and NV post GT-2x0 GPUs releases.

What happens if run Crysis 1.2 on this Larrabee? 10 FPS? Another decelerator...

The are rumours ATI is aiming double clocking (e.g. 1.4Ghz) thier current RV770.
Double clock methods are already in use in Geforce 8/9/GT-2x0. ATI RV770 @TSMC's 40nm process node is already taped out btw.

Larrabee's raytracing examples is a joke compared to Radeon HD 2900/3870/4870's raytracing the Transformers movie trailers. Refer to http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/38145/135/

NV can design cGPU type device with ARM ISA+GpGPU. In terms developer acceptance and market share, ARM ISA can handle X86 ISA.

Last edited by Hammer on 16-Dec-2008 at 11:12 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 16-Dec-2008 at 11:04 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 16-Dec-2008 at 11:02 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 16-Dec-2008 at 10:43 AM.

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@minator

Quote:

According to an IBM press release after the switch they never asked for laptop chips. Actually they probably did but weren't willing to pay the $$$ IBM would want.

Well, Intel commits to mobility computing R&D without Apple being involved i.e. Intel’s self pace improvement program e.g. tick-tock, Moore’s law, “only the paranoid survives”.

Quote:

That said later versions of the G5 were lower power than the G4 at similar clock speeds so they could have done a G5 laptop if they really wanted to

Again, you haven't factor in the chipsets.

Should I post Intel PM965 against IBM CPC945 again?

IBM CPC925 and CPC945 chipsets is a joke compared desktop ATI RD580 chipsets (8 watts max.). ATI RD580 is not even the mobile varaint.

Erm PASemi's PowerPC is not a Core 2 class CPU. Current Intel Core 2 Duo P9500 @2.5Ghz has 25watts TDP.

Last edited by Hammer on 16-Dec-2008 at 10:56 AM.

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