We know Sony sold to retail way more PS3s last holidays season as well as for Sony's last fiscal quarter than Microsoft shipped XBox 360s.

Despite this the XBox 360 was overstocked at retail while there were major shortages for the PS3 in North America and in various parts in Europe. (6.5 million + 2.2 million PS3s, 5.2 million + 1.5 million XBox 360s, so 8.7 million PS3s vs 6.7 million XBox 360s)

Gamestop again confirms this for the US: "Supply on hardware was a continuing challenge this quarter," Raines explained, "as on an average daily basis, our U.S. stores were out of stock for the PS3 for 80 percent of the time and were out of stock for Wii 50 percent of the time."

http://www.joystiq.com/2010/05/20/ps3-and-wii-hardware-shortages-challegened-gamestop-q1/

Sony's recently launched PlayTV for the PS3 seems to be a huge success down under:

"Of those PlayTV sales, it seems 36,000 were sold during the last six weeks of 2009 which - according to Ephraim - made the PlayTV the top-selling PVR for 2009."

http://www.hydrapinion.com/index.php/play/2010/05/21/playstation-3-s-playtv-australia-s-best-selling-pvr

Sony also has similar success with a similar device called Torne recently released in Japan:

http://playstation.joystiq.com/2010/03/19/japanese-retailers-selling-out-of-ps3-torne-dvr-peripheral/
http://kotaku.com/5496218/japan-lines-up-fordigital-ps3-recorder

Last edited by MikeB on 21-May-2010 at 09:33 AM.

@MikeB

Looks like the PS3 is great as all round entertainment device but sadly lacking as a gaming machine!! I am far more interested in a PS2 style gaming device ie. games & Video Disc playing, stuff the internet and stuff media hub stuff.

The PS3 needs PS2 compatibility to get me to part with my hard earned money or else I'll look to the XBox Elite Valhalla model as it plays games I like in a better resolution with better textures! Ghostbusters, Rage, the Orange Box, Fear 1 & 2, are all better on the Xbox 360!

The only win is for Red Alert 3 which is a great improvement (but released v late), however as it doesn't support a keyboard and mouse, it turned a polished and well presented port into an epic fail!! I think I might skip the generation entirely as it is full of motion control gimmicks and style over substance. Maybe the PS4 will have PS2 back compatibility, rumble from the get-go and a more back to basics approach Wake me up when this gen is over!

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@MikeB
MikeB wrote:
@Lou
Quote:

You aren't being honest there... Move is more accurate and shows less lag compared to Nintnedo's MotionPlus.

No I am not. Also, have you used MOVE?

I have used WM+ as I own WiiSports Resort. There isn't lag worth mentioning.

Also, both sensitivity details were published and WM+ is more sensitive.

Also, MOVE still lacks direct pointing capabilities.

Now, Move's secandary controller is more sensitive than the Nunchuk, because that was never upgraded to WM+

Last edited by Lou on 21-May-2010 at 02:36 PM.

@Lou

Motion controls are over-rated & gimmicky side shows! Who cares which is more sensitive!!? WHERE IS THE JEDI LIGHT-SABRE GAME PROMISED!!! I do not think 'The Force Unleashed' or 'Lego Star Wars' counts!

Developers are not able to push these tools creatively at present! The Sony EyeToy was under-utilised and these Motion Controls will be too. Most Wii owners JUST PLAY BOWLING, GOLF & TENNIS ON Wii SPORTS and that's it!!! POINTLESS! Get ready for Raving Rabbids Party game shovel ware being ported across to the XBox 360 and PS3 in the coming months! Can't wait

Last edited by BigD on 21-May-2010 at 02:56 PM.

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

http://5by5.tv/conversation/16

Valve releases Steam for Mac and thinks PS3 is more like a Gamecube.
This is quite the interview...

@BigD

Quote:

BigD wrote: @Lou Motion controls are over-rated & gimmicky side shows! Who cares which is more sensitive!!? WHERE IS THE JEDI LIGHT-SABRE GAME PROMISED!!! I do not think 'The Force Unleashed' or 'Lego Star Wars' counts! Developers are not able to push these tools creatively at present! The Sony EyeToy was under-utilised and these Motion Controls will be too. Most Wii owners JUST PLAY BOWLING, GOLF & TENNIS ON Wii SPORTS and that's it!!! POINTLESS! Get ready for Raving Rabbids Party game shovel ware being ported across to the XBox 360 and PS3 in the coming months! Can't wait

I am happily looking forward to seeing shovelware on the PS3/360 so that they can take their average review score and put it where the sun doesn't shine.

Since neither Natal nor Move can do 1:1 pixel pointing, FPS game controls will still suck on those systems compare to Wii FPS controls.

@Lou

Quote:

Since neither Natal nor Move can do 1:1 pixel pointing, FPS game controls will still suck on those systems compare to Wii FPS controls.

What do you mean by that? Why can't Playstation Move do that?

Have you really investigated what Playstation Move can do or are you just shouting stuff angrily as long as it's negative towards Playstation and godly towards Nintendo?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mnggr-ycbro

First Killzone 3 details (supports 3D):

A magazine scan:
http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/2654/pict0143l.jpg

"2 days ago I was able to play Killzone 3 behind closed doors in Amsterdam and have to say that it looks crazy.

The graphics are still based on the same engine as its predecessor, but was immensely improved."

"What impressed me the most in the 30 minutes were the snow effects. It just looks fantastic how the snow lays down on the weapon and melts when shooting - and all that in 3D!

To be honest, I was a bit sceptical but KZ3 looks phenomenal in 3D, the explosions, the rain and the snow seem to be so real, that hollywood blockbusters like Avatar pale in comparison."

Stay tuned! (3D glasses on)

CVG revealed Naughty Dog is co-creating the game engine together with Guerilla Games.

My opinion: I think Guerilla Games will benefit greatly from an enhanced streaming engine, probably resulting in a more seamless experience, hopefully like in Uncharted 2!

@MikeB

Quote:

MikeB wrote: @Lou Quote: Since neither Natal nor Move can do 1:1 pixel pointing, FPS game controls will still suck on those systems compare to Wii FPS controls. What do you mean by that? Why can't Playstation Move do that? Have you really investigated what Playstation Move can do or are you just shouting stuff angrily as long as it's negative towards Playstation and godly towards Nintendo? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mnggr-ycbro

You failed to prove anything in that video. From the looks of it, it seemed he was using Move like a gyro-mouse which even the Wii can do with WM+.

From the technical details published, the MEMS unit in WM+ is sensitive to 1mm where as the one in Move is someware between 5mm and 8mm, I forget the exact # published by Sony...and I could be off on the units of measure(mm) but they were the same unit of measure and the actual value(1 vs 5-8) references are correct.

Since Move's primary controller uses 1 "sphere", the Eye can determine distance from the unit by it's diameter, however, it can't actually tell the player is not pointing at the unit, only that it is not, if something partially or fully blocks the glowing sphere such as the player's arm during extreme movements. Nintendo's implementation is from the opposite perspective. The camera in is the Wii Remote and the sensor bar emits 2 points of light and that is how distance is determined as well as a pixel perfect 1024x768 resolution because it has 3 points of reference vs. Moves 2 points. The Wii Remote uses triangulation to determine where the Wii Remote is pointing onto a 1024x768 virtual plane that exists below or above the sensor bar. Since the Wii is not HD, that is plenty of resolution.

Perhaps you are the one who needs to do more research?

@MikeB.

Is the demise of the Cell afoot?

Sony announced GoogleOS powered TVs and Blu-Ray players. CPU is the Intel Atom. Strange how a few years ago they told us the Cell would be powering their TVs and devices. Also, we saw a 4 SPU Cell design at one point. Yet, no Sony Cell.

EDIT: IBM also seems to have given up the Cell. Their most recent supercomputer is Intel based driven by NVidia GPUs. No coprocessing Cell such as their past supercomputers. And of course this one is to be faster than the past Cell machines.

Last edited by BrianK on 23-May-2010 at 02:32 AM.
Last edited by BrianK on 23-May-2010 at 02:32 AM.

@Lou

I can't say I'm very impressed with Wii Motion Plus judging from what I have seen so far in comparison to PS Move.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqi2eaY_gZ0

Last edited by MikeB on 23-May-2010 at 10:49 AM.

@BrianK

Quote:

Also, we saw a 4 SPU Cell design at one point. Yet, no Sony Cell.

- Toshiba is using the Cell in some of their top range TVs, it's very impressive and allows Toshiba to distinguish itself from the rest.

- IBM is using the Cell's technology in other future chips, however these will not be branded Cell.

- Sony together with its partners are continuing Cell Broadband Engine development / RSX at a fast pace,they have recently shrunk down with 40 nm / 45 nm technology.

- The PSP2 is rumoured to be powered by a 4 processor version of the Cell Broadband engine.

- The Cell is powering the worlds fastest supercomputers, the Cell technology isn't going away anytime soon.

Last edited by MikeB on 23-May-2010 at 11:41 AM.
Last edited by MikeB on 23-May-2010 at 10:52 AM.

@MikeB

Quote:

Toshiba is using the Cell in some of their top range TVs,

Sony sold the idea that Cell would be a ubiquitous. All your equipment would have Cells in them and they'd be able to increase each other's power. Yeah failed marketing hype. Even to the point that Sony doesn't use the Cell in it's own equipment, save the PS3.

Quote:

IBM is using the Cell's technology in other future chips

This gets to how one talks about the Cell. Is it a set of instructions? Not all Cell instructions exist in the Power7 series. Is the Cell a PPE+SPU construct? The Power7 is multiple cores no specialized SPU. So in this sense it doesn't exist.

Quote:

they have recently shrunk down with 40 nm / 45 nm technology.

I think you're bluring the concept of 'development' here. Certainly it is development to shrink a processor or create a 32 core SPU Cell. The shrink doesn't add enhancements to the technology. It's simply a smaller version of the current genration architecture. The cancelled 32 core SPU Cell would have enhanced and extended the chip into a new generation. At present no 2nd generation to the Cell chip is being developed.

Quote:

The Cell is powering the worlds fastest super computers

The Cell does enahance the power of the existing super computer. IBM just announced it wouldn't be using them for the next gen but instead use the NVIDIA GPU for this sort of purpose.

The PSP2, some calling P3P due to the cell, is rumored for the Cell. It is also rumored to be a quad core ARM, the PowerVR SGX543MP4. We'll find out this year which rumor is correct.

Last edited by BrianK on 23-May-2010 at 04:22 PM.

@MikeB

Quote:

MikeB wrote: @Lou I can't say I'm very impressed with Wii Motion Plus judging from what I have seen so far in comparison to PS Move. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqi2eaY_gZ0

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Mike, that video only affirms your propaganda methods.

When throwing a frisbee, does how tall you are matter? So if one player is holding the WiiMote higher than the next, the game is auto-magically supposed to render a "taller" Mii when they are using the same Mii and possibly taking turns? What's interesting is how on the PS3 tennis game, it shows you the path of the ball in advance so you can line up your shot in advance, talk about easy mode. No suprise on the spin that the opponent put into it. Also, I like how "jerky" they showed the Wii player intentionally being when the PS3 player was just waiting on their shot like a normal person would as if you couldn't constantly wave your arms on the PS3. What a joke.

I especially liked how they recorded the Wii footage at worse quality than the PS3 footage to exagerate the resolution different across a 360p youtube video. That was ever-impressive!

The technical details I mentioned before are a fact. Unless the two systems are running the same exact software and performing the same exact movements, your "video" is bovine excrement.

You can't even disguise your fanboyism, it's really bad and annoying.

Last edited by Lou on 23-May-2010 at 09:51 PM.

@BrianK

Quote:

I think you're bluring the concept of 'development' here. Certainly it is development to shrink a processor or create a 32 core SPU Cell.

One beauty of the Cell is that you can create boards with multi-ple Cell on them, similar to how supercomputers function with the Cell processor.

9 processors per Cell chip as in the PS3 (8 active, one reserve), if you have 4 chips that makes 4 times the peak gflop performance. Shrinking down the technology certainly helps with such an approach.

IBM created a version of the Cell with better double precision performance, for peak performance that doesn't really help if you optimise your code, it mainly simplifies development in cases. I didn't consider this a crucial direction, only a concept was planned for that chip. IMO it's not that big of a deal that it didn't go into production.

@MikeB

Quote:

One beauty of the Cell is that you can create boards with multi-ple Cell on them

Do note this 'beauty' exists is non-Cell architecture too. DSPs work this way. ASICs work this way. And of course we've seen multiple x86 on a board for quite some time. I expect the dodecacores will also result in the ability to put more than 1 on the board.

And of course the new GPU's can also have multiples on a board. IBM just announced their two Xeons CPU and two Fermi GPU. Again likely because there's no Cell successor.

Last edited by BrianK on 24-May-2010 at 02:48 PM.

@BrianK

Just pointing out the ongoing development of the current PS3 Cell processor can pave the way for a distant future PS4.

IGN: Killzone 3 hands-on and they absolutely dig it!

http://uk.ps3.ign.com/articles/109/1092173p1.html

"The first three minutes we're allowed to go hands-on with has more set-pieces crammed in to it than the entire first level of Killzone 2"

"Killzone 3 will be one of the first Sony titles to support 3D out of the box, and thanks to a prototype TV using active shutter glasses set up at the event we can report that it looks stupendous – bullets zip out of the screen while particles such as snow and sparks are tangible elements of the game world. It feels like much more than a gimmick as well: peripheral details such as raging seas thrashing the icebergs combine with the way the player's gun seems to hang out of the screen (and indeed people were living up to the age-old clich? and reaching out to touch what wasn't there during the presentations) to create a level of immersion that's truly beyond anything we've seen to date. "

Eurogamer had some reservations and doubts with regard to stereoscopic 3D gaming on the PS3 (based on early quick & dirty examples of how easy this is to implement in some existing games), they are regularly quoted by naysayers for this. But not anymore it seems:

Some snips:

"PS3D has been common knowledge for some time now, and it makes perfect sense that one of the platform's flagship series be earmarked for the technology's release. What is a surprise is how well it all actually works."

"Straight away there's an immediate impact. The weighty, long-barrelled minigun has a real presence in-screen, highlighting the fact that the majority of Killzone's 3D trickery is done via the impression of depth rather than projection. Shuffling behind cover emphasises the effect superbly, each vanishing line and focal reference point making the illusion ever more real.

The game's particle effects really come into their own under the influence of the active shutter glasses too. Snow seems to swirl very distinctly in front of the screen, its fluttering hypnotism starkly punctuated by the bullets which zip and zing towards you."