@BrianK

Quote:

Recent news is Sony is going to report a $3B loss for last year.

You are wrong Brian, Sony indicated a small profit (net income) for the holiday season (unlike Samsung, Philips, LG, etc), but expects a fiscal year net loss of 1.7 Billion USD (you are talking about operating loss), so till the end of March 2009 (employing 180K+ people is costly, while generating little income). This looks a bit worse because of weak dollar vs strong yen conversions but is in line with the consumer electronics industry as a whole.

David Reeves meanwhile re-affirms the gaming division will remain largely unaffected.

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Good news is the entertainment division is reporting 1/2 the losses of last year. Part of this is that the PS3 is losing less money per console.

Half of the loss is due to a strong yen and weak dollar according to Sony. With regard to this quarter Sony expects: "90 to the dollar and 120 to the euro for the fiscal fourth quarter, compared with 100 and 140 projected on Oct. 23. "

"The yen jumped 30 percent against the euro and 24 percent to the dollar last year, the best performer among 16 major currencies tracked by Bloomberg. A stronger yen damps the value of overseas earnings when repatriated. "

Last edited by MikeB on 24-Jan-2009 at 10:43 AM.

@MikeB

Quote:

MikeB wrote: @BrianK Quote: Recent news is Sony is going to report a $3B loss for last year. You are wrong Brian, Sony indicated a small profit (net income) for the holiday season (unlike Samsung, Philips, LG, etc), but expects a fiscal year net loss of 1.7 Billion USD (you are talking about operating loss), so till the end of March 2009 (employing 180K+ people is costly, while generating little income). This looks a bit worse because of weak dollar vs strong yen conversions but is in line with the consumer electronics industry as a whole.

It's not I'm wrong as I cited news so clearly not my opinion. It's what the news says..

Last edited by BrianK on 24-Jan-2009 at 02:45 PM.

@BrianK

Again, 2.9$ billion USD operating loss expected for Sony's fiscal year (so until March 2009).

Read your linked article, that article is correct.

@BrianK

"Stringer announced that Sony was revising its fiscal 2008 (ending March 2009) consolidated net income forecast to a ¥150 billion ($1.6 billion) loss"

"At part of yesterday's announcement, Sony estimated that it generated a net profit of ¥10 billion for its fiscal third quarter, which ended on December 31, down 95% from the same period a year earlier. Third quarter revenues are expected to have fallen 25% to ¥2.15 trillion. The final figures will be announced at a press conference on January 29."

http://www.financeasia.com/article.aspx?CIaNID=94663

@MikeB

Quote:

MikeB wrote: @BrianK Again, 2.9$ billion USD operating loss expected for Sony's fiscal year (so until March 2009). Read your linked article, that article is correct.

MikeB you stated before you find it amusing when people see you as a fanboy. I posted $3B and you're arguing not to make a rounding error? Egads you try hard to prove your fanboydom.

Preview of GTA4 : Lost and Damned for the 360.

@BrianK

Quote:

MikeB you stated before you find it amusing when people see you as a fanboy. I posted $3B and you're arguing not to make a rounding error? Egads you try hard to prove your fanboydom.

No, I didn't comment on your rounding methods at all. I distinguished between net income (tax refunds, non operating income, etc included) and operating income.

And I pointed out to you this operating / net loss regards for Sony's fiscal year, so not last calendar year you seemed to point to and finally I pointed out Sony is likely to post a small profit for the previous fiscal quarter.

I just prefer accuracy, IMO no need to get personal about this.

This will be Sony's first fiscal year loss in a 14 year timespan, so they can take it. Ironically it seems Microsoft's gaming division is far worse off, M$ has and will fire many gaming division employees, it has already closed ACES Studios, the developer of the Flight Simulator series.

Last edited by MikeB on 24-Jan-2009 at 10:28 PM.

@MikeB

Quote:

I just prefer accuracy, IMO no need to get personal about this.

Don't mean to point fingers here but if you look at your first response to the $3B loss Sony is reporting your first statement is 'You are wrong'. If you really want accuracy and not attacks why did you start out declaring someone wrong instead of a friendly and constructive approach such as 'for a point of clarity the net loss is $1.7B and the operating loss is the $2.9B you talked about' . You know working together to get the accuracy you need instead of first thing trying the attack mode?

Quote:

Ironically it seems Microsoft's gaming division is far worse off, M$ has and will fire many gaming division employees, it has already closed ACES Studios, the developer of the Flight Simulator series

I believe Microsoft gaming had one of their best Christmas seasons ever w/ high console sales, high game sales, and good sales of LIVE. Look at the approach -- Microsoft has been reducing their ownership of gaming companies for the last couple of years. AFAIK ACES last game was 2006 w/ a upgrade in 2007, if nothing was planned in 2009 it makes sense to cut it as it's not generating profit. Microsoft had talked last fall about scaling back some 360 releases as the ecomony dipped they are readying to ride the downturn.

Well and Microsoft as a company is reporting a near $4B profit for the quarter compared to the $3B loss coming up for Sony for the year.

@BrianK

Quote:

BrianK wrote: @MikeB Quote: The RSX is more powerful than the Xenos If anti-aliasing is used doesn't the RSX end up with half the Xenos pixel per sec rate? Isn't this due to the superior setup relating to anti-aliasing within the Xenos? Also isn't the RSX less efficent than the Xenos? So comparing actual performance to theoretical paper #s are worse for the RSX. Also doesn't the RSX handle vertices worse than the Xenos? Isn't the recommendation for this to use the SPEs? While some theoretical #s might be better for the RSX in the real world it appears the Xenos is closer to this gen's video cards and the RSX is closer to something from 2004. Sony stated 1.8TFlops for the RSX comes with free Kool-Aid.

The RSX (and any 6 or 7-series nVidia GPU) doesn't natively support AA with floating point render targets (e.g. FP16 and FP32).

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@Hammer

Quote:

The RSX (and any 6 or 7-series nVidia GPU) doesn't natively support AA with floating point render targets (e.g. FP16 and FP32).

There are no 360 games with both AA and FP16, there are plenty of PS3 exclusives doing this though.

@all

GameInformer Magazine #190 (Feb. 2009)

Quote:

Top 10 Disappointments of 2008 1) Xbox 360 - Still seeing Red You might not know it, but each Xbox 360 comes with a free game. Its called Living on Borrowed Time. It starts the moment you buy the console and ends when you see the three red rings of death. Despite Microsoft's promises to fix the problem, even the vaunted Xbox 360 Elites are still crapping out at an unacceptable rate. This is a bad multiplayer game we've all had to play too many times.

But before you get too excited MikeB:

Quote:

2) PS3 Loses Its Momentum The PS3 has lost all its summer momentum. The software cavalry has yet to arrive and in this economy, being more expensive than the 360 isn't doing the PS3 any favors. Two years into the system's life and despite winning the hi-def format war, people still can't come up with reasons why they should own the system. We know Sony is taking a long-term approach to the console, but letting your platform die on the vine seems like a poor strategy

On another page:

Quote:

Sony's Troubles Playstation 3's domestic sales numbers for November pale in comparison to its competitors, and even its numbers from last year. while the PS3 moved 466,000 consoles in November 2007, this year's total fell to 378,000. The flailing console's numbers in the rest of the world aren't much better, either. According to Microsoft, the Xbox 360 received a 124 percent increase in European sales for the month over last year as compared to 3 percent for the PS3 and 43 percent for the Wii. Sony as a whole just isn't having a good month. The company's Tokyo headquarters announced the planned elimination of 8,000 jobs and just as many part-time positions by 2010. The company is also closing manufacturing facilities in an attempt to save $1.1 billion by the end of the next fiscal year. Sony is not delineating how this will affect the PlayStation brand, but with the PlayStation 3 performing this poorly, it can't be immune.

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Well, at least we now know why Sony didn't drop the price...

They could be playing a longer game though - Since they know they can't sell in numbers as big as the others, wait until they can reduce costs and then sell to people who already have a Wii/360. If they can get more games with KZ2 type graphics out they might actually be able to do it.

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@wegster
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What you described for handling tasks is exactly how cluster tasks are distributed (not nesc aimed at you, but anyone)...which, you'll recall was one of the original 'dreams' of Cell- add another over network, and instant 'cluster expansion.'

It's not quite the same, the jobs can still access main memory for data. That's rather more difficult for clusters.

They also had data "Cells" at one point but I don't know if anything ever became of them.


@BrianK
Quote:

@minator Interesting layout for the Cell++. If memory serves the Cell (1PPE and 8SPE) has 230M transitiors. If this is a quad Cell (4 PPE, 32SPE) wouldn't we expect this to have close to 1Billion transitors?

Yes, if not more.

The clock speed is interesting as you can tell a lot from it.
They could boost the clock speed as they'll be at much finer geometry, but they've gone for more cores instead.

This could be a simple trade off but it's not. Using a relatively low clock speed compared to what they could do means they can use smaller transistors and that means it'll be smaller and thus cheaper. It also means they don't have to use a high end silicon process and hand design like Cell - again saving money.

The lower clock also means they'll be able to alter the pipeline design to use fewer stages (though this might affect backwards compatibility). Less stages means less logic which means less power usage, it also means they can either cut latency on the LS or increase the size and keep the latency the same.

Sounds like it could be a much more refined processor.

There are also meant to be more instructions but no idea what they are. The addition of texture sampling and use-LS-as-Cache would allow it to function as a GPU that could get very interesting...

--

It's not clear what will happen with the 360 but probably something similar. They have the added complexity of the shared cache though, that could complicate things a lot. They could use a series of clusters of cores, possibly doubtful from MS's perspective but it'll save power and reduce what will otherwise be a painful latency. But then they may not care about latency, GPUs certainly don't.
There are trade-offs to be made in extending the 360 CPU, desktops will also be facing the same questions soon. Sony already made those choices in Cell so have less to worry about.

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@minator

Quote:

They could be playing a longer game though - Since they know they can't sell in numbers as big as the others, wait until they can reduce costs and then sell to people who already have a Wii/360.

I hope Sony isn't taking this approach. This approach could seemingly mean they want the PS3 to be the low cost leader against the Wii2 and Xbox3. Sony, nor anyone, knows yet what the next gen may bring along. The PS2 has done well up until recently. Good job Sony. The big difference here is it's easier to sustain a #1 market position (PS2) into the next gen due to popularity than it is to sustain a #3 market position (PS3). The big question becomes if a developer is going to make games for the Wii2 and/or Xbox3 does it make sense to do anything with the last gen #3 PS3 once the next gen arrives? IMO -- this is a dangerous bet.

Quote:

There are also meant to be more instructions but no idea what they are. The addition of texture sampling and use-LS-as-Cache would allow it to function as a GPU that could get very interesting

The newer Cell, in IBM super computers for example, has more double floating point performance than the PS3. How, if those would be overly useful for videogaming is a good question.

Having GPU on the CPU is the future, the writing is on the wall. The question is how well will the GPU/CPU chip perform? Likely seperate CPU and GPU will perform better. If I had to bet I'd bet the Wii2 comes out with a unified GPU/CPU on day 1. If I had to bet on the Xbox3 it's these are likely to be still seperated but with plans to unify quickly to reduce costs.

Of course there's still some time for next gen (likely 2-3 years). There are lots of questions out there such as Larrabee and it's compelling story and need to make a compiler to handle this properly. And certainly 2-3 more years of behind the scenes looking at the Cell architecture. (Of course the rumors are IBM and Sony can enter into their own licensing terms. Perhaps Microsoft will pull the rug out from Sony and use the Cell++ first.) We all guess at what the future brings.

Which brings us back to Sony's PS3. If they are guessing the PS3 will survive 10 years and own the market at this point is a bet against the odds, IMO. 2009 doesn't look good for videogaming nor the higher pricing position of the PS3. This leaves Sony about a year before the next-gen to improve their position to a point the PS3 could sustain 10 years of sales.

Nice 2008 PS3 income results for multi-platform publishers (for those who "worry" for PS3 3d party support ):

"Earlier last month, Take-Two, publishers of Bioshock and Grand Theft Auto, announced that the PS3 had been their biggest source of income, with 35% of their revenue coming from the platform.

It seems this may becoming trend, as UbiSoft is reporting a similar story. So far for the fiscal year of 2008, 21% of the publisher's sales have come from the PS3. Of the three home consoles, that is the largest percent, with Microsoft's XBox 360 trailing at 20% and the Wii at 15%. This is quite a mix up from the 2007 fiscal year, where the 360 actually had the highest amount of sales out of all platforms at 25%.

UbiSoft is expecting to meet their financial goals for the fiscal year of 2008, with Tom Clancy's HAWX releasing for the PS3, 360, and PC in the final quarter of the fiscal year."

http://www.ps3center.net/news/2191/ps3-generates-largest-sales-for-ubisoft/

@MikeB

Quote:

MikeB wrote: @Hammer Quote: The RSX (and any 6 or 7-series nVidia GPU) doesn't natively support AA with floating point render targets (e.g. FP16 and FP32). There are no 360 games with both AA and FP16,

Without Halo3's tricks, Xenos natively supports FP10 + AA. Halo 3 involves rendering two frames at same time with each have low or high HDR. This is then combined to form the final picture. Due to limitations in the secondary GPU, the rendering resolution is lower than 720p.

Quote:

there are plenty of PS3 exclusives doing this though.

Such as? ... Some uses volumetric lights + bloom instead e.g. Killzone 2.

The ones that has HDR + AA, they use integer (e.g. RGBA8 frame buffer) based HDR, hence RSX can use AA. HDR rendering costs are shifted from memory to pixel shaders. The advantage is lower memory space and bandwidth requirements.
An example of PS3 exclusive using this method is "Heavenly Sword 2".

This method is similar to Half Life2 PC's HDR and AA on Geforce 6 and 7 GPU series.

You program with machine’s strength not weaknesses. The R&D for D3D 10 class GPUs got to count for something and this is one of them.

http://blogs.xnainfo.com/post/XNA-On-The-3602c-Part-2-HDR.aspx
Using integer based HDR on Xbox 360.

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@minator

Quote:

It's not clear what will happen with the 360 but probably something similar. They have the added complexity of the shared cache though, that could complicate things a lot. They could use a series of clusters of cores, possibly doubtful from MS's perspective but it'll save power and reduce what will otherwise be a painful latency. But then they may not care about latency, GPUs certainly don't.

For latency, modern GPUs includes a multi-thousand registers and multi-threading.

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@BrianK

Quote:

Having GPU on the CPU is the future, the writing is on the wall. The question is how well will the GPU/CPU chip perform? Likely seperate CPU and GPU will perform better.

Yes.

Quote:

If I had to bet I'd bet the Wii2 comes out with a unified GPU/CPU on day 1. If I had to bet on the Xbox3 it's these are likely to be still seperated but with plans to unify quickly to reduce costs.

This has been rumoured on the 360 for a long time.

Quote:

There are lots of questions out there such as Larrabee and it's compelling story and need to make a compiler to handle this properly.

I'm rather sceptical of the Larrabee approach. I think it could backfire on Intel.
x86 compatibility means they'll be able to get something running quickly but it's going to run like a dog. Even multi-threaded stuff may not run very well. x86s generally provide very low latency through aggressive caching and OoO hardware. Larrabee is in-order and will have high latencies. I expect other GPUs to easily outgun it.

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@Hammer

Quote:

The ones that has HDR + AA, they use integer (e.g. RGBA8 frame buffer) based HDR, hence RSX can use AA. HDR rendering costs are shifted from memory to pixel shaders. The advantage is lower memory space and bandwidth requirements.

Yes, NAO32 (based on LogLuv) is cool. It was first used for Heavenly Sword, it's a very efficient method of implementing HDR. Heavenly Sword had HDR combined with 4x AA and 8xAF. As code and knowledge is shared between developers various exclusives games have used this approach, notably also Uncharted: Drake's Fortune in 2007.

I don't know all the exact lighting methods used for Killzone 2 (you do?) which appears to be a mixed usage of HDR and Bloom effects. It's at least clear that it is pretty effective and does the job well:

GamesRadar: "to the frenzied landing and shiver-of-relief comprehension that, no, this is real, as bullets rain in with terrifying intensity; to the rifle’s jaw-dropping HDR and zoom effects, to the dazzling rain-lashed rooftop where we’re unnaturally thrilled at the sight of windswept wires: we were gripped in our seats, absolutely, honestly, astonished - and, well, more than a bit relieved."

Yahoo games: "However, what sold us on the visuals in the game were such things as the stellar lighting, which was shown off in a variety of ways. We saw subtle touches, ranging from the heat glow given off of metal when it's shot at, to the way muzzle flashes from you and your enemies light up the areas around you. The lightning arcs that lit up the sky in the game managed to be both dramatic and subtle with light and shadow dancing around in dramatic fashion."

That's of course what really matters for a game.

@MikeB

Quote:

Yes, NAO32 (based on LogLuv) is cool. It was first used for Heavenly Sword, it's a very efficient method of implementing HDR. Heavenly Sword had HDR combined with 4x AA and 8xAF. As code and knowledge is shared between developers various exclusives games have used this approach, notably also Uncharted: Drake's Fortune in 2007.

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune renders at 1280x720 and 2xAA. NAO32 HDR method works on Geforce 6 and Geforce 7 GPU series.

Quote:

I don't know all the exact lighting methods used for Killzone 2 (you do?) which appears to be a mixed usage of HDR and Bloom effects. It's at least clear that it is pretty effective and does the job well:

http://www.guerrilla-games.com/publications/dr_kz2_rsx_dev07.pdf
Page21 notice...
"Allows MSAA with hardware support". (this indicates RSX/G70/G71 no FP16 HDR + AA).

"Limited output precision and dynamic range"
- "Can use different color space (LogLuv)".

Last edited by Hammer on 26-Jan-2009 at 12:56 AM.

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