@BrianK

Quote:

* Unreliable? Inital 360 builds were way above standard failure rates anywhere from 15-30% depending upon which source we'd like to believe or not. Later generations have a much lower rate of failure. It's hard to say if they're above the norm or not because there simply isn't as much time. IMO a 1 year warranty w/ standard failure rates or a 3 year warranty w/ a bit higher then standard failure? Between these two choices the 3 year plan better protects one's investments and as this is an entertainment console I can live for 3 weeks to return didn't really bother me. I guess because gaming isn't my only hobby.

In all fairness, I think it is fair to call the Xbox 360 unreliable. Making the implication that it is a piece of s*** is of course too much, but what else can you expect from the one and only.

But Xbox 360 is unreliable. Neither of mine have broken (nor is the third launch console I know of), but surely the story is clear: Microsoft botched the quality side due to various reasons. I do believe it is better NOW and I'm sure it will continue to get better (and the warranty is good of course), but generally speaking reliability is not one of Xbox 360s strengths.

It has other strengths of course, and it has advanced the market tremendeously (unlike MikeB wants to claim) while a market waiting for PS3 would not have had the HDTV experience it did perhaps for two years (due to no Xbox 360 for the first year and subsequently even more delayed PS3 which might have come out maybe a year later then it did). Xbox 360 also pushed PS3 developers to make more of their systems because the initial comparisons to Xbox 360 games were far from flattering. Not to mention the price wars that have advanced HD gaming too.

You are also correct to point out that the Xbox 1 introduced standard HD drive, which I'm sure Sony has taken pointers from in their own design process for PS3.

But reliable, from a objective, laymans point of view, the Xbox 360 is not. Hopefully it will be more reliable in the longer run, the current indications are promising.

Last edited by jtsiren on 07-May-2008 at 08:10 AM.

@jtsiren

Quote:

In all fairness, I think it is fair to call the Xbox 360 unreliable. Making the implication that it is a piece of s*** is of course too much, but what else can you expect from the one and only.

Figuratively speaking of course and I would say the same about any other mass consumer targeted electronics product which fails way beyond industry standards especially one also targeted at kids. The 360 fails multiple times above industry standards not only due to RRoD (~60%) but multiple time over also due to other hardware issues not even covered by extended warranty (~40%, mostly drive related) and is too sensitive for kids to handle (disc scratching especially in unstable situation, but even in perfectly stable situations like pointing out by investigations), nomatter if it's a washing machine, vacuum cleaner or television set. I think due to being a games console fanboyism clouds many people's perspectives.

If a washing machine damages your cloths, is likely to break down and makes far too much noise compared to other washing machines, it's a good consumer product?

Microsoft may release a more sturdy Blu-Ray equipped (no more disc scratching) 360 version later this year. If it lives up to expectations, I would say the 360 Ultra or whatever it's going to be called would be a good enough consumer electronics product, but this won't change my perspectives on currently and past sold consoles.

I think if both a sturdy product like this as well as an unreliable version would have been available during launch, many wouldn't be wary to admit the unreliable version is a pretty sh*tty mass consumer product.

Last edited by MikeB on 07-May-2008 at 10:40 AM.
Last edited by MikeB on 07-May-2008 at 10:19 AM.

@ Wegster

A Haze demo is available on the Euopean PSN store, IMO it's pretty good.

Killzone 2 finally got a release date, February 2009. It was playable at the European Playstation day event and looks awesome already:

Destructable environments, GIF animations from gameplay by the press:

http://i30.tinypic.com/25a5h5w.gif
http://www.globalstudio.com/cody/killzone-bridge.gif
http://i30.tinypic.com/behw1c.gif

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y247/Wollan/kz1anigif_1.gif
http://i28.tinypic.com/rkub69.gif
http://i27.tinypic.com/6i45xk.gif
http://i29.tinypic.com/148gnd2.gif

Some shots:
http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/article/871/871951/killzone-2-20080506020318399.jpg
http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/article/871/871951/killzone-2-20080506020320680.jpg

I am glad this title is not getting rushed. This is a pre-alpha build, so we can expect a lot more to be added, some things are IMO already well beyond the initial trailer!

Last edited by MikeB on 07-May-2008 at 10:38 AM.

LittleBigPlanet Killzoned:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1dup3pGhRw

@MikeB

Quote:

MikeB wrote: @BrianK A firmware patch may not be really needed as no other games have shown such problems. IMO Rockstar should have done better testing. Quote: Sony divested from the Cell to Toshiba and IBM Sony was part of the initial R&D, but now the basics are now worked out. The PS4 Cell should be higher clocked sporting 2 PPEs and 32 SPEs (some may be disabled to increase yields and thus reduce costs), Sony needs to concentrate on the software and IBM will focuss on cost reducing and advancing the CPU architecture, good progress is being made. BTW, an interesting IEEE award winning research paper has been published online. The Cell's SPEs are especially single (and half) precision code monsters, running one thread per SPE.

Not against "fat" DX10 era GPUs.

Quote:

Although their efficiency drops when creating additional software threads and taking a double precision approach this study demonstrates the Cell can still be multiple times more powerful in such far from ideal situations than other top CPU architectures.

AMD RV670 stream processor also supports double precision FP.

Quote:

This paper researches the performance of several top processors, the Cell in these double precision tests is running 16 threads on 8 SPEs (the PS3 has 7 SPEs in addition to the PPE, one of which one is used for OS functionality running in the background). The study focusses on the Lattice Boltzmann application (LBMHD) "that historically has made poor use of scalar microprocessors due to its complex data structures and memory access patterns." The performance increase per extra SPE unlike for the other CPUs shows a near linear increase in performance: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/%7Esamw/research/papers/ipdps08.pdf

Er, where's the games?

Lattice Boltzmann methods (LBM) is a class of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methods for fluid simulation.

Lattice Boltzmann was ported to CUDA.
http://www.irmb.tu-bs.de/UPLOADS/toelke/Publication/toelked2q9.pdf


Platform LBGKL | LBGK | MRT
Intel Core 2 Duo (2.4 GHz) | 35 | 25 | 23
nVIDIA 8800 Ultra | 670 | 568 | 527


The other fluid dynamics simulation example is Fold@Home.
In this case, Fold@Home GPU2 client and Radeon HD 38x0 murdered CELL in performance.

NV Geforce 8800M has power consumption ~35watts i.e. fits within MXM-III infrastructure.

NV and AMD markets their “fat” GPUs in the HPC floating market.

Last edited by Hammer on 07-May-2008 at 02:36 PM.
Last edited by Hammer on 07-May-2008 at 02:12 PM.
Last edited by Hammer on 07-May-2008 at 12:57 PM.
Last edited by Hammer on 07-May-2008 at 12:42 PM.
Last edited by Hammer on 07-May-2008 at 12:38 PM.

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@Zardoz

Quote:

Zardoz wrote: @MikeB The Xeons seem to be choking on far from ideal memory bandwidth. It would be interesting to see the figures for the 45nm Yorkfield Q9300, sporting DDR3 RAM, instead of 533MHz DDR2 FBDIMMs. Even on DDR2, the memory bandwidth achieved with plain DDR2-1066 RAM vs FBDIMMs makes quite a difference, my Q6600 outperforms an 8-way Xeon with the same core (Kentsfield) in some cases. Quite impressive figures for the Cell, either way, it seems that this test is well suited for SIMD architectures.

Lattice Boltzmann runs well on a certain "scalar" based GPU i.e. nVidia Geforce 8800.

_________________
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@MikeB

Quote:

Of course there are more advanced GPUs available for the PC than the RSX. The RSX however is more powerful than the 360 GPU in RAW specs.

Raw specs means little if the GPU has issues with concurrent pixel and texture operations.

Quote:

The big distinguishing features between PCs and consoles are: A fixed core specification, this allows for better software optimisation for the long run.

So why there is a Intel Core 2 logo on the PC game boxes e.g. UT3, Crysis?

Quote:

Most PC devs have also stated they will be styling their games with the 360/PS3 game consoles in mind. Windows and Direct X are inefficient and waste a lot of potential performance. Even the Crytek devs won't be releasing PC exclusives from now on.

Valve has indicated that console targeted games also benefits the PC. For example, PS3 or X360 game ports runs well on my Geforce 8600M GT based laptop i.e. these ported games limits the runtime foot print.

I only run 2007/2008 games on Radeon HD 3870/Geforce 8800GT based PC if I run the game beyond 720p and running Crysis at max details with runtime foot print greater than 1.5GB of memory usage.

Quote:

Why PCs are becoming less relevant with regard to gaming according to various PC games developers (the most important reasons I think based on interviews):

Only if they are not involved in MMORPG.

Quote:

1) Piracy

Not a big issue with MMORPG. As for piracy i.e. google XBOX 360 or PS3 mod chip torrent.

Quote:

2) Lots of different configurations to take into consideration. 3) Best selling PC games the less demanding games.

Like to see WOW on PS3....Oh wait, according to the creators of WOW, it doesn't fit on PS3.

Games like "Sins of a Solar Empire" scales from low end to high end. "Sins of a Solar Empire" doesn't have copy protection and ranked number 1 in best selling PC game in major markets.

The standalone PC games are competing against MMORPG PC games.

Quote:

4) Windows / Direct X inefficiency.

On the past record in running PS3/X360 ported games, this is not a big issue if the PC is equipped with low-mid-range DX10 GPUs e.g. NV Geforce 8600/9500 or ATI Radeon HD 2600/36x0.

Quote:

5) Many people prefer a more seamless experience (using a HDTV, audio equipment

How about PS3/X360 unit sales vs MCE PC unit sales?

As a desktop PC segment, the MCE PCs are in growth stage.

Quote:

and wireless controller, no hassle to determine if the PC is up to the task to run a game well enough, needing upgrades).

Console ported games will limit PC game foot print.

Console GPU sales wouldn’t sustain NV nor ATI(AMD). Annual PC GPU sales out number console GPU sales.

Last edited by Hammer on 07-May-2008 at 02:39 PM.
Last edited by Hammer on 07-May-2008 at 02:06 PM.

_________________
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Amiga 500 (Rev 6A ECS, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3A+/Emu68)

@jtsiren

Quote:

In all fairness, I think it is fair to call the Xbox 360 unreliable

Short version I agree. I believe my post spells this out as I list failure rates and note the newer versions have improved the rates and it's hard to track those newer gen consoles due to time. And of course because there's few areas that track the console failures by generation.

@MikeB
Quote:

The 360 fails multiple times above industry standards not only due to RRoD (~60%) but multiple time over also due to other hardware issues not even covered by extended warranty (~40%, mostly drive related) and is too sensitive for kids to handle

Here's a recent article tracking failure rates . 16% is the rate of failure and of those 60% were due to RRoD. This works out to ~10% of failures due to RRoD. Sorry but your claim of 60% is 6x too high. Here is a breakdown of the data. The other 40% of failures was not primarily harddrive related. Harddrives comprised about 2% of total failures. DVD problems -- tray and reading comprises about 4% of errors (clearly higher then harddrives), primary DVD issues not harddrive. Videocards issues matched the harddrive rate. So again you claim of 'mostly harddrive related' isn't correct. In addition Xbox 360 harddrive failures are on the low end of observed hdd failures. I agree with your statement -- "I think due to being a games console fanboyism clouds many people's perspectives." -- in fact this was a great example of your statement in action.


@Thread
The launch versions of the 360 are problematic and higher then industry standards. Subsequent versions show a marked improvement, that's the one you'd get now if you went to the store. Around Aug. of this year the newer model, Jasper, will be shipping. It will undoubtably include the fixes to heatsinks and other fixes done last gen and will shrink the GPU die. Most people expect this console to make further strides into reliability. There's no arguing the PS3 is statiscally a more reliable console.

@MikeB

Quote:

I don't agree. Atari ST users at the time would also claim the Amiga wasn't anything special, especially at a time the Atari ST had many better apps as well as better performing games compared to the Amiga ports. A comparison with the PS3 is easily made, the full force Amiga development started with the vision of becoming the top class gaming system of its time

One shouldn’t use Atari ST vs Amiga 500 since both X360 and PS3 has different strengths and weaknesses.

Atari ST’s IGP nearly doesn’t have advantages (e.g. yesteryears Gfx technology) over Amiga’s IGP.

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@MikeB

Sony has backed some of my thoughts on their market situtation out of the gate --
"I think it's fair to say that the first year of PlayStation 3 was somewhat a difficult one," said Hirai at Sony's PlayStation Day in London. "There were some teething problems, success from our competitors, and our customers were a little underwhelmed by the range of titles that were available.

Luckily Hirai agrees their problem is games -
"Ultimately, it's the games that are defining PlayStation, and games that continue to excite all PlayStation and gaming fans alike. " Europe president Revees agree -- “The PS3 is first and foremost a state of the art games machine and this is not better experienced than in our titles for the dedicated gamer"

Unfortunately their next statement was Killzone2 is delayed till after Christmas.

This is confusing. Games are really important to us so we're dedicated to slipping dates after the important Christmas season?

@Hammer

Quote:

Raw specs means little if the GPU has issues with concurrent pixel and texture operations.

Why can't you go into more depth and provide some specific example? In what way is the RSX limited compared to the Xenos?

Quote:

So why there is a Intel Core 2 logo on the PC game boxes e.g. UT3, Crysis?

So this means the PC is fixed hardware and every consumer should be expected to own one specific version of Intel Core 2? Personally I have an AMD powered PC.

Food for thought:

Quote:

Developer Bethesda will release Fallout 3 on the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 this autumn, but the game maker concedes that the complexity of the format; the unclear nature of system specifications, has left the PC lagging behind consoles. "In general I think PC gaming still suffers from the fact that it is one platform, and 10,000 platforms, at the same time," he explained. "The fact that you could get 100 gamers together and every single one has a different PC config, whether it's the hardware they have, or the drivers they have installed for that hardware, is still a problem from a development standpoint and one that has never, really, been solved."

Quote:

"There is something to be said about having a console and having it being able to play anything, and not having to screw around with video settings and stuff."

Quote:

"What do you think of the state of the relationship between PC gaming and console gaming? Is console gaming taking away the PC gamers? I hear a lot of developers say, like you just said, hey, we're console gamers now"

Longtime PC developers turning into console gamers and moving towards consoles with regard to development.

Last edited by MikeB on 07-May-2008 at 03:54 PM.

@BrianK

Like mentioned earlier that 16% failure rate relates to console tracking of only a period of 6-10 months and people may have bypassed this warranty service even, dealing directly with Microsoft instead. So it's not an absolute per year failure rate figure.

To quote the breakdown of non RRoD failures:

* 18% were disc read errors.
• 13% were video card failures.
• 13% were hard drive freezes.
• 10% were power issues.
• 7% were disc tray malfunctions.

The ones highlighted above are hard- and disc drive related problems. One drive related problem not listed above is scratching issues. A certain drive is very prone to disc scratching.

In any case 16% per year would still be 5 times above industry standards.

Last edited by MikeB on 07-May-2008 at 03:56 PM.

@MikeB

Killzone - arggh. Will I buy it when it comes out? Most likely. But..argh. The game was shown when, 2006, and I think it was claimed to be gameplay, not a cut-scene. I'm finding that harder and harder to believe with the time difference involved. I'm not saying it won't be a great game, but certainly a bit disappointed with respect to it's delayed (again?) ship date.

Haze - Cool, I'll keep my eyes open for the Haze demo on the US PSN store, then, and give it a shot. Hopefully single player is long enough to warrant a purchase there, as I'm looking forward to the game, but play more single player than online.

_________________
Are we not done with the same silly arguments and flames yet??!

@MikeB

Quote:

I don't agree. Atari ST users at the time would also claim the Amiga wasn't anything special, especially at a time the Atari ST had many better apps as well as better performing games compared to the Amiga ports. A comparison with the PS3 is easily made, the full force Amiga development started with the vision of becoming the top class gaming system of its time. Much later with the CDTV and CD32 it finally turned into such a dedicated multi-media device and games console (sadly past the technology's prime time). The PS3 already realized this goal (ahead of its time), but like the Amiga IMO the core technology can be improved on and turned into much more for the long run. I see a lot of potential and vision in the Cell architecture. For me it's the most exciting hardware development I have seen in over a decade.

Oh come on, Mike. The Amiga wasn't just a games machine like the PS3. It was a versatile tool that introduced a whole generation of kids to the power of computing. It allowed people like me to do professional looking desktop publishing on a computer that cost a fraction of what the professionals were using. The Amiga was rendering 3D animation for movies... and playing Superfrog.

The PS3 is a pale shadow of that. A whole generation is not learning about computing by installing Linux on PS3.

That world is gone. We didn't have the internet or mobile phones back then. In the new world, kids are learning about programming by modding their MySpace pages, making web-sites and doing other interesting things online. The same goes for artists and musicians. Andy Warhol launched the Amiga, but right now he'd be using a Mac to put stuff on the internet. He wouldn't be slumped on his couch playing Ratchet & Clank on PS3!

The internet is where the excitement of the Amiga is, not in a console that can anti-alias some texture slightly better than another one. Hardly anyone cares about that. It's boring.

You're trying to fit the PS3 into a world-view that is no longer relevant in the 21st century.

Chris

Last edited by clebin on 07-May-2008 at 05:21 PM.
Last edited by clebin on 07-May-2008 at 05:20 PM.

@clebin

Quote:

Oh come on, Mike. The Amiga wasn't just a games machine like the PS3.

The PS3 is a multi-media powerhouse just like the Amiga was. People can explore the hardware and programming for the SPEs using Linux with wireless mouse and keyboard attached. It's not so different as what could be done with the Amiga CD32.

You can ray trace models faster than common PCs can (due to SPE usage by this raytracer). There's a lot of software for available for PS3 Linux, you can use Firefox, OpenOffice.org, GiMP, etc. I just wish an OS like AmigaOS4 or BeOS would have been available for the platform.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1G6HP6bH1w

Last edited by MikeB on 07-May-2008 at 05:31 PM.

@MikeB

Every computer made in the last 10 years can run Linux with Firefox, OpenOffice and the GIMP. How is this interesting?

For 99% of people, a games machine because unlike the Amiga in its day, there are better tools for every other job. The Mac is a better creative machine than the PS3. A £300 laptop is a better internet device than a PS3.

The world has moved on and isn't interested in hacking hardware. The Amiga spirit is out on the internet and you're looking in the wrong place.

Chris

@MikeB

Quote:

Like mentioned earlier that 16% failure rate relates to console tracking of only a period of 6-10 months and people may have bypassed this warranty service even, dealing directly with Microsoft instead

Likely not. The service choose 1000 360s to track closely as a sample set. Read the 2nd link on my post.

Quote:

So it's not an absolute per year failure rate figure.

Of course not. Again refer to the 2nd link on my post. You'll find the troubles spiked in month 3 with subsequent months lower numbers and stablized. But, also, there's no way to realistically get their 16% number up to your claim of 60% RRoD. I think you latched on to the big number here not realizing it was 60% of 16% not 60% of all consoles.

Quote:

To quote the breakdown of non RRoD failures: * 18% were disc read errors. • 13% were hard drive freezes. • 7% were disc tray malfunctions.

Aye! Thanks for your explaination of the rub in your logic. You are lumping harddrives and DVD drives in as 'drives' and giving them the majority. You're certainly right. However, I'd argue that provides little value to the question as it's combining problems. DVD drives on the console 18+7 are more likely to fail then the harddrive 13%. The harddrive # of 2% (again 13% failures in the group of 16% failures) is at the low end of harddrive failures and to be expected.

Quote:

In any case 16% per year would still be 5 times above industry standards

No one is arguing that the 360 isn't above the industry average. But it's not the 60% you make it out to be either. What was that line about fanboy bias again? Hi Pot I'm kettle.

Last edited by BrianK on 07-May-2008 at 07:05 PM.

UK GTA sales...

The Xbox 360 version of Grand Theft Auto IV has sold more than 100,000 copies, or 20%, more than the PLAYSTATION 3 version in the UK since the game’s release last Tuesday, 29th April.

The 360 has sold ~2M in the UK and the PS3 ~1.5M. So the penetration rate for the 360 is lower then the PS3. Not impressive from that point of view.

However, GTA was a Sony console exclusive. It's gone multi-platform and in exchange the new platform, Microsoft, is beating the sales of the original platform, Sony. I think this speaks loudly to developers. Even if the game was once a Sony exclusive they should consider the multi-platform approach and as such will likely be rewarded with more then enough sales and profits to jusify the effort.

As the 360 and PS3 platforms world wide have about the same number of sales it again behoves profits to go multi-platform to reach the most possible users, read sales. And hey if SDTV will do for your game do all 3.

@wegster

Quote:

wegster wrote: @MikeB Killzone - arggh. Will I buy it when it comes out? Most likely. But..argh. The game was shown when, 2006, and I think it was claimed to be gameplay, not a cut-scene.

The first official KZ2 footage was soon at E3 2005 and people were given the impression it was actual gameplay footage, but when people started to say the level of detail shown was way beyond even the PS3, it came out that it was "target renderings" of what they hope to be able to achieve, rather than actual game footage.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=SJOds-R-WVs

Then we get more footage of actual gameplay at E3 2007 showing IMO a very impresive looking game.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=mBGMFLhbvvw

Now we have had more footage showing an even more impresive looking game (the explosions are great) and a release date whch although I am dissapointed with it being pushed back 9 months I feel it will give GG more time to polish it up and make and changes they feel are necessary.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=K6D9NZPp0y4
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=mBGMFLhbvvw

I cant wait

Last edited by Amiboy on 07-May-2008 at 08:32 PM.

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@BrianK

Quote:

The 360 has sold ~2M in the UK and the PS3 ~1.5M. So the penetration rate for the 360 is lower then the PS3. Not impressive from that point of view.

The UK is the 360's by far strongest performing market within Europe and although the PS3 sold quite a bit faster than the 360 did, it's not yet up to that level. Note the 360 had a 1 year and 5 months headstart.

From MCV (3 March 2008) “PlayStation 3 has officially sold one million units at UK retail, hitting the milestone faster than PSOne or PS2."

Sony Computer Entertainment UK boss Ray Maguire:

“Achieving one million PS3 sales faster than both PSOne and PlayStation 2 is even more gratifying considering PS3 is a premium product introduced at a premium price,” he told MCV.”

So within less than a year.

1 April: "Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, Dorian Bloch, director of UK sales monitor Chart-Track, said: "We are very close to clocking through 2 million 360s in the UK. It should be next week"

So after 2 and a half years.

Unless the 360 sold nothing since then and the PS3 sold half a million in a little than 2 months, your hardware ratio is wrong. Relatively GTA IV sold much better on the PS3 for the UK and rumours are it's pushing far more hardware sales since release as well.

Last edited by MikeB on 07-May-2008 at 08:51 PM.