Sony finally starts to really advertise:

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2007/10/31/new-ps3-tv-ad-campaign

@Tomas

The Uncharted demo is coming on the 8th of November!

@BrianK

Depends a little on how you look at it, so far I have bought more PS2 as well as PSN PS3 games for my PS3 than retail PS3 games (but even I am above average with regard to retail purshases as well. Many of them are really cheap and great of good value (I am still looking for Okami (PS2) and plan on buying Everyday Shooter, Snakeball and a few upgrade packs for the short term).

Of course some people may be buying the PS3 primarily as a Blu-Ray player, maybe only planning on buying a few of the major PS3 blockbusters a year. But naturally game attach ratios will increase in course of time, as early adopters will take their time to built up their games library.

@Samwel

The 360 seems to be jiving to your more of a games unit then the PS3. Recently in the US the numbers of games sold per console provide these ratios:

Wii: 3.4 games per console
PS3: 3.6 games per console
360: 6.6 games per console

Translated another way
Wii: 4.5M consoles w/ 15.5M games
PS3: 1.9M consoles w/ 6.8M games
360: 6.8M consoles w/ 44.8M games

If you're a company making current gen games the 360 should be your target in the US. It has a larger audience who is more willing to spend money. The chances your game will sell well are favored by a 360 choice.

Also UT3 seems to be shaping up well,

Epic's Mark Rein:

"I was playing the PS3 build for a few hours tonight and it is really, really fantastic...　amazingly smooth and solid. I think you PS3 users are in for a huge treat with UT3"

They got some help from Sony recently, so they will be making use of the Cell's SPUs unlike what will probably be the case with regard to Half-Life 2 the Orange Box.

"With the PS3, we can’t exactly say what power cap we reached, since no developer really knows where the boundary is for the PS3. We can tell you that in terms of the whole game together on the PS3, we are not even using the SPU’s and it is purely built on the graphics card and Cell. We’re still optimizing for PS3 more because we can, which can explain the slight delay to you. But no worries, everything is going smoothly to put down any rumors"

@Samwel

If you are a online FPS fan, Resistance and Warhawk are most excellent! But of the two only resistance has a single player campaign.

The last couple of months I have been playing Oblivion almost exclusively, I am at level 19 currently and still have quests to make! If you like action RPGs and value lastability it's a very good game.

@Tomas

Yes, Gran Turismo 5 prologue is available, but you will need to create a Japanese account to download it.

User video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByfJZEj-yOE

Some 720p screenshots and videos here, note the game is 1080p / 60 FPS natively, so the quality is downscaled compared to maximum results:

http://www.gamersyde.com/news_5372_en.html

Last edited by MikeB on 01-Nov-2007 at 01:25 PM.
Last edited by MikeB on 01-Nov-2007 at 01:25 PM.

@MikeB
Is gran turismo prologue out yet? Because i only found the trailers...

Last edited by Tomas on 01-Nov-2007 at 02:35 AM.

@MikeB

Ratchet and Clank seems to be a great game. Alot of fun, nice graphics and good sound.
I have played the demo to the end a couple of times now.

SuperStardust is also nice, if you like the game type. Everything is smooth and nice. Quite
alot of fun aswell. Even for me that doesn't like shoot'em up's.

Motorstorm just had me amazed first time I saw it. The graphics is just... well amazing!
The sound could have been better though.

Heavenly Sword is also.. How should I put it.. Amazing!

Grand Tourismo HD Concept is also good.

Virtual Tennis 3 is a great game. Not that it's pushing the graphics and sound barriers or
anything like that.. Just basically a great game. IMO

I have bought NHL'08 because I'm quite the hockey fan.
Virtual Tennis 3, F1 Championship, MotorStorm, and Resistance is in the mail. I got them
all on discount.

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@Tomas

Ratchet & Clank, Heavenly Sword and Motorstorm demos show some of the potential. An Uncharted demo is expected soon. Not technically impressive but good fun is the Simpsons demo. Gran Turismo 5 Prologue is also worth checking out!

RR7 was made with 1080p in mind, but didn't yet tap into much of the PS3's potential yet like many other early games. Things are about to change though, Uncharted already taps into about 30% of the Cell's potential, Ratchet probably pushes the hardware just as hard if not more:

Also worth checking out on the PSN:

Super Stardust HD!!!

"We are able to get over 10,000 active objects with physics and collisions and over 75,000 particles simulated and drawn @60fps. That said, we were unable to use all the available processing power from Cell for this game, so for the next game there are still plenty of reserves left"

Source: IGN

Worth keeping an eye on for the short term:

Uncharted

"The PlayStation 3 has a lot of power. When we started Uncharted we were really ambitious and had no idea what the PS3 would give us. Once we got the first devkits, we realized quickly that we could do everything we had planned to. The three main points for me are the Cell, Blu-Ray and the hard drive. We’ve been using the Cell for pretty much all our systems: rendering, particles, physics simulation, collision detection, animation, AI, decompression, water simulation, etc … and to give you an idea of the power of the PS3, we're using only 30 percent of the Cell processor.

In terms of Blu-Ray, we just couldn’t have made Uncharted without it; with Uncharted we have almost filled it (91 percent). We're also using the hard drive to pre-cache data from the Blu-Ray disc. That allows us to stream up to 12 streams for sound, load level data super fast and more importantly to stream textures constantly to guarantee high-res quality on the screen. "

Source: Ars Technica


Ratchet and Clank Future: TOD

"We are continuing to build our Insomniac Engine and have made many improvements to it since Resistance: Fall of Man. The one huge focus for us has been moving more of our processes over to the SPUs on the CELL processor. This has allowed us to get our physics and effects systems running roughly four times faster than it did in Resistance at nearly double the framerate, which is something you can see in weapons like the Tornado Launcher."

Source: The New Zealand Herald

Killzone 2

"We've created our own proprietary technology to drive the game, and this is using many of PS3's specific strengths.Large quantities of data can be streamed because we have a great deal of storage capacity. This allows for the level of detail you can see in the game.

It is not a luxury to have Blu-ray, but rather a necessity, as compression only gets you so far. I mean, the level that we showed at E3 and Leipzig topped out around 2GB! Also having the CELL and SPUs means we can offload all of our physics processing to an SPU, or process AI using the SPU's. All this processing power just means we can add more detail and create that Hollywood-type realism we're after."

Source: GamePro.com

Later games like Final Fantasy XIII, Gran Turismo 5 and Metal Gear Solid will be 1080p native but should look good downscaled on lesser TV sets as well.

Last edited by MikeB on 31-Oct-2007 at 08:26 PM.

Just got my hands on the ps3 40 gig version and have been playing it for a couple of hours now. I have so far tested out ridge racer 7 + a few demos.. I find that the graphics of RR7 is noticable worse than the RR6 version on xbox 360. It does not seem to have as smooth frame rate, the jaggies are very visible and textures in the distance seems undetailed. I also tried the dirt demo, which on the other hand looked nearly identical, with the exception of maybe some jaggies extra and a bit better frame rate than the xbox 360 version.

Can anyone recommend a game demo that really shows of this machines capabilities?

@BrianK

I couldn't find any real proof of it either. Other than a couple of (well?) informed
people on a swedish forum that said PS3 does output 36/48bit according to 1.3
specs. But it seems no one has done actual tests!?!

Sound is as you said.. TrueHD 5.1/7.1 converted to LPCM 5.1/7.1. Dolby Digital and
DTS fully supported including bitstream. DTS-HD not supported at all. This means
no bitstream of TrueHD or DTS-HD but SD sound and PCM works with bitstream.
This is ok for now. Most Blu-ray movies have 5.1 PCM as the best quality sound.

Some (again well?) informed person said Sony is looking into adding DTS-HD
decoding. But bitstream of the HD formats is not planned yet according to him.
This could all be BS of course. It sounds likely though.

In-game music is nothing for me. But I guess some people like it. All features
possible should be added IMO.

Last edited by Samwel on 30-Oct-2007 at 11:12 PM.

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@Samwel

I've been searching for the change to 48bit. It seems v1.3 is the candidate where the console's video was redone and updated to include the option. I haven't found anyone verifying either just Sony's advertising.

While searching I came across 'rumors' for V2.00 of the PS3. It seems XMB and music in-game will be included. I hope so, it's such a nice thing on the 360 to not have to listen to the in-game music. The soundtrack I choose is always better for me.

@BrianK

According to Sony, the PS3 does indeed support full 36/48bit output.

press release for the 40GB model

Took this part from the specs in the bottom..
Quote:

*3 "Deep Color" and "x.v.Color (xvYCC)" defined by HDMI ver1.3a are supported.

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@BrianK

I think you can disprove the 16bit output just by displaying a Blu-ray movie.
You would notice 16bit compared to 24bit easily.

But 48bit is, as you say, very hard to prove.. The only way is to ask Sony about this IMO.
Maybe a future firmware can fix this if missing? I can't believe there would be some
hardware limitation.

I will try to get hold of a movie with TrueHD.. Thanks for the info.

Yes indeed, most people choose portability over quality.

Regarding SACD I'm not sure.. Many DVD players handle 2ch SACD over HDMI without
problem but then choke on multi channel. I don't think this has to do with bandwidth but
rather DRM. For example on my Pioneer DVD player does DVD-Audio 5.1 and SACD 2ch
through HDMI. SACD 5.1 is not possible.
I read on a forum somewhere that this had to do with some DRM problem. I think
Sony/Philips didn't want to release it fully. But I'm guessing on this.

The manual says if digital output is prefered choose bitstream (for both HDMI & optical).
But there's also a warning saying that all audio may not be outputed if chosen.
No detailed info on what audio would be missed though.
EDIT: This last part is regarding the PS3

Last edited by Samwel on 30-Oct-2007 at 04:32 PM.

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@Samwel
Looking for Deep Color and PS3. What I found is that 'when released' 16 bit color output was measured not 48bit even with 48bit content. Last winter after the test there were fixes to HDMI so perhaps this was updated. Deep Color sources are few and far between there's not that many videocamera's available that can do 1080p 48bit depth. Perhaps we'll see more in a few years, of course by that time the 8th gen Microsoft console will be near and likely will take advantage of the most current HDMI setting. Good that the new consoles can be patched. But, this seems to mean early adopters get the hype and wait for the features instead of companies rolling out a completed solution.

Instead of RGB the color space is xvYCC

Last edited by BrianK on 30-Oct-2007 at 04:09 PM.

@MikeB

I think you're wrong about this..

I believe FULL RGB means using 0-255 color scales instead of the normal movie mode
of 16-235. The manual actually explains this.
It does actually only prove that PS3 outputs atleast 24bit. 48bit would be hard to prove
or disprove. I have no equipment supporting this to test with.

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@BrianK

Quote:

When the PS3 was released the color depth output on Blu-Ray was measured to be a 16bit color depth

Your PS3 should support this.

What you need. A cable supporting HDMI 1.3, a TV set supporting 48-bit color depth, 48-bit color depth content and enable the Full Range HDMI option in the XMB.

@Samwel

Quote:

What do you mean, doesn't PS3 support 48bit output?

When the PS3 was released the color depth output on Blu-Ray was measured to be a 16bit color depth. 24bit depths are allowed by HDMI v1.2. Up to 48bit depth, advertising lingo is 'Deep Color' is allowed by HDMI v1.3. Supposedly the PS3 is incapable of hitting the full 48bith color depth. This is obviously hard to test right now as movies with that depth are few and far between. Likely there won't be any games with this sort of depth.

I believe Fox Blu-Ray has TrueHD. So next time you're at a rental store look out for that logo and rent something w/ TrueHD and give it a try.

Quote:

iPod is nothing compared to real HQ audio, quality wise IMO. But both these formats where bound to loose. Ordinary people don't need these HQ audio formats. Also you'll need quite advanced equipment to get the best out them.

I agree the iPod is nothing compared to HQ audio. However, the consumer base appears to be willing to trade quality for portability. The PS3 can play SACDs but it 'breaks' the SACD format in so far as the multichannel analog connectors are missing. Supposedly the HDMI connector doesn't have enough bandwidth to do a full on SACD support. So there's conversion of the signal again. It's a heavy bugger reports are 5 SPEs for decryption and 2 SPEs for conversion to PCM.

Setting up the 360 is fairly easy for media extender capabilities. Especially with VISTA. Also one thing I find is a plus for the 360 is the ability to play my own music in games. I don't believe the PS3 will stream music from a PC removing the game music. I haven't tried it in a while so perhaps they've fixed it. Definitely a plus for the 360 to allow me to choose whatever soundtrack I want for the game.

@BrianK

Quote:

v1.3 can output a 48bit videostream. v1.1 does 24bit video. If Sony's going to advertise HDMI 1.3 then it darn well better be able to do ALL of options video and audio. If a TV can't do 48bit video the last 24bits are ignored.

Ahh yes, forgot about the 48bit extension of 1.3.
Of course, I fully agree with you.. What do you mean, doesn't PS3 support 48bit
output?

Quote:

LPCM is of course decoded. As of 1.93 the PS3 takes TrueHD and converts to 640kbps DD bitstream. But this is easy to test yourself. If your receiver or TV are not TrueHD bitstream compliant then set the PS3 to output in bitstream and you get sound then obviously it's not doing a TrueHD bitstream. If your receiver can do TrueHD bitstream you should get the TrueHD indicator light when playing back content.

I have no TrueHD streams to test. But I believe you on that. LPCM is of course
decoded.

I have no possibility to do a HD bitstream test at the moment. Would have been
nice to do though.

Quote:

The problem I see with the 360 is the dual drive arrangement. But, on the plus side if Blu-Ray wins then an add-on Blu-Ray drive could be made. If HD DVD wins then the PS3 owner will be out of luck or at best end up moving to a dual drive add-on. In SACD vs DVD-A war the winner was argueably the iPod. It well may be Blu-Ray and HD DVD lose out to internet HD distribution.

Yes, the dual drive arrangement is one big nono for me. I don't like that for consoles
or stuff I'm putting next to my home theater equipment.

I can't truly see how Blu-ray can loose.. But then again I'm not sure any of the formats
are going to win (like the SACD/DVD-A situation but not as bad) either.

iPod is nothing compared to real HQ audio, quality wise IMO. But both these formats
where bound to loose. Ordinary people don't need these HQ audio formats. Also
you'll need quite advanced equipment to get the best out them.

Quote:

The 360 supports media streaming. The trade-off is only from Microsoft OSes. PS3 can stream from non-MS or MS OSes. The 360 is the first certified VISTA Media Extender, it can stream from XP too. Streaming is of course good because us with media frequently want it on a system with a RAID device so when the harddrives fail we have some redundancy built in. Restoring from backups always sucks. Speaking of Media Centers there's the AppleTV. Either the 360 or PS3 beats that device, IMO, because of the built in DVD drive and the gaming availability.

I'll have to try this. Not being compatible with other OSes is nothing I see as a
problem for 360. Most people use Windows.

I don't use RAID. I don't even make backup's Maybe I'm living on the edge?

I agree about AppleTV.

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