Sony CEO "Can't Imagine" Future of PlayStation

[Eri]

And by "futuristic," you mean "financially disastrous," right?

Apparently, the level of power needed to build a PlayStation 4 would be well over 9000, an unthinkable amount by anyone's measure.

What does that sentence even mean?

Someone's a bit dense or/and out of the loop.

 

[mikecoulter]

Futuristic? We're talking about a console that can at best barely outperform the X360 on a graphical basis.

Hahahahahahaha

Of which parallel universe are you referring?

The amount of extra textures and detail that are able to be loaded on a blu ray disk, by far, and away, out perform the 360 with it's terrible dvd/cd-only drive. Only due to some developers lazy coding do you see small differences in cross platform games.

All that space is useless if the GPU can't effectively render all that data. Let's not forget that the console only has 250MB of video ram. Seriously, do you honestly think that putting loads of texture data onto the blu-ray disk will actually result in better graphics?

Think for a minute here, you can only load 250MB of texture data at any one time, that includes Texture Maps, Normal Maps, Specular Maps, Cube Maps, and any other such textures that modern developers slap onto their models.

Sure, you can have the card swap delete and rewrite data into the memory to account for more texture data, but that takes precious GPU cycles that are already loaded performing vertex and pixel calculations.

As I said, both the 360 and PS3 have their respective strengths and weaknesses, but overall the two consoles aren't that far apart when it comes down to it.

The PS3's GPU is based off of a five year old GeForce 7800 design... Even though the 360's GPU is older, the 360's GPU integrated many of the now standard innovations including unified shader models. Furthermore, the 360 GPU is also capable of using some DirectX 10 features, whereas the PS3's GPU is only capable of rendering DirectX 9.

Furthermore, the 360's GPU is in fact NEWER than the PS3's (in terms of technology used). At the time that the 360's GPU was designed, ATI used their currently unreleased R600 architecture, which spawned the HD2000 / HD3000 series of cards (Which are far more potent than the 7800 series).

Source on the PS3's GPU: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSX_%27Reality_Synthesizer%27
Source on the X360's GPU: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenos_(graphics_chip)

But due to the PS3's cell processor, one of seven virtual cores worth 3.2Ghz can be set aside purely for the graphics. Meaning the dedicated memory doesn't need to be that high as it can scream through the data. I'm not saying the 360 isn't as good at the moment, I have both and don't really mind! But I do believe that in time, the 360's data size limit will be it's achilles heel.

 

[Julianking93]

I was thinking the same a couple days ago.

Just how the hell could they go from the PS3? I can't really think of any way they could improve it in a new system.

 

[Withard]

From Gabe Newell

MCV report reports that Gabe Newell, the founder and managing director of Valve Software, has labelled the PlayStation 3 "a total disaster."

"The PS3 is a total disaster on so many levels, I think It?s really clear that Sony lost track of what customers and what developers wanted," Newell told Game Informer magazine. "I?d say, even at this late date, they should just cancel it and do a ?do over?. Just say, ?This was a horrible disaster and we?re sorry and we?re going to stop selling this and stop trying to convince people to develop for it.?"

 

[Pendragon9]

With many good exclusives, I see the Ps3 having a decent future.

It isn't the best, but damnit all, it's good enough to keep afloat.

 

[theironbat46]

The article ninjaed me to an over 9000 joke.

 

[Dexiro]

Whatever the hardware's like, the PS3 is getting tons of awesome games recently ;D

It'll last a good 3-4 more years hopefully but noone can say where the game industry is heading next. For all we know there could be a big VR craze in the next few years and Sony will end up in a race to develop that instead.

 

[goldenheart323]

Anyone else notice how he never said they wouldn't release the PS4 before the PS3 turns 10? Sony still sells the PS2. Just because they release their next gen model doesn't mean the previous one dies.

"When somebody can craft the technology that exceeds what we're able to do on the PS3, but we are still just starting to harness it."

I never understood how a company can build a device yet not know how to take full advantage of its abilities or even know the full limit of its abilities. That was true even back in the 16-bit era. Both the SNES and Genesis, late in their lives, had games where the dev's figured out some cool way to get even better results from the machines. (i.e. Donkey Kong Country's impressive graphics on the SNES, 1 of the Sonic games with 2 player split screen but both players' screens were at full resolution, but compressed into half the screen. Also, Eternal Champions for the Sega CD was the only game to use a trick to get the Genesis to show more colors onscreen than is normally possible.)

 

[jamesworkshop]

Anyone else notice how he never said they wouldn't release the PS4 before the PS3 turns 10? Sony still sells the PS2. Just because they release their next gen model doesn't mean the previous one dies.

"When somebody can craft the technology that exceeds what we're able to do on the PS3, but we are still just starting to harness it."

I never understood how a company can build a device yet not know how to take full advantage of its abilities or even know the full limit of its abilities. That was true even back in the 16-bit era. Both the SNES and Genesis, late in their lives, had games where the dev's figured out some cool way to get even better results from the machines. (i.e. Donkey Kong Country's impressive graphics on the SNES, 1 of the Sonic games with 2 player split screen but both players' screens were at full resolution, but compressed into half the screen. Also, Eternal Champions for the Sega CD was the only game to use a trick to get the Genesis to show more colors onscreen than is normally possible.)

watch an amiga scene demo to see how much clever programers can squeeze out of a 7Mhz cpu
certainly more than the creators would have ever thought possible

untapped potential can be useful but unfortunatly to make something perfectly optimised you would have to never release it because you would never be finished, which i think its the strategy GT5 is taking.

I don't think anyone is going to tap out the ps3 for another 20 years but the tech won't be appearing in games because extreme optimization is still beaten by hardware advancements

 

[Brnin8]

I think that this guy needs to get back on his meds...
In seven more years that thing will having the gaming output that a Lenovo Thinkpad has now!

 

[Vapus]

Well they may not want to do a new console for another 7 years,, but i can pretty much guarantee NO ONES Ps3 will last that long with regular use.. So .. they clearly want to sell everyone a Second or third Ps3 During this Current gen.. What an absolute failure .

Im not really a hater of consoles quite yet.. but as PC tech continues to move forward, all this will do is Hold games back.. a lot.. And I cant think of any hardcore gamer {pc 360 or otherwise} that would be happy about this.