Understanding Sony's philosophy on the PS3

[Merciless.Fire]

Okay, to answer some questions highlighted by people actually reading the original post...

-Sony has jumped the gun on the HD revolution, this is very true. But you need a company to push new technology forward in order for it to become a more viable and useful product in the market. Take Apple, before the iPod, MP3s were a relatively unknown and expensive means of playing music. Pretty much everyone had a CD player, but Apple took the MP3 and gave it a new look and usefulness to the consumer, at a high price AT FIRST. People started to realize the usefulness of carrying hundreds of CDs in the confines of a machine that fits in your pocket, and demand skyrocketed into the empire that is the iPod.

-The VHS-Betamax comparison to the DVD-Blu-Ray doesn't have much merit, as the two aren't REALLY similar, unlike how the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray were. There is a big jump in quality, not just in display, but sound as well. People don't want to buy Blu-Ray NOW because most people aren't too picky on those subjects, but when the price lowers significantly and get their hands on HDTVs, which will happen, Blu-Ray will take hold.

-As for the GPU/CPU comparisons, I admit to not knowing the extent of these for the Playstation 3, and I thank you for letting me know about this, real helpful. It does alter the graphics bit a tad, but it still shows the potential power that consoles can achieve.

 

[jemborg]

What Eggo says in regards to the architecture of the PS3 and programming for it is quite correct

Spoiler: click here to see his post

Please play Killzone 2. Or at least the demo. Maybe with some good surround sound at max. And a nice telly to play on, preferably 1080p or such. Or maybe just hook it up to your PC, you PC nerd you. Play it on a different language though, maybe Dutch, the voice acting is so bad it's hilarious.

Dated technology doesn't mean you can't squeeze some more juice out of it. Or more ragdoll physics. Or maybe some particle physics [http://ps3.ign.com/dor/objects/748475/killzone-next-gen/videos/killzone_omzet_part1.html] or something.

I never said Killzone 2 doesn't look decent. But dated technology does mean you have to spend quite a bit more money, time, and effort, all things especially precious considering contemporary market conditions, in producing games which will be competitive and successful. That's a big reason why the PS3 is dead last in the console race, despite all the big exclusives that were supposed to save it which came out this year, and also why Sony has recently posted their first loss in 14 years.

When you're dealing with an SDK and platform which essentially requires you to reinvent the wheel just to get everything running compared to the two other platforms a major company is developing a blockbuster for (the Xbox 360 and the PC platform). Hell, even looking at the Wii, there isn't much of an issue since the platform has been around for so damn long. And you can typically print money with it.

By the way, when you put your CPU in front of your GPU, you lose. And you double lose, when your CPU is weirdly overpowered, extremely expensive, and essentially useless for gaming. It's great for marketing to talk about how awesome the Cell processor is, but marketing won't get you far when you have the most expensive console on the market at the moment.

That people don't understand the ramifications of this is worrying. Although, it's a little bit more worrying that Sony doesn't seem to understand this either. They should just give me a lot of money to help develop their next platform.

In the interests of fair play, here is a comprehensive overview of the Cell family. Now, it casts the CPUs in a pretty optimistic light ok?

http://www.simbiosys.ca/science/white_papers/eHiTS_on_the_Cell.pdf

Pay particular attention to where "Programming Differences" are discussed and seen as a downside however. Traditional code optimization is seen as unsuitable and new methods have to be found. "The PPE and the SPE are not binary compatible. The code needs to be compiled with a different
compiler to generate code fragments that run on the SPE. Simple posix threads cannot be scheduled by the OS to run on the SPE." Note the lack of branch prediction hardware and other stuff.

In contrast, Jon Stokes claims "the 360 is by all accounts a dream to develop for" http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news/2008/09/game-console-architecture-in-depth.ars and "there will never be a game that truly taps the "full potential" of the Cell BE, because that full potential can only be tapped by certain types of data-parallel HPC workloads. The data-parallel portion of a game will always be better suited to the PS3's NVIDIA-designed GPU." http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2007/02/8896.ars There are some pretty good links to follow on these pages too.

However, a positive account of programming the Cell can seen here... http://www.simbiosys.ca/blog/2008/05/03/the-fast-and-the-furious-compare-cellbe-gpu-and-fpga Still it's stated "The effort required for FPGA is far more significant (several orders of magnitude) because the code has to be taken down way beyond the assembly coding level, all the way to the micro electronics gate logic level."

The Cell and the 360's modded Xenon are based architecturally off PowerPC cpus. Yes, the Xenon and Cell are part of the same RISC family of IBM's CPUs- which puts paid to the idea it's just simply usual PC tech. But the Cell is not a true multicore processor, it only has one PPE the 360's cpu has three. The trend in game programming is towards multi-core CPUs. Say what you like about M$ but they did recognize this.

The mantra that the 360 has reached it's programming limits are pure PS3 fanboy dreaming. No matter how many times you repeat it. Play GeOW2 and you will see that. The same logic dealing with code optimisation development applies to both machines. The PS3 is a quite good machine just not as fantastic as the hype suggests.

A note on build quality. The "PS3 blu-ray drive dead" advice thread over at AfterDawn has hit over 500, going for 7 months now and not slowing http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/20/672905#4513268. PS3's are coming in at half the rate of X360's into GameFix now and sharply climbing. The 360 rate is falling. The opinion there is that BOTH consoles are crap build-wise.

My own personal perspective is that if it was left to $ony and the Playstation we could say goodbye completely to independent development houses who might save us from an endless cavalcade of sequels. So go competition!!

Meanwhile, I think I'll just upgrade the gfx card in my pwning BluRay HTS PC, cos I want to game in true high anti-aliased 1080p NOW.

 

[Uncompetative]

It's typical Japanese business strategy. Dump high quality, hi-tec stuff at a loss to grab market share, then make the profit through gradual improvements.

I'm a pc gamer who believes in buying consoles towards the end of their life, because that's when the best game collections for them are all out, and the consoles themselves cost next to nothing.

The first balanced and rational opinion in this thread so far.

 

[Hippopotamus]

I understand the arguments, but at the same time, it all seems like meaning-less rants.

I use my PS3 a bit more often than my regular PC now because, after Linux installed, the PS3 is a *PC*. Even without Linux, I can still go to most of my websites, check my news, listen to some tunes, show people my pics, all in a less cluttered, less cable, 400-watt speakered *console*.

After you install Yellow Dog Linux (the *Official* PS3 flavor of Linux), or Ubuntu, or Mandriva, or *insert Linux distro here*, congratulations, you now have another PC. You get Firefox and Open Office out of the box, which is what 95% of most PC users use their PC's for. And you can do most things people do on Linux anyway.

As for the upgrading the equipment argument, it's been done so many times. Some people like, and can afford, the option of constantly upgrading, installing, and troubleshooting new components. And there are some people who build a PC once, and keep it because it can still run all the new games on high.

For the most part, the PS3 can be summed up as a Game Console that can multi-role as a DVD/Blue-ray player, home theater system, and Linux PC. Pretty much all the same as a regular PC, just no MS Windows OS.

 

[Kikosemmek]

Since I've used all three members of this console generation, I'll give the OP the reasons why I believe the 360 is the best console, keeping in mind that we're viewing this from a gaming perspective:

The Xbox 360, as far as I'm concerned, can match the eye-candy provided by the PS3 as it does support 1080p resolution out of the box. It can play DVD's, music and stream HD (yes, 1080p) movies through an integrated Netflix account. It has a much larger and more appealing line-up of games backing it up, as well as the most intuitive interface. The last point is subjective but let me put it this way: it is the only console where most game updates take only up to 20 seconds to download and install, and custom music soundtracks are supported for every game and can be played while doing anything on the console. It's capable, fast, and easy.

What exactly does the PS3 offer that the Xbox doesn't? A blu-ray player. To be honest, this is marginal to a gaming platform, and since I have a Netflix account (for which I only pay $8.99 a month) I can stream any movie I feel like watching, at any moment, in full HD without paying $300 for a blu-ray player, or renting/buying a disc. Sony might think of the PS3 as a multimedia center, but I don't. It's far easier for me to check the internet and play music through my computer. As far as I'm concerned, it's a gaming platform and it's outdone by the Xbox 360. Your point about developers needing time to adapt to the new consoles is valid, but keep in mind that we're 3 years into this generation. In a few months we'll be just about at half-way.

 

[social_outcast]

My biggest pet-peeve with the ps3 is the whole focus on multi-core;
until concurrent cpu thread multiplexing becomes implicit (something which it isn't now I might add), its pointless to have more than two processors (one for core transformations and one lesser one for asynchronous details such as post-process effects). You can talk about parralell proccessing, sure, but in a game - where everything accesses the same shared area of memory - race conditions and data inconsistencies are going to make your life a misery (and make the programmer wish he was never born by extension).
That being said, I have similar irritations with quad/oct/etc-core PC cpus, so Im not lashing out at Sony Specifically with this one.

 

[D_987]

All that theoretical power won't help Sony out of its gigantic money pit though. Why is it so hard to accept that they've made a huge mistake in backing the wrong architecture horse?

Sounds like a severe case of fanboyism to me.

 

[Jumplion]

All that theoretical power won't help Sony out of its gigantic money pit though. Why is it so hard to accept that they've made a huge mistake in backing the wrong architecture horse?

Sounds like a severe case of fanboyism to me.

It took you guys this long to find out?

 

[D_987]

It took you guys this long to find out?

All good medical shows increase atmosphere by spending a long time analyzing the patients symptoms before issuing a statement.

 

[Simalacrum]

Its a good summary of the PS3, but I don't know why its been posted - this is all pretty standard knowledge.

oh i dunno, i never took into account the timing of Blu-ray popularity when considering why the PS3 was doing badly...

ah wells, besides, i reckon the Blu-Ray revolution won't happen - everything going digital, people will be downloading movies and such soon, physical disks seem to be becoming... irrelevent.

still, i think i slightly understand why Sony seem so thick-headidly confident right now...

 

[Bowstring]

All that theoretical power won't help Sony out of its gigantic money pit though. Why is it so hard to accept that they've made a huge mistake in backing the wrong architecture horse?

Sounds like a severe case of fanboyism to me.

Yeah... He's being like... Totally fanboyish and stuff.

You totally just owned him right there.

 

[Jumplion]

It took you guys this long to find out?

All good medical shows increase atmosphere by spending a long time analyzing the patients symptoms before issuing a statement.

Touche.

 

[D_987]

All that theoretical power won't help Sony out of its gigantic money pit though. Why is it so hard to accept that they've made a huge mistake in backing the wrong architecture horse?

Sounds like a severe case of fanboyism to me.

Yeah... He's being like... Totally fanboyish and stuff.

You totally just owned him right there.

Well, what else could I have said?

"Your spirit in defending a faceless company in the face of such overwhelming evidence to the contrary is inspiring"?

 

[Bowstring]

All that theoretical power won't help Sony out of its gigantic money pit though. Why is it so hard to accept that they've made a huge mistake in backing the wrong architecture horse?

Sounds like a severe case of fanboyism to me.

Yeah... He's being like... Totally fanboyish and stuff.

You totally just owned him right there.

Well, what else could I have said?

"Your spirit in defending a faceless company in the face of such overwhelming evidence to the contrary is inspiring"?

Well... I would have preferred that. It's way more poetic. You should also mention the fact that his eyes are like glistened pearls, beyond a bed of endless ocean.

C'mon. Mix it up a little.

 

[Merciless.Fire]

I want to address the points that people have been making about the digital downloading revolution:

-I don't believe downloading movies, especially HD movies, are going to be of any REAL threat to physical discs. First off, bandwidth in the US is horrible, you'd be lucky to find anything near acceptable to downloading movies of those sizes, even Japan would have a tough time. Plus, having a physical copy eliminates need to worry about crashes in your system. Take insurance companies, most are now filing records digitally now, but they still use paper. Why? It's a reliable backup to data crashes that can happen.

The 360 is banking a portion of their success on the growing market of digital downloading, and for the most part, people are thinking that it's going to be a huge success, but if millions of people start streaming HD video through their 360s, bandwidth will decrease more and more until its impossible to do it in a reasonable space of time. Physical discs will stay around, and digital downloading will only be a compliment to it.

 

[Jumplion]

I've always preferred a physical collection and it always means I'll always have it until it wears out instead of a random hardware crash.