New PS3 details emerge...

[mkreku]

I thought I heard someone on this forum mention a quote from a developer stating how murderous it was to develop a game for a cell phone.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

That was me! That was me!! I am famous!

 

(And yes, it is true. You could also ask Loof about it since he's taking the same course as I am so he must have been to that lecture too.)

[EnderAndrew]

I thought most cell phone games were just programmed in Java.

[mkreku]

I thought most cell phone games were just programmed in Java.

Yup. And for some reason, people still believe Java is platform independent.

 

Like I said in the other thread: 3 weeks to code the game, 3 months to make sure it works on 800 different phones..

[Loof]

Don't forget that they don't usualy HAVE the 800phones so they just test on a few from each series and hope for the best.

 

Now I know at least one type of gameing job im going to do my best to avoid when I graduate...

[EnderAndrew]

Java was going to be platform independent until someone started screwing it up.

[Loof]

Well all platform independence is relative, you will never get EXACTLY the same behaivior from two different interpretators. So the question is realy where do we draw the line for what is platform independent and what isn't? Is the question even worth asking? *shrugs*

[Guest GroinOfDespair]

Well, with Microsith taking over the known universe, every platform will be the same and then we can come to learn to love the bomb.

 

Happy happy joy joy.

[alanschu]

I was kind of waiting for Epiphany's response.

 

I had a really good second punch waiting

 

Oh well.

 

 

Bold prediction, Sony for teh win based on the games they have. Of course it's always easy voting for the defending champion

[EnderAndrew]

Epiphany is a cut-and-paste poster, admittedly so.

 

He finds the opinions of other people, posts them here, and stands by them fervently. I don't expect to get much new from him until he sees a new article or post on another forum that he can throw at us.

 

Epiphany did turn out to be half-right on something though. He was adamant that XBox 360 would get HD-DVD drives. He also suggested all XBox 360's would. Not all of them will, but Bill Gates did announce the 360's shipping later in Japan would have the HD-DVD drive. I imagine later 360 units in the US will as well. But in Japan there are more HDTVs, so I imagine the feature is more important there.

[Cantousent]

[moderator voice]I would appreciate it if we could keep from personal attacks. Address the issue and not the posters, if you please.[/moderator voice]

 

Now, I have a question regarding the "powerful hardware" concept. Is processing and graphics speed the only thing that makes for performance. The way it looks on paper, the PS3 is simply superior from a hardware standpoint. I don't care about which has better games. I want to know what factors will make one better than the other. These factors include hardware reliability. A better machine isn't better if it breaks down every two months. What about optical sound for surround sound? What about better picture for DVDs? What about storage capacity? Some of these things I can gather on my own. Some of them I simply don't understand very well.

[EnderAndrew]

I don't believe commenting on a posting style is necessarily an attack.

 

As far as your questions go, let me address them one by one.

 

Launch consoles are rarely champions of reliability. The PS2 is famous for shoddy DVD drives and deservedly so, but the early Thompson DVD drives in the XBox are pretty bad as well. After a good cleaning my PS2 drive works, and is older than my XBox. However my XBox DVD drive is still working horribly after a good cleaning. These guys will look for ways to cut back on hardware costs and I don't know that you can expect quality in specific components from either one.

 

As far as optical surround, both support it and should quite well. Yet some feel they both step backwards a bit in sound, but having the sound go through the CPU rather than a dedicated audio chip. I don't know if the PS2 had a dedicated audio chip though I assume it did. I know the XBox did. Sony and M$ claim the PS3 and 360 have CPU processes to spare, and thusly audio processing

 

As far as DVD quality, the PS3 gets my vote with the Blu-Ray DVD drive.

 

The 360 and PS3 are both currently slated for 20 gig HDDs, with removable HDD bays. Many expect larger HDD options for both consoles. Epiphany seems convinced Sony will scrap the HDD, and simply make it optional, but they haven't said anything to actually suggest that.

[alanschu]

I don't follow the consoles too closely, but I usually still check on people's claims.

 

If someone came in hyping up how r0x0r the PS3 was going to be, then I'd point out its shortcomings as well.

[EnderAndrew]

The shortcomings of the PS3 is that the architecture is extremely different to program for. There are developer kits and APIs to make programming for the PS3 easier, but we don't have finished games in our hands to see how that will work out.

 

I should have also mentioned in my previous post that the PS3 can put out a 1080p image, in fact it can put out two different 1080p pictures if you have two high-end displays.

[Loof]

Ender are you sure about ps3 gettinga HDD as default? I thought I read that it was an optional upgrade for the ps3, as I remembered it the reviewer said something along the lines of it being the only thing sony was skimping on. Is this info in error or am I simply imagining that i read that?

[EnderAndrew]

I thought it was optional as well, but Sony's official specs say 20 gig HDD.

[Meshugger]

The shortcomings of the PS3 is that the architecture is extremely different to program for.  There are developer kits and APIs to make programming for the PS3 easier, but we don't have finished games in our hands to see how that will work out.

 

I should have also mentioned in my previous post that the PS3 can put out a 1080p image, in fact it can put out two different 1080p pictures if you have two high-end displays.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Didn't Sony acquire OpenGL and nVidia's CG-language in order to make it a bit easier to program the PS3?

[alanschu]

Do you need to acquire OpenGL?

 

I know there are parts of it that have costs, but it does stand for Open Graphics Language.

[metadigital]

[moderator voice]I would appreciate it if we could keep from personal attacks.  Address the issue and not the posters, if you please.[/moderator voice]

 

Now, I have a question regarding the "powerful hardware" concept.  Is processing and graphics speed the only thing that makes for performance.  The way it looks on paper, the PS3 is simply superior from a hardware standpoint.  I don't care about which has better games.  I want to know what factors will make one better than the other.  These factors include hardware reliability.  A better machine isn't better if it breaks down every two months.  What about optical sound for surround sound?  What about better picture for DVDs?  What about storage capacity?  Some of these things I can gather on my own.  Some of them I simply don't understand very well.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Buy a PC.

 

Here are the current Best of Breed components (and why you can build a better Pc than any console):

[*]the best graphics card is the Gigabyte nVidia 7800 GTX SLI (= two nVidia 6800 Ultra)

[Drakron]

I think Sony is toying with the idea of releasing the PS3 without the HDD as a way to lower the console bungle price and so making less of a loss when they will release the PS3 under the Xbox 360 price.

 

Since I rather have the HDD to store save games intead of being used to install games ... I would not mind that since it would force PS3 developers to see the HDD as a save game data storing device and nothing else.

[Darque]

^ I.... actually agree with that.

[EnderAndrew]

[*]P4E Intel 925XE motherboard chipset

You have to be kidding me!

 

The AMD 64 FX series trounces the P4 series for gaming. And the multicore FX line is coming out in a few months which may be a quantum leap in processing power.

[alanschu]

Goooooo AMD

[Meshugger]

Do you need to acquire OpenGL?

 

I know there are parts of it that have costs, but it does stand for Open Graphics Language.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I didn't mean in terms of buying it, more like they're added support for the OpenGL API.

[Loof]

The shortcomings of the PS3 is that the architecture is extremely different to program for.  There are developer kits and APIs to make programming for the PS3 easier, but we don't have finished games in our hands to see how that will work out.

 

I should have also mentioned in my previous post that the PS3 can put out a 1080p image, in fact it can put out two different 1080p pictures if you have two high-end displays.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Didn't Sony acquire OpenGL and nVidia's CG-language in order to make it a bit easier to program the PS3?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

The reason people are concerned about the difficulty of programing for the ps3 doesnt realy have that much to do with the graphics system.

It has to do with the cell processor being a rather extreem multicore, so to use the system fully you have to write multithreaded programs. Programing multithreaded aplications is a bit harder then singlethreaded. But the big concern is that debuging multithreaded aplications is MUCH harder.

 

EDIT: Of course the xbox 360 is also a multicore cpu, but it has fewer cores and they are all identical so it sould be a bit easier to code for. At least in theory...

[Meshugger]

The shortcomings of the PS3 is that the architecture is extremely different to program for.  There are developer kits and APIs to make programming for the PS3 easier, but we don't have finished games in our hands to see how that will work out.

 

I should have also mentioned in my previous post that the PS3 can put out a 1080p image, in fact it can put out two different 1080p pictures if you have two high-end displays.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Didn't Sony acquire OpenGL and nVidia's CG-language in order to make it a bit easier to program the PS3?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

The reason people are concerned about the difficulty of programing for the ps3 doesnt realy have that much to do with the graphics system.

It has to do with the cell processor being a rather extreem multicore, so to use the system fully you have to write multithreaded programs. Programing multithreaded aplications is a bit harder then singlethreaded. But the big concern is that debuging multithreaded aplications is MUCH harder.

 

EDIT: Of course the xbox 360 is also a multicore cpu, but it has fewer cores and they are all identical so it sould be a bit easier to code for. At least in theory...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Hopefully the developers don't have to spend 90% if their time optimizing their code for a multithreaded-framework. In theory, both MS and Sony should provide a SDK with the dev-kits(MS has XNA IIRC) in order easy some of the developer's headaches.