The winning formula? Convincing parallels between the PS2 and PS3.

No console maker has ever dominated three consecutive platform generations. Atari squandered its head start in the 80s, Nintendo lost its near monopolistic stranglehold in the 90s, and now it's Sony's turn to pass the baton. Or is it? The PS3 may have seen its share of negative press lately, but Sony seems to be lining up a perfect repeat success of the PS2. The outlook for PS3 is actually not all that different as it was for the PS2 when it was first introduced in 2000. Don't believe us? Check out these examples of history repeating itself

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10 reasons the PS3 won't be able to repeat the success of the PS2.

Even though it's clear that Sony has a lot of the right ingredients for a repeat success of the PS2, a lot has changed over the past six years, particularly in terms of its competition. Here are 10 reasons why Sony could find itself unable to hold its leadership position with the PS3.

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This post has been edited by mzaidi: Nov 11 2006, 03:50 PM

Screenshot half-truths

Perched at his Newsweek blog, N'Gai Croal discusses modern problems with screenshots -- they just don't look as good as video. He cites shader and particle effects detracting from game images when still.

We agree that screens don't always show the quality of a game; good animation also makes a major difference. The developers Croal interviews want HD video to become the screenshot replacement. That'll happen someday, but not in the short-term.

What annoys us most about game screens -- and videos -- is when developers render beyond what the game can produce. In that situation, game companies are either deceptive, trying to trick us into thinking the images match the actual game, or up-front, clearly saying that an in-development game should eventually reflect the marketing materials. But if they're honest about it, we're still skeptical about the game -- either way, they can't win with faked screenshots or video.

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PS3 vs. XBOX 360: A Developer's Perspective



A Game Developer's View

As long as consoles have existed, discussions, debates, arguments, fights, and all out WARS have taken place over who makes the best video game units. Growing up, I was always a Nintendo fan boy; I didn't want to hear anything about Sega Genesis... In my mind, Nintendo had Mario, Zelda, and other great first-party titles. Sega had Sonic, and red blood.

Things are slightly more complicated these days however. Console makers are taking different approaches to designing their products; some go for hardcore processing power, others focus more on online gaming. We already have a heated debate going on in our forum about which console is better, PS3 or XBOX 360.

I thought it would be a good idea to ask my friend, who is a lead programmer for a large gaming company that produces games for both PS3 and XBOX 360. He has also worked on PS2, XBOX 1, and PC games in the past 6-or-so years. Obviously, considering his position working with both consoles and both Sony and Microsoft, he doesn't want to step on any toes, so wishes to remain anonymous at this time. Here are his thoughts on the subject:

PS3 vs. XBOX 360

Being a video game developer (I develop for both, Playstation 3 and XBOX 360) people ask me almost daily which platform I think is better. These are my personal feelings, in no way does this reflect my employer.

Short answer: XBOX 360.

Long answer: Price, performance, visual quality, game selection and online support. I think the XBOX 360 wins in every category.

Price: This is obvious; the XBOX 360 core is only $299. The PS3 is around $499 for the 20GB version. It comes with a hard drive, but you don't need a hard drive to enjoy a lot of great games on the 360 so I think it's fair to compare both core systems.

Performance: On paper, the PS3 is more powerful. In reality, it's quite inferior to the 360. Without getting into too many details, the three general-purpose CPU's the xbox360 has are currently FAR easier to take advantage of than the SPU's on the PS3. I suspect a few years down the road some high budget, first party PS3 exclusive titles will come out that really take advantage of the SPU's and do things the XBOX 360 can't, but I don't think the console is worth buying based on this speculation (for some it will be though, we'll have to wait and see how these games turn out).

Graphics: The XBOX 360 is a clear winner. The GPU is more powerful. It has more powerful fillrate, and far more pixel and vertex processing horsepower. Part of the reason is their choice of memory, and architecture of pixel and vertex procesing. I can't get into details but the same vertex shader will run much slower on the PS3 than the XBOX 360. The 360 also has a clever new way rendering high definition anti aliased back buffers. To accomplish the same effect on PS3 is prohibitively expensive. For this reason I think many games will have no choice but to run in non-HD resolutions on the PS3 version, use a lower quality anti aliasing technique, or do back buffer upscaling. The end result in all cases is going to be noticeably worse image quality.

Game Selection: The XBOX 360 has a huge head start here. 1 year is an eternity in gaming. Almost all multi-platform developers have made the XBOX 360 their primary platform due to timing of release-to-market, this means the games will look and perform better on the 360. The PS3 versions will be ports of the 360 versions. (The opposite was true for XBOX 1 vs. PS2). The XBOX 360 is also far faster to develop for due to better development tools (massively popular Visual Studio .NET vs. proprietary, buggy PS3 compiler and debugger), better documentation, and easier architecture (3 general purpose CPU's vs. 8 specialized processors that require DMA). Timing has also caused all next-gen middleware developers to make XBOX 360 their primary platform, and they will 'add ps3 support' as needed. This support will probably be inferior to the XBOX 360's due to manpower and more importantly, demand. It's this catch-22 now that will continue to drive the 360 forward and hold PS3 back.

The other obvious point here is that right now the Xbox360 already has a very impressive line-up of titles on store shelves; the ps3 just launched, and has virtually nothing of interest. Also, many 360 games are already discounted ($35 for Fight Night 3 on Amazon). PS3 games are all full price since it just launched.

Live: Microsoft's online support with XBOX1 was phenomenal. They built in-house experience, user base, facilities, $$ commitment from executive level (since it proved successful), and most importantly, feedback from 100,000s of XBOX Live subscribers. Playstation 2's online support sucked. They are now playing catch-up, trying to emulate Xbox's model. But they had their hands tied just trying to make the PS3 work, it was incredibly ambitious (blu-ray etc.). I haven't seen it yet, but I seriously doubt the quality will be anywhere to the level of XBOX 360.

HD Content: The PS3 comes with one built in (blu-ray). The XBOX 360 offers HD-DVD as an add-on for $200. You probably don't care about HD-DVD right now. But you will soon (The quality between DVD and HD is comparable to VHS vs DVD, if you have the right TV) so I suggest paying attention to the war that's begun. There are two formats: HD-DVD and BLU-RAY. Basically if you rent a BLU-RAY DVD from Bockbuster, it won't play in your XBOX 360 HD-DVD, and vice versa with the PS3. The implications of this format war would require another article on its own. But as far as the consoles are concerned, the XBOX 360 wins because the DVD player is a separate unit. Playing movies is very taxing on the DVD reader, and let's face it. In 3 years when your PS3 DVD drive goes out due to playing lots of movies (PS2 was notoriously bad about this) you will have to go buy another PS3. With the 360, you'll just chuck your HD-DVD player, and go buy another one at the store. In 3 years standalone units wlil probably only cost about $99-150. Another point for the XBOX 360, is that I don't know who will win the format-war, so I would rather wait with purchase of a HD player. The PS3 doesn't give you this option.

PS3 controversy: Shootings, Wallmart fights, $15,000 Ebay sales etc. My advice is ignore it. It will pass soon.

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I don't think the article is about developing games on both console, but rather a developer's opinion on PS3 vs. Xbox 360.

According to Wikipedia, "Perspective" means: one's "point of view", the choice of a context for opinions, beliefs and experiences

And since the article was titled:



IMHO it simply meant the single developer featured in the article's point of view / opinion on PS3 vs. Xbox 360 and doesn't necessarily represent the whole gaming industry's point of view.

This post has been edited by mzaidi: Nov 21 2006, 11:48 AM

The latest Famitsu reported that Blue Dragon sequel is on the way.

I thought that's because the Lost Odyssey is not due for release until sometime next year? Of course gamer will pay more attention to game that is going to be released first.

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PS3 loses more exclusives



It's said that the rats are the first to abandon a sinking ship. While not rats, publishers are beginning to abandon the PS3 after its less than impressive launch launch and news of production woes. Three titles have pulled up stakes and moved to the Xbox 360 (as cross-platform).

Koei, long time PlayStation supporter (and company frequently billed as key support to win the generation) has pulled Fatal Inertia and Blade Storm: The Hundred Years' War from the PS3 exclusive list and plopped them squarely into the Xbox 360 camp. Another PlayStation staple, the Armored Core series, is also coming to the white box in the form of Armored Core 4.

Sony is going to be in for a difficult battle if key players keep moving over party lines; Microsoft is doing far better coaxing exclusive content over to the 360. If Sony continues to lose its differentiation, why should gamers continue to shell out up to $200 more just to play the same games? Enjoy this machine translation for those who can't read Japanese.

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This post has been edited by mzaidi: Nov 23 2006, 03:12 AM

Resistance = 17.75GB of garbage?



Resistance: Fall of Man was billed to be the defining game for why Blu-ray exists in the first place. Resistance developers Insomniac stated that the game took up 22GB of space and that all those bits and bytes were necessary to make the game work. It would seem that ripping the disk in Linux shows otherwise.

A NeoGAF forum member by the name of squatingyeti posted a long list of padding files on the Resistance disk; the padding took up approximately 17.75GB of space. Padding is frequently used to push data to the outer edges of the disk to improve read times, but Blu-ray is supposed to be a constant read over the entire disk.

It is possible that the data isn't fully true and we would like to see some confirmation. However, if this report that 81% of Resistance is just empty filler and could fit on a single-layer DVD is true, will this put a hole in Sony's claim that Blu-ray is absolutely necessary this generation? The padding isn't needed to make the read speeds any better and (if true) is a lame way for Sony to justify Blu-ray for gaming.

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Real PS3 Power Usage Figures

When sitting idle at the crossbar navigation system, the equivalent to the Xbox 360 dashboard or the Wii's home menu, the PS3 used anywhere from 185 to 205 watts. When doing similar work the Xbox 360 uses 145 watts and the Wii just 15-20.

Now, for the gaming. We tested with three games and found consumption to be lowest when playing Tiger Woods 07, registering at 185-190 watts, and highest when playing Formula One Championship Edition, which demanded a rather more disconcerting 217 watts on average. By comparison the Xbox 360 comes in at 165 watts during gameplay with the Wii using only around 120. Finally, during Blu-ray playback the PS3 continued to draw a surprising 205 watts, just to spew the rather craptacular Ricky Bobby to my HDTV.

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