I have to agree with that.Microsoft definitely having critical advantage over Sony or Nintendo, because they are software developers. I would love to quote Jason Rubin's words, but you can hear from the man himself here.

http://www.gametrailers.com/bonusround.php?ep=1&pt=1

Btw, I do wonder why all next-gen consoles doesn't support Dx10, since console lifecycle is around 5-10 years, I believe, by then, Vista will be the standard thus Dx10 is also a standard. Can you briefly explain about the differences between Dx9 and Dx10, hardware-wise and how does it relates to the differences between G71 and G80? Thanks.

I have to agree with that.Microsoft definitely having critical advantage over Sony or Nintendo, because they are software developers. I would love to quote Jason Rubin's words, but you can hear from the man himself here.

http://www.gametrailers.com/bonusround.php?ep=1&pt=1

Btw, I do wonder why all next-gen consoles doesn't support Dx10, since console lifecycle is around 5-10 years, I believe, by then, Vista will be the standard thus Dx10 is also a standard. Can you briefly explain about the differences between Dx9 and Dx10, hardware-wise and how does it relates to the differences between G71 and G80? Thanks.

DX10 focuses on optimization despite all the flair around it (aka Crysis).
There's little that you can't do on the 2 heavyweight () consoles that you can do in DX10, save for the geometry shader. The others are more of PC-specific code and optimizations.(The 360 has a unified shader architecture that basically was the main point of DX10)

I have to agree with that.Microsoft definitely having critical advantage over Sony or Nintendo, because they are software developers. I would love to quote Jason Rubin's words, but you can hear from the man himself here.

http://www.gametrailers.com/bonusround.php?ep=1&pt=1

Btw, I do wonder why all next-gen consoles doesn't support Dx10, since console lifecycle is around 5-10 years, I believe, by then, Vista will be the standard thus Dx10 is also a standard. Can you briefly explain about the differences between Dx9 and Dx10, hardware-wise and how does it relates to the differences between G71 and G80? Thanks.

There are plenty of articles on dx9 vs dx10, just google a bit and you will find more than you will care to read. The 360 GPU is quite close to dx10. Much more so than the PS3.

What can i say, it just took too many transistors, too much time and such for it to be a viable option to them. Anyways Direct X has always been a very open API, but you must realize what an API is for, to set industry standards on how graphics should be rendered. But since only Microsoft makes the XB360, lol, they make their own standard. DX10 compatibility demands that a graphic card can do certain things before it's declared compatible, and not all those things are what's best for a console, better to go with their own "campur" implementation.

Thanks for the guide, I've tried it before, and for your sake I try it again using the keyword you have 'sort of' suggested "dx9 vs dx10". Here are what I get :

http://forums.legitreviews.com/about6174.html&highlight=
http://www.istartedsomething.com/20060817/...ctx10-fabulous/
http://www.winmatrix.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=9550
http://www.sharkyforums.com/showthread.php?t=287594
http://www.crysis-online.com/forum/index.p...opic,771.0.html
http://www.hothardware.com/forum/messagevi...&threadid=34065
http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware/DX...pict194987.html
http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=30466

None of them answer my questions. All of the links comes from the first 5 pages of the google search result. Maybe I am not that good at googling or simply am a lazy bast@rd.

Btw, since google doesn't help much I lurk into some of the tech forums(Note: I am not a hardware enthusiast, but at least I've heard of anandtech before.)

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2870&p=1

That article is quite helpful, although I don't understand totally of what have been explained there, at least I have a place to refer back if I do need it again.
That is one of my major concern of how Microsoft going to play their trump card, which is Dx10 + Vista to change the gaming world. Who knows what is in Gates mind now.

http://www.beyond3d.com/articles/directxnext/index.php?p=1

That's about the best i've read. There were some good ones at elitebastards.com also if i can remember correctly.

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.

I don't quite get this one, what this have to do with developing games on both console.

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

Then, IMHO, the title is very much misleading.

PS3 vs. XBOX 360: A Developer's Perspective

Then, IMHO, the title is very much misleading.

That developer sure is pro 360. I think people want good games. If it's hard for the developer yet they can produce great games, then it doesn't matter

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. 

That developer sure is pro 360. I think people want good games. If it's hard for the developer yet they can produce great games, then it doesn't matter

Yes it does matter. A lot. Hard for the developer means more time and resources wasted which would not happen on a platform that is easy to code for. That means more time for better eye candy etc, or faster time to market. Time is money.

Oh, now only I know. But why there will be final fantasy for ps3 and not on xb360 ? The developer got bribe ? I love japanese RPG games. Too bad not many japanese RPG for xb360

There will be around 110 titles (RPG and more) I believe for the Jap market with Blue Dragon kicking off the wave. However, whether it will be released for other markets is still a question mark for us.

A Weekend Full of Quality Time With PlayStation 3

Howard Stringer, you have a problem. Your company's new video game system just isn't that great.
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Sony Computer Entertainment

A view of the screen of "Resistance: Fall of Man," one of the games for the new Sony PlayStation3.
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The controller of Sony PlayStation 3 looks like earlier ones.

Ever since Mr. Stringer took the helm last year at Sony, the struggling if still formidable electronics giant, the world has been hearing about how the coming PlayStation 3 would save the company, or at least revitalize it. Even after Microsoft took the lead in the video-game wars a year ago with its innovative and powerful Xbox 360, Sony blithely insisted that the PS3 would leapfrog all competition to deliver an unsurpassed level of fun.

Put bluntly, Sony has failed to deliver on that promise.

Measured in megaflops, gigabytes and other technical benchmarks, the PlayStation 3 is certainly the world's most powerful game console. It falls far short, however, of providing the world's most engaging overall entertainment experience. There is a big difference, and Sony seems to have confused one for the other.

The PS3, which was introduced in North America on Friday with a hefty $599 price tag for the top version, certainly delivers gorgeous graphics. But they are not discernibly prettier than the Xbox 360's. More important, the whole PlayStation 3 system is surprisingly clunky to use and simply does not provide many basic functions that users have come to expect, especially online.

I have spent more than 30 hours using the PlayStation 3 over the last week or so and may have played more different games on the system - 13 - than probably anyone outside of Sony itself. Sony did not activate the PS3's online service until just before the Friday debut. Over the weekend a clear sense of disappointment with the PlayStation 3 emerged from many gamers.

"What's weird is that the PS3 was originally supposed to come out in the spring, and here it came out in the fall, and it still doesn't feel finished," Christopher Grant, managing editor of Joystiq, one of the world's biggest video-game blogs, said on the telephone Saturday night. "It's really not the all-star showing they should have had at launch. Sony is playing catch-up in a lot of ways now, not just in terms of sales but in terms of the basic functionality and usability of the system."

Sadly for Sony, the best way to explain how the PlayStation 3 falls short is to explain how different it is to use than its main competition, Xbox 360. When I reviewed the 360 last year, I wrote: "Twelve minutes after opening the box, I had created my nickname, was in a game of Quake 4 and thought, 'This can't be this easy.' "

I never felt that way using the PlayStation 3. With the PS3, 12 minutes after opening the box I realized that Sony inexplicably does not include cables to connect the machine to a high-definition television. Keep in mind that one of Sony's main selling points has been that the PS3 plays Blu-Ray high-definition movie discs. But high-definiton cables? Sold separately. The Xbox 360, by contrast, ships with one cable that can connect to either a standard or high-definition set.

Then, before you are even using the PS3, you have to connect the "wireless" controller to the base unit with a USB cable so they can recognize each other. If you bring your PS3 controller to a friend's house, you'll have to plug back in again. The 360's wireless controllers are always just that, wireless.

If there is one thing one would expect Sony to get perfect, though, it would be music. Wrong. Sure, you can plug in your digital music player and the PS3 will play the tunes. But as soon as you go into a game, the music stops. By contrast, one of the things I've always enjoyed most on the Xbox 360 is being able to listen to my own music while playing Pebble Beach or driving my virtual Ferrari. Doesn't seem too complicated, but the PS3 can't do it.

In that sense it often feels as if the PlayStation 3 can't walk and chew bubble gum at the same time. In the PS3's online store (which feels like a slow Web page) you can access movie trailers and trial versions of new games, but when you actually download the 600-megabyte files, you'll be stuck watching a progress bar crawl across the screen for 20 or 40 minutes. Astonishingly, you can't download in the background while you go do something that's more fun (like play a game). On the Xbox 360, not only are files downloaded seamlessly in the background, but you can also shut off the machine, turn it on later, and the download will resume automatically.

The PS3's whole online experience feels tacked-on and unpolished. On the Xbox 360 each user has a single unified friends list, so you can track your friends and communicate with them easily, no matter what game you are in. On the PlayStation 3 most games have their own separate friends list and some have no friends function at all. There is a master list as well, but in order to communicate with anyone on it, you have to quit the game you are playing.

There are some high points. The multi-player battles in Resistance: Fall of Man are excellent. The arcade-style action in the downloadable Blast Factor is suitably frantic.

But the list of the PS3's disappointments remains, from its undersupported voice chat to its maddening cellphone-like text messaging system. (In frustration I ended up plugging in a USB keyboard.) Overall, Sony seems to have put a lot of effort into cramming as much silicon horsepower under the hood as possible but to have forgotten that all the transistors in the world can't make someone smile.

And so it is a bit of a shock to realize that on the video game front Microsoft and Sony are moving in exactly the opposite directions one might expect given their roots. Microsoft, the prototypical PC company, has made the Xbox 360 into a powerful but intuitive, welcoming, people-friendly system. Sony's PlayStation 3, on the other hand, often feels like a brawny but somewhat recalcitrant specialized computer. (Sony is even telling users to wait for future software patches to fix some of the PS3's deficiencies.) The thing is, if people want to use a computer, they'll use a computer.

Through the decades of the Walkman and the Trinitron television, Sony was renowned as the global master of easy-to-use, seamlessly powerful consumer electronics. But recently Sony seems to have lost its way, first in digital music players, in which it ceded the ergonomic high ground to Apple's iPod, and now in home-game consoles. For now Sony's technologists seem to have won out over the people who study fun.

As a practical matter, given the limited quantities Sony has been able to manufacture, the PlayStation 3 will surely remain sold out throughout the holiday season. If you can't find one, don't fret. Sony still has a lot of work to do. As Mr. Grant of Joystiq put it: "Maybe in six months it'll be finished. Maybe by next fall I'll be able to do all the cool stuff. I'm still kind of waiting."