PS3 not so broken after all...
by James Steele · 06/06/2006 (3:17 am) · 33 comments
Before I start with this, I make no appologies for being a firm supporter of Sony's hardware efforts on the PS3. I realise that extremely powerful and complex hardware does not by default mean you'll have a great games. But at the same time, I don't see anything wrong with making advances in this area.
I can deal with all of the anti-Sony sentiment going on right now. I mean, it's only natural. Sony came along almost a decade ago, and changed the games industry beyond recognition. It started a trend towards catering for the mainstream consumer, making video games something cool to play and no longer just the realm of kids drooling infront of thier TV in a darkeneded bedroom.
All of a sudden, it wasn't okay to make niche games. We now had to worry about market penetration, production values, and god knows how many other details we never really had to worry about before. No longer could we make games that we thought would be fun for us to play, hoping that other would feel the same too.
That had been reveresed. Now we had to make games that the lowest common denominator found fun, and hoped that we might want to play them too. All because of Sony. All because of thier push towards main-stream consumerism. Damn them to hell. They've ruined our industry.
So why does it surprise me that I see articles like =http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=32171]this? At a first glance, Charlie Demrjian seems to know what he's talking about. But after a little close inspection, you find that the guy is quite blantantly writting an article based on a knee-jerk reaction. His opening paragraph says it all;
"earlier on the flight to Japan, my row-mate said 'if you think that's interesting, wait till you see this. Cell is hurting, badly'."
At this point, I think it's fair to say that ol' Charlie has already made up his mind that the PS3 is a piece of decicated panda doo. He's shown a slide with some bandwidth numbers on them, one of which is horribly low. So what does Charlie do? Does he investigate further? Does he bother to find out the context of the slide? Does he do his job to invesitgate this fully and report without bias?
Nope. Good ol' Charlie instead writes a sensationalist article titled; "PS3 hardware slow and broken".
Maybe if Charlie wasn't so eager to bash Sony, he would have done some research and found that;
* Sony always refers to VRAM and "Local Memory" when dealing with the graphics chip.
* The 16MB/s transfer speed refers to transfering data from VRAM to Main RAM.
* There are very few occasions when you would actually want to do this with the Cell.
* The RSX provides a nice high bandwidth from VRAM to Main RAM anyhow...so why the need to duplicate this functionality in the Cell? Isn't the hardware already expensive enough?
I tell you folks, I'm getting a little sick of this. I understand people no liking Sony, but c'mon...has it gotten so bad that reporters are now jumping on the bandwagon too?
[/rant]
I can deal with all of the anti-Sony sentiment going on right now. I mean, it's only natural. Sony came along almost a decade ago, and changed the games industry beyond recognition. It started a trend towards catering for the mainstream consumer, making video games something cool to play and no longer just the realm of kids drooling infront of thier TV in a darkeneded bedroom.
All of a sudden, it wasn't okay to make niche games. We now had to worry about market penetration, production values, and god knows how many other details we never really had to worry about before. No longer could we make games that we thought would be fun for us to play, hoping that other would feel the same too.
That had been reveresed. Now we had to make games that the lowest common denominator found fun, and hoped that we might want to play them too. All because of Sony. All because of thier push towards main-stream consumerism. Damn them to hell. They've ruined our industry.
So why does it surprise me that I see articles like =http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=32171]this? At a first glance, Charlie Demrjian seems to know what he's talking about. But after a little close inspection, you find that the guy is quite blantantly writting an article based on a knee-jerk reaction. His opening paragraph says it all;
"earlier on the flight to Japan, my row-mate said 'if you think that's interesting, wait till you see this. Cell is hurting, badly'."
At this point, I think it's fair to say that ol' Charlie has already made up his mind that the PS3 is a piece of decicated panda doo. He's shown a slide with some bandwidth numbers on them, one of which is horribly low. So what does Charlie do? Does he investigate further? Does he bother to find out the context of the slide? Does he do his job to invesitgate this fully and report without bias?
Nope. Good ol' Charlie instead writes a sensationalist article titled; "PS3 hardware slow and broken".
Maybe if Charlie wasn't so eager to bash Sony, he would have done some research and found that;
* Sony always refers to VRAM and "Local Memory" when dealing with the graphics chip.
* The 16MB/s transfer speed refers to transfering data from VRAM to Main RAM.
* There are very few occasions when you would actually want to do this with the Cell.
* The RSX provides a nice high bandwidth from VRAM to Main RAM anyhow...so why the need to duplicate this functionality in the Cell? Isn't the hardware already expensive enough?
I tell you folks, I'm getting a little sick of this. I understand people no liking Sony, but c'mon...has it gotten so bad that reporters are now jumping on the bandwagon too?
[/rant]
About the author
#2
I read somewhere that sony hopes the ps3 will take over personal computing.
Good luck to them.
06/06/2006 (4:43 am)
Im not into sony either, I sold my ps2 I won at a christmas party one year, and kept the xbox I won the year earlier.I read somewhere that sony hopes the ps3 will take over personal computing.
Good luck to them.
#3
And I so wanted a PSP and PS3 :'(
06/06/2006 (5:45 am)
Sony is one of the biggest components of the whole copyright, license restrictions that are making a big mess of the game, film and music industry. I have always been a sony fan (Walkman, Vaio, PS1, PS2) because they treuly used to bring new and better products to market but they lost my respect. money and interest with the rootkit fiasco. If you want to own my digital soul, at least be honest about it sony!And I so wanted a PSP and PS3 :'(
#4
Nintendo has always produced games aimed at everyone and to this day that's their aim with the Nintendo Wii so I'm really not seeing what Sony has done to bring games to the masses whatsoever, personally I think it's Playstation games that are dull and generic whilst most gaming innovations occur on the PC or Nintendo consoles. The main reason the Gamecube was a flop was that Nintendo really did nothing special with it, they just followed the same old generic path that they always have and it got them nowhere.
I'm not trying to be insulting but I feel personally that your overhyping of Sony, giving them far more credit than is deserved is equally as bad as a reporter twisting the facts to the opposite effect. One final note is that in this round the only ones being innovative again are Nintendo - there's really nothing innovative about just using the latest greatest hardware ala the XBox 360 and the PS3.
I probably sound like a Nintendo fanboy here myself, but honestly I'm not even really into consoles at all, I'll stick with my PC to be perfectly honest - I just think Nintendo are the only ones deserving praise this round by trying something different, which according to all the reviews and E3 reports has worked wonders.
06/06/2006 (6:03 am)
I have to agree with J.C. Smith on this one, you're giving Sony far too much credit. How exactly did Sony change the games industry? I was under the impression it was cheaper computing hardware, the ever increasing popularity of the internet and games such as The Sims.Nintendo has always produced games aimed at everyone and to this day that's their aim with the Nintendo Wii so I'm really not seeing what Sony has done to bring games to the masses whatsoever, personally I think it's Playstation games that are dull and generic whilst most gaming innovations occur on the PC or Nintendo consoles. The main reason the Gamecube was a flop was that Nintendo really did nothing special with it, they just followed the same old generic path that they always have and it got them nowhere.
I'm not trying to be insulting but I feel personally that your overhyping of Sony, giving them far more credit than is deserved is equally as bad as a reporter twisting the facts to the opposite effect. One final note is that in this round the only ones being innovative again are Nintendo - there's really nothing innovative about just using the latest greatest hardware ala the XBox 360 and the PS3.
I probably sound like a Nintendo fanboy here myself, but honestly I'm not even really into consoles at all, I'll stick with my PC to be perfectly honest - I just think Nintendo are the only ones deserving praise this round by trying something different, which according to all the reviews and E3 reports has worked wonders.
#5
I would disagree. At the point when Sony decided to make thier entry, the games industry was heading for a huge down turn. Sega were floundering after some disaterous hadrware choices and really, Nintendo weren't about to do much better. The kids who had gotten hooked on the 16-bit era, were now young adults. They were about to enter a time in thier life were, for the most part, there more interesting things to do apart from play video games which were aimed at kids.
Sony really did take a different approach to marketing not only the console, but also the perception of playing games. All of a sudden, it seemed acceptable to come home roaring drunk from the pub to play either Tekken or Ridge Racer with your friends. Sony really pushed into the mainstream market in a way that both Sega and Nintendo had never attempted before.
06/06/2006 (6:11 am)
@J.C. SmithI would disagree. At the point when Sony decided to make thier entry, the games industry was heading for a huge down turn. Sega were floundering after some disaterous hadrware choices and really, Nintendo weren't about to do much better. The kids who had gotten hooked on the 16-bit era, were now young adults. They were about to enter a time in thier life were, for the most part, there more interesting things to do apart from play video games which were aimed at kids.
Sony really did take a different approach to marketing not only the console, but also the perception of playing games. All of a sudden, it seemed acceptable to come home roaring drunk from the pub to play either Tekken or Ridge Racer with your friends. Sony really pushed into the mainstream market in a way that both Sega and Nintendo had never attempted before.
#6
As I said, it was Sony's approach to the marketing. Nintendo's games may have been meant to be played by everyone, but the majority of thier games were still seen as childish by adults. They never attempted to dispell that perception, and that were they failed quite horribly.
Sony on the other hand, employed some very clever marketing ploys. I remember seeing Playstations running Wipeout in pubs, and other such like gimmicks. I'm not saying that Sony innovated anything to do with development processes, the way games are played or anything else.
It was just marketing. All of a sudden, "wanna play Nintendo?" turned into "wanna play Playstation?". I had just started in the industry at the point when the original Playstation was at it's zenith, in terms of sales and popularity. Sony made it okay to play video games. They made it cool to boast about your best combo move in Tekken 2 with your colleagues at work. Suddenly, you would be bitching about how hard the last mission on Driver was and more than two people in the room would know what you were talking about.
As for me being a bad reporter; I thought I was a video games programmer? Did I miss the bit where I'm being paid to write this? If so, where's my money GG!?
06/06/2006 (6:21 am)
@IanAs I said, it was Sony's approach to the marketing. Nintendo's games may have been meant to be played by everyone, but the majority of thier games were still seen as childish by adults. They never attempted to dispell that perception, and that were they failed quite horribly.
Sony on the other hand, employed some very clever marketing ploys. I remember seeing Playstations running Wipeout in pubs, and other such like gimmicks. I'm not saying that Sony innovated anything to do with development processes, the way games are played or anything else.
It was just marketing. All of a sudden, "wanna play Nintendo?" turned into "wanna play Playstation?". I had just started in the industry at the point when the original Playstation was at it's zenith, in terms of sales and popularity. Sony made it okay to play video games. They made it cool to boast about your best combo move in Tekken 2 with your colleagues at work. Suddenly, you would be bitching about how hard the last mission on Driver was and more than two people in the room would know what you were talking about.
As for me being a bad reporter; I thought I was a video games programmer? Did I miss the bit where I'm being paid to write this? If so, where's my money GG!?
#7
Sony's technology may not be broken, but in my eyes, their corporate image certainly is. I'm not trying to add fuel to the fire, just adding my perspective as a consumer and a budding developer.
06/06/2006 (7:45 am)
Hi guys, Sony's technology may not be broken, but in my eyes, their corporate image certainly is. I'm not trying to add fuel to the fire, just adding my perspective as a consumer and a budding developer.
#8
Nintendo on the other hand was taking their time with releasing their N64. They kept trying to make money off of their SNES game system, and waited too long to come out with their next generation system. When they finally came out with the N64 they made the fatal mistake of not using CD's for their game media. For some reason people at that time didn't mind waiting three minutes for their ultra low quality FMV to load. ;)
So then you have Sony. Without any true competition, they easily dominated the game market. You could say that they innovated the market by having 3D hardware and a CD drive. On the other hand the Saturn was released first, and had both of those features. What about Tekken and Gran Turismo, were they not innovative games? Have you ever heard of Virtua Fighter or Daytona USA? Sony was really the only strong player in that generation of game consoles, so they won by default.
When Sony came out with the Playstation 2, they were in an even better position. Sega released their new Dreamcast system, but declared that it would be their last console, even before they released it. The Playstation 2 came with a DVD drive, and a lot of people bought the system just to have a DVD player. Another big features they had, was compatibility with the original Playstation. So when you combine the fact that Sony was the only real player in two generations of consoles, it was really hard for them to lose.
Eventually both the Gamecube and Xbox came out. Both systems had dramatically better hardware than the Playstation 2, but they came out after the Playstation 2 had be out for quite a while. Nintendo was already kind of going in the direction of not competing with other consoles by that time. The Xbox did quite well considering Microsoft obviously didn't know what they were doing. They innovated quite a bit with things like Xbox Live, including an integrated hard drive, controllers with breakaway cables and so on.
The thing I find kind of amusing about the current generation of consoles (Xbox 360 / Playstation 3), is that Sony thinks they will automatically win the market no matter what. Hardware wise and graphically, the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 are about the same. The BluRay drive is an interesting features, but quite honestly, I hate FMV. Microsoft is getting excellent third party developer support at this point too, which was one of their biggest issues with the original Xbox.
I honestly hope the Xbox 360 comes out on top, for various reasons. For one its probably the only console that indies will be able to get their games on. Another thing is that I have never really been found of Sony hardware. I have already had problems with their systems breaking. For example I bought a Playstation 2 a little after it came out. Right after the warranty ran out, the DVD drive stopped working. So it was 300 bucks of my hard earned money down the drain.
06/06/2006 (8:04 am)
Honestly I didn't see Sony do anything innovative or interesting in the game market at any point of time. Sony entered the market at a point of time where Sega had serious problems problems marketing their consoles. Sega essentially had zero third party support with their Saturn, and it was the hardest to program game console up to that point of time. It seemed like only Sega could program games that took advantage of the system. In addition the Sega Saturn was initially designed to be the ultimate 2D game system, although they added 3D support when they heard the Playstation was going to be 3D. At that time, I strongly believe consumer hardware really wasn't ready to do 3D games at an acceptable quality. Nintendo on the other hand was taking their time with releasing their N64. They kept trying to make money off of their SNES game system, and waited too long to come out with their next generation system. When they finally came out with the N64 they made the fatal mistake of not using CD's for their game media. For some reason people at that time didn't mind waiting three minutes for their ultra low quality FMV to load. ;)
So then you have Sony. Without any true competition, they easily dominated the game market. You could say that they innovated the market by having 3D hardware and a CD drive. On the other hand the Saturn was released first, and had both of those features. What about Tekken and Gran Turismo, were they not innovative games? Have you ever heard of Virtua Fighter or Daytona USA? Sony was really the only strong player in that generation of game consoles, so they won by default.
When Sony came out with the Playstation 2, they were in an even better position. Sega released their new Dreamcast system, but declared that it would be their last console, even before they released it. The Playstation 2 came with a DVD drive, and a lot of people bought the system just to have a DVD player. Another big features they had, was compatibility with the original Playstation. So when you combine the fact that Sony was the only real player in two generations of consoles, it was really hard for them to lose.
Eventually both the Gamecube and Xbox came out. Both systems had dramatically better hardware than the Playstation 2, but they came out after the Playstation 2 had be out for quite a while. Nintendo was already kind of going in the direction of not competing with other consoles by that time. The Xbox did quite well considering Microsoft obviously didn't know what they were doing. They innovated quite a bit with things like Xbox Live, including an integrated hard drive, controllers with breakaway cables and so on.
The thing I find kind of amusing about the current generation of consoles (Xbox 360 / Playstation 3), is that Sony thinks they will automatically win the market no matter what. Hardware wise and graphically, the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 are about the same. The BluRay drive is an interesting features, but quite honestly, I hate FMV. Microsoft is getting excellent third party developer support at this point too, which was one of their biggest issues with the original Xbox.
I honestly hope the Xbox 360 comes out on top, for various reasons. For one its probably the only console that indies will be able to get their games on. Another thing is that I have never really been found of Sony hardware. I have already had problems with their systems breaking. For example I bought a Playstation 2 a little after it came out. Right after the warranty ran out, the DVD drive stopped working. So it was 300 bucks of my hard earned money down the drain.
#9
Apparently, in order for a shop to sell PS3 games, they have to sign something to say they wont re-sell them... Shooting themselves in the foot?
Its not the fact that I buy used games, which I dont, its the idea, plenty of people are used to buying second hand games, and now they cant! How many people will this discourage. (Im not 100% about this, I heard it and it sounds very "Sony").
To me, the "Next Gen" console is going to be the Revolution/Wii (what a name change, ewww!), because it actually has something NEW! An XBox360 is just an updated PS2 with bomb addon* FGS, and Sony seem to be... shooting themselves... a bit.
*Exploding power-cores, heheh! Go Microsoft!
06/06/2006 (8:55 am)
I hate Sony.. ;)Apparently, in order for a shop to sell PS3 games, they have to sign something to say they wont re-sell them... Shooting themselves in the foot?
Its not the fact that I buy used games, which I dont, its the idea, plenty of people are used to buying second hand games, and now they cant! How many people will this discourage. (Im not 100% about this, I heard it and it sounds very "Sony").
To me, the "Next Gen" console is going to be the Revolution/Wii (what a name change, ewww!), because it actually has something NEW! An XBox360 is just an updated PS2 with bomb addon* FGS, and Sony seem to be... shooting themselves... a bit.
*Exploding power-cores, heheh! Go Microsoft!
#11
But one thing guys; I haven't ever said that Sony did anything great, other than find a new way to market video games to the masses. I haven't said that they were innovators of new tecnologies, or a new way to play games.
Hey, I'm a Sony supporter. They have the better hardware and a better market precense than both Nintendo and Microsoft put together. As people who are into developing games, ofcourse we're going to be impressed by the Wii. But the three or four million people waiting for the next itteration of FIFA on the PS3 or XB360 couldn't really care about about a fancy controller.
06/06/2006 (10:31 am)
Lots of interesting comments here. But one thing guys; I haven't ever said that Sony did anything great, other than find a new way to market video games to the masses. I haven't said that they were innovators of new tecnologies, or a new way to play games.
Hey, I'm a Sony supporter. They have the better hardware and a better market precense than both Nintendo and Microsoft put together. As people who are into developing games, ofcourse we're going to be impressed by the Wii. But the three or four million people waiting for the next itteration of FIFA on the PS3 or XB360 couldn't really care about about a fancy controller.
#12
06/06/2006 (11:04 am)
Sony didn't find a way to market games to the masses. They just happened to come at a time where games were starting to have an appeal to the masses. I bet that was the primary reason they got into the market at the time they did. Having no competition at that point was just the icing on the cake for Sony.
#13
06/06/2006 (11:14 am)
The bottom line is this: Sony lit a fire under the industry's ass in 1995 with the original Playstation. As mentioned above: Nintendo was stagnating, Sega was disappointing as always and PC gaming was just getting into its own rut. When the PSOne was released it totally renewed everyone's interest in gaming. Much in the same way Nintendo did in the late 80's with the NES. 
#15
CPU: Cell Processor
PowerPC-base Core @3.2GHz
1 VMX vector unit per core
512KB L2 cache
7 x SPE @3.2GHz
7 x 128b 128 SIMD GPRs
7 x 256KB SRAM for SPE
* 1 of 8 SPEs reserved for redundancy total floating point performance: 218 GFLOPS
GPU: RSX @550MHz
1.8 TFLOPS floating point performance
Full HD (up to 1080p) x 2 channels
Multi-way programmable parallel floating point shader pipelines
Sound: Dolby 5.1ch, DTS, LPCM, etc. (Cell-base processing)
Memory:
256MB XDR Main RAM @3.2GHz
256MB GDDR3 VRAM @700MHz
System Bandwidth:
Main RAM: 25.6GB/s
VRAM: 22.4GB/s
RSX: 20GB/s (write) + 15GB/s (read)
SB: 2.5GB/s (write) + 2.5GB/s (read)
System Floating Point Performance: 2 TFLOPS
06/06/2006 (11:39 am)
PlayStation 3 Specifications and DetailsCPU: Cell Processor
PowerPC-base Core @3.2GHz
1 VMX vector unit per core
512KB L2 cache
7 x SPE @3.2GHz
7 x 128b 128 SIMD GPRs
7 x 256KB SRAM for SPE
* 1 of 8 SPEs reserved for redundancy total floating point performance: 218 GFLOPS
GPU: RSX @550MHz
1.8 TFLOPS floating point performance
Full HD (up to 1080p) x 2 channels
Multi-way programmable parallel floating point shader pipelines
Sound: Dolby 5.1ch, DTS, LPCM, etc. (Cell-base processing)
Memory:
256MB XDR Main RAM @3.2GHz
256MB GDDR3 VRAM @700MHz
System Bandwidth:
Main RAM: 25.6GB/s
VRAM: 22.4GB/s
RSX: 20GB/s (write) + 15GB/s (read)
SB: 2.5GB/s (write) + 2.5GB/s (read)
System Floating Point Performance: 2 TFLOPS
#16
On the other hand none of this matters, or will help you make games. If Sony lets indies develop on the PS3, I will be more interested in the system. Going by their history, I doubt that will ever happen. There is no reason for me to ever support a console that didn't support indie developers in some way.
06/06/2006 (11:50 am)
Stating the specifications for the system has nothing to do with how good the games will be. The Cell processor has an unproven CPU architecture, and we will have to see how well programmers can make it perform. Going by graphical demos that have been released, the graphics of the Xbox 360 and PS3 look about the same.On the other hand none of this matters, or will help you make games. If Sony lets indies develop on the PS3, I will be more interested in the system. Going by their history, I doubt that will ever happen. There is no reason for me to ever support a console that didn't support indie developers in some way.
#17
06/06/2006 (12:13 pm)
Sony made games sexy agian true, but then they strangle everyone else in the process. I love my psp and ps2 but come on, underneith it all they are just another global corporation interested in $.
#18
Did you even see my first post? DIRECTLY ABOVE MY PS3 STATS POST.
Go check out http://www.projectoffset.com.
Watch the videos, these guys show what the PS3 can do with their engine.
In one example they have 100,000+ particles on the screen each casting individual soft shadows, and display a dragon and orc casting soft shadows and self shadows at cinematic quality rendered in REAL TIME.
I also only posted the stats so other people who don't know the stats don't have to go searching the net. Sorry for making things convenient for others.
06/06/2006 (12:33 pm)
Sorry Ray, I didn't know you were blind as a bat!Did you even see my first post? DIRECTLY ABOVE MY PS3 STATS POST.
Go check out http://www.projectoffset.com.
Watch the videos, these guys show what the PS3 can do with their engine.
In one example they have 100,000+ particles on the screen each casting individual soft shadows, and display a dragon and orc casting soft shadows and self shadows at cinematic quality rendered in REAL TIME.
I also only posted the stats so other people who don't know the stats don't have to go searching the net. Sorry for making things convenient for others.
#19
Like the PS2, Sony will be supporting homebrew developers with the Linux kits. I'm not sure how long we'll have to wait for them, but given that they'll be using a similar distro to IBM's current Cell packages, it might not be too far off into the future.
06/06/2006 (12:34 pm)
@RayLike the PS2, Sony will be supporting homebrew developers with the Linux kits. I'm not sure how long we'll have to wait for them, but given that they'll be using a similar distro to IBM's current Cell packages, it might not be too far off into the future.
#20
06/06/2006 (1:03 pm)
I'd still like to get an XBOX 360...It's marked perfectly for skeet shooting.
Torque 3D Owner J.C. Smith