Poor initial impressions on the next gen consoles

T

theacoustician

Flaccid Member
Sep 30, 2004
12,781
4
0
Marklar
₥0
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2461

I love the part where developers basically say that they're both hard to program for and that's going to hold them back. Gee, I think I remember hearing that posted here a while back. Oh yeah, that's exactly what I said.

Other choice quotes
The most ironic bit of it all is that according to developers, if either manufacturer (sony or microsoft) had decided to use an Athlon 64 or a Pentium D in their next-gen console, they would be significantly ahead of the competition in terms of CPU performance.
Click to expand...
the real-world performance of the Xenon CPU is about twice that of the 733MHz processor in the first Xbox
Click to expand...
The Cell processor doesn’t get off the hook just because it only uses a single one of these horribly slow cores; the SPE array ends up being fairly useless in the majority of situations, making it little more than a waste of die space.
Click to expand...
Paraphased :
the core in the Xenon processor in the Xbox2 is essentially the same as the PPE in the PS3
Click to expand...

So that also makes the promise of Nintendo's Revolution only being about 3-5 times as powerful as the current GC in the same ballpark as the other next gen consoles.
 
I still think it's too early to be releasing next gen. Maybe at the end of NEXT year I could see it. I don't think the current systems have past their prime yet...especially the Xbox.

And I also seem to recall that Sega fumbled into this EXACT situation in regards to the Saturn and the Dreamcast...released too soon and too hard to program for.
 
Meh, doesn't matter to me. If publishers put out games for them that I want to play, I"ll probably pick up the console(s) at some point.
 
As an update the anandtech article has been pulled. Im going to to with Hannibal's call on Ars in that the programmers are going to have to pick up the slack. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050629-5054.html True that they do enough allready but what choice do they have and as countless people have said before they bitched the same about the past generation and the previous generation like that and they still pulled off much more than they originally thought when they first started.
 
Not only that, Nintendo has the best game developing company in the world making games for their new console: Nintendo
 
Here's another interesting nugget I just found. The PS3 will retail in the US for $399 at launch, but it will cost Sony $494 to make one. That's an estimated loss of $1 billion the first year. That, added with the cost of developing the Cell would scare the crap out of me if I owned Sony stock.

For the record, Xbox360 is set to debut at $299 and Revolution hasn't announced a price, but its predicted to be between $199-279.
 
theacoustician said:
Here's another interesting nugget I just found. The PS3 will retail in the US for $399 at launch, but it will cost Sony $494 to make one. That's an estimated loss of $1 billion the first year. That, added with the cost of developing the Cell would scare the crap out of me if I owned Sony stock.

For the record, Xbox360 is set to debut at $299 and Revolution hasn't announced a price, but its predicted to be between $199-279.
Click to expand...
it's pretty much understood that no company makes money on the consoles, but on the games, right?

(seeya later XBox)
 
Fat Burger said:
You have fewer controls, only one set of hardware, and only a couple of resolutions to deal with.

From a playing standpoint it's no easier, but from a standpoint of making the games run well, it's much simpler.
Click to expand...
You're assuming that :
1. You're not porting a title
2. There's zero learning curve on the new console. x86 has been around for years and looks to be staying. The operating system of choice is Windows (XP to be more specific) for gaming. Takes a lot of variables out.
3. That less controls are easier to program for. I'd make the arguement that its tougher. If you only have 6 buttons and a d-pad to do a slew of different actions in-game AND make it easy for a person to use, that's a lot tougher than someone with a mouse and keyboard where you can assign each function to a key. That's a debatable thing though.


There's a slew of platform specific vs. PC that can be argued, but those are the common ones.
 
theacoustician said:
You're assuming that :
1. You're not porting a title
2. There's zero learning curve on the new console. x86 has been around for years and looks to be staying. The operating system of choice is Windows (XP to be more specific) for gaming. Takes a lot of variables out.
3. That less controls are easier to program for. I'd make the arguement that its tougher. If you only have 6 buttons and a d-pad to do a slew of different actions in-game AND make it easy for a person to use, that's a lot tougher than someone with a mouse and keyboard where you can assign each function to a key. That's a debatable thing though.


There's a slew of platform specific vs. PC that can be argued, but those are the common ones.
Click to expand...
and the biggest bitch for PC games, PROTECTION
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom
Back