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What's Known About the PS3

Posted by Zonk on Fri Mar 03, 2006 12:52 PM
from the devil-in-the-details dept.
PlayStation (Games)
1up has an expansive piece up exploring everything they know about the PlayStation 3. They cover rumours, prices, technology, and the limited information currently out there on upcoming games. From the article: "While the hard facts are still tough to nail down, the general consensus is that the PlayStation 3 is the most powerful of the three next-generation systems, although probably not by as much of a margin as Sony would like us to think. The arguments for the technical strengths of the PS3 go into CPU floating-point capabilities and the difficulties surrounding programming for parallel architectures, but the long and short of it is that whether or not the advantages of the PS3 are apparent will depend on developers' ability to utilize the PlayStation 3's unique architecture."
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  • With any luck... (Score:5, Funny)

    by PastAustin (941464) on Friday March 03 2006, @12:58PM (#14843742)
    It won't cost $1,000,000 and thanks to Sony not having Microsoft's "Rush To The Market" attitude you don't have to worry about it melting to your carpet!

    • Re:With any luck... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Dimentox (678813) on Friday March 03 2006, @01:01PM (#14843771)
      Thats a feature of the X-Box 360, "a portable foot heater and Cooking stove."

    • Re:With any luck... (Score:4, Funny)

      by PastAustin (941464) on Friday March 03 2006, @01:03PM (#14843789)
      FTA: Even Sony Computer Entertainment president Ken Kutaragi has been quoted as saying "It'll be expensive [...] I'm aware that with all these technologies, the PS3 can't be offered at a price that's targeted towards households."


      Hell Yes! I've always wanted a PS3 at work. I knew it would happen!

    • Re:With any luck... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      and thanks to Sony not having Microsoft's "Rush To The Market" attitude you don't have to worry about it melting to your carpet!

      Considering all the launch problems with PS2 this is good if it's meant as irony, and funny if not.

    • Re:With any luck... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tonywong (96839) on Friday March 03 2006, @04:22PM (#14845925) Homepage
      Let's be realistic here. In NO way is Sony going to ship this in Q1 06. Where are the production SAMPLE units, SKUs or final plastics? No one has even developer SDKs that are in any way finished or polished (besides Sony owned entities) and they are still throwing about theoretical performance numbers. If Sony was any way serious about launching in this time frame, you'd see their factories gearing up for such a launch. The only thing happening here is that they're trying to steal away hype from the 360 launch...and doing pretty well at that it seems.

  • The next gen Phantom (Score:5, Funny)

    by British (51765) <british1500@gmail.com> on Friday March 03 2006, @12:59PM (#14843754) Homepage Journal
    ...is the PS3. Yes, this will have TWICE the delays with its new marketing and rumor engine. Capable of thousands of speculations a second!

    (it's a joke kids, someday that PS3 will come out).

  • More emphasis on functional languages. (Score:4, Funny)

    by CyricZ (887944) on Friday March 03 2006, @01:00PM (#14843757)
    In the near future we may see more emphasis being placed on strict functional languages, such as Haskell, for such massively multithreaded and parallel development at the commodity level. Many of the issues associated with concurrent development with traditional imperative or imperative OO languages can be avoided via stateless computation.

    Even a language like Erlang may begin to gain widespread popularity among game developers, as they begin to see the benefits that it brings when writing multithreaded applications.

    With more industry support behind such technology, we may witness a computing revolution. It has been decades in the making, but its time is quickly coming upon us.

  • why the big secret? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by psycho chic (958251) on Friday March 03 2006, @01:01PM (#14843768) Journal
    i think the thing that gets me is "hey, why all the secrecy?" if you are gonna release a product, at least TRY to convince me its better then the competition. when people start getting (publically) fired for making opinions known, it makes you wonder

  • Other things known about the PS3: (Score:5, Funny)

    by dr_dank (472072) on Friday March 03 2006, @01:02PM (#14843777) Homepage Journal
    Other things known about the PS3:

    * It is not a strapless evening gown.

    * Ducks may not try to mate with it.

    * It is not a flotation device.

    * Is not a good substitute for snow chains.

    * It will not remove tough grease stains.

    * It will not get you an automatic first post on Slashdot.
  • OK, so it's slightly more powerful than the xBox360, will probably retail around $400 without HDD (and $500 for Net/HDD config bundle) (figure initial cost to start at $500 so they can drop to $400 over a year, unless you get it cheap at Costco in a bundle), has 100-150 original content games, including an Anime Dating sim "Akira Project", a Nintendogs non-clone "Active Dogs", a lot of wierd anime games, a lot of RPGs, a lot of scary games, the obligitory sports games, the obligitory FPS games, Bomberman, Clown Combat (yup), ...

    OK, looks like xBox360 is going to lose a lot of market share when it ships, probably starting in December when most of the new titles ship.

    Hmm, maybe I should sell my MSFT stock ...
    • OK, looks like xBox360 is going to lose a lot of market share when it ships, probably starting in December when most of the new titles ship.

      Probably since the XBox 360 has 100% market share for the newest generation.
      • Well, I'm just basing this on the actual games that will be there by December for the PS3, and their broad range of appeal, which will give the PS3 a category killer that has appeal to non-FPS, non-Sports gamers, such as boys, girls, women, and guys who don't like to play FPS because they spent too many years actually doing that when they were in the Army and it tenses them up too much so it's more fun to play other games.

        But, hey, whatever. I'm still saying, since I've seen no real moves in the 360 area t
    • OKAY. We GET it. You have Microsoft stock. You can stop mentioning it in practically every thread you post in.
        • but when you hold somewhere between $5000 and $20,000 in a firm, it's ethical to mention it.

          Why? Are you holding yourself out as some kind of expert? Do you believe that your slashdot postings are so important that it's vital that nobody rely on them without full disclosure? Do you think that you have such an important position of slashdot trust that must be maintained by disclosing conflicts of interest?

        • No, it's not caveat emptor or ethics. (Score:5, Insightful)

          by dyoung9090 (894137) on Friday March 03 2006, @02:54PM (#14845045)
          Caveat emptor means the buyer beware. It's a general disclosure principle in most aspects of the law, specifically in real property and contracts, that says the buyer is not under a duty to make sure YOU know everything that could possibly concern that which you are buying. It's the court's way of saying YOU as the buyer needs to take some initiative to make sure you're getting a good product because YOU as the buyer are the one that will be harmed if you didn't make a prudent and informed decision.

          As for ethics, nobody is buying stock on your word. NOBODY. You don't have a duty to disclose your ownership of MS stock because you're not creating some kind of reliance in us upon your word wherein your status as an MS stockholder makes us suspicious of conflict of interest. It's not like we have reason to believe you're neutral or that otherwise you'd be misrepresenting yourself by not telling us.

          It's not relevant at all. You want to pretend it's relevant because you want us to be impressed. That's why you're throwing out that BS 15k range of stock value.

          The ethical thing is to tell us truth about a situation when that truth has an impact on the situation. Supreme Court justices tell us their stock holdings when there's a potential conflict of interest because their decision may have some effect on the US. YOU telling us how much money you'd like to have invested in MS is equal to me posting "PS, I own a Ford and plan to buy another when this one dies" every time I mention cars because hey, that was a huge 5k-20k investment I made in that company, or that I took out student loans through one bank (becuase hey, that's a huge 16k-130k investment in that company) or that I took out a mortgage through another bank (because hey, that's a huge 1k-250k investment in that company.)

          Your logic is so illogical it's like, I'm having trouble even semi-seriously attempting to take your concept of ethics seriously, it's like a doctor walking in, seeing that you have Nikes on and then telling you he prefers Converse and just wants you to know that despite his preference in shoes, he's going to try to not kill you on the operating table.
      • Actually, based on the review, I think I saw about four Anime Dating Sims, so I'm in Anime Heaven. Nose bleeds! Obligitory panty flashes! Ultra-violence without real injury! Stolen kisses after eight hours of game play! Now I won't be stuck playing the flash versions of Love Hina and other ones ...

        Well, ok, since I've got a steady girlfriend for six months now, I haven't had time to do that, but still ...

  • Too many variables, too little information (Score:5, Interesting)

    by netnemmy (947142) on Friday March 03 2006, @01:02PM (#14843779) Homepage
    The thing that's going to kill the PS3 is the price. If they don't release at the same point, or less, than the X-box, people are going to have to strain their wallets to afford this thing. Very few people are about to spend $800 for a console - there's a lot better ways to spend that money (you could even buy a 360, and several games).

    Not to mention that, by the time the PS3 comes out, there will be many titles available for the 360. Although (as TFA shows) there are a good deal of games in development, the 360's titles will have matured while those for the PS3 will remain untested.

    Finally, the longer it takes for Sony to put this console out, the less people will have confidence in it. Console developers are always hush-hush about their products, but at this point, it would do Sony well to clarify some things; they keep saying that they're going to release on-schedule, but nobody else sees how they can possibly do that. If they _do_ release on schedule, I for one will be forced to assume that it was rushed to market, and therefore not worth the risk (especially at that price).

    • It's what's inside the box that counts (Score:4, Informative)

      by wuffalicious (896539) on Friday March 03 2006, @01:22PM (#14843950)
      I was under the impression that the original Playstation 2 took a while to come out as well, and did just fine on release despite the dreamcast being available long before it (and, in some ways, being a superior piece of hardware). I look at all the hype that's being slung around, and I wonder why people obsess so much about the systems themselves. Ultimately it's going to come down to a matter of games - it doesn't matter what your system is capable of if no one developes for it. The Dreamcast should be proof positive of that.

      Release titles are what will matter - how many people would have picked up an xbox had it not been for Halo?

  • Short summary: (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SharpFang (651121) on Friday March 03 2006, @01:03PM (#14843793) Homepage Journal
    XBox360: Most hype.
    PlayStation 3: Most CPU power.
    Nintendo Revolution: Most fun.

    Personally I'd say Nintendo is the best in the means of innovation. The competitors are just "the same old, just faster, better, stronger", while Nintendo takes a step in a completely new direction.

    • Re:Short summary: (Score:4, Interesting)

      by fr0dicus (641320) on Friday March 03 2006, @01:13PM (#14843871) Journal
      Weird, I found Nintendo least fun this time round. Waiting for games to trickle out isn't my idea of fun.

      • Re:Short summary: (Score:4, Insightful)

        by poot_rootbeer (188613) on Friday March 03 2006, @02:25PM (#14844718)
        Waiting for games to trickle out isn't my idea of fun.

        Buying a new game every month or so isn't MY idea of fun. I'd rather have four titles a year with superlative replay value than 20 a year that get stale after three weeks.
    • XBox360: Shipped

    • Re:Short summary: (Score:4, Interesting)

      by acidrain (35064) on Friday March 03 2006, @01:30PM (#14844053)
      Sony makes hardware that is difficult to program. But game developers have a financial gun to their heads and will ultimately do whatever it takes.

      Remember how the XBox looked set to eat the PS2's lunch? However after 5 years of hardcore low level programming on freakish hardware the latest round of PS2 titles look just as good as the XBox titles.

      Frankly the PS3 is a *lot* easier to program than the PS2. All the complaining is coming from PC developers (a.k.a the current crop of Unreal engine licensees) who never touched the PS2 and don't know the meaning of pain.

      The weak developers will die out, and the rest will push the PS3 way further than the XBox360.
      • FWIW, you can also play all the older Nintendo games (and Sega, and Atari, and Coleco, and arcade, and a kickass media frontend) on a softmodded Xbox, which you can probably pick up used for less than $100.
      • Last I checked, there was a lot more to the Revolution controller than just the shape.
      • Moving to the Cell processor is not a step in a completely new direction. Right...

        Moving to the Cell architecture is like a car moving to a hybrid engine: It's not really gonna change the way you drive.
      • uh, shape...? Shape is irrelevant.
        Try to use the XBox360 controller as a tennis rocket handle, as a frying pan handle, as a steering wheel etc.

        Let's count in the means of variables of space, starting from oldest.
        Directional Keys: 4 bits in separate devices, one key one bit.

        Everything since incorporated some keys so let's omit the key=bit count.

        Paddles: 2 floats in 2 separate controllers.
        Digital joystick: 4 bits combined in one manipulator with combinations limits. 8 directions.
        Mouse: 2 floats indicating pos
  • Just wait for the damn thing to come out already. Does it really matter if it's got 26 super nano vector spline processing engines with 18 pixel flushers and a quantum video output if it is still vapor? Will it make the games any better if it DOES? No, just prettier with more depth. Boring.

    It's a waste of breath, any of thsoe features can disappear between now and then. Further, I've done HW design long enough to know that the only people who actually know what will and will not work on launch are 2-3 HW guys who actually work on it, and 2-3 SW guys who actually work on it. Their managers, coworkers, beta customers, that guy in procurement? They only know some post-processed garbage that the engineers came up with to get some sleep, or worse, some counter-garbage politics devised by unfriendly managers to look for an excuse for why they can't make a commitment (look up the term "estoppel").

    WoW and Galactic Civilizations 2 should be able to tide all of us over until the console wars v4 have subsided enough to make a buying decision.

  • Played a Cell processor Demo (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Kraegar (565221) on Friday March 03 2006, @01:10PM (#14843852)
    Recently at an IBM conference for pSeries hardware, they gave a small demo on the Cell processor. The demo was a Mac G4 running a sort of flight sim, with data for Mount St. Helens. The display was a 35" flat panel running at some obscene resolution. They began the demo with just the G4 processor, and no help from the Cell. It was painfuly slow, at less then one frame every 5 seconds. Jagged lines were obvious, and it looked terrible.

    In the software demo, they then enabled the cell processor, or re-routed the processing to it in some way (it was hard to tell exactly, and they weren't too forthcoming). The difference was remarkable. 30 - 40 fps, and a crystal clear picture. The data they were using was from (or at least they said it was from) satellite images, GPS data, aerial photo surveys, and USGS maps. It was extremely well rendered, down to pebbles. Clouds and such were just remarkable.

    At the end they offered to let us "fly", so I jumped at it and took the first turn. While not a real game by any stretch, it was a lot of fun to manuever through the terrain and look at the detail. So, taking what they said was going on at face value, the cell was a very impressive processor.

    One thing of note, though... the "cell processor unit" they had hooked up to the G4 was HUGE. Bigger then a standard PC case, with 6 120mm fans on it. Not exactly heartening for something that's supposed to go into a console.

    Still, my impression of it was that it's got a TON of possibility, and it really is working hardware.

    • That's without the PS3's NVidia GPU (Score:5, Informative)

      by Animats (122034) on Friday March 03 2006, @01:29PM (#14844046) Homepage
      I went to a talk at Stanford where the lead architect of the Cell processor described that demo. That's running on a Cell processor which is actually doing the rendering. Sony's original plan for the PS3 worked that way, but they eventually put in a conventional NVidia chip.

      So in the PS3, the Cell processors aren't doing the rendering. The Cell should render about as well as everything else with a current NVidia part.

      Flyovers are easy if you have enough RAM and a GPU. How much RAM did the demo rig have?

  • say no more. I'm getting one.

  • More like "What is not known about the PS3" (Score:4, Informative)

    by javaxman (705658) on Friday March 03 2006, @01:28PM (#14844031) Journal
    Really, the article is a bit more like "here's the stuff we really don't know the answer to :"

    - when will it ship
    - what will it cost
    - will games actually be able to live up to the great graphics and model/AI processing promised by the Cell processor marketing, or will they look pretty much like XBox360 games ?
    - will there be a halfway decent online component ?
    - is a hard drive included ? An add-on ? What's the deal ?

    All we *really* seem to know is that there's a Cell processor inside, it'll support HD, include a Blu-ray drive, will take some sort of hard drive ( at least as an add-on ), will have built-in networking ( like crazy ), and will have a *ton* of games written for it... seriously, that's a long, long list of games. Oh, and it'll play existing PS2 games, though the article doesn't say that I think it's a well-known given. That and the controller they showed just looks weird.

  • Is will it have a new version of Star Wars: Masters of Teras Kasi [lucasarts.com]?

    Or, as my friends in college liked to call it: Jedi Bitch-slap

  • Graphics power (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MobyDisk (75490) on Friday March 03 2006, @01:42PM (#14844198) Homepage
    Today, game consoles compete on graphics capbility. I find that kinda funny since most people I know can't tell the difference between 640x480 and 1440x1080, can't distinguish a progressive image from an interlaced one, aren't bothered by aliasing, think 24fps isn't choppy, and can play Mario cart in 1/4th of the screen just fine. I bet the console manufacturers could support 480p, wide screen, and then upscale to everything else. Just keep it above 24fps. The gamers wouldn't notice or care.

    Personally, I'm more interested in new controls and new game play innovation.

    Maybe the consoles are really made just to impress the reviewers?

    • I agree with you that game quality and play are far more important than resolution, but I should point out that I went and bought the xBox version of Sims 2 instead of the GameCube version, due to the better graphics.

      So, for a cross-platform game, I think it's critical.

      For a single-platform, or console (PS3) plus portable (PSP) decision, I don't think it matters that much. It won't make me buy one console over the other.

  • Will it be sold at a loss? Of course! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by WoTG (610710) on Friday March 03 2006, @01:46PM (#14844252) Homepage Journal
    I'm tired about all the speculation about how much of a loss Sony will take on each initial device. Of course there will be a loss, and the amount of the loss depends MORE on how you decide to distribute the cost of engineering (both at the component level, and at the system level) over the lifespan of the PS3.

    How much will it cost to manufacture, excluding the up front investments? Probably reasonably close to the XBox360. Just look at the pieces. 200M transistor CPU and GPU's cost pretty much the same no matter the design. The cases are reasonably comparable. Power supplies will be similar -- unless the PS3 magically is able to use a whole lot less power than the Xbox, but I doubt it. The one difference major difference would be the DVD drive vs whatever the PS3 will have, but this added expense is offset by helping Sony launch their next-gen DVD format.
    • if it integrates with the PSP and people end up shelling out for:

      PS3 - break even
      PS3 controllers (extra, say two or three) - profit
      PS3 game - profit, after first two
      PSPs to attach and interact with PS3 - profit
      PSP versions of PS3 games that interact with PS3 - profit
      PS3 extra services - classic games, etc - profit

      Not a bad market move.
  • The PS3 is starting to look more and more like a Daikatana scenario. Is Sony changing the specs trying to make it better considering the competition? (As John Romero did with Daikatana) This could be ugly for Sony. All of the Kings of the Industry always come tumbling down sooner or later. (3dfx->NVidia->ATI, Sears->Walmart, etc)

  • Overhyped analysts (Score:4, Interesting)

    by magicsquid (85985) on Friday March 03 2006, @02:02PM (#14844441) Homepage
    It is obvious to me what Sony is doing with the PS3. They are letting the analysts talk about how expensive it will be. The analysts are commenting on how hard it will be to develop for. The analysts talk about potential delays.

    All this does is get the consumer to expect the worst.

    Then when Sony prices it at $399 and delivers it on time, consumers will flock to it because now to them "It's $400 cheaper than I thought it would be! I've got to go get it!"

    Sony loves right now that people are talking about $800 and $900 price tags. When they deliver at around $400 it will seem like the bargain of the century.

  • How long will next generation really last? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by OzPhIsH (560038) on Friday March 03 2006, @02:44PM (#14844956) Journal
    Ok, so everyone is hyping up the power of the cell processor. No doubt the cpu is going to push some impressive numbers when code is correctly optimized for cell. But how long is it going to take developers to really discover and understand how to effectivly use the power of the processor?

    Lets take a look at console history. In every case you can see that for any particular console, the console's first generation games pale in comparison to games created towards the end of the consoles life cycle, at least on technical merit. Game worlds are more complex, graphics are better, AI is better, etc. This is because as time goes on, the developers become more familair with the specific capabilities of with the hardware and learnt o exploit the strengths and avoid the weaknesses. To me at seems that jsut as soon as developers really come to grasp with the specifics of the hardware they're wroking with, the hardware companies decide to release new consoles and the cycle starts over. Developers have to once again start the process of learning the ins and outs of the new hardware. In this case of the recent generation, I'd be hard pressed to say that the XBox and Gamecube games are even close to achieving their maximum potential. We'll never see it though, because, with the exception of 1 or 2 games, their life cycles have effectivly come to end.

    Fast forward to the new generation of consoles that are coming to market. Well except for Nintendo I guess. (Nintendo seems to be trying to avoid this problem by basing the Revolution on a souped up Gamecube architecture. We've all read how they've said they're trying to make it easier on developers). This new generation, more so than any other transition, with the advent of multi-cpu parallel processing is really shaking up the development community. Developers who are used using the same old way of thinking, but just adjusting for specifics of different hardware, now need to completly reevaluate just how to program their software in a way that effectively takes advantage of all the parts of the processor. Many of us are still waiting for quality apps that take advantage of our dual core PC's, which is arguably a much easier platform to code for than the cell.

    So here are my questions:
    1) How long is it going to take developers to really exploit the power of the processor? We've seen that this can take several years, and with cell so radically different, it may take longer than usual.

    2) When is the next-next console cycle going to show it's head (PS4, NextBox, etc)? 4-5 years? I have heard people say Sony intends the PS3 to have a long life (8 years?) but I think that is suicide. Gamers love new consoles and have become quite used to and supportive of the current console life cycle situation. If microsoft or whoever in 5 years comes out with another box thats better, Sony won't idly sit by, they will release a new console of their own or risk losing out.

    3)So based on 1 and 2, I have to ask, by the time the next-next generation of consoles come out, will all this extra power of the cell processor even have been exploited? Based on the current situation of XBox and Gamecube, my prediction is no the maximum potential will not have been reached.

    This brings me to my final point. If a) the cell is going to be initially difficult to program and it takes developers a long time to exploit the potential of the processor, and b) the lifecycle of the console will probably end before this potential can be reached anyway then c)what's the point? It seems that this technology is just going to drive up the cost of the system with out really giving gamers any of the benefits the processor has the potential to give. Hell, I doubt even XBox 360 developers will have been able to push its so called "weaker" hardware to the max before another generation of consoles is upon us. Do gamers really need all this hardware being thrown at them?

      • Re:But..Over a Barrel. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by AuMatar (183847) on Friday March 03 2006, @01:05PM (#14843808)
        Because physics was good enough in Super Mario 1. Not all games need, or want, realistic physics. In most cases, unrealism is prefered (try a true Newtonian physics space sim- changing directions is hard). Whats needed is gameplay innovations, and they don't make hardware for that.

        • Re:But..Over a Barrel. (Score:4, Funny)

          by Winterblink (575267) on Friday March 03 2006, @01:23PM (#14843969) Homepage
          I can't imagine true physics in a Mario game. Wait, maybe I can.

          Mario tries to jump over a fence, but his foot catches. Small splinters of wood are torn from the wood as he comes tumbling over the fence. He tries to brace himself for the fall, but breaks his arm. Game over.

          Or, he tries to buttstomp some shroom and ends up with an impacted vertebrae and shattered pelvis.

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