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PlayStation (Games) XBox (Games)

More On PS3 and Xbox 2 541

Posted by michael from the controllers-now-twice-the-size dept.
News for nerds writes "The BBC has news about the next-generation game consoles, with comments from various third parties. According to Rory Armes, studio general manager of EA in Europe, they have already received the development kits from Microsoft, but not yet from Sony and Nintendo. He assumes Sony's PlayStation 3 will have a little more under the hood and be more cost-efficient than Microsoft's Xbox 2. Gerhard Florin, head of EA in Europe, remarks 'PS3 will provide graphics indistinguishable from movies.' Spider-Man 2 or Toy Story 2, that's the problem."
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More On PS3 and Xbox 2 More

More On PS3 and Xbox 2

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  • iGame (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fembots ( 753724 ) on Tuesday January 25, 2005 @02:50PM (#11472059) Homepage
    Would it be too much to speculate that Apple can easily come out with a iGame console similarly sized like a Mac Mini?

    The article mentioned that "Microsoft is obviously a software company first and foremost, while Sony has more experience in hardware", so what then, can a software/hardware company like Apple do?

    • Would it be too much to speculate that Apple can easily come out with a iGame console similarly sized like a Mac Mini?

      Last time Apple tried to make a game console, the result was the Pippin. It flopped. But by the time the Nintendo Revolution comes out, we'll probably have a half-height GameCube SP to match Sony's new thin PS2.

      • Re:Watch Nintendo, not Apple (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Golias ( 176380 ) on Tuesday January 25, 2005 @03:04PM (#11472280)
        The Pippin, like the Performa and the Newton, was a product of the Dark Times, between when Jobs had control of the company stolen from him, and when he stole it back.

        Let us not speak of the Pippin any further.

        If a critical mass of Mac mini systems end up in TV rooms across America, a few game developpers will probably gravitate towards exploiting that market, and Apple may find themselves selling a popular game console entirely by accident.
      • At one point it was speculated that half the reason Nintendo decided to go with the smaller discs was so their was potential in the future to make a portable Gamecube. It's a nice thought, although I doubt it would ever happen. But if the next gen GameBoy (the DS is not the next gen Gameboy) just happened to be a miniture, handheld version of the Gamecube with a screen that played Gamecube games, that would be nice.
    • You mean like the Pippin?

    • Re:iGame (Score:2, Insightful)

      by poot_rootbeer ( 188613 )
      Would it be too much to speculate that Apple can easily come out with a iGame console similarly sized like a Mac Mini?

      Sure, they COULD. But I don't think they will, because Apple has thus far shown less then zero interest in moving into the entertainment market. They are still strictly a home computer and portable music company.

      The fact that they've had mixed success in getting third parties to produce even desktop software for their machines does not bode well for their ability to attract game develop

      • Re:iGame (Score:3, Interesting)

        by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF ( 813746 )

        The fact that they've had mixed success in getting third parties to produce even desktop software for their machines does not bode well for their ability to attract game developers to the platform, either.

        Actually, developers are all about OS X. Heck I am sitting two offices away from some people developing Windows only software, that they are developing on powerbooks. I mean have you seen how much freeware/shareware there is for OS X? People love to develop on OS X. Businessmen on the other hand, are

    • Re:iGame (Score:3, Interesting)

      by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF ( 813746 )

      Would it be too much to speculate that Apple can easily come out with a iGame console similarly sized like a Mac Mini?

      I'd much rather see them partner with an established console maker. The key to a successful console is the games. You need a lot of them. You need a few really good ones. You need at least one excellent, exclusive title. This would be really hard for Apple to swing all at once.

      I'd like to see them partner with Nintendo or Sony to release a built in gaming environment and compatible

    • Re:iGame (Score:3, Informative)

      by Jozer99 ( 693146 )
      Uhhhh...It is the Mac Mini. It has a Radeon 9200 (better than the gForce 3 in the XBox), a 1.25 GHz processor (Better than the 700 Mhz Celeron in the XBox), 256 MB of DDR RAM (better than the 64 MB of RDRAM in the XBox). For $29.99 US you can get a TV video adapter from Apple. Play flash games, shockwave games, emulate old systems, and play modern games ported to Mac (there are some). Plus, when you are done gaming, you can watch movies and listen to music. When you are done with entertainment in gener

    • Re:iGame (Score:3, Funny)

      by nuckin futs ( 574289 )
      igame?
      great, now we're gonna hear jokes about the game controller having only 1 button.

  • i remember... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fresh27 ( 736896 ) on Tuesday January 25, 2005 @02:51PM (#11472073) Homepage
    when Nvidia said their GeForce FX series could render 6 Jurassic Park quality dinosaurs in real time. Long story short, this is bullshit and it'll be a while before we get such great quality.

    • Re:i remember... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by stupidfoo ( 836212 ) on Tuesday January 25, 2005 @02:58PM (#11472198)
      The same thing (rendering Toy Story like movies in real time) was said about the PS2 and Xbox. Has this happened? No. And it won't happen with the Xbox 2 and PS3. They'll look great, but they won't be of that quality.
      • This is true. However, I'd say that Virtual Football 2006 will look almost indistinguishable from live football on SDTV.

      • Re:i remember... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Marvelicious ( 752980 )
        My question is: would it really be a problem. I'd hate to see Hollywood have to use actors instead of computers and all, but c'mon. Lets face it, the largest use of graphics in movies is kids movies, and that market won't really be hurt. As for the rest of it: if you can do it in real time on a game system, maybe its time to step up and improve movie graphics again. ...After all, it still doesn't look real to me!

    • Re:i remember... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by pbranes ( 565105 ) on Tuesday January 25, 2005 @02:59PM (#11472212)
      We have heard all of this before. PS3 marketing is doing what marketing does best - lying. Only believe it when you have the hardware in hand. We have never been given any evidence that the PS, Xbox, or gamecube marketing departments ever tell anything close to the truth.

      Case in point. Read this time article from before PS2 came out:

      http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/2000/0320/j apan.sony.html [time.com]

      Don't believe it till you are holding it in your hands.

    • Re:i remember... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by grumbel ( 592662 ) <grumbel+slashdot@gmail.com> on Tuesday January 25, 2005 @04:33PM (#11473319) Homepage
      Its actually less bullshit than one might think at first. The biggest difference between Jurassic Park and a game with dinosaures is not the polygon count, but that the game is interactive, while the movie is not.

      In a movie you have a fixed set of camera angles and actions to be performed, if you could throw all your polygons, artists and CPU power to render those, you would get results close enough to the movie. However in a game you end up having neither a fixed camera angle, nor fixed actions, most stuff is up to the player. You just don't have enough artists to tweak each and every situation. One time the player might have a bazooker, next time a MG and next time he might want to crash into the dino with his jeep. So since you can't prescript all actions you have to let a physic engine and AI handle it, which in turn burns down valueable CPU, which you no longer can use for pushing polys around, in addition to that you no longer have an artists involved who can fine tune the stuff that happens on screen, so you might run into clipping errors or silly looking situations.

      Overall it is simply impossible to get an interactive situation look as good as a movie, even if you have all the CPU power you need at hand you still lack the artists for the fine tuning and often have zero control over the camera angle.

      Beside from that we already are in a situation where yesterdays cutscenes are tomorrows gameplay scenes, yet, most gameplay looks for more borring then the cutscenes we saw before.

      • Re:i remember... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Caraig ( 186934 )

        The biggest difference between Jurassic Park and a game with dinosaures is not the polygon count, but that the game is interactive, while the movie is not.

        Not true. The big difference is not in the interactivity, but rather in the realtime rendering.

        A movie such as Jurrasic Park is made by putting the scene into a 'render farm,' a series of dozens if not hundreds of computers. Each computer not only works on a single frame, but more often than not works on a single element in each frame: color, speculari

  • Quick Summary: (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 25, 2005 @02:51PM (#11472075)
    "We have no idea what the two will look like, but that doesn't keep us from making Wild-ass guesses and then providing 'analysis' on them!"

  • Movie animation (Score:5, Insightful)

    by truesaer ( 135079 ) on Tuesday January 25, 2005 @02:52PM (#11472087) Homepage
    This sounds like hype to me...how can you render on the fly as well as movies which use huge render-farms to come up with a static video? If he just meant cutscenes....well guess what, thats just the work of any DVD player.

    • Re:Movie animation (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Omnicrola ( 831720 ) on Tuesday January 25, 2005 @02:59PM (#11472209)
      Well, your computer would only have to generate a maximum of say, 1600x1200 resolution frames. To put something on a film, which is projected on a 40-100ft (diagonal) screen, you need something on the order of 4000dpi images. (not sure what that works out to in pixels, as the aspect ratio is different between computer and film) Either way that's a heck of a lot more pixels. Plus, a lot of advancement has been made in 'shortcutting' to better-looking graphics. Jurassic Park probably used a lot more polygons than they would take to do the same job nowadays. You have pixel shaders, normal mapping, and a slew of other things that can be done in real-time now. Granted, there will probably be a disernable(sp?) difference to the trained eye, but that's just a fallacy of being educated in the art of the polygon. :)
      • When you talk about 4K resolution, you're talking about 4K per frame, not per inch.

        4000dpi on a 100 foot (diagonal) screen? Are you making movies about fractals?
      • The parent post doesn't really make much sense.

        I don't understand why projecting something on a larger screen would require a higher DPI. In fact, because the audience is farther from the screen, it would be precisely the opposite (i.e. individual pixels implicitly look small, simply because they are far away).

        Furthermore, digital cinema simply does not use a resolution far beyond that of modern PC video. Doing a quick Google search for "digital cinema resolution", I ended up at a little blurb [howstuffworks.com] which menti

      • Re:Movie animation (Score:3, Informative)

        by dokebi ( 624663 )
        This is a common misconception. Star Wars II in digital projection had a resoltion of 1280x1024. Many graphics cards can now do this resolution with very high polygon counts without much trouble.

        What really differentiates PC/console graphics and render-farm graphics is in the physics engine. The article mentions this as well. The reason Pixar films look so great is because they have very detailed physics models that do a lot of particle interactions--ruffled clothing, waving hair, splashing water, etc.
      • Pixel Count has next to nothing to do with movie quality rendering. Shading, Lighting, and Animation are what make movie quality rendering. Real Time Global Illumination? I don't thinks that's going to be a feature of these consoles. How about Caustic effects? Real Time Refraction? probably not. Those are some of what set a movie quality renderer apart from your 3d accelerator chipset. Not even polygon count does as much as those things to increase the realism in a rendering.
    • Looking at FFX and keeping the advance of technology in mind I'd say that's possible. You don't do fluid dynamics or individual hair physics, use normalmaps instead of subD meshes and stuff like that. The result won't be as good as a real movie, no, but the difference should be small enough not to matter. After all, games aren't using proper AI, either.
    • This sounds like hype to me...how can you render on the fly as well as movies which use huge render-farms to come up with a static video?

      I thought Doom 3 looked as good as some animated movies. Part of how it's pulled off is spending hours rendering the lighting for everything before it's put in the game. Disadvantage is that more stuff is static and you can't destroy, say, every wall in the game. Also Doom 3 has little quirks like monsters don't cast shadows on one another, if too many lights fall on the

    • Ever played Tron 2.0? The typical home computer or Xbox can easily produce graphics indistinguishable from movies-- as long as the movie is an effects show in Tron.

  • But still nothing on Nintendo... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 25, 2005 @02:52PM (#11472104)
    ...it seems Nintendo is all but ignored by the MSM, unless it's an article predicting doom and gloom for the country. I think Nintendo's system is definitely the one I'm most interested in seeing.

    And anybody else upset that Microsoft wants to rush the next next generation? I still don't think this generation has been tapped out yet in terms of graphics and gameplay potential (maybe I'm just a bit bitter cuz I bought an Xbox last week :P)
    • I'm with you, but not as strongly. Unfortunately, the PS2 is really starting to get long in the tooth. I'll be sad to see it go as the new war begins. I am however, still pissed at Sony and Nintendo for rushing this DS/PSP thing, as the software lineups for both show is obviously the case.

      As for Microsoft, they may be trying to push forward a *little* bit early, but console history shows it's about time to introduce the new generation for early adopters.

      Don't worry about your XBox though, people still
    • Well, yeah, but the Xbox, great as it is, is getting a bit old. The PS2 is positively ancient. The tech is from the late nineties, basically (OK, the Xbox is tip of the century, but only just), so it's nice to see it upgraded. What I'm most worried about, is the mod scene. They have to go right back to scratch with the next Xbox and the next PS3. I wonder how long it'll take'em to hack'em.

    • Its simple (Score:5, Informative)

      by Mike Hawk ( 687615 ) on Tuesday January 25, 2005 @03:13PM (#11472408) Journal
      Nintendo is not an American company. It is not traded on the American exchanges like Sony and Microsoft are. Press about Nintendo is not as useful to the people who actually get "gaming" news from the MSM, except to give perspective compared to Sony and Microsoft, and yes in the American market it is relatively doom and gloom for Nintendo. This is all logical and matter-of-course.

      And for a little perspective on rushing things... The GBA and Xbox both came out in 2001. The NDS is already out. Nintendo is the one complaining about the pace of the console cycle. This does not make sense. I'm just saying.
    • "...it seems Nintendo is all but ignored by the MSM, unless it's an article predicting doom and gloom..."

      In that respect, it's a lot like Apple. Actually...

      Both companies do very well with their portable products, even above and beyond their non-mobile ones. Both companies enjoy zealous followings, and suffer some zealous detractors. Both companies are often featured in articles with the word "beleaguered" or synonyms thereof.

      Is Shigeru Miyamoto Steve Jobs in disguise? We've never seen them both at t
    • Let's face it, except for the Super NES days, Nintendo is largely irrelavent. The Gamecube has not been a huge success outside of Japan (and even then, it's dominated by PS2). Nintendo is known for innovations, but not necessarily leading edge hardware. Nintendo's biggest problem is getting 3rd party support. They were so protective in the past (and also their younger audience stigma) that it's going to be hard for them to get 3rd parties to develop on the Nintendo. It seems like 90% of the games on th

  • Finally, on the same level as the PC, for now. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Crusher[DV] ( 84497 ) on Tuesday January 25, 2005 @02:52PM (#11472109)
    I love this comment.

    "Graphics on PC games such as Half Life 2 will be capable on the new consoles"

    In another 6 months, PC's will have moved on yet again to the next generation GPU's, leaving these things behind once more.

  • Physics? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by chris09876 ( 643289 ) on Tuesday January 25, 2005 @02:53PM (#11472121)
    In the article they mention that a big thing they'll be able to do with the improved processing power is more realistic physics. ??? Does anyone else find that a bit weird? I remember like 20 years ago I played a game with monkeys on buildings throwing bananas at each other. That thing had gravity you could adjust :) The screenshot does look amazing though... it's going to be really interesting to see where this technology (games) goes not only in the next 18 months, but 5-10 years down the road. Maybe we'll have holodecks after all :)

    • Re:Physics? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MaineCoon ( 12585 ) on Tuesday January 25, 2005 @03:02PM (#11472250) Homepage
      By "more realistic physics" it means collisions, physical chain reactions, complex shapes, more correct aerodynamic reactions, water simulation.

      Think Half Life 2, but with objects being more realistic in reaction (all those crates acted like they were hollow and made of balsa wood... which, if you break them open, you discover they are!).

      Consider a complex problem of an urban combat situation ala Black Hawk Down, but lets even make it more complex: a helicopter taking a hit to the tail, going into a destabilized spin, slamming at an angle against a building and sliding along, tearing things up as it goes.

      These days, the results would be: the helicopter takes the hit, which blows it up, and the dead husk falls to the ground, maybe with some forward velocity retained. The building would likely be unharmed.

      Ragdoll these days tend to look like dolls made of rubber. GOOD calculations are very CPU expensive, and multiple iterations are as well, so as few iterations of very fast low resolution calculations are used in physics these days to leave CPU time for other things, such as AI logic.
    • I'm not sure, but my guess [taoriver.net] is that they're intending to use the parallel capabilities of the system to provide what is basically super-cheap physics.

      Physics is mostly "local interaction." You drop a pen, it falls on the ground underneat it. Wind moves around. Hair is connected to a nearby head.

      With the exception of missiles flying across the world at super-high speed, which can gum things up, it's local interaction.

      Since it's local interaction, it's highly parallelizable. Just like graphics rendering.

      Th
    • Physics engines have moved generations beyond the simple demonstration you mentioned (which could be duplicated in DHTML and javascript ;)

      Imagine a game world where any object can be moved, pushed, pulled, rolled, or thrown. Each object has a specified weight and buoyancy. The typical example of this is that an empty barrel may float when pushed into the water, but if you start throwing rocks into it, it begins to sink.

      Though it may not sound like it, advanced physics engines in games are more than ju
    • I remember that game, too. Here it is: http://telcontar.net/Misc/Gorillas/ [telcontar.net]

  • Blurring the lines between cut scenes and gaming. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by teiresias ( 101481 ) on Tuesday January 25, 2005 @02:54PM (#11472126)
    Maybe I'm getting old and all but I find with better graphics I end up forgetting about the game and just watching the game. For Halo I'd walk around for awhile just admiring different things while getting shot at by Convenant ships.

    Well not really. But I'd feel like I missed something whipping around on the warthog.

    This can only be more true with movie like games.

    Blurring the lines between cut scenes and gaming. Can't wait! Although I'll probably be too distracted to actually finish my objective ;)

  • Every system says that (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jandrese ( 485 ) * <kensama@vt.edu> on Tuesday January 25, 2005 @02:54PM (#11472130) Homepage Journal
    Every time a new Playstation comes out Sony marketing types talk about how it will deliver movie-quality graphics to the masses in realtime. The truth is that it tends to perform exactly how you would expect it to perform, about the same as a high-end PC graphics card at the time it is released. Given how PC graphics cards aren't very close to rendering movies in realitime yet, I think it is safe to assume that any such statements made by Sony marketing are bullshit.

    • Re:Every system says that (Score:4, Informative)

      by __aailob1448 ( 541069 ) on Tuesday January 25, 2005 @03:23PM (#11472518) Journal
      Parent is mostly right.

      for the last couple generations (which is when consoles went fully 3D) at the launch of a console, the games looked better than pc games. It took pcs a couple of years to catch up.

      The thing is, consoles used low resolutions. 320*240 to 512*384 mostly. Even now, only a few games support 640*480. Compare this to pcs where the expected resolution is 1024x768 to 1600x1200 and you can see that consoles have been "cheating" all along.

      They got away with it because TVs weren't capable of greater resolutions and the native interpolation made things look smoother (blurrier, but smoother).

      With the advent of HDTVs, next-gen offerings will all have to support HDTV which means a significantly increased strain on the console engines. Will this mean PCs will catch up quicker? We'll see...

    • I think it is safe to assume that any such statements made by Sony marketing are bullshit.

      Well, that would assume everything [blachford.info] that was said about cell processors here [slashdot.org] was also untrue.

      If what was forwarded in that article was even half true, I don't know that real time redering would be that far off.

      • Re:Every system says that (Score:4, Informative)

        by tc ( 93768 ) on Tuesday January 25, 2005 @04:04PM (#11472997)
        Well, that would assume everything [blachford.info] that was said about cell processors here was also untrue.


        Heh. Looking at your first link, I think you should consider the source a little bit. This is the same guy who believes he knows how to counteract gravity [blachford.info] and travel faster than light [blachford.info]. So if it's all the same to you, I'll consider his "analysis" of the cell processor with a large dose of salt.

  • Porn industry better have devel kits! (Score:3, Funny)

    by garcia ( 6573 ) * on Tuesday January 25, 2005 @02:54PM (#11472135)
    Mr Dunn said he expected the introduction of real-world physics to be a major part of the new consoles.

    "We want to increase that level of immersion and realism in gaming to people can lose themselves in a game."

    Microsoft has apparently delivered devel kits to some of the game makers but Sony has not. I really hope that with these "real-world physics" and "more immersion" that the Adult Industry has development kits from all parties RIGHT NOW.
  • PS3 will provide graphics indistinguishable from movies.

    Didn't they say nearly the same thing about the PS2 in the months leading up to its release?

  • That's what they said about the PS2; movie-level graphics.

    The Emotion Engine, they said, could render very subtle faces, expressions, emotions.

    Well, go take a look at, say, Final Fantasy X. Yes, the faces are very nice. But the belt on the guy? It's a damn texture. Floor length hair? It's four solid bars joined end-to-end. Nasty, nasty stuff.

  • Lalah! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Turn-X Alphonse ( 789240 ) on Tuesday January 25, 2005 @02:55PM (#11472152) Journal
    We'll see Halo 3, Metal gear 4, Mario sunshine 2 and so on and so forth. The new consoles can't do much new because no one is risking it, they just want better graphics and the same thing over and over. That's just how the market is these days.

    Tell me when we're seeing Virtual reality, because untill then "inovation" is a word Microsoft like to throw infront of their patents.

    • Re:Lalah! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Raunch ( 191457 ) <http://sicklayouts.com> on Tuesday January 25, 2005 @03:33PM (#11472651) Homepage
      We'll see Halo 3, Metal gear 4, Mario sunshine 2 and so on and so forth they just want better graphics and the same thing over and over.

      I think that's a little unfair to Nintendo. Mario sunshine was a very different game from all previous marios, not different to the level of others but a signifigant difference. Metroid went from platformer to first person and Zelda was cell shaded and set at sea. I mean, a Zelda that involves a ton of sailing? Then there's Pikmin. I mean, if that is more of the same to you, then you need a new interface, not a different game.

      Maybe xbox, maybe PS3. But I'll eagerly await anything that comes out of Nintendo.

  • Great news for PS2 owners (Score:4, Interesting)

    by nizo ( 81281 ) * on Tuesday January 25, 2005 @02:56PM (#11472173) Homepage Journal
    I look forward to the price drop in PS2 games and consoles, particularly in the used market. Granted the games won't have all the eye candy appeal that the PS3 games will, but I figure the new influx of games will keep me happy until the PS3 price drops (probably around xmas of 2006).

  • Yep, this comment sums it up... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Gruneun ( 261463 ) on Tuesday January 25, 2005 @02:57PM (#11472190)
    "We can thrown more polygons around and have better AI but if it doesn't make for a better game then that's not very useful."
  • ...movies.

    Yes. I've talked to people at EA. They really have no clue what it takes to get a movie made. When it takes 100 CPU hours to render a typical frame (not unusual) and hours of work by human compositors to achieve subtle 2D effects for which no algorithms as yet exist (such as touching up the lighting because what is aesthetically pleasing isn't geometrically correct) I wonder how they're going to do this stuff at 60fps even if the hardware renders 1000 times faster than is possible on the current crop of PCs.

    On the other hand, if by movies they mean the likes of Episode II then Half Life 2 is already better.

  • Realism? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by techstar25 ( 556988 ) <techstar25@gmail. c o m> on Tuesday January 25, 2005 @02:59PM (#11472213) Journal
    Sounds like everyone's goal is graphics realism and immersion. Isn't anybody trying innovate anymore? Thank God for Nintendo. You want immersion? You want to run...they gave you the power pad. You want to punch...they gave you the power glove. You want to shoot...they gave you the light gun. You want to play music...they gave you the Konga bongos. While Sony and Micsrosoft are trying to improve their graphics, Nintendo is actually immersing players in the game by innovating hardware...the only area left for innovation.
    • Nintendo is actually immersing players in the game by innovating hardware...the only area left for innovation.

      I'm not the world's most experienced gamer, but I'd have to respectfully disagree. From what I've seen a lot more innovation can go into the actual "storytelling" of the game. The article says it best towards the end:

      Mr Armes warned that developers still had to learn how to tell stories effectively in the medium.

      "In some ways we are trying to forget about the hardware, go in the opposite d

    • Re:Realism? (Score:3, Informative)

      by poot_rootbeer ( 188613 )
      You want to punch...they gave you the power glove.

      Nintendo (that is, Nintendo of America, the corporation) didn't give us the Power Glove. It was designed by Abrams Gentile Entertainment, Inc., and developed and marketed by Mattel.
    • I don't know if you can exactly credit Sony for this, but what about the EyeToy, and headsets with non-traditional uses (i.e. Karioke Revolution instead of just voice chat in multiplayer games).

      I would say these are far better examples of innovation, becuase they hve both been wildly successful (something like over 10 million EyeToys sold now!) unlike the examples you provided.

      Microsoft has not done much, but even there one comapny had a very cool full custom control for a mech game (that really was more

  • Yeah, right,?? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Jarlsberg ( 643324 ) on Tuesday January 25, 2005 @03:02PM (#11472248) Journal
    And Playstation 2 can presumably render the original Toy Story in real time, right? Just like Sony claimed before PS2 was released ( http://www.dvdfuture.com/features.php?id=2 [dvdfuture.com])?
  • The new PS3 has a "Realism System" guaranteed to render realism more realistically than ever before! Criminal simulators such as GTA are further enhanced by the special "Gritty" subprocessor!

  • What I wnat to know is... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Raunch ( 191457 ) <http://sicklayouts.com> on Tuesday January 25, 2005 @03:15PM (#11472435) Homepage
    Where the hell did that beautiful picture come from?
    It's definately rendered - but from what?

    http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/40753000/jpg /_40753511_ea_screenshot203.jpg [bbc.co.uk]

    • Re:What I wnat to know is... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Bagels ( 676159 ) on Tuesday January 25, 2005 @04:00PM (#11472955)
      It's one of two "concept shots" that EA released a while back showing the estimated capabilities of next-gen systems. They also showed a fairly nice racer screenshot with a very high-poly car and trees with good-looking autumn leaves... quite impressive, assuming that they really do approximate next-gen graphics. The folks over at The Magic Box [the-magicbox.com] had both of them a while back, but you'll have to dig around to find them.

    • From the Febuary issue of XBN magazine (the last one):

      Speaking in December at a Financial Conference, Electronics Arts Cheif Financial Officer Warren Jensen displayed two screenshots purporting to represent the graphical capabilities of both Xenon (Xbox 2) and Playstation 3, claiming that the audience-wait for it-should "imagine the characters in a football game expressing real emotions. That's the kind of thing that's going to be possible with the next generation of technology."

      So that's where that sho

  • In related news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by funny-jack ( 741994 ) on Tuesday January 25, 2005 @03:18PM (#11472464) Homepage
    PS3 will provide graphics indistinguishable from movies.

    In related news, the PS3 will also be packed with the following features:
    • Built-in AI indistinguishable from humans
    • Integrated 10 MP digital camera
    • 10 Gigabit ethernet & wireless
    • Controllers will interface directly with the human brain--wirelessly!
    • Processor will run at 42 GHz
    All these and more, in the Next Sony Platform(TM)!

    ...is there anyone here who still believes pre-release/development crap like this? Anyone? I mean, anyone other than Michael.

    And now, it is time for a shameless plug [blogspot.com].
  • Both MS and PS want to have an "entertainment center", basically a machine that plays games, movies, music. pc's already do this, but they are much more upgrade friendly.

  • Sure, the PS3 might be faster and more powerful... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anita Coney ( 648748 ) on Tuesday January 25, 2005 @03:23PM (#11472516) Homepage
    ... but I have no doubt that the Xbox2 will be larger, louder, and hotter!

  • distribution method of games (Score:3, Interesting)

    by zornorph ( 63846 ) on Tuesday January 25, 2005 @03:36PM (#11472680) Homepage
    "A gamer could buy a starter disc for 10 euros. When he goes home he goes online and he could buy AI and levels as you go. It's much smarter if you can get levels as you go."

    Sounds like another subscription service, which is definitely smarter for the manufacturers. Smarter for us? While it does mean that we can constantly get new levels, it also means that the game may not work without being able to go online to download the levels, or will be sold with crappy levels to encourage you to sign up.

  • Lots of console hype... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GeorgeMcBay ( 106610 ) on Tuesday January 25, 2005 @03:38PM (#11472709)
    I'm positive the next generation of consoles will be very nice to behold, but I also remember all of the hype surrounding the PS2 launch and how the PS2 was such a super computer that they had to ban exports to Iraq, and how it was "movie quality" and such... And then it came out, and it was a clear step up, but not nearly the giant leap the hype suggested.

    I suspect we'll see the same thing here.

    The other thing to worry about is that the increasing reliance of highly detailed art means games are going to take much longer to produce, cost a lot more to make, and those costs will certainly be transfered to the consumer. Not to mention that when you're making games that require 100s of artists and with artists being a limited resource, you'll be seeing less projects spread among less game developer/publishers, with less competition and thus less gameplay innovation...

    So things aren't *all* rosy...

    Still, I'm sure I'll buy the Xbox2 on release day... I'm a sucker for new things.

  • Detail vs. Gameplay (Score:5, Insightful)

    by podperson ( 592944 ) on Tuesday January 25, 2005 @03:56PM (#11472918) Homepage
    It seems to me that all this technology just increases the effort necessary to produce a given quantity of satisfying gameplay.

    Once you add physics into the mix, every object needs to be broken down into more parts, represented in more ways, its possible impact on the game logic dealt with. (No point putting in a maze puzzle if you can bash through walls.)

    So now you need hyper-detailed models with hyper-detailed textures and somewhat-detailed physics representations to produce something that looks as good as a second-tier film from ten years ago.

    And the state of the art is, say, Half Life 2, a game which provides gorgeous graphics but runs you around on rails -- because providing that level of detail in a more open-ended game is simply prohibitively expensive. Indeed, by all accounts, Half Life 2's game play is unusually restrictive, even by the standards of First Person Shooters.

    The key to me is choosing a level of design detail that suits the game you plan to make and then hiring an art director who can make the game look fabulous at that level of detail -- rather than maxing out the level of detail for the hardware currently available, and then producing the best game you can given the budget constraints you're stuck with.

    The way things are trending we'll have games where you only get to visit one room because it costs millions of dollars to texture the pillows, insects, cracks in the wall, navel fluff, etc.

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