The Tech Of The Next-Gen Console Wars

Sergey writes "Ars Technica has an inside look at the next-gen console wars, with a focus on what we know about the hardware in the PS3, Xbox 360, and the Nintendo Revolution. In particular, the coverage of the Nintendo's Broadway processor is the most thorough and best-compiled available right now, and I think it shows that the Revolution won't be nearly as weak as its opponents suggest." An interesting sidenote from a Eurogamer article: the Revolution's specs may never be fully revealed by Nintendo. They consider the information irrelevant.

While this seems a little foolish

[Kazzahdrane]

I suspect that technical specs only really matter to one group of people: the developers. I need to know the specs of my PC so I know what games it's capable of. A console has a defined specification that doesn't change during its lifetime (unless you buy a "core" system....), so you know a game for that console will run on the one you have at home. Also, much of the specs released for the Xbox360 and PS3 are gibberish to laymen. Having said that, I do like to know little things like this, but then I'm a developer. If Nintendo's console is more powerful than rivals are suggesting maybe they should release them and say "Told you so!"?

Nintendo's got it right

[Gothic_Walrus]

They consider the information irrelevant.

And why shouldn't they? You're not going to be hacking into the Revolution to make it run Linux; I'd suspect the controls would make for a slightly wacky computing experience. You're never going to need to upgrade the system.

More importantly, as the last gen showed us, power doesn't mean much anymore. The three systems were able to offer very comparable experiences with the consoles differing in power, save for the fact that the Xbox versions of titles tend to be prettier than PS2 or GC ports. Hell, there were plenty of tri-console titles even in the last generation; even if the PS1 version of Spider-Man, for instance, was uglier, it still played the same as the Dreamcast version. If the specs didn't matter then, why should they now?

If I buy a console, it's for the games. Not for the specs. The era of classifying systems by bits is over.

Re:While this seems a little foolish

[/ASCII]

Since it looks like the Revolution will be _much_ easier to develop for, because of it's old-school design with few cores and a lot of cache, the first generation of Revolution games might look noticably better on the revolution than on the 360 or PS3.

Specs? Who cares?

[Lord_Pain]

Although hardware specs are nice and can contribute to a game it is the games themselves that matter.

Without quantity AND quality a system will die. It's simple.
Show me where the good games are and that will be the system that I will buy.

Re:Not just developers...

[Kazzahdrane]

Perhaps the Nintendo Marketing Department should stop believing that gamers need to be told *how* to play games. Nice suggestion though, it'd probably go down a treat and the fanboys would be able to say "Look, Nintendo listen to their fans! Aren't they so great!"

Re:While this seems a little foolish

[higuy48]

Wait a second... I don't understand how they could have made the system so easy to develop for if the controller is so different. I'd love to see the interface on their devkit.

Hannibal and Ars Technica suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? Because their articles are full of unfounded speculation disguising otherwise. Oh, but it's fun to read their silly articles after they're debunked as false.