The 5-Year Console Cycle Is Dead 422
Pickens writes "The Xbox 360 recently turned five years old, and with no known successor on the horizon for the 360, PlayStation 3 or Wii, Cnet reports on the death of the 5-year console cycle — one of the video game industry's most longstanding truisms. For example, the Nintendo Entertainment System came out in 1985, followed by the Super NES in 1991, the Nintendo 64 in 1996, the GameCube in 2001, and the Wii in 2006. But now, why should console makers upgrade their offerings? Consumers are still buying their machines by the hundreds of thousands each month, and ramped-up online initiatives are breathing new life into the systems. A lot of it has to do with the fact that with the current generation of consoles, each company found a way to maximize either the technology behind the devices, or the utility to a wide range of new gamers."
Wow, not even the first example is right (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Say again? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:It is all about resolution (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry for the bad netiquette / karma whoring, didn't realize these were available ...
* The PlayStation®3's SPUs in the Real World - A KILLZONE 2 Case Study
http://sijm.ca/2009/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/michiel-van-der-leeuw.pdf [sijm.ca]
* Practical SPU Usage in GOD OF WAR 3
http://www.tilander.org/aurora/comp/gdc2009_Tilander_Filippov_SPU.pdf [tilander.org]
Cheers
-- ...
CPUs & GPUs are still too damn slow.. A graphics programmer who worked on Uncharted 2 (one of the best looking PS3 games available) shares his comments on the future of GPUs / Rendering
http://filmicgames.com/archives/467 [filmicgames.com]
Re:Business Model Changes (Score:2, Informative)
Especially the Wii would of course benefit from an upgrade.
Kinda haven't played it but was actually in an electronics store today which had it hooked up to a large HD screen and it looked like utter crap, sorta like if you used a non-RGB scart (maybe not in the US?) or JPEG encoded with low quality. Blurry and weird. Cable and TV may had sucked (composite cable?)
Anyway, regardless of course it could had been better.
Heck, the Gamecube could output DVI ..
Re:Say again? (Score:3, Informative)
The hell it was. Gamecube and Wii used different media formats, different input device busses, different CPU, different GPU.
Gamecube GPU - ATI "Flipper", 162 MHz
Wii GPU - ATI "Hollywood", 243 MHz
Gamecube CPU - IBM PowerPC "Gekko", 486 MHz
Wii CPU - IBM PowerPC-based "Broadway, 729 MHz
Re:Sony and others... (Score:1, Informative)
Umm, Sony already has a 3D TV capable console, It's called the PS3 and it's been out for 4 years now. (Nov 17 2006)
Sure, it only recently got the free upgrade to 3D, but that's because we didn't have 3D capable TVs in 2006.
Re:Business Model Changes (Score:3, Informative)
I doubt it, as people are really not going to adopt this until we're wearing full-body suits.
They'll waggle a bit, drop their stuff, and go back to a controller.
The only 'waggle' game I consistently play is DBZ:BT3 on the Wii. At least the movements to perform many of the moves are quite realistic and true to the style of the game/series.
Re:Business Model Changes (Score:3, Informative)
I second this. I have a gaming pc, a ps3, and a wii.
My wii sits collecting dust 90% of the time. My ps3 gets used a lot for netflix, and I play games on it every once in awhile; it gets a ton of use when I get a new game that I really like and I want to beat, like AC2. My computer gets used more regularly, although it's pretty much ignored when I'm playing a game on my ps3 like AC2.
In the end, my wii is great for playing Super Smash Bros, and Mario Kart, when friends come over. Other than that it doesn't get used much at all.
I'll be getting PSMove come Christmas so I'll see how it compares. It seems like it will basically be Wii with PS3 graphic capabilities which should be nice.
I really do wish they would make a backwards compatible HD Wii though. Even if the graphics suck using a higher resolution would be nice. After playing my PS3 for an hour, playing the Wii physically hurts my eyes because everything looks out of focus and fuzzy.
Re:It is all about resolution (Score:3, Informative)
2006 Article [xbitlabs.com]
Re:No he's quite right (Score:3, Informative)
The PS3 was not a well planned design, it was what they could hack together in the time they had.
You are being far from accurate in your statement here. The PS3 was well planned, but as it turned out the cost of the cell turned out to be prohibitive. The original PS3 planned for multiple cell processors, as many as four in one design. Multiple Cell Processors would have handled the necessary vector processing to handle what is traditionally off loaded to a GPU (a dedicated vector processor). This is not all that different than the PS2 architecture which also did not have a dedicated traditional GPU (The GS did not perform geometric transformations only textures and shading). But in the end the cost of the Cell processors made multiple cost prohibitive, They even had to cut down on the number of active SPUs to increase yield.
So this was not a matter of poor design, but one of misunderstood costs (The PS2 chip, which was also a very original design, was far cheaper to produce.)
There may not be a way around it, IBM canceled further Cell production because it just doesn't stack up well.
This is also disingenuous. Yes IBM has cancelled continuing the cell architecture, but not because it "doesn't stack up well" but instead because better techniques for implementing single chip multi-processors have been developed. All major CPU manufacturers are moving to similar design, using a general purpose processing unit in conjunction with dedicated vector processors. The basic architecture laid out by the Cell is the future of CPUs, just not the specific Cell line because improvements have been made, and rather get tied into a legacy architecture and having to work around it's weaknesses (like Intel and AMD have to do with the X86 architecture) they chose to innovate and move to a new and improved architecture.