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PlayStation (Games)

A PS3 Hands-On Report? 105

Via a Joystiq post, a story on the site Kikizo which claims to have hands-on experience with the PS3. From the article: "Firstly however, the box. The stylish PlayStation 3 casing design that SCEI boss Ken Kutaragi revealed last year is, and always has been, empty - and no signs of a final, tangible casing solution appear to be in sight. 'I think to fit everything that Sony wants in there AND leave space for a 2.5 inch hard drive,' explains one senior developer working on a final kit, who will be our guide for much of this report, 'the machine would have to grow. The models they're showing off are way too small for what they want.'" Please view this with the appropriate amount of skepticism.
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A PS3 Hands-On Report?

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  • by republican gourd ( 879711 ) on Saturday February 11, 2006 @06:25PM (#14696584)
    ... If they go through with the 'purchased content is locked to a specific player' trick, I won't be buying one. I don't care how many formats it will play or how many Metal Gear's come out. The horribly low sellback value of videogames etc already makes me feel like I've been taken advantage of, I'm not going to support anything that makes that market worse.
    • by Kazzahdrane ( 882423 ) on Saturday February 11, 2006 @06:27PM (#14696594)
      Indeed, the console gaming community as far as I'm aware of has always been built upon recommending games to your friends and lending them out. Not being able to take a multiplayer game round to a mate's for a gaming session because the game disc is locked to your PS3 would be so terrible it's not funny.
    • There won't be any used games blocking [ps3focus.com] .
    • The patent is from 1999; if they wanted to use it they would have used it for the PS2 so this whole discussion is FUD (helped by Sony's rootkit fiasco, great work guys)
      • >if they wanted to use it they would have used it for the PS2

        not necessarily, since that machine had no network access hence no way to keep tracks of people. and DRM that has no upgrade or remote control options can only hope to work by disallowing ALL use.
        • bzzt, wrong. the ps2 had network access via any number of usb networking dongles (or even direct usbnet in linux)
          • As the other guy pointed out, you missed the point. To build such a system as to lock the game to a specific machine, you would have to have it hooked up to the interent whenever you wanted to play. This would have been sure death for the PS2, as the internet wasn't that ubiquitous back when it first appeared, and people wouldn't want to have to dial in just to play a game. I don't think people will want to do it on the PS3 either. I think it will mean the death of a great console if they decide to go
            • I thought the original patent was for a mechanism to introduce a section to a disc that becomes unreadable if read once and would contain the key to decrypt the remaining data?
            • It's still sure death for a console, hence the reason reasonable people consider it to be FUD, probably spread by the great purveyor of fertilizer. You can only pull that type of stunt if you have monopoly control of the market, Sony is in no condition to even think about doing it.
    • The horribly low sellback value of videogames etc already makes me feel like I've been taken advantage of

      Uh, that's because you are being taken advantage of. If you must sell your games then have a yard sale or use ebay. You can then charge just under what your local gamestore will and lose less money.

      If you find yourself frequently selling games back then you shouldn't have purchased them to begin with. With that usage pattern I believe you'll find the game rental services a cheaper alternative once

    • You know, it's interesting: Microsoft has done this with the Xbox 360's Live Arcade, but I haven't heard anyone complaining about it.

      Live Arcade games are "locked" to your profile. As long as the system can see your profile (e.g., it's on the hard drive or memory card in the system), everyone on the system has full use of any games that profile has purchased. But once the profile goes away, all the Arcade games "automagically" turn into game-demos.

      It's a pretty convenient system in a lot of ways: If

      • I wonder why that ire doesn't extend to MS?

        This is Slashdot, we've already got plenty to complain about with Microsoft.
      • Probably because these Xbox Live Arcade games only tend to run $5, occasionally $10. The fact that every game has a demo available for it takes care of some of the "lending need" too. But I don't think many people purchase a game for $5 and then worry about being able to sell it later to make some of their money back! The pricing model basically puts it slightly above arcade game pricing, and it's even cheaper than a lot of game rental places. It's way, way below the $50-60 retail price standard that some p
      • The original Xbox used a different style of protection- the games you bought on Live Arcade were tied to the Xbox you purchased them with. It sucked.

        I had a Xbox with about 10 XBLA games and a ton of paid downloadable content on it (golf courses among other things)...my daughter killed the Xbox by spilling some juice on it. When I bought a replacement console, there was no way to retrieve (without paying) those games (and add-ons) I had previously purchased.

        But when I sold my second Xbox, the new owner wa
      • Youve answered your own question.

        'I wonder why that ire doesn't extend to MS?'

        because

        'If you're at someone else's house (or lose your hard drive, delete games for more space, or need to replace your system), you can save your profile on a memory card or restore it from Live and all your Arcade games can be redownloaded at no cost.'

        Its barely more restrictive than taking the actual disk around to a friends house. The Blu-ray technology would require you to take your entire system round just to demo some game
  • Rootkit (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by pjh3000 ( 583652 ) *
    The article fails to mention the impending Rootkit payload to be delivered in every box.
  • Why can't they add a caddie to each and every BlueRay media? You know, like the very first CD drives had: a piece of plastic about the disc itself so it's protected from dust, fingerprints, and scratches to the most precious surface area?
    • Ummm... because if they added caddies we couldn't use the discs for frisbees?

      Seriously: They probably don't care if your disc gets scratched. In fact, it is good for business, as Sony makes a lot of money off game sales.

      Caddies are also an added mfg expense. The cheaper game discs + packaging are, the higher your profit margin.

      One thing it would fix is the tendancy for some consoles to scratch discs. In a caddy, no readable part of the disc would ever be near something that could scratch it.
      • Seriously: They probably don't care if your disc gets scratched. In fact, it is good for business, as Sony makes a lot of money off game sales.

        This must be why Sony made it a point not to add plastic caddies to UMDs!

        Oh, that's right, they did add them to UMDs. I guess you're just making things up.
        • But there is a serious difference there. In a PS3, you don't need the caddy because the game isn't going anywhere. The console is supposed to be stationary. The XBox 360 is supposed to scratch discs if you change it from vertical to horizontal while it is running or vice versa, but it wasn't designed for that.

          Compare that to the PSP. The PSP is designed to be moved around. They had to caddy the discs otherwise people would have ruined them fast. When playing a PSP you may be walking, in a car (which could

          • Compare that to the PSP. The PSP is designed to be moved around. They had to caddy the discs otherwise people would have ruined them fast. When playing a PSP you may be walking, in a car (which could hit a pothole), on train, on a bus, flying, tripping (oops), etc.

            I guess you missed the great portable CD player revolution of 1984. Strangely, also ushered in by Sony [sony.net].

            One more try, and then the stuffed bear is mine.
            • Lol, good comeback with "One more try, and then the stuffed bear is mine."

              To point out, I guess Sony also missed "the great portable CD player revolution of 1984" when they designed their PS2 and it started scratching up discs like a crazed DJ.

              The problem was a poor design. One plastic part would start wearing out and the disc would end up getting nice spiral scratches in it... Just because Sony did something right once, doesn't mean they won't fark it up later.
            • Re:Caddies? (Score:3, Interesting)

              by MBCook ( 132727 )
              Portable CD players are much more tolerant of scratches (because they are CDs, not DVDs as UMDs are (that's a lot of letters)). Plus Sony built the PSP so small I would assume a much smaller distance between the discs and the laser than you would see in a standard CD player.

              The main reason for the PSP caddies are probably so they can be put in a pocket or something like that. They are still open, but they would survive better than a "naked" disc.

              I've always been surprised that we haven't been using CD or

              • The real reason I don't want caddies on discs is that I keep all of my CDs and DVDs on several thousand spindles stashed around my apartment. Discs in caddies won't fit in the normal Case Logic style cases, either. It would just be annoying.
          • Consumers will accept this: witness the success of Zip drives. Those are just HD platters in cartridges.

            No, they were oversized floppy disks in cartridges. And they were never very popular.

            • Zip drives where quite popular, however only for a short time being, ie. between the days of floppies and before the internet and CD-R. The thing with Hard-Drive in cardridge was the Jazz-Drives if I remember correctly, came from Iomega as well.
              • Yes, Iomega did have the HD-based Jazz, thanks for reminding me. The first removable media I bought was the SyQuest HD cartriges. That was years before the Iomega Zip.

                However, by the time Jazz came out, Iomega was on its last legs. When they were even remotely popular, it was the ~100MB floppy disks. I don't think they sold very many of their HD models at all.

            • Zip discs were hugely popular for 3-4 years there... They ruled in the time period between floppies not being enough and CD-Rs becoming cheap. It was 3-4 years at most, but they were everywhere when I was in college.
              • That may have been true in colleges and art departments, but they were never really mainstream. Especially in a global sense. You might want to put their total sales into perspective compared to floppy disks and CD-ROM. Students and graphic artists had particular needs, and Zip disks filled the gap. But not for most individuals or businesses, who did not use them.
                • 59,050,000 million zip disks were sold in 1998 alone, according to wikipedia. That is a lot of disks. Not as much as floppies, sure, but certainly enough to be considered mainstream.
    • Because caddies are expensive and bulky?
    • are you kidding me? i worked in an environment where we had cd-rom drives used about 8-10 hours a day, 365 days a year. suffise to say, in the 3-4 years i was there, i replaced the caddy drives 8-10 times the entire time i was there, and never touched the tray drives.

      what was the application? DTS audio units in a theater. 2 SCSI drives per soundtower/theater, 8 of the 10 theaters with DTS audio. 2 of the 8 theaters had trays, the rest were caddies. i changed at least 1 drive out every single tower with cad
    • Why can't they add a caddie to each and every BlueRay media? You know, like the very first CD drives had: a piece of plastic about the disc itself so it's protected from dust, fingerprints, and scratches to the most precious surface area?

      They have, it's called a DVD/Jewel case. I find this works very well in protecting my media.

  • Summary (Score:5, Informative)

    by miyako ( 632510 ) <miyako AT gmail DOT com> on Saturday February 11, 2006 @07:27PM (#14696909) Homepage Journal
    The site was painfully slow, so here is a summary of the information in the article:
    The case we've seen for the PS3 is empty, and many developers are not convinced that sony will actually be able to fit everything into the case they've designed. The current development machines are towers. Along with a possibly redesigned case, Sony seems to be redesigning the controller, but is planning to keep the basic dual shock2 layout.
    As for the graphics, looking at games running in realtime there is certainly nothing as impressive as the Killzone trailer, but but MGS4 trailer seems realistic to be ran in realtime. The graphics right now seem to be about equal to the "creme of the crop" 360 titles, and while the PS3 will certainly be able to provide better graphics than the 360- it will probably be a fairly marginal difference.
    One thing to remember is that, while the PS3 may not be able to produce graphics that are substantially nicer looking than on the 360- it does seem to handle many more objects on screen at once.
    Game developers seem to be targetting 720p as the target resolution. Developers aren't really expecting games to run at 1080p because the system isn't powerful enough to do 1080p at a reasonable resolution (or even 1080i)- but the PS3 is capable of doing some nice upscaling to 1080p. Dual 1080p output is a joke at this point.
    The spring '06 release date isn't looking very likely. Developers are predicting summer 06 for Japan and a fall 06 or winter 07 release for the US and Europe.
    • As for the graphics, looking at games running in realtime there is certainly nothing as impressive as the Killzone trailer, but but MGS4 trailer seems realistic to be ran in realtime

      This seems silly, because this shot of Old Snake [ign.com] is far more impressive than this shot from the KZ trailer [ign.com].

      The interesting things about the latter are the 16:9 ratio, the high-res textures, and the hair/fabric. But compare that to Snake's hair in the first one. Or the sweat trickling down his face. Or some of the amaz [ign.com]

  • This whole tailoring the content to individual players will start eroding markets such as rental and resale of games, which isn't cool. Microsoft kept it to a minimum with the Xbox360 as they know that users do not want purchased content locked to them, but it seems as if the more people hear about the PS3 the more it is out of line with what they want and expect.
    • To clarify for the 360, Xbox live arcade games downloaded to the hard drive are available to all profiles on that machine. Some games are marked as restricted, such as Gauntlet, where if the game is downloaded to a memory card (which is a valid location to download to), that user must log into Xbox Live each time they play to verify the game. So you can take the game to another Xbox, but you'd need to sign in on each one you played it on.
  • 720p vs 1080p (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cgenman ( 325138 ) on Saturday February 11, 2006 @08:11PM (#14697114) Homepage
    720p as the target resolution. Developers aren't really expecting games to run at 1080p

    This seems to be key. Higher resolution does not always equal better image quality. When you boost the resolution of a shot, you reduce the amount of processing available for each pixel. If these systems are 10x the power of current systems, going from 640i to 1080p will consume 8x that power, giving you basically today's graphics, but sharper.

    Some games would be wise to spend those clock cycles on higher resolutions. Geometry Wars, for example, would be great candidate for 1080p. Others should spend the clock cycles on effects, like the swirling clouds in survival horror games. Still others should be looking towards more intelligent character interactions (I'm looking at you, tactical squad shooters with AIs that runs blindly into death).

    Personally, I feel that 640p ought to be enough for any game. Higher resolutions would be nice too, but better dynamic lighting, cloth effects, water effects and hair effects would be better. Higher resolutions expose poly problems and any effects shortcomings more, so it is best to shore these up first anyway.

    Guaranteed placement on-screen would be great too. You're losing something like 30% of your usable screen area simply to not being sure that an edge pixel is an edge pixel. Ever wonder why the HUD floats annoyingly close to the middle of the screen? That's why.

    And can we please stop putting an environment map on absolutely everything? Old stones in run-down castles are not high-gloss.

    • by Namarrgon ( 105036 ) on Saturday February 11, 2006 @09:25PM (#14697526) Homepage
      Of course, no-one was realistically expecting the PS3 to have the required 2.25x in pixel/shader/bandwidth horsepower to play Xbox360-level games at 1080p. And given a choice, developers would always rather do impressive-looking fancy graphics than plain, seen-it-before graphics at a higher resolution. But this may not matter anyway.

      The human eye has limited resolution, and there's little benefit to be had by exceeding that, so unless you have a very large screen (or you like to sit unusually close), you simply can't tell the difference between 720p and 1080p at "normal" viewing distances on an average-sized HDTV. Some numbers:

      The average eye is capable of resolving one minute of arc, a sixtieth of a degree. This equates to roughly 300 dpi, when viewed at a distance of one foot. Let's say the average distance from a couch to a TV is 7 to 10 feet. At 7 feet, you can resolve 300/7 = 43 dpi, at 10 feet it's 30 dpi.

      So in order to fully resolve a 720p picture (1469 pixels diagonally) at 7 feet, the TV would have to be at least 34 inches diagonally to make out all the detail. At 10 feet you'd need a rather large 50 incher. For true 1080p, even at 7 feet, anything under 50 inches and you're missing out - and at 10 feet you'd have to get a whopping 74 inch TV!

      Of course, for computer monitors, where you sit much closer (say 18 inches), it's a different story - optimal resolution really ought to be 200 dpi (for a 24" widescreen monitor, that's an amazing 4183 x 2353, or one of these [wikipedia.org]). But if you're on a couch, you probably don't need true 1080p unless you're watching a projector on an 80" screen, or unless you spent so much money on your TV that you can't afford a decent-sized loungeroom.

      • I think that the first problem is that people WILL BE expecting the ps3 to run at 1080p and now that the Sony marketing machine has done it's job, it will be difficult to de-program people.

        Second, is that no-one on this planet seems to understand what a native resolution is, if you have to upscale or downscale you will lose picture quality! Having a 1080p output (which almoat 0% of hdtv support as their native resolution) and a 720p hdtv. means that you will lose information and that picture quality will be
        • I think that the first problem is that people WILL BE expecting the ps3 to run at 1080p

          That's total BS.

          90%+ of the people buying the PS3 and the Xbox 360 will be expecting it to drive an SD 480i or 576i display. The talk about HD capabilities are just posturing for the gaming media. Most people don't, and won't have HD displays for this console generation.
      • "The average eye is capable of resolving one minute of arc, a sixtieth of a degree. This equates to roughly 300 dpi, when viewed at a distance of one foot. Let's say the average distance from a couch to a TV is 7 to 10 feet. At 7 feet, you can resolve 300/7 = 43 dpi, at 10 feet it's 30 dpi."

        This is a bit simplistic. Calculating the rough optics of the lens of the eye may tell you what you can resolve for a still image if your head is standing perfectly still, but it has nothing to do with the way the eye a
    • Personally, I feel that 640p ought to be enough for any game.

      I believe that's spelled 640k.

      In other news, limits get pushed back as technology advances. Our grandchildren will need to be reminded that 640 doesn't mean 640 thousand, and it's going to take us a long, long time to explain to them such eventually moot points as anti-aliasing.
  • Wonderful (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Retroneous ( 879615 ) on Saturday February 11, 2006 @09:02PM (#14697413) Homepage
    Ah yes, this from Kikizo Games, who claimed to serve "12 million unique users per month" in an issue of MCV (UK trade mag) last year.

    Y'know. More than IGN, Gamespot and every other game site around.

    And you know what's worse? Them getting REWARDED for it. Because stupid editors at major sites decide that they'll throw HUGE amounts of traffic at articles that consist of lies, hyperbole and what amounts to stock photos.

    Why is game journalism just a bunch of hot air and attention grabbing headlines? Slashdot, Joystiq - any other publication that decides to link to such rubbish. Well done, Kikizo. You've pulled the wool over their eyes - but most people will realise that you've not so much as got past security at any of Sony's offices.
    • Re:Wonderful (Score:3, Informative)

      by MMaestro ( 585010 )
      I can't say any about Joystiq since I don't read it, but as for Slashdot linking to Kikizo, thats simply the problem with user submitted 'news'. Get enough idiots who read your 'news' enough and eventually they'll force other news sites (such as Slashdot) to link to them. Throw in a user submitting system and editors that don't care and this is the result.
  • so we'll see you for more hands-on with final, cased hardware (and presumably a final controller) in surely not much longer than a couple of months' time.

    i'm wondering if they got the huge desktop tower that "Josh" guy got at his workplace. or ex-workplace ;)
  • by Anonymous Coward
    the times. A true NextGen console would have had used a 64bit Intel or AMD CPU, a Linux based OS, dev tools open to all developers, a choice of Nvidia or ATI graphics hardware, a modular casing that allows for hardware upgrades and expansion cards, et cetera et cetera et cetera.

    Whats the point of having three completely proprietary platforms with virtually identical hardware specs, zero compatibility between them and no hardware upgrade path? Games just 2 to 3 years from now will need more RAM, beefier grap
    • Good, then don't buy one.
    • by KDR_11k ( 778916 ) on Sunday February 12, 2006 @06:16AM (#14699194)
      Microsoft tried the mostly-PC approach, it netted them a huge loss because consoles are sold at a price point way below the cost of building a PC like that. Without license fees on games the hardware has to make a profit on each sale. Do you know how much such a console would cost and how pointless it would be (consoles have the big advantage of a single fixed hardware config, no worrying about incompatibilities or hardware that doesn't perform like your testing machines)? Consoles last 5 years on average, BTW, no matter how outdated the hardware is at the end you can be sure the newest games will still work on your unmodified launch system.

      If you want a PC then use one, don't try to turn a completely different system into one.
    • by RzUpAnmsCwrds ( 262647 ) on Sunday February 12, 2006 @05:05PM (#14701534)
      the times. A true NextGen console would have had used a 64bit Intel or AMD CPU, a Linux based OS, dev tools open to all developers, a choice of Nvidia or ATI graphics hardware, a modular casing that allows for hardware upgrades and expansion cards, et cetera et cetera et cetera.

      Whats the point of having three completely proprietary platforms with virtually identical hardware specs, zero compatibility between them and no hardware upgrade path? Games just 2 to 3 years from now will need more RAM, beefier graphics chipsets and quite possibly hardware physics accelerators and the like. What do you do with your PS3/360/Revolution then? Throw it away? Buy a NextGen II console? What?

      Sorry, but what Sony, MS and Nintendo are doing seems very 90s-thinking-applied-to-mid-00s-tech. Difficult to get excited about three proprietary consoles with no cross-platform compatibility.


      Typical Slashdot idiocy. Let's review:
      64bit Intel or AMD CPU
      64-bit CPUs are really only helpful when you need to address more than 4GB of memory. There are other advantages, but most code is not significantly faster on AMD64 than it is on the same CPU running in 32-bit mode. Also, x86 CPUs are expensive - MS is no doubt getting an excellent deal on the CPU in the 360.

      dev tools open to all developers
      The majority of console profit comes from game licensing fees. Sony/MS/Nintendo gets paid for every game sold for their system. Why should they give this up?

      a choice of Nvidia or ATI graphics hardware
      No, no, no! Consoles are about having a standardized hardware platform. By changing that, developers now have to target a range of hardware with different capabilities, different performance, and different bugs. It makes development and debugging more difficult, and takes away the fundamental advantage of having a system that "just works".

      a modular casing that allows for hardware upgrades and expansion cards
      No, no, no, no, no! Again, the Slashdot reader misses the entire point of consoles. With a PS2, you can buy any system and any game and know that it will play the same way. Developers have one platform to target. Console add-ons have failed many times (32X, Sega CD, 64DD, PS2 HDD) for a very good reason - developers can't target hardware that is only installed on a minority of systems. You can't code a game that requires 1GB of memory if the base system only has 512M; the smart developer doesn't even bother coding for add-ons because only a minor percentage of users will actually be able to see any advantage.

      What do you do with your PS3/360/Revolution then? Throw it away?
      No, you keep it because it still plays the same games that it played 5 years ago. And you buy a new console. It's worked well for 20 years, why should we change it now? $400 every five years is still cheaper than whatever you would pay to "upgrade" some old system.

      Upgrading went out of style in the mid-90s. It's not the console makers that are stuck in the past, it's you. Ever since Intel started using new chipsets for new CPUs, it hasn't made sense to upgrade the core system. Most people never open their system; why should they, when new PCs are so affordable?

      Basically, your post boils down to, "I like PCs and hate consoles, so I'm going to claim that consoles are out of date and should be like PCs". Too bad that you're 10 years too late. Consoles are more popular than PCs for gaming, and for good reason - because the games offset the cost of the hardware, and because the hardware is game-tuned (e.g. no parts that aren't needed) and standardized (economies of scale make it cheaper), consoles are cheaper than PCs. And because of their standardized platform and long lifecycle, there's a bigger selection of games and you never have to worry about whether your system will be able to handle a particular game. Pop in the disc and play.

      After 20 years, you would think that the PC gaming industry would have figured that out. They haven't, and neither have you.
      • To reinforce the point of the direct parent of my post, he forgot to add a few extra things (most of it is directed to inform the grandparent "with the times" poster)...

        Consoles make improvements in leaps and bounds - back when the first edition Playstations came out, games like Metal Gear Solid (Metal Gear #3, MGS 1) had literally state of the art graphics.

        PS3 Graphics (GPU) - It'll be using what is currently top of the line NVidia graphics, the RSX is supposed to be faster than even the holy 7800 GTX -

  • This story has less content than the empty PS3 mock-ups.
  • 'I think to fit everything that Sony wants in there AND leave space for a 2.5 inch hard drive,' explains one senior developer working on a final kit, who will be our guide for much of this report, 'the machine would have to grow. The models they're showing off are way too small for what they want.'



    In other news, Sony has recently laid off one of its senior developers on the PS3 project...

  • This guys biggest complaint was about the PS3 was that developers don't think the PS3 can handle 1080p at high frame rates. He writes for a game magazine, he probably can't move out of his parents basement, let alone afford one of those hi-def beasts.
  • "Don't worry, the PS3 will be the most powerful machine on the market..."

    Probably, but is the extra 2 FPS over the 360 really worth paying an extra $300+ for the worthless blu-ray drive?
  • Seriously TFA has an interrogation mark in the title, how more vague could it be?

    Its mentioned in several parts of the article sony NDA wibt allow the writers to be specific about games or certain specs about the Ps3 but the result is so incredibly vague, is hard they actually had a ps3 or they were just guessing.

    Other than a few pointers that could have taken from recent news posts or common sense (the devs are not using 1080), most of the information in the article is already well known, and the writing s

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