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HappySqurriel on 02 January 2009
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MikeB said:
HappySqurriel said:
MikeB said:
Linkzmax said:
Great thread! I think it's time for a PS3 2009 VS PS2 2002 thread as well.

IMO in terms of console specs, the PS3 is ahead of its time. From a console tech perspective the PS3 would have been more suited to release by christmas 2009, compared to historical specs (but with bigger harddrive and slimline components).

I view the tech as such, so from that perspective the PS3 will have more than a 2 years headstart to allow developers to adapt and mature their game engines, increase install base and mature the services.

IMO the PS2 was a rather normal specced console in 2000.

So if the PS3 should have been released in 2009 because it was so advanced, what does that tell you about the XBox 360 that was released a year before the PS3 and has similar performance to it?

The engineering behind the PS3 is (sort of) like a chef who chooses to put as many of the most exotic spices into a dish as possible regardless of how these spices taste together ... The PS3 is not "Ahead of its time" as much as it was unnecessarily complicated and poorly thought out.

 

Regarding CPU peformance and general design the 360 is not similar in terms of actual potential performance. And there are other factors with regard to being more advanced, like having a high capacity Blu-Ray drive. PCs came with DVD drives well before the PS2 launched, in this sense the PS3 is actually ahead of standard PC technology.

It's a bit like an Atari ST vs Amiga thing, where early Atari ST to Amiga ports were better on the less advanced but simpler Atari ST. But the Amiga far outshined the Atari ST regarding exclusive games a couple of years further along.

Don't get me wrong the 360 was well specced for a 2005 console, it would have been a solid specced console if it didn't have such a failure prone design (and should have had a default harddrive, like the original XBox). Gears of War 2 looks good, even a launch title like Kameo still looks good. I would rather have had Microsoft waited till 2006 to iron out all the fundamental design "mistakes".

 

Well, the Blu-Ray drive is only ahead of PC techology if Blu-Ray becomes a standard addition to most PCs ...

There are two technologies which have a much stronger foothold and may prevent this from happening, external hard-drives and flash memory. We really aren't that far off from having external disc drives that offer 100 times the storage of a Blu-Ray disc which are sold for $100, and USB keys which offer similar storage to a Blu-Ray disc for $10.

Now, the reason why I would say the Cell is over complicated is that Sony could have choosen a less expensive processor that had lower power requirements that achieved the same real world performance as the Cell ... As nice as theoritical performance is, it is entirely meaningless unless it translates to real world performance (which doesn't happen with the cell).