disolitude said:
While I really don't want to contribute to the PS3 vs 360 graphics war flame, as they both are pretty limited and even by todays standards, I do have to ask... How did Sony screw up the PS3 performance like this? A year in R&D development is an eternity. A year is the difference between 3DO and PS1. Dreamcast and PS2. PS2 and Xbox... Even if we consider PS3 and 360 a graphical draw, which I think they are with their individual strenghts and weakneses, I have to see this as a failure on the Sony side. All they had to do is buy a 360 in 2005, and say to their engeneers..."Look at what this is capable doing, and make sure PS3 does it better." |
Not as simple as that.
90s - 2000s a lot changed in terms of graphics chips. Basically, producing a graphics chip in-house become too expensive and specialized - The PS2 isn't vastly more powerful than the Dreamcast in terms of graphics performance, it's just the CPU that is much faster when programmed correctly (much more effort needed though).
The same situation has occured with CPU technology now, there is no massive strides being made. Graphics chips are advancing becuase it's been determined that people really are willing to pay $1000 for a graphics card to make mass production viable.
We are still limited by the fabs in the far east though. nvidia and AMD essentially churn out the design to a company who makes the chip, these companies that produce chips based on other's desings aren't up the high standards and haven't been able to shrink the process as much as say Intel who do everything in-house....
Anyway, Xbox 360 and PS3 are based on same generation of graphics chip, just using competitors AMD = Xbox 360, nvidia = PS3. The desktop varients of the chips they were based on didn't see a proper generation upgrade and redesign until a couple of years after release, there wasn't really anything "better" for Sony to use, taking thermal and power requirements into account, this itself was never even a problem with the PS1 or Saturn of course.
If you go back to 2001 - 2002, there was a new Gefore full redesign every year.
....Bit of random gibbering there, but puts across the answer in a sense ;)
