MikeB said: @ HappySquirrel how unsuited the Cell processor is to game development. The Cell is very suitable for gaming development as has been proven already. It's not only great for scientists and militaries, first and foremost it's actually most suitable for games and multi-media. The Cell is however a radically new approach, a direction the market is currently taking in general with the PS3 at the forefront. It was expected years before the PS3 released there would be issues porting legacy game engines to the PS3 or XBox 360 lead games (I know devs who ported old DirectX-bound games to technically capable, but different alternative platforms, the end results were superior yet it took an unreasonable amount of effort, being multi-platform friendly isn't Microsoft's priority). Like many developers say, the Cell is not really that hard to develop for, but can be hard to port to if you have to port legacy game engines (and want good performance). Within 2 years the next generation will begin Unlikely for the PS3 I believe. I hope we get to see a WiiHD by that time, but it could well be such a device would be weaker than a PS3/wand combination. So such a device could be viewed as current gen and the Wii like the PS2 last gen, from a technical perspective of course. So PS2 vs Wii and PS3 vs Wii2HD. As for a new XBox, I hope Microsoft this time takes the time to properly design their hardware. They sacrificed a lot of the good console reputation the industry had and of course PC gaming is getting neglected nowadays to help XBox marketing success.

Its not about legacy game engines ...

Even very strong developers working from the ground up to produce games for the PS3 are unable to produce games which are dramatically better than what has been produced for the XBox 360; and the Cell processor falls far short of what is possible on Intel/AMD PC processors which it is supposedly more powerful than.

 

Now, regardless of what you believe, it is highly likely that Sony will release a new console in the face of Nintendo and Microsoft releasing new consoles. It doesn't matter how "Powerful" a system is, after 5 or 6 years it will be easily outshined by what is possible in a low cost system; and it is likely that Nintendo/Microsoft will be doing things outside of pure processing power increases to build excitement for their systems. Beyond this, the PS3 and XBox 360 are so dependant on eachother to justify game development that if one is replaced the majority of development for the other will dry up.

Realistically speaking, by the end of 2011 we will likely see the first of the next generation systems and by the middle of 2013 we will have seen all three companies release their systems.

MikeB said: @ RAZurrection Remains to be seen. If they tap enough Cell resources, it's likely the PS3 version will run better than the 360 version.

Well as I linked earlier, they've already said they're pushing the PS3 to the max, so there won't really be any excuses come the day will there?

MikeB said: I hope they will tap the Blu-Ray technology as well with a good streaming engine

I think since it's sandbox, a mandatory install will be likely.

MikeB said: 7.1 surround audio

That's nice if you have the set-up, but it would be better for the masses to have a solid framerate with little to no-screen tearing, which anyone with a television, projector or monitor can benefit from.

In any case Crytek should technically have far more room for gains on the PS3 than on the 360 while maturing their game engine.

You would think....I mean that was supposed to be the baseline for this generation wasn't it, but some things are not meant to be. Reality can be a real dasher to wishful thinking.

 

 

@ HappySquirrel

Which game engine(s) are you talking about specifically?

Of course building from the ground up is a big task. Many PC game engines also took so many years to be built up towards to where they are today.

There are endless optimisation oppertunities with the Cell (far less so for the Xenon), launch 360 games already used up near all of the Xenon's processing resources. Various launch PS3 games including some exclusives did not use the SPUs at all.

@ RAZurrection

That's near impossible, that would take too many manyears to accomplish. There are huge gains to be made with re-writing parts of an engine in assembler code, usually coders first start with time critical parts. To fully hand optimise an entire game engine would require far too many manyears for the team of coders Crytek has.

Much more likely is that they will advance their game engine in significant steps like Naughty Dog and Guerilla Games are doing. Crytek is still hiring SPU programmers, if what you said would be the case, why would they?

HappySqurriel said: Realistically speaking, by the end of 2011 we will likely see the first of the next generation systems and by the middle of 2013 we will have seen all three companies release their systems.

maybe, but seeing as nintendo is doing great dominating this gen and making a shit load of money, they would most likely want to extend this generation longer. microsoft is also doing fine and are earning a nice profit, i only see them releasing their next xbox early if the ps3 catches up to the xbox360 ww in install base in late 2010 to mid 2011. sony would most likely try to extend the ps3's life to the max to try and make a profit and earn back all their losses.

slowmo said: KBG29 said: Well I am done playing this game for now. I will end with saying this. As an owner of both the Xbox 360, and the PS3 I know which one has more impressive games. I have spent 1000's of hours on each system over the last 3+ years, and I like them both. However, when you go head to head with games that were built directly for each system PS3 is the clear cut winner, across the board. From my experiance there is only 2 360 titles that match the feel of PS3 games, and thats Gears 1 & 2. Halo, Forza, Fable, Mass Effect, and L4D are not in the same league as Uncharted, Killzone, GT5:P, Ratchet & Clank, and Metal Gear Solid. Not in Gameplay. Not immersivness, and surly not in presentation. Now back to playing Banjo Kazooie Nuts & Bolts. A imo would never hurt on such a hugely subjective point, I happen to think you're stark raving bonkers saying its clear cut either way.  That being said I can't believe you're playing BJ, I got 3 hours in and thought it was boring crap, guess our gaming tastes are very different.

he's prolly talking about graphics and physics, which is pretty much true unless I'm blind or something, game play is always the most important though, so that would not be true on a game play level, just on a technical presentation level. agree on the BKNB btw, I'd take galaxy over that anyday.

MikeB said: That's near impossible, that would take too many manyears to accomplish.

Since Naughty Dog, Hideo Kojima have already done so by their own admission, I don't see how.

MikeB said: There are huge gains to be made with re-writing parts of an engine in assembler code, usually coders first start with time critical parts. To fully hand optimise an entire game engine would require far too many manyears for the team of coders Crytek has.

I imagine they'll enhance it to the point where they reach diminishing returns, which since it seems visually and technically beyond all other games (except perhaps Rage) revealed or released is fine.

MikeB said: Crytek is still hiring SPU programmers, if what you said would be the case, why would they?

They say the power needle is at the limit, seems like they need all the help they can get. They want to sell their engine after all, maybe they thought Sony could do without another UE3 repeat.

oobob said: iLLmaticV3 said: I believe the Sony Playstation 3 Computer Entertainment System is a very powerful beast. Within the next year or two we are going to see games that completely showcase how powerful the system is. God of War 3 and Heavy Rain being two of them. Uncharted 2 already raised the bar also. Luckily with technology belief is minimized.  And it's a fact that they could have had the same power in a chip that didn't piss everyone off.  I own a ps3 and I would be so pissed to program for it.  I linked phrack - oh yeah, most video gamers have an illusion of technical knowledge supported by buzzwords.  The fact is in order execution cores like those in the xbox or ps3 strain developers enough.  Having to further optimize code over 6 processors makes optimization needlessly complex.  In my comp hardware course years ago a student asked the prof if he should write something in a convoluted manner that saved a little bit of programming time.  The prof immediately told him that he should write it clearly and the compiler would optimize it.  Writing it clearly was much more valuable for the next guy who worked on it and the complier takes care of the minor optimization.  Turns out this gen of consoles threw out the common assumptions programmers have made for years and placed a larger burden of optimizing command orders on them.  Then Sony further screws developers by making a parallel processor so complicated it's horrific.  I love my ps3 but I would hate programming it.  The reason multiplats suffer is only developer studios that Sony throws money at can afford to waste their time figuring it out. And they could have just put a faster x86 chip in there instead.  Perhaps more than 512mb of ram (this limitation is why the console versions of oblivion have unarmored horses while it's present on the PC).  Or a better GPU.  And it would have run just as well if not better!  For the price of the launch ps3 you could have built a mid-high end gaming pc that murdered it! Hey look, exclusive developers sony throws money at make great games.  Those multiplat guys might be able to keep up if they could afford spending extra time and effort on overly complicated development for the cell.  Who would waste their time like that to reach a smaller market than either of the two other consoles?  Sony's arrogance this gen is appalling.

when it first came out, you can't really get a PC that powerful for 600 bucks, I'd admit to that easily, and now it's 300, so the price kinda does scale, but they are very arrogant and were very stupid about the PS3 during launch, and I still think they are retarded on a marketing level, it's fucking mind blowing, and where the fuck is my free cross game voice chat? no? wanna charge a platinum fee for it now? fuck off! i'll use skype and ingame kk? kiss my ass sony.

I first learned computers when people were still coding a decent amount of assembly(pre-windows lol) instead of using high level languages all the time, so I think people are just not used to it these days, I personally would enjoy the challenge but I'm more old school on that front I guess.

CGI-Quality said: @ RAZ Like I said, you talk a lot of nonsense.

I'm not surprised. Ad hominem attacks is a sign of lack of reasons to defend your posture.

 

Did you hear Heavy Rain has load times now?

FKNetwork said: MikeB said: @ Chrizum Uncharted 2 looks great, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't have anything to to with the Cell or Bluray (it could have been done on the 360 and PC as well). Not with this quality on the 360 according to these well respected developers. Their provided reasoning are also IMO solid. I think it's nice to see top devs being excited about what they can do with their future PS3 games. You mean "according" to a 1st party ps3 developer lol, of course they will say its only possible on the PS3, doesn't mean its true, anything on the ps3 could be done on the 360 with ease including unchartered 2, the only issue would be space on the drive but graphics would be no issue at all seeing as the 360 has a better gpu and memory setup.

the only thing that the 360 wouldn't be able to handle in UC2 would be the physics portion(besides the obvious storage thing,) the PS3's spec can handle physics a lot better than the 360 if devs bother with it, yes, I know not all levels in UC2 are physics heavy, but when those scenes happened, it was more awesome than any game I've played on consoles. The 360 doesn't really have a better memory setup, it's just different, but it does have a more feature advanced GPU, feature =/= raw performance though, don't mix the two up =) PS3 remains the faster machine that works more like a console than a PC, it's just a bitch to work with.