@ starcraft

Overall the PPE is insanely powerful for just the task of sheduling and co-ordinating the SPEs. Although I believe for many future games it may well be the case that's all the PPE will need to do. Look at the PPE as a manager and the SPE as employees, the employees can operate independently to a certain extend when given a task.



Like was the case with regard to CD and DVD, 1X speed for a DVD isn' the same as 1X speed of a Blu-Ray drive. The XBox 360 DVD drive can read about 15 MB/s max but the average reading speed is much lower due to the outer rings containing more data than the inner rings, one circulation reads more data at the outer rings.

Most PS2 and XBox 360 games are currently dual layer discs, all 16X DVD drives can read dual layer DVD at max 12X speed, on average that's significantly slower (a little more than 4MB/s for the inner rings) than the sustained reading speed of the PS3 Blu-Ray drive (9 MB/s).

Seektimes is another issue, with similar technology like was the case with the transition of CD to DVD is a little longer. This related to the higher density of the data of the disc, like in a library offering more books than another library it will take a little longer to find the book you are looking for using identical technology.



Both are excellently suited for multimedia and thus games development. However legacy game engines need to be adapted, else they would only use the PPE of the Cell.

@ starcraft

To quote myself with regard to the PS3 and Cell processor from a couple of years ago (July 2005):

"I understand that games developers may not be too fond of the idea of having to learn new ways to write their software"

"for software to really take full advantage of the new Cell technology, software needs to be optimized for using the specialized SPEs"

"Today single CPU solutions are dominant, thus multithreading isn't really that much of a benefit. Software developers who mainly write for single processor solutions don't like doing extra (time=money) work to get the most out of multithreading for other platforms."

So I was actually expecting this to happen. IMO listen to the exclusive developers, they know the hardware best.

MikeB said: @ starcraft And to address your earlier comment that Blu-Ray allows the streaming of more data than DVD (you were discussing memory, so I assume you meant simultaneously rather than 50gb to 9gb), the Xbox 360's DVD read speed can be optomised to 16X, whereas the PS3's BLu-Ray drive can only be optomised to 2X. Like was the case with regard to CD and DVD, 1X speed for a DVD isn' the same as 1X speed of a Blu-Ray drive. The XBox 360 DVD drive can read about 15 MB/s max but the average reading speed is much lower due to the outer rings containing more data than the inner rings, one circulation reads more data at the outer rings. Most PS2 and XBox 360 games are currently dual layer discs, all 16X DVD drives can read dual layer DVD at max 12X speed, on average that's significantly slower (a little more than 4MB/s for the inner rings) than the sustained reading speed of the PS3 Blu-Ray drive (9 MB/s).

Way to selectively quote me Mike.  For those of you following this conversation who weren't already aware, I qualified that statement immediately by acknowledging there are different methods of measurement for Blu-Ray read speeds(somewhere near the bottom of the last thread page).  I say again Mike, you are at odds with testing and apparently a huge number of mainstream developers on almost everything you say.  The read speeds of the 360's DVD drive and the PS3's Blu-Ray drive average out to a similar speed under testing and gaming conditions.  The PS3's drive certainly doesn't sustain a regular read speed of 9MB/s, just as the 360's drive is not locked at a regular speed.

MikeB said: @ starcraft So I was actually expecting this to happen. IMO listen to the exclusive developers, they know the hardware best.

Lol, Lair's framerate issues anyone? There is an abundance of 360 exclusive developers telling everyone that a DVD is more than enough, why do you not listen to them at all Mike?

@ Starcraft

48 Mbit/s reading speed throughout the disc is a minimal standard for all Blu-Ray movie players, the PS3's drive is faster.

@ starcraft

So? Was I saying Lair is a perfect example or something? Maybe some things they wouldn't have been able to generate on the XBox 360, but I still haven't played it (only just released here in Europe?).



Well Forza 2 devs admitted to making storage related sacrifes, also many multi-platform devs including Rockstar complained about the lack of storage.

But most importantly of all I have my own mind, I look at the PS2 and how much data later games like God of War 2 took. And I look at the PS3 with many times more processing power, bandwidth and memory, it's easy to understand DVD is not enough for the long run, IMO for the long run sacrifices are likely to be made even with regard to 50 GB Blu-Ray discs.

Considering the XBox 360's performance wise bottlenecked design and lower long term expectation, such as 5.1 audio (vs 7.1), 600p - 720p resoluton for more complex games (vs 720p - 1080p for the PS3), I consider the XBox 360's long term storage requirements to be somewhere close to the middle of that of the PS2 and PS3.

Honestly, why do people care about this number? It looks better than almost anything out there and that's a fact 600p or not.

@ ckmlb

Because the consoles are marketed as High definition consoles and at least on the PS3 considering its technical abilities should be rendering in at least 720p. Mario Galaxy and God of War 2 both look great compared to many PS3 and XBox 360 games (art direction and design talent), but people have higher technical expectations for much higher specced consoles.

At least COD4 isn't a first party exclusive game, so I can understand the trade offs (for the PS3 indirectly, due to being a mirror version of the XBox 360 game). Games like Halo 3 is a different case, they had a huge budget and working on the XBox 360 exclusively, so for whatever reasons they kept that game from being high definition, it's not related to multi-platform porting or development budget.

No it was related to creating "perfect multi-faceted lighting and effects." According to Bungie anyway.