Rockstar to develop brand new franchise exclusively for PlayStation 3

So, when do we get the next installment of Smuggler's Run? That game was the shit...

What other franchises has Rockstar created that have been worth a damn? I'm sorry to say, even though I really like the GTA series, but Rockstar is a one-trick pony at this point.

So I guess Sony's gotten past that whole "we don't buy exclusives" thing they were ranting about a few weeks back?

"How fast does BR need to be when it can load the the HDD and stream? Whoops the 360 can't. HDD streaming not allowed."

HDD caching/streaming is allowed on the 360, several games use it - Oblivion for one.

funny how the sony defence force was clamoring about 50 million for exclusive content and lambasting m$ about it.. now that sony is clearly paying for a exclusive its just a buisness practice...talk about hypocrites....why would xbox 360 owners be frustrated...seems people who have too defend their precious 600 dollar grill are frustrated enough for everyone else

Quick! POLICE! POLICE! HELP! SOMEONE IS HOLDING A GUN TO JONNT THE BOY'S HEAD AND IS FORCING HIM TO COME INTO A PS3 THREAD.

Ridiculous reasoning...which is on par with the rest of your fanboy twisted comments. It happens everytime you butt in on a topic that you only care about because you woryy over it. You can say what you want but your actions prove that you lay awake at night, jump up and look at your 360 and you are afraid. Ha ha ha ha ha.

Here is is.....my flame free post, enjoy.


Maybe Sony helped Take 2 in coming up with the idea for this new IP. Sony is NOT a 1 trick pony when it comes to new very successful IP's. Sony has had more new successful IP's than the other 2 companies combined...multiplied even.

All any of us can do at this point is speculate. The way Jack described what he thinks this new IP will do for the PS3 was interesting.

He mentioned Tomb Raider as a defining franchise for the PSone. He mentioned GTA as the defining franchise for the PS2. He seems to think that this unannounced new IP in development will do the same thing for the PS3.

Who knows what this game is. It could be groundbreaking and be a HUGE system seller...or it could be mediocre and not do a whole lot.

I think it is safe to say that it will at least be somewhere in-between.

I believe that the gap will widen between the 360 and PS3 as the PS3 really starts to show what it can do. It took a couple of years for the PSone as it did the PS2 for games to fully take advantage of the hardware.

We have only seen glimpses of the monster that is the PS3 with MGS4, Killzone2, Heavenly Sword, Lair, LBP.

We can only guess what this beast has in store for us in another year or 2.

Whatever it is...we are in for the ride of our lives...so far, until the inevitable release of the next hardware generation.

Yup just as I thought. Whenever Sony gets some good news,it turns into an all out flame war. But at least there's some comedy!

Wow. A PS3 thread and Jonny the boy has 20 comments so far. 20. That goes to show you how far fear can drive a person.

The crack in the rock is going to get bigger. A few smart people have been saying it and it is starting to show. The crack will split into a rift then a gorge and then a chasm. The PS3 will be on the future side of that chasm and start to show it's abilities over the competition.

"The crack in the rock is going to get bigger. A few smart people have been saying it and it is starting to show. The crack will split into a rift then a gorge and then a chasm. The PS3 will be on the future side of that chasm and start to show it's abilities over the competition."

by that time jesus will be back and a small thing called armageddon will be in effect....where most of us will be getting poked unless that crystal ball you got says otherwise???

Andy McNamara's voice is almost as whiny in reality as it is in my head when I read his editorials in GI. It perfectly fits his consistantly smug expression.

Don't get me wrong, it's not like I hate the guy. He just gets on my nerves occasionally.

ohh quit saying people are scared sony troll...ill buy one of them grills when its 200 bucks......no the only thing thats scary is the though of you pro-creating morganfell

@JonnyBoy2U.

Really man, you don't have the right to call someone troll since you are one.

@bandit

I responded to your incorrect statements in regards to the CELL processor... Although, I forgot to include the IBM research url...

http://www.research.ibm.com/cell/

@word

thank you for parroting IBMS research papers now PLEASE tell me what it means in real-world game development
-oh yea you cant

The spes as I explained have limited branch prediction in the form of BRANCH HINTS which is very different from FULL branc prediction. The 360 by contrast has branch prediction closer to IBMs G5 series processors based on Power core. While not the greatest its no slouch either. In addition the 360 as OOOE execution on its VMX units buddy, which utterly slaughters the total lack of OOOe in cell.

While vector processing is powerful no arguement there, BUT there are aspects which cannot be higly parrellized. IE. Collosion detection in combination with AI branching while using real-time physics and alloting room for user input. Individually each of tis acieves a high theorical performance in non-real-time environments but once you essentially mix it together it becomes a coding nitemare were adequeate branch prediction is NECCESSARY and where OOOE would have excelled. Thank fully the 360 as decent branch prediction and OOOe thanks to its VMX units. IF im wrong please post more than a sentence and a link and while we are throwing around links seres a link to IBMs Power4 arch which both cell and 360 are built around.

http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/eserver/pseries/hardware/whitepapers/power4.html

LMAO....

Have sony fanboys been reduced to so little that now they're claiming us 360 owners are scared to sleep at night?

I just bought an Elite and its doing fine so far.

As for jonny hes just 1 of many trolls on this website. The truth of the matter is that there are trolls on both side. Perhaps the sony ones are worse since they continue to lash out all the time....

@word

Also no cell cannot access vram it doesnt word like that. When is the last time youve seen a computer use gpu ram for system ram? Id love a source on that please

Oh its too bad for me being a Wii60 man means I won't get to give them my money.

I would laugh if it's another not so great series like Bully or Table Tennis.

Actually it's a lose-lose situtation. Rockstar has never had a major hit outside of Grand Theft Auto, and Sony's PS3 does not have anywhere near the market penetration that the PS2 enjoyed.

So you have a game that is likely to sell on par with Rockstar's other non GTA titles, on a system that has sold the least amount of consoles this generation.

Sony g@ytrolls. Have Rockstar, u know ur screwed when it comes to games. PS3 is not as good as my Atari Jaguar.

So has anyone confirmed weather or not the Cell can access more than the available system ram. From many sources, the PS3 OS already takes up more than 50MB and I have heard it goes as far as 80. That means less ram for the SPUs and definitely less ram for the GPU.

Anyway when you switch from internal to external ram you will take a performance hit no matter what because of the overhead involved.

Another issue will be Home. If you will be able to access Home from within a game, then this will also take up memory and thus shorten the amount of memory and maybe even a Cell SPU in order to provide a smooth experience.

I also would like to know if streaming from the Blueray drive is as bad as I have heard. Lets take Oblivion for instance. It was a major play with the developer when they needed to stream content from the Blueray and this prompted them to basically push it all on the HDD. The problem with this is when games truly take up large space on the Blueray, Streaming may not be an option and also saying that content on your drive also will not be an option because of the size.

The PS3 is only as good as it's weakest component and the problem is that the PS3 has a lot of weak points that probably will keep the performance of the system from reaching it's total pontential. Games like MGS4 shows a good deal of the PS3 pontential but can we say it will look better than that after another year. IMHO COD4 and even RE5 look just as good if not better and they were showcased on the 360.

you must not understand the content you keep posting

Or Dynamic physics versus environment. Im talking about DYNAMIC. examples such as wind generation or wave simulations are not real-time are not true real-time examples because they can and are reproduced in a lab with out user imput, AI rountines, or collosion detection. on dynamic variables. You cannot find an example of this because the results are dismay.

"This chip is DESIGNED to handle physics calculations. You do not seem to understand the SIMD/vector paradigm. It is hard to understand how you can think to argue that the cell is not designed for gaming. Please do READ the IBM's cell research page."

Trust me I understand but I'd love to see how you will use vector processing in conjuction with AI branching and user input on INTERACTIVE physic environment.

"And again, you stated another false statement: "the total lack of OOOe" --> READ.. The PPE has full branch prediction, the SEVEN SPE's have limited branch prediction. They also have limited out of order support."

WOW!!! This is basic Fundamental Computer ARch Info...!!! OOOE DOES NOT EQUAL BRANCH PREDICTION!!! Branch prediction by definition only skips lines of code as it enters the execution window. OOOE actual dynamically reorders the code as it enters the instruction window which need less to same is a much more intensive process. The branch prediction on the SPEs is weak that it is not consider branch prediction at all. but BRANCH HINTS, its a legitimate term look it up as it applies directly to your precious spes. No need to go into detail if you dont have the fundamentals down.

"And again, you do not seem to understand that the need to NOT use branch prediction, as it can be coded around and compiled around at compile time. Done using the 128x128bit register. You vectorize array any branch prediction scheme... "

This comes from a lack of understanding the basic concepts at play here. IN-ORDER processors such as Cell and the 360 can only process rountines as the enter the instruction window. Therefore in order to prevent process unneccessary code it must skip lines of cod or process everything that enters the instruction window. The work around is to structure rountines at compile time such that they execute in order. The problem is in a sandbox game such as GTA4, dynamic AI, Physics, User input, and an open ended world make compiling in a completely parrellelize fashion impossible. The aresome things Particularly with "next gen" games which cannot be parrelized. Therefore True branch prediction in an in-order processor is NECCESSARY.

"Remember this thing has 7 SPE's and 1 PPE..."

Meaning What? The PPE s the only one with decent interger performance or full TRUE branch prediction. And the PPE has to use a large precentage of it cycles to act as manager for the SPEs with managing resources adn assigning tasks. While they can do some task autotonously the still rely heavily of the PPE cores direction. Where as the 360s cores run independently of one another and have full interger and branch prediction on each core as well as OOOe vmx units. Which the PS3 DOES NOT have REMEMBER: Branch Prediction does not equal OOOe (Computer Arch 101)

"The url you posted does nothing to support your argument that the CELL is not designed for games. Sorry..."

That was never such a link does not exist the point was to educate you on processor arch so that you can make valid points... The cell is not good at certain types of processing which next gen games are beginning to use more and more of. I suggest you quite trying to comprehend these white paper and think about real-world examples of games that your PS3 is suppose to be running....

"The RSX can access the Cells XDR memory, and use it.

This is not a home computer."

Ummm buddy I never said it couldnt... I said you couldnt use it the opposite way. Cell cannot use RSXs VRAM. Thats funny because it looks like you looked it up and realized that what I said was valid all along. Either way I suggest you work on your reading comprehension

nice!

@bandit

You are sadly in denial. You obviously will not read what IBM itself says. I have given you example after example of REAL TIME physics, and collision detection...

You just refuse to read...

No one said OOOE and branch prediction are the same, you just keep lying about the fact the the CELL does both. I called you out, gave you the list of what you were wrong about, and served it to you.

Man, you are really putting all you hope into branch prediction, and OOOE. READ -> The CELL DOES BOTH. No matter how much you say it doesnt, it does.

How many cores does the 360 have? HOw many does the CELL have? Thanks... now, go act like an osterich, and avoid the facts... Don't read what IBM itself says, as they made a NEW design, specifically FOR GAMES and PHYSICS.

Do continue to make up things, and hope for the best. It seems like people hear are unable to actually look and things in an unbiased manner.

I am done, as it seems you cannot read... you comments prove the you do not understand the CELL design, or the paradigms of SIMD/vectorzation or ILP/MLP/TLP...

Do not bother responding... the truth eludes you...

I also find it odd as to the fact all CoD4 footage (mutliplayer perks) has been from 360?

@bandit

"I'd love to see how you will use vector processing in conjuction with AI branching and user input on INTERACTIVE physic environment."

Specifically page 16-17...
http://www.research.ibm.com/people/m/mikeg/papers/2006_ieeemicro.pdf

More on compile time optimization... and memory level parallelism...
http://researchweb.watson.ibm.com/journal/sj/451/eichenberger.pdf

Opensource environment for CELL...
http://www.research.ibm.com/people/m/mikeg/papers/2007_ieeecomputer.pdf

@bandit

"I said you couldnt use it the opposite way. Cell cannot use RSXs VRAM."

Um, yeah... you are wrong about this as well... The CELL can use the RSX memory and vise versa. There is bus overhead, but its in the GB/sec area.

@Word
Sorry for wording that wrong. I ment to say memory external to the GPU. In other words, since the 512MB of memory is split, between system and the GPU, you will have a performance penalty if you have to access memory that is not internal to either chps.

My take on Home is this. If the system is not setup as integrated with the PS3 then How will you be able to use Home and the experience be smooth. If I wanted to access my Friends list, Compose a chat etc, Will I have to exit out of my game, go to Home, then load my game back up. If this is the case then Home is a step backwards and is no more than a pretty VRML shell.

On the Branch predictions issue. I read the paper you provided and Bandit was right that the Cell uses Branch Hints. Also the SPU can only use one Hint at a time which truly limit it's capabilities. Last but not least if there is a miss, there is a huge performance hit of 18 cycles.

The other things I have read from those IBM articles is how serialize the Cells are and how the SPU are really designed for multimedia and streaming. Even Carmack I believe expressed his opinion on the design of the PS3 which he stated how the Cell design did not make for a good gaming CPU.

Anyway the limitations of the CELL design can be worked out soome good some not so good but the results appear that at least we will continue to see a lot of good games so who really cares unless you are a nerd like myself.

I guess $50m don't buy what it used to.

Its too early for tis, im oin to te beac...

I am purposely inorin te IBM documents not because tey are in accurate but because tey ave an investment in marketin tem. Please verify wit independent test from developers and prorammers. As it stands now branc prediction is NECCESSARY for complex amin application especially wit particularly branc code.

Lets establish a few things.
ALL ALGORITEMS CANNOT BE PARRELELIZED (meaning if you dont want a performance hit on this code you must use branching.) -Also you claim IBM put a theoritical worse case scenario in their white paper on branch prediction?!? Obviously when IBM details its own limitations they cant be right after all they just designed and manufactured the processor... (rolls eyes)

Anyway I will lay out my 3 main points and ask you to flatly refute them.

1) All Algorithms cannot be parrellelized.

2) Cell does not have branch prediction as good as 360s and that branch prediction is neccessary for complex game code due to point number 1.

3) Cell cannot access the RSX vram. (Tech specs will tell you what can read and write to where in the system)

Prove these things which were the points I was making all along and I will not have anything left to say. Feel free to use white papers if you must but obviously im move inclined to believe individuals makin GAMES on the hardware. As IBM as soooo much experience making games and soooo much success in the past selling macs as gaming machines... Besides the fact that IBM says the exact same thing about the 360 in their white papers as far as gaming applications. White papers are marketing brochures for engineers... informative but still the object is to generate sales i suggest looking up independent studies of cell in relation to gaming applications.


For Fun Let detail a few quotes. Good article you should read it...
Also before you repeat yourself, yes the author does acknowlegde the spes and branch hints but suggests they are nearly useless.

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/xbox360-2.ars/7

"Rumors and some game developer comments (on the record and off the record) have Xenon's performance on branch-intensive game control, AI, and physics code as ranging from mediocre to downright bad. Xenon will be a streaming media monster, but the parts of the game engine that have to do with making the game fun to play (and not just pretty to look at) are probably going to suffer. Even if the PPE's branch prediction is significantly better than I think it is, the relatively meager 1MB L2 cache that the game control, AI, and physics code will have to share with procedural synthesis and other graphics code will ensure that programmers have a hard time getting good performance out of non-graphics parts of the game....
...At any rate, Playstation 3 fanboys shouldn't get all flush over the idea that the Xenon will struggle on non-graphics code. However bad off Xenon will be in that department, the PS3's Cell will probably be worse. The Cell has only one PPE to the Xenon's three, which means that developers will have to cram all their game control, AI, and physics code into at most two threads that are sharing a very narrow execution core with no instruction window. (Don't bother suggesting that the PS3 can use its SPEs for branch-intensive code, because the SPEs lack branch prediction entirely.) Furthermore, the PS3's L2 is only 512K, which is half the size of the Xenon's L2. So the PS3 doesn't get much help with branches in the cache department. In short, the PS3 may fare a bit worse than the Xenon on non-graphics code, but on the upside it will probably fare a bit better on graphics code because of the seven SPEs."


Anyway Im going to the beach...

sorry my G and H keys were stuck, lol

@macssauk
the video for the new multiplayer perk for cod4(c4)is from the ps3 version

The Xbox 360 ATI R500 GPU is actually a R600 GPU. The R600 is the foundation of the Radeon HD 2000 series of video cards developed by ATI Technologies. These cards are topping the performance of the nvidia 8800 series. Also the Xbox360 has 500 MB eDRAM, which is same type that IBM later claim to have develop as the world's fastest RAM. DVD is faster than bluray, but not by much. Xbox 360 PowerPC processor's 3 main cores perform and share equally. The PS3 Cell processor has 1 main core telling 7 SPE's what to do. Snow White and her 7 Dwarves. If the programming isn't right on, this thing will bottleneck to a crawl. Programmers nightmare.

Ok I back from the beach. Whatcha find out?

for clarification and to be very specific as far as the cell access to VRAM is concerned. Cell can of course write to VRAM like any normal gpu. But reading from it is ridiculously slow as to make it none useable as system ram. So the last statement should read.

3) Cell cannot access XDR as system ram.