bandit

ummm actually MS is doing the exact opposite by pioneering Live Anywhere and downloadable content. The ENTIRE Microsoft business model right now certains on buying ONE license for content and using that same content across multiple platforms. The problem is they just arent there yet. They are still working on it. What I mean is you buy UNO for $20, this allows you to not only play again users on cellphones, PCs and 360s, but also use the SAME purchase license to access it on all platforms. Again thats a massive effort and will take a tremendous amount of collaboration from many many providers. MEANWHILE, the Sony method is to release the same content across multiple platforms and force you to rebuy it depending oh how you plan to use it. EX. You want Spiderman 3? now you have to buy the UMD version, the DVD version, and the Blu-ray version. By the time you are finished youve spent almost $100 for the ability to watch a single movie across multiple platforms and worse of all YOU CANT MAKE COPIES!!! yeah DRM may suck, but is better than the alternative that Sony and movie studios are trying to push on us. Believe it or not for once in their corporate existant MS has the best interest of the consumers in mind. They are actually the good guys in the DRM war.

I agree with some of the moe educated individuals here, Procedural Synthesis was what the xbox 360 was DESIGNED for and why currently the games look like crap, because the engines the developers use to creat the games are at least 2 years old, even the unreal engine 3.0 is pushing 4 and not a single game has been released yet using it. (the first unreal 3.0 demo was shown at E3 2004 its been around alot longer than that) As others have pointed out the GPU on the 360 has direct access to the CPU cache which basically streamlines this process and prevents the major RAM hang ups and requirements seen in the mentioned demo. In addition, the unified shader arch of the gpu allows the gpu to dynamically change the amount of geometry or shader effects on the fly, thus if a scene is more geometry intensive or shader intensive there are plenty of pipelines to allocate to either scenario. So lets look at the design of the 360, I personally like the structure as it offload almost all graphical data to areas beside system memory, IF used in the intended way. proedural content is rendered directly in the gpu from the cpu, the framebuffer is restricted to the edram. This frees the system ram considerably from constraits. The problem is Developers have been creating games a certain way for a long time and while using elements of PS have yet to full exploit it due to the lack of horsepower until now. Anyway you wont see a game engine that makes full use of this until 2-3 years down the road. As for the industry this is a HUGE bonus, most game content can be procedurally generated in some form. Textures, models, even sounds. Two examples of sound generationg are the ability to mix sounds on the fly, for instance a developer can mix the sound of metal hitting wood and rather than play the two default sounds at the same time. they can generate a new sound on the fly based of the properties and sounds of the two objects. A second example is Spore where based on the position and mouth, the system will generate a sound based on the way air would likely flow and how a creature of that shape and size would sound. Spore is only dabbling at what we can do with this concept. We can create worlds as large as spore on a single DVD, or create infinite detail in a microcasm. I know people claim its not the end all be all, however i beleive its the future of game development. Mostly because once written its several times cheaper than highing artists, plus they can reuse variations of the code in other games. Basically devs do nothing but win from using this method.

This is what I envison. Currently Geometry Wars, Uno, and Im sure eventually solitaire will eventually be HUGE casual gamer fare.

No imagine an iPod that lets you listen to music while playing uno against your xbox live friends at home or PC users at work. Now imagine that same $5 purchase lets you play uno o your cellphone, this new device, on the PC and xbox all for the same $5 dollars. In addition the 99 cent song you purchased is also playable of each of these platforms for a one time purchase. Foolish you, say? Me thinks not. If this thing had the capability to play uno against people on xbox live it could be an Ipod killer and I could very well see MS reaching their 1 billion people mark. Not in the xbox console but their brand of live anywhere.

Gotta say, people outside the industry are generally clueless. For game production a team below 20 is the NORM at any given time, ESPECIALLY for multi-platform games. For single console games an ACTIVE team of about 7-9 is good, although it can be done with less. Because people say, its not EPIC, lets take EPIC as an example. For the game GOW which is headed to a single platform right now, the had to more than DOUBLE their team. EVEN WITH THE UNREAL ENGINE 3.0. This is saying something signigicant as the Engine actually can reduce programming expenses by up to 70%. Thats nothing to sneeze at in programming fees, so for their staff to double for a single game is ludicrious. And Im not talking all their games, Im talking GOW. Secondly the UNREAL Engine has NOT been tested fully with cell. MARK REIN has gone on recorde SEVERAL times stating they have yet to really use the spes as the majority of the game code is running on the single PPE and the RSX. Once they attempt to synchronize those spes with the PPE into ram using the current bandwidth you open a nightmare of programming headaches. Its not far fetched to same this about the hardware. But to be honest this has VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY little to do with the hardware itself. The fact of the matter is Sony provides garbage tools to developers. Plain and simple. Sony DOES NOT HELP DEVELOPERS by providing decent tools. It took forever to get a stinking compiler to them let alone a DECENT one. The white pages on the SONY system SUCK and the fact of the matter is their support is sub nintendo level when attempting to build a game. This translates into game companies paying their own programmers to trouble shoot hardware. As compared to MS, for all the things they do wrong, they realize that the less developer have to pay, hence the more profit they make, the better experience it will translate into for everyone else. Currently Sony's position is game companies should feel priviledged that they are allowed to develop for their console at all. Which is true as they have a 70% market share. But at the same time this is a whole new ball game and is that attitude of shunning developers without support continues it will be down hill sony.

Sony is literally banking on early adoption, trojan horses, and brand loyalty. They don't really have a choice. Blu-ray Discs are expensive. Its much more expensive in terms of programming code NOT ART ASSSETS to develop for the PS3. To everyone who would like to dispute this please refer to John Carmacks E3 comments on G4TV. Anyway
the PS3 is expensive period and Sony has literally bet the farm on having the highest market share as it did last generation. They have no choice but to succeed or die. MS really wants it bad but with Vista about to really become the only operating system for gaming Direct XX BABY!!! I dont think the corporation as a how is as financially pressed. Maybe that divison but not MS. Nintendo meanwhile is quietly churning a profit so I feel Sony is truely in the worse position of them all.

If you are looking for a real "fresh maker" my I suggest "Mentos".

I just want to dual wield this baby. BtW i think the idea of basing a console around a single additive is short-sighted and a poor business idea. However, I personally cant wait to go all shadow the hedgehog with this piece here, DUAL Shotguns BABY!!! yeah!

At this point developers are screwed no matter who they develop for. In my personal opinion, unless Nintendo and Microsoft can pull out some incredible content Sony will have won this years E3. HOWEVER. This is important. Can Sony deliver as they have a nasty habit of over promising and under delivering. The reality is that neither Ninty nor MS is particularly worried because if they reacted to every comment and press conference by Sony they would be broke as they rarely follow through with their more grandiose claims. So in my opinion. I think both will ignore the hype and simple let their games. Not their gimmicks do the talking. Whether those games are any good remains to be seen. Anyway this announcement by Sony only succeeding in driving developers closer to the edge then they already were. Bad Sony. Bad.

To answer steve's question as to what the Ps3 actually has...

The Ps3 has clear brand name advantage, and the the fact that At least initially its a relatively simple process to put games out for the Ps3 as long as you dont get fancy with it. As such using similar code, the PS3 has a slight advantage in terms of raw power, and a considerable one in terms of gpu bandwidth. HOWEVER if each system is actually coded properly in the way they are designed the 360 is an extremely capable machine and will streamline software and middleware processes that will be common place in 2-3 years in the game industry. On the other side of the coin is the tremendous floating point power of the Ps3 which cannot and should not be ignored. The Ps3 will do some REALLY REALLY REALLY cool looking stuff. Unfortunately at the end of the day the only thing it will be is something to look at rather than interact with. at least by comparison to a properly coded 360 game.

basically my take is this. Ps3 games will look insanely cool but play like current gen games

360 games will look just as good but not as fancy as its processing power will actually be used to make the games more indepth, fun, and interactive.
basically given what I have seen and what the 360 is capable of, its a better GAME machine

To answer Jons question first. I always lump the "system" ram and the Vram into one block as the GPU will need the majority of the bandwidth anyway, and not a distinctive block like the 360. Basically there is very little reason to seperate the Vram from the system ram except in reference to what the CPU can access. The Ps3 gpu does not have the ability to pull from the cache of cell. The local store on the spes are really just the cache with each spe having a restricted DMA controller with only allows access to system RAM.

Floating is great for last generation and before it when polygon count was king. Cell was orignally developed in an era where advanced shading do not exist with normal, specular, parralax, and bump mapping and Pixel Shader 3.0. Sony realized they would need advanced shading software and compliant hardware rather than a FLOP beast. Which is why Nvidia came onto the scene with Sony only 2 years ago. The original intent was to have at least 2 cell processors to off-load between cpu and gpu functions, however software has changed drastically, become more sophiscated especially in the gaming arena.

You are correct the OLD way of physics, animations, AI, and graphics were heavily Flop dependent. However the "new" focuses much more on interactivity between these elements and "situation" AI, physics, animations.

Example. In AI character automatically knows that hitting a bookshelf will knock the contents off the top of the shelf.

Player places object of desire on top shelf of book case, AI sees objects, generates animation to topple bookshelf to recieve object. And this act is completely unscripted and natural, down to the unique animation used. Thats what "true" next gen gaming is, combining the elements to make a realistic world. Im not saying the PS3 cant do it. Im saying the design of the 360 at this point appears to be much better suited for these "new" methods of coding, at the cost of being ill suited for current methods. Until games are coding in this method, which is very expensive to develop initially however once coded, makes game design literally plug and play.