Video Gaming Cheaper to Xbox 3 and PlayStation 4

[admin]

Every industry by now feels the effects of the economic slowdown. The good news for gamers is that it's not just the price of gas that's being throttled back, it's also your favorite hobby. Research suggests the cost of not only consoles but the games themselves is going to get cheaper until the release of next generation consoles from Microsoft and Sony – and we're already hearing rumors about future console's technology.

Discuss "Video Gaming Cheaper to Xbox 3 and PlayStation 4" here. Read the article.

 

[TheD]

"But Sony has long said it foresees a ten-year life cycle for PS3 making 2012 difficult to believe considering it was only released in 2006"



That means they are planing to still sell it for ten years, not that it will be the flagship console for ten years!!

In 8 years time the PS3 will be even more hopelessly outdated than it is today.

 

[Wayde Robson]

Yeah, yer right TheD.

I'm not a fanboy defending any one console but... PS3 is the most advanced out there now.

It'll be interesting to see what happens in the next gen. Will there even be much focus at all on being an all-in-one media box? Or will they turn to the Wii model which has proved so successful.

Is the Wii an anomaly or the sign of a future of simplified, stripped down, game-focused consoles?

I hope not! I still hold out that dream of a unified set-top-box that does HD video, audio, streams internet, games, etc. etc. Even if I do have to deal with one company's quirks.

 

[Tom Andry]

Sony does tend to overlap consoles (the PS2 is still being sold now with new games coming out as well) though I wouldn't classify the PS3 as "outdated." Maybe in comparison to the uber-PC-gamers which measure everything by how well it can run Crysis but certainly not in comparison to the console competition out there.

 

[lsiberian]

"But Sony has long said it foresees a ten-year life cycle for PS3 making 2012 difficult to believe considering it was only released in 2006"



That means they are planing to still sell it for ten years, not that it will be the flagship console for ten years!!

In 8 years time the PS3 will be even more hopelessly outdated than it is today.

The system is getting a 45nm processor, plays blu-rays better than any other system, has all the network capabilities needed for online gaming and has many very good titles for it.

How is it outdated?

Maybe in 8 years, but with the economic downturn this may not be the case.

IMO games are already good enough and realistic enough. The PS3 will have a lot of staying power because they are updating and improving it's new models. It uses the best media available and is a full entertainment center not just a game system. Plus it has more than 3 buttons.

 

[GlocksRock]

A 10 year life cycle doesn't mean that they won't release a new console for 10 years, it means they still expect to sell the console for 10 years as well as release games for it, but they are most likely going to release a PS4 before the PS3 has been out for 10 years.

It would be very nice for the price of new games to come down some, I think $60 for a new release is a bit high.

 

[Wayde Robson]

As the general jist of the article went... I believe the cycles are slowing down for turning over technology.

Hence 360 and PS3 should last longer.

You NEVER saw Sega Genesis or orig. nintendo getting a CPU facelift like both PS3 and Xbox have done. They're not even the same systems that launched anymore.

Graphics require no more leaps in resolution - aliasing (jaggies) has been solved - resolution gives you nothing beyond 720P - until you start playing with 100" monitors.

Modern developments in graphics have more to do with APIs, textures, maps and 3d geometry.

I remember when I used to get a new video card (or at least felt I had to) just to play a new game. Through the 90s I must have bought about one video card a year.

My newest PC is now about three years old and still plays modern 3D shooters near-flawlessly. Although I haven't actually played through one in a long, long time.

So, maybe it's just me getting old and being satisfied with games on consoles.

However... The space between an affordable 486/66 and Pentium/100 with a 3DFX card installed was relatively short yet the net-effect of that upgrade was so significant in those days it literally boggled your mind. Well, it boggled mine. I tell you - my mind is not so easily boggled!

BTW. I assumed the TheD was just saying that the technology in PS3 has been exceeded in general terms because it's at least two years old. As a console I don't know that he's dissing it compared to any competitor.

 

[MinusTheBear]

The system is getting a 45nm processor, plays blu-rays better than any other system, has all the network capabilities needed for online gaming and has many very good titles for it.

How is it outdated?

Maybe in 8 years, but with the economic downturn this may not be the case.

IMO games are already good enough and realistic enough. The PS3 will have a lot of staying power because they are updating and improving it's new models. It uses the best media available and is a full entertainment center not just a game system. Plus it has more than 3 buttons.

Its got everything except good development tools which is one of the most important aspects of a gaming console. One thing overlooked by Sony when implementing the cell processor for its design.

 

[TheD]

Yeah, yer right TheD.

I'm not a fanboy defending any one console but... PS3 is the most advanced out there now.

Not really.

The PS3 has a number of huge oversites in it's design.... like, The blu ray drive is too slow for the the amount of data it has to transfer (that is why a lot of PS3 games need installs),

The memory is split up between 2 pools and it makes it harder to load balance the assets,

the PS3 is far harder to program for because of how basic the board logic for loading data to the SPEs and back again is,

the PS3 has a less powerful GPU (which btw is far more important most of the time than how powerful the CPU is) made worse by the fact it is a older design that has separate Pixel and Vertex pipelines vs the 360's unified shader pipelines.

I hope not! I still hold out that dream of a unified set-top-box that does HD video, audio, streams internet, games, etc. etc. Even if I do have to deal with one company's quirks.

Look up what a HTPC is.

Maybe in comparison to the uber-PC-gamers which measure everything by how well it can run Crysis but certainly not in comparison to the console competition out there.

Only a fanboy would say such a thing.

So you attack people because they are using a game that is just about the biggest load on a PC to test how fast it is (just one of many games I might add)... GREAT!

When it comes to how fast a console is, a highend PC has always been the benchmark. That is because of moore's law, the just about doubling of speed each year from Nvidia and ATI and the fact that new consoles come out about every 5 years.

The system is getting a 45nm processor, plays blu-rays better than any other system, has all the network capabilities needed for online gaming and has many very good titles for it.

HAHAHA.

Just because the cell is getting a process shrink (BTW intel's core 2 CPUs have been at 45nm for sometime) does not make it any faster, the only thing it means is that the cell would cost less to make and it will run cooler.

Being able to play Blu Rays does not make it a better console, just a better Blu Ray player

So having network support (something all 3 consoles have) makes the PS3 great how????

But just about all multiplatform games look and run worse on the PS3 vs the 360 (this comes back to how hard it is to get good speed out of it)

IMO games are already good enough and realistic enough.

Look at game, look outside, nough said.

The PS3 will have a lot of staying power because they are updating and improving it's new models.

But the new models can not be any faster.

Plus it has more than 3 buttons.

As do all 3 consoles.

You NEVER saw Sega Genesis or orig. nintendo getting a CPU facelift like both PS3 and Xbox have done. They're not even the same systems that launched anymore.

Huh??????????? Both the 360 and PS3 have not got a "cpu facelift", they are just getting die shrinks (like a far few consoles before hand have).

Graphics require no more leaps in resolution - aliasing (jaggies) has been solved - resolution gives you nothing beyond 720P - until you start playing with 100" monitors.

What the hell are you smoking????

Aliasing as still alive and well, the fact you think that anything above 720p (BTW a far few games on the 360 and PS3 run below 720P, some are even SD res!) is waste just shows how clueless you are, the res you need is based on how big the tv is and how far you are away from it.

Modern developments in graphics have more to do with APIs, textures, maps and 3d geometry.

And all of that needs more powerful GPUs to run on.

BTW. I assumed the TheD was just saying that the technology in PS3 has been exceeded in general terms because it's at least two years old. As a console I don't know that he's dissing it compared to any competitor.

That is how it started but because of the huge amounts of misinformation that people have posted in this thread the 360 was drawn into it.

 

[yettitheman]

Not really.

The PS3 has a number of huge oversites in it's design.... like, The blu ray drive is too slow for the the amount of data it has to transfer (that is why a lot of PS3 games need installs),

The memory is split up between 2 pools and it makes it harder to load balance the assets,

the PS3 is far harder to program for because of how basic the board logic for loading data to the SPEs and back again is,

the PS3 has a less powerful GPU (which btw is far more important most of the time than how powerful the CPU is) made worse by the fact it is a older design that has separate Pixel and Vertex pipelines vs the 360's unified shader pipelines.



Look up what a HTPC is.



Only a fanboy would say such a thing.

So you attack people because they are using a game that is just about the biggest load on a PC to test how fast it is (just one of many games I might add)... GREAT!

When it comes to how fast a console is, a highend PC has always been the benchmark. That is because of moore's law, the just about doubling of speed each year from Nvidia and ATI and the fact that new consoles come out about every 5 years.


HAHAHA.

Just because the cell is getting a process shrink (BTW intel's core 2 CPUs have been at 45nm for sometime) does not make it any faster, the only thing it means is that the cell would cost less to make and it will run cooler.

Being able to play Blu Rays does not make it a better console, just a better Blu Ray player

So having network support (something all 3 consoles have) makes the PS3 great how????

But just about all multiplatform games look and run worse on the PS3 vs the 360 (this comes back to how hard it is to get good speed out of it)



Look at game, look outside, nough said.


But the new models can not be any faster.


As do all 3 consoles.



Huh??????????? Both the 360 and PS3 have not got a "cpu facelift", they are just getting die shrinks (like a far few consoles before hand have).




What the hell are you smoking????

Aliasing as still alive and well, the fact you think that anything above 720p (BTW a far few games on the 360 and PS3 run below 720P, some are even SD res!) is waste just shows how clueless you are, the res you need is based on how big the tv is and how far you are away from it.



And all of that needs more powerful GPUs to run on.



That is how it started but because of the huge amounts of misinformation that people have posted in this thread the 360 was drawn into it.

So... you coming in to just be an ass?
Seriously, the posts you have made really have good information. No lie, or smirk. But the way you have portrayed them, makes you look like an ***.

I'm just assking!


With that said.... in general, consoles have planned obsolescence built in.
Why? Non-upgradeable (save now for downloadable firmware and replaceable drives), proprietary control format (games, specialty downloads, control interface [it's getting a bit better], encryption [what isn't now-a-days?]) and typically hardware used is either something that was derived from a older "glory day", or a new type of part with minor revisions to keep size, price, and or thermal requirements within spec.

But, somehow, they are simpler, and easier to deal with. The PS3 does a lot better than many many standalone BD players (it's considered the reference player by some publicists), the 360 has a large library of games to choose from as well as excellent LIVE service, and the Wii is so easy to play and use, even grandma can do it!

With that said, GTA4 time.

 

[Wayde Robson]

Not really.

Look up what a HTPC is.

HAHAHA.

Huh???????????

What the hell are you smoking????

shows how clueless you are

You know D, I tried to give you the benefit of the doubt and even defend your position by refusing to believe you were engaging in mere console fanboyism. That’s SSOOoooo 2007 D, please spare me the XBX/PS3/GPU/CPU argument about which is better.

What’s really sad D is that you're like a puppy prematurely separated from its brood. You know how to nip and yap but not communicate. The idea of conversation seems lost on you. You view a forum as a tool to put people in their place and not as an open market of ideas.

Huh??????????? Both the 360 and PS3 have not got a "cpu facelift", they are just getting die shrinks (like a far few consoles before hand have).

Your puppy-like efforts at diving into argument with teeth barred actually takes a surreal turn here. You must know that CPUs don’t have faces.

You say a die shrink doesn’t fit the context of an idiomatic expression in ‘facelift’. But it only proves you miss the point of my sentence.

The point has only been that features have been added and removed from both Xbox and PS3 since their launch. I’ve been involved in console gaming for a very long time and I’ve never seen so many product changes since launch in a console. At least none that were this high profile. I believe, and I could be wrong, it it’s in preparation for a slightly longer shelf life than normal. Why else does newer versions of Xbox spring up with HDMI. It's actually a great business decision on Microsoft's part, something I've long applauded it for. But I'm not here to discuss consoles.

Arguing whether a die shrink is a CPU face-lift or more of a CPU botox injection is actually quaint. It makes you like a kind of a cute puppy you just can’t help but want to throw a stick to.

And about aliasing... I'm not sure what you're trying to argue. Do you think I said aliasing doesn’t exist?

I don’t think you understand what I’m saying and maybe it’s partly my fault for expressing it briefly. But your responses are just mean-spirited.

We’re not out to make absolute statements in a forum post. It’s too brief a medium, it’s not a Wikipedia entry. They’re small fragments reflecting perspective and sometimes even prejudice. It's meant to fun, often half-baked but should always be informative and never rude... we're all here to learn.

Look up what a HTPC is.

Do you really think I don't know what an HTPC is? You're just trying to be "not very nice" again. You know D…

It’s nice to be important but it’s more important to be nice.

Maybe be a little less sarcastic with people. We're not idiots. You're obviously a smart boy but you're also impatient and don't care about other people's perspective or points of view. Perhaps you believe they’re beneath you. But you'll be far better served in life within and outside any forum if you adopt an attitude of patience and not be so quick to jump to conclusions.

When you’re ready D, I will accept you apology and give you a big hug and we can be friends from now on.

 

[Hipnotic4]

A tech guy can easily view any product as "outdated," especially with how fast things move today. Either way, the PS2 still sells heavily, shouldnt be too hard to see the PS3 having just as long or a longer lifespan.

 

[Matt34]

I think we just experienced some Nerd Rage!!!

 

[mudrummer99]

For theD,
30% failure rate...3 years after launching.

 

[abboudc]

The memory is split up between 2 pools and it makes it harder to load balance the assets,

Um you obviously don't know what loadbalancing is. Load balancing in this case is the last thing you want to do, you want to load things in contiguous memory, not across it.

Having disjoint pools can make it more difficult to utilize it all effectively though.

the PS3 is far harder to program for because of how basic the board logic for loading data to the SPEs and back again is,

No it's more difficult because of the specialization of those units and they're not suitable for certain types of tasks vs. the the "general purpose" cores of the 360.

the PS3 has a less powerful GPU (which btw is far more important most of the time than how powerful the CPU is) made worse by the fact it is a older design that has separate Pixel and Vertex pipelines vs the 360's unified shader pipelines.

GPU vs. CPU it depends on what you're doing. Games aren't all graphics.

The graphics bottleneck isn't the separate pixel/vertex pipelines, older design, or "less powerful" GPU. It's that by offloading the processing to Cell, it's sucking up memory bandwidth. Half (or more) of graphics challenges today relate to memory bandwidth, speed, and usage. And it's the bottleneck in the PS3 graphics engine.

But just about all multiplatform games look and run worse on the PS3 vs the 360 (this comes back to how hard it is to get good speed out of it)

This isn't true either. Multiplatform games are going to look worse on PS3 (for the time being anyway) because of a few factors (nothing to do with hardware power):

1. Larger installed base of 360 -- the "A" team will work on 360, the "B" team will work on the "port". The A team will always work on the highest profit opportunity.
2. 360 was out a year ahead and most "next gen" dev tools were built on the 360 first. Look at the "first gen" 360 games, they looked no better than the PS2 equivalents...this changed as dev tools were built. Most dev houses don't have the resources to build the same tools twice. They were built for 360, then modified to work with PS3.
3. It's easier to code for. Ease does not equate to power. A Camry is easier to drive than a Ferrari, but it doesn't make it more powerful.

Last gen some games ran better on PS2 than Gamecube or Xbox, even though it was the least "powerful" system. It was out first, and had the largest installed base.

At the end of the day, the graphics will look the same on both 360 and PS3 (in still shots) and run smoother on one or the other. Which one will have much more to do with economics than technology.

That is how it started but because of the huge amounts of misinformation that people have posted in this thread the 360 was drawn into it.

Well, no need to be an *** about it. Reading the cliff notes on an Anandtech article doesn't make you an expert

 

[majorloser]

I think we just experienced some Nerd Rage!!!

I think the proper term would be "Geek Fury".

 

[krzywica]

I hate consoles........

Mostly becasue of all the hype and the followthough has been dissapointing since I can remember.

 

[lsiberian]

Not really.

The PS3 has a number of huge oversites in it's design.... like, The blu ray drive is too slow for the the amount of data it has to transfer (that is why a lot of PS3 games need installs),

The memory is split up between 2 pools and it makes it harder to load balance the assets,

the PS3 is far harder to program for because of how basic the board logic for loading data to the SPEs and back again is,

the PS3 has a less powerful GPU (which btw is far more important most of the time than how powerful the CPU is) made worse by the fact it is a older design that has separate Pixel and Vertex pipelines vs the 360's unified shader pipelines.



Look up what a HTPC is.



Only a fanboy would say such a thing.

So you attack people because they are using a game that is just about the biggest load on a PC to test how fast it is (just one of many games I might add)... GREAT!

When it comes to how fast a console is, a highend PC has always been the benchmark. That is because of moore's law, the just about doubling of speed each year from Nvidia and ATI and the fact that new consoles come out about every 5 years.


HAHAHA.

Just because the cell is getting a process shrink (BTW intel's core 2 CPUs have been at 45nm for sometime) does not make it any faster, the only thing it means is that the cell would cost less to make and it will run cooler.

Being able to play Blu Rays does not make it a better console, just a better Blu Ray player

So having network support (something all 3 consoles have) makes the PS3 great how????

But just about all multiplatform games look and run worse on the PS3 vs the 360 (this comes back to how hard it is to get good speed out of it)



Look at game, look outside, nough said.


But the new models can not be any faster.


As do all 3 consoles.



Huh??????????? Both the 360 and PS3 have not got a "cpu facelift", they are just getting die shrinks (like a far few consoles before hand have).




What the hell are you smoking????

Aliasing as still alive and well, the fact you think that anything above 720p (BTW a far few games on the 360 and PS3 run below 720P, some are even SD res!) is waste just shows how clueless you are, the res you need is based on how big the tv is and how far you are away from it.



And all of that needs more powerful GPUs to run on.



That is how it started but because of the huge amounts of misinformation that people have posted in this thread the 360 was drawn into it.

So you telling me that shrinking transistor size doesn't improve performance? Where did you get your EE or CS degree from?

Oversites in it's Design? Really so you think Sony did a poor job of engineering the PS3 are you kidding me? The system does it's job very well and the blu-ray player is better than most in it's price range. Your statements show you place emphasis on requirement gold-plating which is a classic engineering mistake that causes project to fail.

Programming difficulty isn't because of the cell processor it's because Microsoft is by far the best developer of development tools on the market. Any SE that has used visual studio and other Microsoft tools know how easy Microsoft has made doing a lot of things.

FYI Blu-ray DVDs are able to hold much more data than DVDs therefore games on the PS3 are able to be bigger. That does make it better. You think a 5 gig hard drive equals a 25 gig?

You also aren't very familiar with windows issues or the jokes that go with them.

Does the xbox 360 have advantages? Of course, but the PS3 does too.

I guess you work for a gaming company and that's fine that your company prefers the 360, but it doesn't make the 360 superior hardware wise.

Windows is inferior to Unix in many ways, but software is the reason we all use windows. I guess the same goes for the 360 for some people.

However it breaks down this way in most gamers I know

I'm poor I buy the 360

I've got cash I buy the PS3. So the PS3 is viewed as the superior console by gamers, but the price is what keeps people buying the 360

I doubt you really had an attitude in the response. You just gave your argument. I give mine.

 

[lsiberian]

It's easier to code for. Ease does not equate to power. A Camry is easier to drive than a Ferrari, but it doesn't make it more powerful.

actually from a software perspective he is correct. If you can produce the same amount of instructions with less code then your development tools are more powerful. This is because a software engineer can only produce 3 to 5 thousand lines of usable code a year. So a 100 thousand line project with 10 software engineers takes 2 to 3 years to develop. Just an FYI

 

[MinusTheBear]

Sony underestimated the importance of keeping game developers happy with efficient development tools. This is a huge oversight by Sony since most developers can't be bothered to spend extra resources developing for the cell (difficulty, time and most importantly equates to money). The only real good games for the PS3 are exclusive titles. The majority of 3rd party games are better on the 360. This is very important since exclusive titles and game developers, developing for a single console are becoming less frequent (Final Fantasy, cough, cough). Does Microsoft still have exclusive rights to Bungie . The best games this generation IMO was Fallout 3 and it was developed on the 360 and ported to the PS3.