The Next Generation Consoles

[Alarick]

Yeah, they looked great back when the tech demos were released.  Time changes perspective on that, and you can't tell me graphics didn't improve as developers have gotten better.  PS2 is no Xbox, mainly because of the times they were released, but the Xenosaga series is a great example of how good graphics can be real time on a PS2.
I'm sorry, but if it's a hardware limitation that's running at "25-30%" capability 6 months before launch, this system will never reach "100%".

But three months is a huge amount of time for hardware changes. Look at WoW. In 6 months, they went from hardware that could barely support many realms, to the point where most realms are incredibly stable.

For Xbox360, the Alpha dev kits are at the end of their lifetime. The next wave of dev kits is coming shortly. The time frame of 6 months could easily get the system to "100%," because it's simply hardware and debugging that's limiting the graphics.

We can talk about the fact that the Xbox 360 has 3 cores, each of which can handle 2 threads, for 6 total thread.  The PS3 has 1 core, but the core offloads work to 7 units (there is an 8th there - for redunancy if one fails, apparantly) individually.  All these threads are great in theory, but I'd like to see a game handle them in practice.  There's only so much work a processor can do before it's stuck waiting for results.  How often are those 6 or 7 threads actually going to be available for use?  How will the compilation or programming to go to make sure threadsafe calculations are actually sent to a seperate line?  The Gamespot article says: "Microsoft has a lot of experience with multithreaded applications, and the company is confident that developing on the processor won't be a problem."  Too bad that says nothing whatsoever about performance.  Making a program threadsafe is not the same as making it work well with threads for speed.


Threadsafe programming, at the basic levels, is probably twice as hard as programming where you don't have to worry about it.  Once the basic levels are in, there's no real difference.  So if the SDKs get it right, programmers shouldn't have to worry about being threadsafe for these consoles.  But how much more time needs to be spent to make sure cores aren't wasted?

Programming for PS3 won't be an easy task, either. The Cell processor isn't just a single processor you program for. You have to write multithreaded code the same as you will for the 3 processing cores of the Xbox360. Proof is here. To quote:

A lot of the burden will fall upon the hardware manufacturers themselves to design systems and provide tools that will make it easier for programmers to write games. Sony has announced that the PS3 will use Open GL/ES, a specialized API closely related to Open GL, and programmers will be able to access the Cell's SPEs using C or C++ tools instead of having to program on the assembly level as with the PS2.

There will need to be threadsafe programming for both systems. The biggest issue I see is that it appears that the Cell has a "main" processor that looks like it will be the controller for all of the sub-cores, while Xbox360 looks like it has three parallel cores that can all act as a "main controller." All of this is speculation, but that's how the design looked to me.

Then there's another problem entirely.  Previews everywhere are talking about how great of an advancement these processors for these systems are.  Then you look at the graphics chips descriptions, and it basically says "more pipes, more transistors, more MHz."  There's no true innovation going on in the graphics, and graphics at the core of the argument.  Not that the extra power won't help, the early screenshots prove it will, but people keep skipping over the graphics chips and those are what really matters here.

I agree for the most part. Video cards are not moving in leaps and bounds. The only significant change I've seen is that there will be onboard cache RAM for the Xbox360's video card. Other than that, it's more pipes (though no dedicated pipes for particular operations) and more speed.

I haven't really looked at teasers yet, as I said I care more about the games then how they look.  Just some thoughts to ponder when the fight continues for "this system's faster!  no this one is!"
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As I said before, graphics are quickly becoming the least powerful thing to bring people to one console or another. We are reaching the point where there is little difference between consoles' graphic capabilities. It's the games and other services that will decide the war.

I think one thing that may be a blunder on Sony's part is the lack of a dedicated online service. Both Microsoft and Nintendo are offering a dedicated service, and Microsoft is even requiring that all games be, in the least, Live-aware, so that online functions will still continue while that game is active, even if it has no real online game modes.
Sony seems to be leaving it to the game companies to set these things up. Now, correct me if I'm wrong here, but I don't think Sony has announced any online service for the PS3, and that may be something that hurts them in the long run.