The Next Generation Consoles

[Alarick]

Here is a good article for those interested in the hardware differences between the Xbox360 and the PS3.

Admittedly, it's from the Xbox360 section of ign.com. However, it seems at least slightly credible. Unfortunately, I can't find a similar argument from the PS3 section of ign.com to compare.

In conclusion, enjoy, and have fun picking apart the article's flaws and mis-statements because I certainly don't feel like trying to do that.

EDIT - I noticed on the page that the editors admit that this is a Microsoft-written piece, and so clearly has some (lots of?) slant to it. IGN simply formatted and posted the unaltered email sent to them by the Microsoft reps.

[[wcip]Angel]

Here's a fairly objective article comparing the hardware of the PS3 vs that of the X-box2:
http://hardware.gamespot.com/Story-ST-15016-1985-x-x-x

[Quark]

Thanks for the link. An interesting tidbit: PS3 will support progressive at the (1080p), while Xbox 360, which keeps touting its HDTV line, only supports interlaced (1080i).

On other interesting thing I see: PS3 supports up to 7 controllers, while Xbox 360 supports up to 4. About time Sony upped the default over 2, no more multitap needed to play 4-6 player NHL games :). I wonder if 4 will be limiting at all for Xbox 360, though, unless there's a way to buy something that expands it.

That's a little less relevant now, anyway, since playing over the Internet is more common than actually going to your friend's house/room :D.

[Alarick]

Thanks for the link.  An interesting tidbit: PS3 will support progressive at the (1080p), while Xbox 360, which keeps touting its HDTV line, only supports interlaced (1080i).

On other interesting thing I see: PS3 supports up to 7 controllers, while Xbox 360 supports up to 4.  About time Sony upped the default over 2, no more multitap needed to play 4-6 player NHL games :).  I wonder if 4 will be limiting at all for Xbox 360, though, unless there's a way to buy something that expands it.

That's a little less relevant now, anyway, since playing over the Internet is more common than actually going to your friend's house/room  :D.
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I haven't seen any real info on the max number of controllers for Xbox360, yet. I've seen things saying it's all based on wireless tech, rather than Bluetooth, but I have yet to see any hard numbers.

As for HD, I don't know why Xbox360 doesn't support 1080p officially. However, it is nice to know that all games must support up to 1080i, which means that it's required that all games play on HDTVs without black bars.

These two systems are far too similar to really make a choice solely based on the hardware. For once, it's really down to what each system offers in software and services.

[Guest]

4 controls is all I would ever need.

If I need to play with more people than that at once Id rather do it on the internet.

[Alarick]

4 controls is all I would ever need.

If I need to play with more people than that at once Id rather do it on the internet.
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I agree for the most part. If I have more than 4 players, it's on more than 1 system. The only games I could easily see using more than 4 players at once would be the sports games Quark mentioned, like hockey or football.

[Raelynn]

Recently there was a two-part article posted on ArsTechnica which talked about the Xbox360 core. It also touched a little bit on the PS3 core, but only because the main processor of the PS3 is based on the same chip as each of the 3 processors in the Xbox360. The most interesting note from this set of articles is that the author feels there is going to be a big bottleneck in both of the systems.

Basically, the processors have a fairly deep pipeline, but no real instruction window, and additionally they have smaller caches than most deep pipelined processors. What does this mean? It means that there is going to be a performance hit most likely in any set of instructions that require branches, as this lack of instruction window and smaller cache means there is little to no branch prediction. The type of processes in a game that generally require fairly heavy branch prediction are AI, some physics, and some specific gameplay. Seems to me to be a pretty big spot to be lacking in. There apparently were already some comments from developers that the Xbox360 was somewhat lacking in performance of AI and such.

The only caveat is that this is all based on what the author could come up with from seeing the presentations, and while he is ery well-versed in hardware, he could still be wrong.

[Obi2Kenobi]

This article addresses most of my gripes with all this.
http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/game...festo.html

[Occhidiangela]

This article addresses most of my gripes with all this.
http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/game...festo.html
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I now have a new addition to my Favorites button. That guy is funny.

Occhi

[[wcip]Angel]

Give us A.I. that will actually outsmart us now and then.

Chances of that happening...

Almost zero. One, there's more and more focus on multiplayer for this sort of game. This takes some of the pressure off programmers because in multiplayer, other humans supply their own A.I. Even the ones who are complete morons.
:lol:


Great article. I laughed on many occasions. I'll spread this article as far as I can :)


edit: The funniest thing was, when he got to the part of poor voice acting, I not only thought immediately of the original 1996 Resident Evil (for the Playstation), I also thought of the exact same line the author used as an example. It truly *is* one of the worst lines in gaming history.

Oh how I laughed!

[Mithrandir]

This article addresses most of my gripes with all this.
http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/game...festo.html
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That guy was pretty awesome. It's soooo true about the crates :)

[Obi2Kenobi]

Video Game Crash