If you haven't already seen it, here's my coverage of Sony's Playstation 3 announcement today. I wrote the story while sitting in Sony's press conference, so it was a bit rushed but I wanted to post some of my additional thoughts that didn't make it into the first article.
Let me start first with the design; to me, the Xbox 360 is very Apple-like while the PS3 is very clearly a Sony product. Personally I prefer the looks of the Xbox 360, but the PS3 doesn't look bad at all in real life.
Although I've yet to use it, the PS3's controller scares me. I'm going to try my hands at it this week, but I really have no idea where that design came from.
The demos on the PS3 were absolutely *amazing*. I wouldn't call them "movie-quality" yet, but the things I saw came very close. Words really can't describe, the demos just looked amazing.
Virtually all of the games/demos on the PS3 had some degree of aliasing, some were unacceptably bad for a console with this sort of power. Don't get me wrong, about 95% of the games looked great, but those that had aliasing looked great...with jaggies. I'm not talking PS2 level of aliasing, but far too much aliasing for this level of hardware.
Without a doubt, ATI and NVIDIA are on very diverging paths with these two consoles. ATI went with a strictly unified memory architecture while NVIDIA used a combination of local graphics memory and GPU addressable system memory. ATI is backing their unified shader architecture, while NVIDIA doesn't appear to have embraced that on the hardware side. I will know more about ATI's GPU later this week, so stay tuned.
The dual HD output feature of the PS3 is very interesting; I'm not sure how many folks will take advantage of the 32:9 aspect ratio mode. I'm wondering whether this feature was put in to support sending different content to separate TVs (e.g. stream video to one display while gaming in another). Then again, I'm not sure how many people have that many HDTVs within close proximity of each other.
Sony clearly wants the PS3 to be much more of a media center style device. The demos weren't only about games, they were about decoding HD streams, navigating through video and picture content, they were about the entire picture. With built in blu-ray, I think the PS3 will have a huge advantage over the Xbox 360 as it should be able to act as a HD-DVD video player as well as a game console.
The 1080p output of the PS3 isn't that big of a deal for me. Given that basically the entire installed base of HDTVs right now only support 1080i, I seriously doubt we'll see a push to 1080p only all that quickly. That being said, I don't doubt that there will be an obvious difference between 1080p and 720p games. Given that it is essentially a resolution change, I see no reason for all developers to offer both 1080p and 720p options in PS3 games unless there are frame rate limitations. I did notice that some demos played much smoother than others, but I think it is far too early to make any calls on performance a full year before the console's release.
I'd say that Sony has the more powerful CPU on paper, but I'm curious to see how much of that gets taken advantage of in the real world. Difficulty of programming aside, the fact of the matter is that console development houses are very much of the write once, compile many mindset. Given the similarity of the Xbox 360's cores to the PS3's PPE, I'm afraid that the array of SPEs may go relatively untapped on the PS3.
From the very start I felt that Sony couldn't possibly bring the Cell to market in the PS3 as a 90nm chip. Disabling one SPE is a particularly interesting move, but one that makes a lot of sense. And the loss of a single SPE isn't a huge deal as I don't foresee the PS3 really being bound by the number of threads its SPE array can execute.
Overall, the PS3 looks to me to be the more complete package. The hardware is a bit more complete than Xbox 360, but at the same time given that it won't launch for another 6+ months after the 360 launches I'm not too surprised. Sony didn't really play up a competitor to Xbox Live, although it is very clear that the PS3 will be a net-enabled box. I have a feeling that Microsoft may bring to the table a much more complete on-line play package, while Sony brings a more powerful, more complete console.
Sony's strength with the PS2 has always been its game library, which I think will continue to be a strength with the PS3 (especially with full backwards compatibility all the way back to PS1). It's just that this time around, Microsoft appears to have a much stronger game library than with the original Xbox - and it's that key difference that will make the 360 and the PS3 worthy competitors.
I will be reporting from the show all week, but for now it's time to enjoy 24 a full 3 hours later than I normally would - how do you west coast folks do it? :)
Take care.
Let me start first with the design; to me, the Xbox 360 is very Apple-like while the PS3 is very clearly a Sony product. Personally I prefer the looks of the Xbox 360, but the PS3 doesn't look bad at all in real life.
Although I've yet to use it, the PS3's controller scares me. I'm going to try my hands at it this week, but I really have no idea where that design came from.
The demos on the PS3 were absolutely *amazing*. I wouldn't call them "movie-quality" yet, but the things I saw came very close. Words really can't describe, the demos just looked amazing.
Virtually all of the games/demos on the PS3 had some degree of aliasing, some were unacceptably bad for a console with this sort of power. Don't get me wrong, about 95% of the games looked great, but those that had aliasing looked great...with jaggies. I'm not talking PS2 level of aliasing, but far too much aliasing for this level of hardware.
Without a doubt, ATI and NVIDIA are on very diverging paths with these two consoles. ATI went with a strictly unified memory architecture while NVIDIA used a combination of local graphics memory and GPU addressable system memory. ATI is backing their unified shader architecture, while NVIDIA doesn't appear to have embraced that on the hardware side. I will know more about ATI's GPU later this week, so stay tuned.
The dual HD output feature of the PS3 is very interesting; I'm not sure how many folks will take advantage of the 32:9 aspect ratio mode. I'm wondering whether this feature was put in to support sending different content to separate TVs (e.g. stream video to one display while gaming in another). Then again, I'm not sure how many people have that many HDTVs within close proximity of each other.
Sony clearly wants the PS3 to be much more of a media center style device. The demos weren't only about games, they were about decoding HD streams, navigating through video and picture content, they were about the entire picture. With built in blu-ray, I think the PS3 will have a huge advantage over the Xbox 360 as it should be able to act as a HD-DVD video player as well as a game console.
The 1080p output of the PS3 isn't that big of a deal for me. Given that basically the entire installed base of HDTVs right now only support 1080i, I seriously doubt we'll see a push to 1080p only all that quickly. That being said, I don't doubt that there will be an obvious difference between 1080p and 720p games. Given that it is essentially a resolution change, I see no reason for all developers to offer both 1080p and 720p options in PS3 games unless there are frame rate limitations. I did notice that some demos played much smoother than others, but I think it is far too early to make any calls on performance a full year before the console's release.
I'd say that Sony has the more powerful CPU on paper, but I'm curious to see how much of that gets taken advantage of in the real world. Difficulty of programming aside, the fact of the matter is that console development houses are very much of the write once, compile many mindset. Given the similarity of the Xbox 360's cores to the PS3's PPE, I'm afraid that the array of SPEs may go relatively untapped on the PS3.
From the very start I felt that Sony couldn't possibly bring the Cell to market in the PS3 as a 90nm chip. Disabling one SPE is a particularly interesting move, but one that makes a lot of sense. And the loss of a single SPE isn't a huge deal as I don't foresee the PS3 really being bound by the number of threads its SPE array can execute.
Overall, the PS3 looks to me to be the more complete package. The hardware is a bit more complete than Xbox 360, but at the same time given that it won't launch for another 6+ months after the 360 launches I'm not too surprised. Sony didn't really play up a competitor to Xbox Live, although it is very clear that the PS3 will be a net-enabled box. I have a feeling that Microsoft may bring to the table a much more complete on-line play package, while Sony brings a more powerful, more complete console.
Sony's strength with the PS2 has always been its game library, which I think will continue to be a strength with the PS3 (especially with full backwards compatibility all the way back to PS1). It's just that this time around, Microsoft appears to have a much stronger game library than with the original Xbox - and it's that key difference that will make the 360 and the PS3 worthy competitors.
I will be reporting from the show all week, but for now it's time to enjoy 24 a full 3 hours later than I normally would - how do you west coast folks do it? :)
Take care.
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Reflex - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
#24 - The 360 does full 1080p rendering internally. The issue is output, there are *no* consumer level HDTV sets that display that resolution, so therefore it wasn't hyped. Hyping a feature that has no real world use at this time is rediculous. I'm sure MS will update thier marketing to respond to Sony however.#21: Actually as transister budgets have become less of an issue, everything is going towards general purpose processors. The limitation on general purpose CPU's/GPU's has always been transister counts, not how well something could do whatever. A general purpose CPU can do *everything* that a specialized core(like the SPE's) can do, plus a whole heck of a lot more. Its up to the programmer to take advantage of that power.
From a programming perspective I'd gladly take 3 full-fledged cores over any number of specialized SPE's. Those cores can be used for anything, not just certain situations that call upon functions that an SPE supports.
Anonymous - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
#23 - you're just crazy. :-) 1080p means 60 full 1920x1080 frames per second. 1080i means 60 1920x540 half-frame fields per second, i.e. the equivalent of 30 full frames per second, not 60.wbwither - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
Maybe I'm thinking completely wrong here, but from the GPU's standpoint, aren't 1080p and 1080i exactly the same? It's just the RAMDAC (or whatever finally does the D-A conversion, if a digital connection to the monitor is used) interleaving the lines -- the heavy lifting of actually rendering the image is the exact same.It's not like the GPU can just render alternate lines and automatically double performance. The GPU still has to calculate all 1080 lines for every frame, and a 1080i output would just be a simple matter of discarding half of them.
The reason for the 1080i and 1080p TV specs is purely for bandwidth reasons, for TV broadcasts and the like -- pre-rendered media. It has nothing to do with video games or other rendered-on-the-fly video sources.
In fact, I have no idea how Sony, TI, Samsung or anybody else could make an LCD, DLP, or plasma screen that would support 1080i and not support 1080p. CRTs, maybe, but even that's questionable. Okay, so maybe the HDTV decoders in the TVs wouldn't support the high-bandwidth 1080p signal, but the LCD/DLP/etc. chips themselves wouldn't know the difference.
Or am I just crazy?
Anon - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
I'm not sure why so many people (not only here) are ripping on the controller when it's only been shown from the front/top. Sure it looks funny. Sure it might suck. But how can you tell from a picture? What are the chances that Sony might have actually tested the thing for useability and comfort? It's the primary input device for one of their flagship products after all...T Money - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
>>I just keep hearing people going on about the Cell outclassing the 360. I have yet to hear a single technical reason as to why that is.<<It's entirely possible that it's because general purpose is not always better than specifacly programed devices. Jack of all trades, master of none.
Consider why for the longest time (and even now) a console was the best device to play video games on with the possible exception of FPSs. Because consoles were dedicated hardware. On a device with decidedly less power than we put in our home machines consoles could perform on par for some of the same tasks meerely because those consoles were designed specifically for that task.
It's kind of why you have a seperate GPU as opposed to an extra Pentium in your computer despite the pentium being a more powerful chip overall.
supert0nes - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
Your coments about a more complete console make no sense. What makes a more "complete" console? 7 controllers? 2 HDMI connections? A router? 1080P? It seems to me like sony just went after everything that looked semi appealing instead of cutting out the useless things and focusing on whats most important like content support and how about a usefull controller.Reflex - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
One other note: The 360 can do FSAA/AF without any peformance hit at all. Thats what the 10MB of embedded memory is for. I think the PS3 will have jaggies regardless as devs have to face a choice: smooth things out or take a perf hit. That choice does not have to be made on the 360.reflex - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
I am failing to see why Sony has the superior CPU here. Their core is roughly similiar to the core MS is using, and it only has one of them. The SPE's are nice, but they are 'helper' cores, not full general purpose CPU's. They can only be utilized for specific functions, not for everything. By comparison the 360 has three general purpose cores each with its own SPE-like Vector unit. The versatility here should allow far more of the 360's power be easily tapped than the Cell. A dev could easily run a physics engine on one, AI on another, and the core game on the third. That option dosen't really exist on Cell...I just keep hearing people going on about the Cell outclassing the 360. I have yet to hear a single technical reason as to why that is.
Chargot - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
Well, it sucks that NVidia and ATI are not into the PC video card industry anymore. I mean seriously, how is one to go out and buy eight hundred dollars worth of SLI cards while knowing that some kid will be able to trump that a few months from now at Walmart. PC is the best platform for games hands down... everything else is silly stupid.Why can't NVidia or ATI release a half decent price point on their cutting edge technologies if they are willing to give it to Sony for fifteen dollars a unit. How quick they forget the hands that feed them... PC gamers and PC users alone.
Anonymous - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link
I thought the article was pretty reasonable except for the perceived huge advantage of the Blu-Ray drive. Both the Xbox and the PS2 have pretty crappy DVD drives. So I have very low expectations for the Blu-Ray drive in the PS3. My guess is that anyone who is serious about movies will get a stand-alone Blu-Ray or HD-DVD player. But who knows? With the increased focus on the idea of the entertainment hub, maybe Sony will surprise me with a high quality product.