Support NeoGAF

[Fafalada]

and devs not needing to work around 256MB limits for either CPU or GPU.

Strictly speaking there were no such limits, adress space was unified.
The setup was more akin to SX having different speeds depending on what part of memory you're addressing. However it also meant GPU had effectively double the bandwidth when using both memories simultaneously.

 

[Katatonic]

I don't think it's even been matched on the latest Xbox hardware so..

 

[intbal]

I think the fact that 360 games were required to be able to run directly from the disc,,,

They weren't. Microsoft dropped that requirement later in the generation.
There are several Xbox 360 games that require a hard drive to play.

 

[Fafalada]

It was a necessity for the PS3 to recruit help from Cell to basically match 360's more advanced GPU.

Ok I get the whole premise of the thread is based on silly PR - but this is next level gymnastics.
You have hw designed with XXX amount of compute - you either use said compute or you don't. There are no alternative takes - 'oh but compute is only allowed to be used for my currently sliding goal-posts or else'.

BF3 devs wrote an entire paper for Siggraph explaining their work on Frostbite and the use of SPU deferred shading. Interestingly, on that same paper they talk about Xenos ALU power handling all this on its own.

They also showed Cell outperformed the other solution in the same workloads.

 

[semiconscious]

"I guarantee that this game couldn't be working on Xbox 360. It would be impossible. I'm 100 per cent sure of this," Balestra told ars technica.

well, duh! of course uncharted 2 wouldn't 'work'. but that only indicates that it'd be impossible to play on the 360, not 'make'...

 

[Shadowstar39]

Maybe, but I doubt it. 360 only had 8.3gb discs (7gb at the start of the gen) , ps3 had Blue-ray so the ps3 games had more storage for textures and better audio. Also the ps3 had a ton of tricks up it's sleave for extra proecessing power if a dev knew how to use it. Games like uncharted series, heavy rain, MGs4, Heavenly Sword, and infamous, lbp, I don't remember anything like on 360.

I bet they could of made an uncharted, but would it be as nice, and solid a game? I doubt it. Not only did they not have the studio, but they were more into multiplayer games, mostly it seemed. One of many reasons I stuck to ps3/psp/pc/wii that gen (also them buying then killing multiple pc studios, and taking resources away from pc exclusives really rubbed me the wrong way, funny how everyone here forgot this during ms acquisitions. )

 

[TehGoomba7s]

BS. Same as 'new Ratchet only works due to muh speedy SSD'

Yeah because it functions soooo well on a HDD.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

It was impossible on X360 because there's no game on that system that looks as good.

They could downgrade it potentially but it wouldn't be the same quality

 

[Calverz]

Let's go back in time, shall we back when developers and publishers were console warring.

I remembered this article stating that Uncharted 2 would be impossible to port on Xbox 360 due to many technical factors.





Sourcel

How true are these statements?

Do you miss the old days where developers were taking shots at one another?

Like this example from Sucker Punch:

No. It was dumb as fuck. Especially those god awful American PlayStation adverts.

 

[YeulEmeralda]

Deus Ex got a PS2 port. Anything is possible.

 

[Shadowstar39]

\\

No. It was dumb as fuck. Especially those god awful American PlayStation adverts.

Those ads were amazing. The chick wanting the boyfriend but he was busy playing uncharted, was amazing. Couldn't be done today due to "waah hot woman liking a man waah", and 360 ads were never as good.
Then we have the Kevin Butler ads for ps3, some of the best marketing for any console outside of 1990s Genesis and PS1 Nintendo slighting commercials.

 

[midnightAI]

They said the same thing for ratchet and clank a rift in time. That it's only possible on PS5 because of the SSD.

That was also untrue.

It's also untrue that it's called Ratchet and Clank A Rift in Time

 

[mayham2199]

Nobody here will know but you're going to have plenty of people tell you the answer with great confidence.

 

[S0ULZB0URNE]

Cell powa and no it couldn't be done in a comparable manner.

 

[RaduN]

90% of that 25 gb was pre-rendered video files that masked the loadings. Just saying.

 

[cinnamonandgravy]

GTA V lead platform PS3 (by far the most impressive R* game of the generation) with better textures and AF.

eh, gta4 was a lot better on x360 (better performance and resolution) and sold better too, so i wouldnt be surprised if sony threw a little something their way for gta5's development. sony wouldnt want a repeat for arguably the biggest game of the generation.

that said, i love the cell, so i hereby call bullshit on myself

 

[Sushi_Combo]

90% of that 25 gb was pre-rendered video files that masked the loadings. Just saying.

Yes, we know this. The way it was done made it very seamless and it was impressive at the time.

 

[Nintendo's Witch]

This man was only possible on PS3 OP:

The answer is NO, It couldn't happen. God I miss when consoles were different.

Shine on Krazy Ken.

 

[Drew1440]

Remember the PS3 bluray drive could only transfer 8.58 MB/s of data at a time, which was a lot slower than the 360s DVD drive 16.5 MB/s, to an extent many games on the PS3 had to have mandatory installs to the HDD. With the 360 it was easier to stream data from it's DVD drive due to its speed.
For the case of Uncharted 2, the FMV cutscenes would have to be compressed further, but a port was defiantly possible without sacrificing much.
The Cell Processor was powerful, but was mostly used to prop up the RSX which was limited with its shaders, the 360 supported programmable unified shaders that gave developers a lot of flexability, not forgetting it's 10MB of eDram.

 

[Hero_Select]

It's also untrue that it's called Ratchet and Clank A Rift in Time

You are correct

 

[JackMcGunns]

Ok I get the whole premise of the thread is based on silly PR - but this is next level gymnastics.
You have hw designed with XXX amount of compute - you either use said compute or you don't. There are no alternative takes - 'oh but compute is only allowed to be used for my currently sliding goal-posts or else'.


They also showed Cell outperformed the other solution in the same workloads.

You're missing the point. One of the most advanced engines of that era, one that took full advantage of Cell's SPU, actually ran slightly better on 360. Proof that with the same level of programming skill, the 360 was well enough capable of churning whatever was possible on the PS3.

 

[sono]

They had a shit ton of effects that were added to the engine in comparison with Drake's Fortune, once they started using the SPUs.




DoF, Per-Object Motion Blur, SSS, the perfect AO, simulations, the constant streaming.. all thanks to Cell.

It is also a great game to play.

I dont know if if it is possible or not on 360, but I miss those days

Now only $299

 

[Caio]

Nothing is impossible, but considering it was made on an engine that specifically targeted the PS3's hardware along with taking advantage of a format with vastly more space available it would have needed some serious work. In the end it's a pointless question as we'll never know for sure nor does it matter.

This.

 

[Calverz]

\\

Those ads were amazing. The chick wanting the boyfriend but he was busy playing uncharted, was amazing. Couldn't be done today due to "waah hot woman liking a man waah", and 360 ads were never as good.
Then we have the Kevin Butler ads for ps3, some of the best marketing for any console outside of 1990s Genesis and PS1 Nintendo slighting commercials.

They were incredibly cringe.

 

[YeulEmeralda]

Nobody here will know but you're going to have plenty of people tell you the answer with great confidence.

Sounds like religion lol.

 

[hemo memo]

Witcher 3 was ported to the Switch. It's a matter of optimization.

 

[Badlucktroll]

They were rumored to have made MGS 4 for 360. I bet the port of that in the Collection Vol. 2 is going to be the shoddily emulated beta of the 360 version

 

[crackajack]

First parties really pushed that hw back then, but since Uncharted Collection runs on PS4, Cell magic clearly can be ported to sorta regular PC architecture, a gifted Xbox team should have been able to make it work to a similar degree. I'd even say you could downport it to PS2 or even PS1 without losing much of its fun. I assume possible with most games, since the controller barely changed since forever and visuals add nothing but visuals anyway. Other areas might be compromised too, but to a lesser extent.

Only works on xyz sounds fine and usually those statements are in so far true that those games are pushing the limits, but eg Rift Apart is also just a modern version of Crack in Time, far less impressive than what Portal was doing, while Rift is basically nothing different than one of their previous games or also the first Prey that did not really do portals like initially planned, almost just an evolution of Mario64 portals. Rift Apart ran fine and had crisp visuals, but its SSD-Portals are just ancient design. Still fun to dive into, but not on the same gameplay changing level as Portal's portals.

 

[AJUMP23]

Probably would have been easier, because they would not have had to work around the difficulty of the Cell processor.

 

[Tomofdahook17]

I don't think it's even been matched on the latest Xbox hardware so..

Most PS games can't even match it. It's the literal perfect blend of graphics, writing, theming, action and plot.

 

[PaintTinJr]

Although this is from the original uncharted, and this was on the disc or a spare disc that came with the original PS3 game IIRC, and most of it still applies. I've timestamped the video at the part that is most relevant to the technical discussion - in regards of the 360's GPU and what its version would have lost - but the whole video is still a good watch IMO.

 

[channie]

[Dice] also showed Cell outperformed the other solution in the same workloads.

lmao - tell me exactly where in their publicly available presentation they said this.

 

[Physiognomonics]

The 360 was a beast of a hardware eventually proven more powerful than PS3. Konami said MGS4 were running on X360. But the best proof is MGS5. It is a very late PS360 game done by Kojima and is running so much better on X360, ironic. I mean even Titanfall runs better on X360 than on XB1!

I respect Naughty dog but they never had a X360 devkit so they never could really compare. The developers who really compared both (at the end of the gen when all platform specific tricks were used) found out X360 was quite more powerful.

 

[OmegaSupreme]

If they could get MSG4 on 360 I'm sure they could find a way here if they wanted. Multiple discs and an install.

HDDs weren't standard on the 360 though.

 

[nush]

HDDs weren't standard on the 360 though.

Just put a logo on the box saying HD required.

Problem solved!

 

[deriks]

Did you see Witcher 3 on the Switch?!

So yeah, Uncharted 2 on the 360 was fucking possible

 

[Krappadizzle]

More than likely on a technical level, but for sure some things would have changed and been less effective on the 360 than the PS3. It was a technical marvel on the system and really leveraged what the PS3 did well. I'd be curious as to what it would have looked like.

 

[AmuroChan]

Maybe the exact version couldn't have been possible, but certainly a downgraded version would have been possible for the 360, similar to The Witcher 3 on the Switch.

 

[Negotiator]

All these threads keep giving me a huge PS3/Uncharted nostalgia...

Hell, on a technical level even the MP was far more impressive on PS3 (dynamic events/physics) compared to bland/static PS4 UC4 MP maps:







Can you imagine this beauty running at 1080p 120 fps or 4K 60 fps?

 

[adamsapple]

HDDs weren't standard on the 360 though.

By the end of the generation, a couple of games required the hard drive to play. The restriction was flexible, there's no rule saying it couldn't be amended.

 

[Zathalus]

I forgot the 360 had Crisis 3, and as somebody mentioned earlier, MGSV. So yeah, definitely doable with engine modifications.

 

[adamsapple]

I forgot the 360 had Crisis 3, and as somebody mentioned earlier, MGSV. So yeah, definitely doable with engine modifications.

This is where Kojima screwed up. 360 ran Phantom Pain notably better than the PS3 and per Ryan Payton, MGS4 was running on X360 devkits ready to be ported, but Kojima refused the port.

Had that port gone through, we would have had a BC compatible 60 FPS version all this time instead of hoping and praying for Konami to remaster it.

 

[Negotiator]

Yeah.. well, I'll trust Balestra (miss him so much in current ND) over you, no offence.

I miss him too.

Christophe Balestra is a Demoscene guy, he knows his shit, he knows there's nothing to match 6 fully-utilized SPUs (around 150 GFlops of compute power).

IIRC, Xenon had around 100 GFlops via VMX128. If you cut down the physics, it's no longer the same game.

So when ND says they maxed out 6 SPUs for physics and other stuff, you can be 100% sure they're not lying. It has nothing to do with pre-rendered video cutscenes/multiple discs.

ND saved PS3 from its demise with Uncharted 2 back in 2009. There were zero politics back then, just pure technical prowess.

 

[Negotiator]

Nah facts are facts. The Xbox GPU was more powerful, the vram was double on the 360. All those things hes talking about can be done on the GPU. They were putting it on the SPUs because the GPU was weaker and needed the cell to make up for it. plenty of open world games added streaming to their engines back then. uncharted is a linear game, and streaming is mostly done on the vram which xbox had double of. DoF, motion blur, and other stuff hes talking about is all done on the GPU. its cool that they were able to use the cell for stuff traditionally done on the GPU but it doesnt matter when making comparisons to a GPU thats better at doing those things.

A TeraScale/VLIW GPU (like Xenos) was too primitive to perform physics (GPGPU), along with graphics. They only had 240 ALUs...

You're making it sound like Xenos was a GCN-style GPU back in 2005.

Can you show me one XBOX 360 game that runs physics via GPGPU and not via the CPU (VMX128)?

 

[intbal]

Just put a logo on the box saying HD required.

Problem solved!

They did. Like I mentioned above.
It was at least 13 games. I don't know the total number.
Here is an example:

This is Dragon Age: Inquisition.
The games don't all have that exact syntax. I believe that was up to the publisher.

 

[Stooky]

a few things. if i remember correctly spus were used for physics, texture, animation, audio processing and decompression which freed up the gpu. this helped U2 stream from the disc. spus were faster at certain task than the 360 cores. 360 used Directx Api. to get full performance from PS3 ND coded to the 'metal' that's were they got performance gains. so if U2 was on 360 it would be a different game

 

[Negotiator]

No. It was dumb as fuck. Especially those god awful American PlayStation adverts.

Really?

There was no political correctness/ESG bullshit back then, just pure old school "in your face!" competition. Who doesn't want that back?

I really miss that era...

And TBH, even MS desperately needs a 360-style console again. Gaming-focused, not subscription-focused.

 

[Trunx81]

Would love to know if Uncharted on the Vita is using the same engine as the PS3. Is this known?

The discussion reminds me of Monkey Island 2 on Amiga. Yes it worked. But without hard drive, at what cost?

 

[Lysandros]

I miss him too.

Christophe Balestra is a Demoscene guy, he knows his shit, he knows there's nothing to match 6 fully-utilized SPUs (around 150 GFlops of compute power).

IIRC, Xenon had around 100 GFlops via VMX128. If you cut down the physics, it's no longer the same game.

CELL BE also contains the double threaded PPU core (like the ones used in Xenon) at 38.3 GFlops (?), so it's around 192 GFlops in total (25.6 GFlops for each SPU×6+PPU).

 

[CrustyBritches]

System Wars!!