LowEndTorque
Member
Pastebin looks like a troll's paradise right now. I'm tempted to type up ridiculous fake specs pretending to be a developer and put them on pastebin just to see if it ends up posted on GAF in one of these threads.
Kotaku Rumor: Microsoft 6 months behind in game production for X720 [Pastebin = Ban]
- Thread starter shinobi602
- Start date
Angelus Errare
Banned
Consoles...serious business...seriously.
Adam Vaz ‏@Adamz77 1 Mag
@aarongreenberg are graphics important ?
Aaron Greenberg ‏@aarongreenberg 1 Mag
@adamz77 what do you think?! Come on man...
dont think they will go nintendo style at all...just wait day 21
Can Crusher
Banned
Now think about how fucked up it is those people from The Impossible are overdramatising a natural disaster when there are innocent people out there being tortured for months on end, after they watched their sons getting executed and their wifes and daughters raped in front of them.
It's a stupid comparison right?
I'm pretty relaxed, you're the one who came all passive aggressive. And now you've added a ton of weight to what I posted...
Don't take it so literal folks...jesus. Call it hyperbole if you want, even though we have a bunch of posters and fake rumors from fans who clearly are hoping for more.
In either case, let's not turn this into something it's not.
This is not true anymore, even for the PS3 with its weird architecture. Sony has caught up and maybe even exceeded.
This is not true at all, this isn't 2006. AAA developer relationships are the same and Sony has a big lead with the indies.
These two are most likely correct, except I doubt the moneyhats will come to anything significant in big games.
The biggest thing MS are counting on is standard kinect.
I would be very very surprised if in five years Sony have 'caught up and maybe even exceeded' a company that has 30+ years of experience providing development suites.
Maximilian E.
AKA MS-Evangelist
The thing is, 3-4 years is quite the long time and tech advancements happens really fast. Your design must more or less be open/prepared for new advancements/development in technology, at least within the timeframe (you cannot wait forever for better/cheaper tech because then you will for sure wait forever..)
And obviously that productions scheduels get fucked up all the time but at least MS was aware of the development of what was going on with GDDR5 densities.
And, MS could have betted on it as well and depending on what was going on, they would have had at least the same amount of memory as Sony (4Gb if it was not viable, 8 if it was). So why did they not make the same decision?
So therefore, MS chose deliberately with DDR3/ESRAM for specific reasons, no matter what the chances were with GDDR5 memory. Perhaps they did so because with time, they could even have more than 8Gb in the machine..
Granted, I don´t know anything about HW design and such, but I would assume that you have to have some headroom in your design, within the timeframe, for possible "what if´s.."
It's always tentative when you're dealing with tech advancements like this. Yields could have been too low or costs could have increased due to something unforeseen. And I doubt they would have waited much longer if the chips weren't ready, as it would have been too risky. They wouldn't want another repeat of the blu-Ray diode situation.
There's a bit of a debate on the subject. I'm not far enough into my EE curriculum to fully understand it, though.
Can Crusher
Banned
Of course the example I said is a joke, it's a stupid comparison. Like yours.
How could you be so affected by a bit of hyperbole, that you needed to bomb my comment in such unnecessary way?
Clearly I wasn't saying this was the worst thing in the world. Or that it was comparable to loss of life...
Core fans do have a tendency to feel pretty committed to whatever their fans of. Are sports serious business?
Of course not, but people get angry and depressed about it anyway.
Angelus Errare
Banned
Yeah and said fans are pathetic all the same, the whole platform console warrioring thing is just nonsensical to me. I could never get that deeply vested in plastic and silicon backed by a publicly traded entity who clearly at no point gives a fuck about you. I guess it's that apathy thing I do.
/shrug
Yeaaaa....no. Sony exceeding Microsoft, MICROSOFT in development suites and software deployment? Surely you jest. I can't remember the last time I've developed any major piece of software using a suite by Sony.
/shrug
Yeaaaa....no. Sony exceeding Microsoft, MICROSOFT in development suites and software deployment? Surely you jest. I can't remember the last time I've developed any major piece of software using a suite by Sony.
Your initial post was just so full of drama.
In the end, we're talking about videogames. You'd think people lose sleep over this stuff the way some people talk.
I'm relatively confident people will find a way to move on with their lives after going through the trauma of dealing with the Xbox being weaker than the PS4.
Can Crusher
Banned
Yeah I'm pretty confident of that too. But this is a gaming forum, and this thread is on page 30. You have 1st highest number of posts in this and it's a rumor thread...
So people certainly care enough to feel disappointed if the opportunity appears. I don't see how a lil bit of drama and hyperbole deserves a shot down with a comparison to a natural catastrophe.
1st world problems yes, that's why you probably feel disappointed and feel cheated by a bunch of stuff that happens in your life. Even though if you were to compare that to The Impossible, it would seem like you were full of drama.
But it's all cool, it bugged you, I respect that.
I respect that. It's pretty normal for human behavior in "1st world" society's to attach to the most meaningless stuff though. Sports aren't any different really. Or TV shows, or whatever.
Brad Grenz
Member
Modern Sony dev tools run on top of Microsoft's Visual Studio. The PS3's linker is apparently way faster than the 360 equivalent which saves devs tons of time. And the Vita SDK has been held up as the best development environment for any game machine ever. The PS4 architecture is also less complicated and more straightforward than Durango's messy ESRAM/Move Engine design. We have every reason to believe PS4 will be the easiest to code on. It's silly to act like MS is unassailable. This is hardly Sony's first rodeo, and the crisis that the Cell architecture created for developers led directly to a huge effort within Sony World Wide Studios to improve the tools, documentation and create useful libraries.
Besides, MS has 30+ years in OS development too, but to this day every other version they release is a trainwreck.
It's hardly MS's first rodeo either, and it's been 7 years with high pressure on ease of development from companies like Apple and Google since they created the 360. Their latest desktop OS has been deliberately built to make development as easy and have as low a barrier to entry as possible, and they're pushing to universalise development tools across all their platforms as far as possible.
The fact that every other iteration of Windows is crappy has no bearing on the situation so far as I can tell. OS development has different pressures to tool chain development.
this is not true. and as for its last OS its better than win 7. You can say whatever you want about the UI but win8 is faster and runs better than win7.
Brad Grenz
Member
OK, then you explain why it's impossible for a Sony SDK built on top of Visual Studio using industry leading profilers, linkers, compilers and libraries to develop on a fundamentally simpler and more powerful underlying hardware design can't possible match up to Microsoft's development environment.
The UI is the trainwreck.
Monty Mole
Member
He didn't say it was impossible, just unlikely.
It's not just about their SDK running on top of Visual Studio. It's about the overall set of tools that can go above and beyond the standard, to make all parts of the development process even easier. Something Microsoft has been particularly good at. Also it's not like PS4 will be utilising DirectX (or future equivalents), so it won't be just case of direct ports from PC without any additional work as some have been implying.
Does it not make intuitive sense that the 15th largest hardware company would have an edge in hardware and the largest software company would have an edge in software? I think that's a safe assumption until we actually get solid info from devs on how both sides stack up.
Brad Grenz
Member
There is only so good your software suite can be, after that it's about the hardware underneath. If both have hit the dev environment ceiling, all that's left is Durango's more complicated hardware design.
Maximilian E.
AKA MS-Evangelist
But that´s the trick..
Most likely, MS will manage to handle the, according to you, "messy design" of Durango in a way that it will seem like a breeze to work with it.
Anything else would be strange, that a software company would design a hardware, that not even themselves can manage to write software for..
where is the logic in this?
Monty Mole
Member
The UI is fine for tablets. The 'Desktop' screen is fine for PCs. The issue is pushing it as a hybrid and the real issue people have had with Win8 is the inability to boot straight to Desktop by default, which is something that is rumoured to be addressed soon.
The underlying OS however is incredible fast and stable, more so than Windows 7. And as you're referring to current UIs as a way of predicting next-gen, perhaps you should give the current Playstation Store a try and see how that pans out.
the ui being good or not is something subjective. Win8 from a programming view of point is great. And that's what we are talking about here.
something fishy
Member
We'd not even know that is what they are using yet though. Only rumours.
The closer these are to pc the better for sure though, gives no reason to get em if the pc versions are spot on.
Melchiah
Member
Well, that didn't really help this gen, as arguably PS3 was a better media device, due to Blu-Ray and services like Netflix not being locked behind a paywall. It's still up in the air, whether XB3 will also have a paywall, or if the Blu-Ray playback is unlocked via a separately bought remote control, like the DVD playback in the first Xbox.
EDIT: Not to mention, what kind of services will be available outside of USA; limited features don't really encourage paying for XBL.
maybe maybe is a wishful thinkin? 
if u look at netflix in the country where ppl most use it (usa and canada) xbox sold more than ps3
here in europe where in most country netflix there isnt..... x360 have lots of apps to stream movies ala netflix while ps3 can just stream low quality movies from the web (most of the time pirated)
on br and dvd......in the years of x360 and ps3.....dvd was sold and rent more than br....
so to be honest the only advantage ps3 had over xbox ..was the web browser...(that had more bugs than right code...but still was better than nothing)
i used to stream movie from sites with the ps3 until a day i chosed to pay for cubovision and mediaset premium ...services and watch it trought the xbox apps.....well was 100times better so...as media device i would choose xbox over ps3 (at least here in italy)
Coulomb_Barrier
Member
Making the PS4 developer friendly was/is one of Cerny's chief concerns this generation, as is Sony's peddling of the console as gaming-focused first and foremost.
Comparatively, no-one can say with a straight face that MS is putting as much importance in these things going by the rumoured specs.
So its actually more plausible that devs will be able to push the PS4 closer to its potential than the NextBox, from a software tools and hardware pov. I don't know why people are acting incredulous at the idea.
Plus lets be serious - the NextXbox has all those rumours of significant memory and processor resources being partitioned off for non-gaming functions.
Comparatively, no-one can say with a straight face that MS is putting as much importance in these things going by the rumoured specs.
So its actually more plausible that devs will be able to push the PS4 closer to its potential than the NextBox, from a software tools and hardware pov. I don't know why people are acting incredulous at the idea.
Plus lets be serious - the NextXbox has all those rumours of significant memory and processor resources being partitioned off for non-gaming functions.
That's the standard code for "hi guys, I'm just trolling" directed to the tech-literate parts of the audience.
And you know this how? Nothing has been announced yet. You don't know shit about their stance towards developers and games. I know for a fact that you are pulling this out of your ass because nothing has been announced yet. Even as a rumor, I've yet to see one that suggests ms will not be developer friendly or give a shit about games. The logical jumps you are making to reach your conclusion are ridiculous. Jesus fucking Christ, this thread.
I didn't say it was impossible, only that I would find it unlikely that Sony would have an edge. Lots of stuff that MS have been doing over the past few years has been about opening up and simplifying the development process, as a reaction to Apple blowing the doors off software development with iOS and the App Store. It is the centrepiece of their new desktop OS, and they've had years of experience in creating development tools for Windows.
That's why I find it unlikely that in 7 years Sony have 'caught up and maybe surpassed' one of the world's largest software companies in their own back yard.
Regardless, that has nothing to do with the improvements to their development tools.
Also the under the hood improvements in Windows 8 over Windows 7 are great; just look at the startup time. It now smokes even Mac OS X which for years made Windows (even 7) look positively geriatric.
The hardware design is barely more complicated. It's not a PS3 to 360 comparison where developers on the PS3 were dealing with seven extra coprocessors and a split memory pool. Also, we don't actually know how much of the hardware in the new Xbox is actually visible to the developers. If Microsoft have a policy of discouraging 'coding to the metal' like the rumours suggest, that will make development more easy, not less.
Your premise is unreasonable: If the next Xbox actually turns out to be quite significantly underpowered compared to the PS4 (like all believeable rumours so far suggest) and has a comparatively restrictive set of unique challenges (mainly memory bandwidth), not even good development tools will be able to hide that fact: It will influence engine and game design.
It's not about not being able to manage to write software for the hardware, it's about the hardware design influencing the software side heavily.
Memory bandwidth is a very much a limiting factor that will be prove to be a significant obstacle.
Coulomb_Barrier
Member
Firstly, calm the hell down with your idiotic, aggressive response. This is not n4g.
Read the words 'based off rumoured specs'. That's all we can debate at the moment, isn't it.
And I'm not suggesting MS won't be developer friendly, I've not said that anywhere.
Even the EDRAM's 102GB/sec?
Maximilian E.
AKA MS-Evangelist
In what way is Durangos supposed memory bandwidth a challenge? And, who says that it is not enough? No where it states that in order to be a next gen, you have to have 130+Gb of bandwidth. Sure, faster bandwidth never harms BUT who says that Durangos BW is not quite enough?
My answer was towards Brad, pointing out that it makes no sense that MS would design a hardware, that they cannot document/provide good devkit/tools etc..
Once again, how do you know Durangos BW is not enough?
BruceLeeRoy
Banned
Man it is depressing being in this thread.
Melchiah
Member
Yet the PS3 was announced to be the most popular non-PC device for Netflix worldwide in December 2012; http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/4/3727556/playstation-3-number-one-netflix-streaming-living-room.
I dunno about other European countries, but Netflix became available on PS3 in the last autumn here in Finland. From what I've read the Netflix app works better on PS3 than 360, but I have no personal experience on the latter.
While DVD is still more popular than BR, the BR playback has definitely been essential for the PS3's relative success as a media player. And the fact, that it was the cheapest and best BR player for quite a while after its launch.
Cthulhu_Steev
Member
Maybe wait until May 21st so we can find out the facts, and then we can talk without smiling about these things we don't know?
ok but as you can understand receiving the availability of netflix last autumn after a 7 years console cycle...didnt put the ps3 as a media device at least in country like mine ..and talking about netflix most of europe is in the italy situation ...i repeat xbox have apps to stream movies available in lots of countries..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360_applications
and as u can see ps3 cant be compared to xbox regard streaming tv and movies
...netflix is still more usa/canada oriented
i mean ok u received last autumn netflix (not a sony fault at all!) and xbox received the browser....but well was too late..
essyouemeight
Banned
lol this thread
Tell me about it, So much negativity it's hard to get excited.
Agreed. Even when I tried to put some stuff into perspective based on rumors last night, people got mad. You probably know a lot more than me though so it's probably more rough for you. I've been following this thread closely to see if there's been any new insights on the matter but it's just Pastebin posts and arguments. People really need to get over the fact that there is a good chance that the next Xbox will be less powerful than the PS4 and focus on what Microsoft is bringing to the table in terms of connectivity features and their own first party output. Durango isn't crippled, it just may be weaker, and those other areas are where Microsoft excels and the main reasons they have a loyal fanbase.
If it's screen-space ray tracing then yes. I don't know about the whole rumor though, it seems lots of people are having fun on pastebin these days.
Monty Mole
Member
Microsoft has always put easy development first though. This isn't something new for them, it's an existing culture.
Sony has been boasting about it in comparison because they've needed to after the previous two generations. They're playing catch-up with MS in this area. And, of course, because they've actually announced their console. So they've got something they can actually talk about.
Microsoft is the reason why Sony is making the PS4 so developer friendly in comparison to their previous consoles.
Actually, it's pretty fucking hilarious that you make a post like that, then you call my post idiotic.
This was your post:
Your basic premise is that because there are some rumors that point to Durango having lower specs, "no one can say with a straight face" that MS is putting much importance into "these things," by which you mean making Durango developer friendly and making it gaming focused. Ironically that's something I'd expect on N4G, not on GAF. But yeah, I'm the one being idiotic.
You don't even know what you are talking about. At all. You don't know anything about the specs, you don't even understand anything about the rumored specs that were released, or memory requirements to run an OS on a console. You pretty much don't know shit and you are basing everything on rumors that could be false or out of context.
If anything, Sony is the one playing catch-up in terms of ease of development.
Gamespawn
Member
In a little over 2 weeks, all this bickering is going to become exponentially worse. Depending on how much information MS actually will provide at their event, we should have a better picture of everything.
All people have been doing up until now is speculate on rumors. Just wait it out. Soon, gaf will turn back to normal.
All people have been doing up until now is speculate on rumors. Just wait it out. Soon, gaf will turn back to normal.
Can you please dial it down, man? You're both taking this way too far.