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[Killer8]

The irony in the push for Blu-ray was that the format wars barely even mattered in the end. Streaming services reign supreme, 4K UHD is a niche for collectors - its playback almost an afterthought on PS5 - and people are still buying DVDs.

The capacity was nice I suppose but barely anything took advantage of that. Money redirected to a bigger HDD as standard meant they could've used installable data discs like on 360.

 

[Karim]

If the ps3 had an adeguate gpu would have been a fucking monster. But eh.

 

[Xeela_sunston]

It the same gen/era where 3rd party devs really are there worst on enemy. Moaning about the Cell chip being a nightmare yet at the same time never properly using the 256MB RSX and then calling It weak. Yet when 1st party & 2nd party devs started pushing the console you got.

- It able to render PS4/Xbox one visuals at 720p, Could've done 900p60 If the ram was 512MB XDRAM + 256MB GDDR3(256-bit at 48GB/s).

- Games doing 95% on the RSX with better visuals/performance at actual 720p.

- Cell CPU being able to match a 3rd gen i7.

 

[Shadowstar39]

That game drought after release was fucking BRUTAL. I bought a 360 lol

Oh man it really was.

As someone who never owned an xbox (until series x) , it wasn't that bad at all, well at least when i got it in 2008.
Especially if you compare it to modern Sony, it was actually loaded with games.

When I bought the ps3 in 2008 (i hadn't bought a console since the ps1 as I was pc only gamer prior). I remember getting the console for $400 and getting MGS4, GTA4 on the same day.
Heavenly Sword, Motorstorm, Uncharted, Oblivion, Folk Lore, Resistance, Warhawk, and later that year LBP, Motorstorm Pacific Rift, Bioshock, Resistance 2, Ratchet Tools of Destruction, Dead space, fallout 3.

I had a blast.

Compare:

PS3 (07-08): MGS4, LBP, Motorstorm 1 and 2, Pacific Rift, Ratchet tod, Heavenly Sword, Uncharted, Folk Lore, Ridge Racer, Resistance 1 and 2, GT5 prolouge, Warhawk, Super Star dust ultra, Lair, to what we got for PS5 first two years:

PS5: Demon's Souls (Remake), Returnal, Ratchet Rift Apart, Destruction All stars.....

It's frankly pitiful how bad the ps5 is in comparison for exclusives and games overall.

Sure 360 had more games as it released a year earlier and had more 3rd party support due to the ps3 hard to program for stuff, but it wasn't exactly swimming in exclusives. You just remember them more as there was more hype around it. 360 was lacking at the end part of the gen and ps3 had trounced it then, like a role reversal.

Here is what 360 had 2005-2006 for exclusives: Project Gotham racing 3, Kameo, Perfect Dark Zero, Dead or Alive 4, Gears of War, Dead Rising, Saints Row, Table Tennis.

Most of the big exclusives for 360 didn't hit until 2007.

The biggest game I remember for the 360 launch was cod2 (one of my favorites) I remember playing it on a kiosk and then buying it for pc. Back when cod was not crap.

 

[sono]

The PS3 was such a wild ride. Gaf was along with it..

 

[Drew1440]

It was an amazing console for itis time, but both Sony and the consumers had to pay a steep price for it. Compared to the 360 it was a very consumer friendly system with the ability to upgrade and install your own HDD, link your own Bluetooth headset and even install Linux (for the first few years anyway) however the OS was less efficient than the 360's dashboard and game updates seemed to take forever to complete.

Ps3 was not meant to host an nvidia gpu, it was supposed to have custom hardware.
Basically, MS forced the shortening of the previous generation by at least 18 months and forced Sony to cut major hardware developpement design for the ps3.
Not only the the gpu, but also the whole sdk and developper toolset suffered from that shortening.
Devs had to reverse-engineering the Gpu to be able to extract more juice.

I believe they partnered with Toshiba which would have produced a GPU with a custom SPU and a rasterizer, along with eDRAM. This didn't work out as planned due to developer feedback and it was scrapped. There were a few threads discussing this on Beyond3D but they have since been made private. The concept was developers could choose which SPU's to delegate between game logic, audio decoding and processing, physics calculations and graphics rendering, similar to the PS2's dual VPU but a lot more flexible from the developer perspective.
Now I'm guessing the Toshiba GPU would have fallen short of the Xenos used in the 360 which is why it got dropped, and Nvidia couldn't adapt their GPU to function with the PS3's XDR memory hence why they used a separate GDDR3 memory pool.

Wifi? Yup first console with it built-in from factory (i think?). HDD? Also first console where all models had one included. HDMI cable? Also first console to include one. Xbox 360 didn't have a cable at first in 2005.

First PlayStation to have a built in HDD (unless you count the Japanese PSX), the original Xbox had an HDD as standard. The design decision to make the 360 HDD optional was due to the hard drive being the most expensive component of the original Xbox.

 

[Badlucktroll]

i remember charging a $599 ps3 and resistance to a credit card at launch and taking forever to pay it off

 

[Fafalada]

Now I'm guessing the Toshiba GPU would have fallen short of the Xenos used in the 360 which is why it got dropped, and Nvidia couldn't adapt their GPU to function with the PS3's XDR memory hence why they used a separate GDDR3 memory pool.

It was a bit more nuanced - Toshiba GPU was specced for a completely different rendering paradigm - it aimed to have 16x the raw raster performance of Xenos/RSX (also why it required eDram to function), but the shader pipeline was different, and more importantly fragment only - it relied on Cell for all the geometry needs.
It's also worth noting that at that stage - 360 was a 256MB console - and this PS3 would have been 192MB (128MB on Cell, 64MB on RS) - but all of it was eDram (XDR was also a later change). That was also still at the time when Cell itself was aiming for a 32-way configuration (instead of 8-way we got eventually) their targets were - very ambitious.
It's an interesting question what the two machines would have compared like had things stayed that way.

And indeed - NVidia offering a GPU that would adopt either eDram or XDR interface just wasn't feasible in the timeframe - so GDDR3 addition was just another trade-off that wasn't planned for.

the system also lacked a scaler chip

To be clear - there were no scaler 'chips' on any system (lest we count consoles old enough to have a CRTC on a separate chip - not sure even PS1 fits that).
But some form of dedicated scaler circuitry did exist on all consoles (even before HD era, it was just analog processing) - part of the GPU usually - PS3 GPU just had a bug that only worked for horizontal scaling.

That said

which meant if the devs didn't have the GPU power left

GPU power was never a problem - pretty much any game with a post-process pipeline (let alone AA) would perform a final resolve before display, so scaling was effectively free from compute perspective (just part of the resolve). The problem was 720->1080 meant double the memory for that final buffer.
And of course - double scaling that you already mentioned.

 

[kruis]

the Cell's processing power was barely enough to let the PS3 catch up to the 360. so what's the use of having this supposedly amazing CPU when it's held back by the underpowered GPU that it constantly has to support to be on equal footing?

also a reminder that the Xenon used the exact same architecture as the Cell.
Microsoft went to IBM, saw the development of the Cell, and told them they want a Tri Core CPU based on the Cell's main CPU core.
so the 360 essentially got a CPU with 3 main cores from the Cell and none of the SPEs, while the PS3 has a single core of the same architecture + 7 SPEs that are almost entirely needed to aid the GPU.

so I don't think having that Cell processor was in anyway a positive thing. maybe if their GPU wasn't lacking behind it would have been a legitimate asset. but the way the console ultimately came together, it was a way to keep up at best, and a huge hurdle for developers at worst.

Nonsense. PowerPC cpus had been on the market since 1992, 13 years before the release of the Xbox 360.

 

[kazuyamishima]

I wonder why? Everyone here says it doesn't matter what platform games are on and putting all games multiplatform won't hurt sells.

Are gafers not really business people?

It was a combination of Very Important aspects of losing so many third party exclusives to middle aspects like the 360 being $200 cheaper and running games better alongside with Sony being complete douchebags.

The 2nd part of the PS3 lifecycle is one of the best I can remember for any console, the comeback in the same gen was real, massive and growing.

 

[kevboard]

Nonsense. PowerPC cpus had been on the market since 1992, 13 years before the release of the Xbox 360.

...yes... x86 has been on the market since the 70s... what does that have to do with what I said?
the Xenon uses literally the same CPU design as the Cell. you know that not every PowerPC core is the same right?

both the Xenon and the Cell use PowerPC 2.02, and the literal core design between them is extremely similar. the Xenon uses a modified version of the Cell's PPE. the PPE was specifically designed for the Cell originally, and Microsoft wanted that PPE, with additional gaming oriented features added, in a tri-core configuration... and that's how the Xenon came to be.

the Xenon is 3x the PPE from the Cell + IBM Enhanced VMX Extensions


edit: Wikipedia actually has a full article on the PPE... which I didn't expect lol

Power Processing Element - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[YeulEmeralda]

You could set your own fucking wallpaper.

Imagine that a console not controlled by corpos.

 

[Justin9mm]

I enjoyed it a lot more than my PS5.

Me too!

 

[aclar00]

The PS3 is why I find the complaints about console prices today(even with $50 tariff increase) A bit ridiculous. It cost $599 at launch in 2006 which is equal to roughly $950 today and Sony was telling people to get a second job.

While i agree, it was also at least high in feature sets, especially things that were relatively new. From built in HDD, wifi, linux, multi USB, Blu-Ray/DVD, SD/Memort Stick slots, wireless controllers, photo viewer, MP3 player, ability to Rip Cds, optical audio network/plex support and possibily other things i cant think of.

At the very least it felt premium to me...Butbdef was expensive.

 

[kruis]

...yes... x86 has been on the market since the 70s... what does that have to do with what I said?
the Xenon uses literally the same CPU design as the Cell. you know that not every PowerPC core is the same right?

both the Xenon and the Cell use PowerPC 2.02, and the literal core design between them is extremely similar. the Xenon uses a modified version of the Cell's PPE. the PPE was specifically designed for the Cell originally, and Microsoft wanted that PPE, with additional gaming oriented features added, in a tri-core configuration... and that's how the Xenon came to be.

the Xenon is 3x the PPE from the Cell + IBM Enhanced VMX Extensions


edit: Wikipedia actually has a full article on the PPE... which I didn't expect lol

Power Processing Element - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The fact that the Xbox 360 has a powerpc cpu wasn't because ms read up on what Sony was doing and wanted to domthe same. Poerpc cpus were pretty popular in games consoles for a while.

List of PowerPC-based game consoles - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[kevboard]

The fact that the Xbox 360 has a powerpc cpu wasn't because ms read up on what Sony was doing and wanted to domthe same. Poerpc cpus were pretty popular in games consoles for a while.

List of PowerPC-based game consoles - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I never said they looked what Sony was doing, but they saw the PPE core IBM developed for the Cell and developed a tri-core cpu based on it with IBM. the PPE was specifically designed for the Cell and was only used in the Cell (and I guess its upgraded variant) and the Xenon.

it's like I said. they went to IBM, saw their work on the Cell, said "gimme 3 of that main core", and the Xenon was born

 

[MacReady13]

The console that turned me into an Xbox fanboy. Made me a 360 fanboy! That was until Kinect came out...

 

[Romulus]

The only Sony console I despised. I loved all the rest of them and they occupy my top 5 all time(most of them). I even had more fun with PSVR1 than I did PS3.