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[Mooreberg]

I'm not even talking about graphics, or videos that were shown (other than the UT2007 live demo), but the impact it seems to have had on a few of the things we've been hearing.

01. Microsoft seems to be in awkward position for backward's compatibility. No doubt they'll get Halo 2, Fable, and their other high profile first party games running fine, but it could still leave a large number of games in the dust. Is Rallisport 2 screwed, since it wasn't a best seller?

02. Epic got the Unreal 3 engine running that smooth in just two months. Most PC developers never even worked directly with PS2, they just had some other team port the games (with sometimes horrific results, like Max Payne 2)

03. What is the word on how many more chips Microsoft will get from nVidia? Will they have that many systems available to sell from this November forward? I now the obvious focus for them will be the 360 launch, but PlayStation has been a pretty good example of the fact that a system doesn't need to be swept off of the store shelves after four years.

The enthusiam from a primarily PC game developer like Epic makes it seem that Sony is sewing up the loose ends about having a system that is a nightmare to program for.

Even if the only benefits are more support from PC developers and easier GPU to work with, it seems like working w/ nVidia is paying off, at least at this point.

 

[pcostabel]

I thought it was a mistake when it first was announced, but after Sony's conference I changed my mind.
The Unreal Engine demo pretty much squashed the only advantage that MS has, PC developers' support. Next gen all the big FPS will be on both PS3 and Xbox, but they will look better on PS3. No need to have an Xbox 360.

 

[Suikoguy]

To me it was a HUGE deal having Tim at the Sony confrence.
I'm not sure if any moneyhats were involved, but if they really got that up and running in 2 months, the ease of PC -> PS3 fixes the biggest hole in the PS2 IMO.

 

[Pedigree Chum]

I thought it was a mistake when it first was announced, but after Sony's conference I changed my mind.
The Unreal Engine demo pretty much squashed the only advantage that MS has, PC developers' support. Next gen all the big FPS will be on both PS3 and Xbox, but they will look better on PS3. No need to have an Xbox 360.

Exactly, PS3 is going to get the best of Japanese games, and Western games (PC titles included). It's going to be awesome.

 

[Phoenix]

We went through this back in the day when Cell was unveiled and then again when the GPU was discussed. NVidia has excellent developer support teams. If you've ever developed professionally for their hardware, you know they will jump through flaming hoops while holding a canister of gasoline to help you do exactly what you want to do. This no doubt was a HUGE boon for Sony's developer relations efforts.

Sony also learned a lot of hard lessons with the PS2 - that having a strong API was important to hide the functionality of the hardware underneath. The PS2 was developing pretty much raw to the processors initially - and as someone who went to the Sony developers conference for the PS2, that was going to be a pain for most PC developers used to DirectX level APIs.

Over the years, however, the industry has matured and there are more people who can deal with multi-processor consoles. Many have had their trial by fire on the PS2 so they know what to expect. They've also got much better support this time around from Sony/nVidia so they can succeed. While I don't know if nVidia was the BEST move, it certainly was a billion times better than going it alone. Most developers (including PC developers) know, love, and understand nVidia folks. They have relationships with many of them on a first name basis and communicate with them often. Most assuredly, this level of relationship (with PC developers) would not have happened at the same level of success with Sony going it alone. Anyone out there from the development world can attest that Sony is just an 'okay' development partner.

 

[Spectral Glider]

I was skeptical at first too as with the PC, I went from being an Nvidia guy to an ATI guy. ATI to me has always had awesome visual quaility. But, lately, the gap has closed. And the press conference was impressive, no doubt.

 

[AB 101]

Well, it looks like Sony is utilizing OpenGL and nVidia has had some pretty good success in this area.


ATI is probably the better choice with Direct X.

 

[sonycowboy]

Word on the grapevine is that it was Sony's only move.

Their development of the GPU was way behind and they signed NVidia on late in the game and NVidia seems to have made a decent royalty deal out of it. Of course, Sony will manufacture, so they'll be doing OK as well.

However, it was a great move. Using NVidias's programmable language on top of OpenGL will make development worlds better.

What will be interesting is when we get a real good tech comparison of the 2 GPU's. NVidia seems to have a ton of nice extensions to their tech, but ATI went with Unified shaders and we haven't heard if NVidia has anything similar to the 10MB Embedded DRAM that will give 360 games the FSAA for free.

 

[Sqrt_minus_one]

Word on the grapevine is that it was Sony's only move.

Their development of the GPU was way behind and they signed NVidia on late in the game and NVidia seems to have made a decent royalty deal out of it. Of course, Sony will manufacture, so they'll be doing OK as well.

However, it was a great move. Using NVidias's programmable language on top of OpenGL will make development worlds better.

What will be interesting is when we get a real good tech comparison of the 2 GPU's. NVidia seems to have a ton of nice extensions to their tech, but ATI went with Unified shaders and we haven't heard if NVidia has anything similar to the 10MB Embedded DRAM that will give 360 games the FSAA for free.

Free FSAA for RSX I doubt it, reduced impact FSAA = likely.
Am I the only one who is more concerned with increments in poly count and sharper textures to as opposed to better AA ?

To the original question great move but not just a bit late, very late IMO. It looks like we just get a strapped on G70.

 

[teiresias]

Question concerning FSAA actually. So do we know if every game on PS3 will have to render 1080P by default? I ask this, because didn't Dreamcast basically do it's FSAA by scaling a higher-res image down?

If every game has to render 1080P by default, first of all I've never seen a 1080P image so I don't know if you even really need AA at a resolution that size (I certainly don't feel I need to use it when I run my PC games at 1600x1200), and secondly if you're display on say an "old fashioned" NTSC display will it simply scale the image and basically do what the Dreamcast did.

I wish I knew more about graphics hardware I should take a graduate class or something, :lol.

 

[CosmicGroinPull]

"Was going w/ nVidia Sony's best move?


I don't know, are we approaching the end of PS3's life cycle?

;P

 

[Panajev2001a]

We went through this back in the day when Cell was unveiled and then again when the GPU was discussed. NVidia has excellent developer support teams. If you've ever developed professionally for their hardware, you know they will jump through flaming hoops while holding a canister of gasoline to help you do exactly what you want to do. This no doubt was a HUGE boon for Sony's developer relations efforts.

Sony also learned a lot of hard lessons with the PS2 - that having a strong API was important to hide the functionality of the hardware underneath. The PS2 was developing pretty much raw to the processors initially - and as someone who went to the Sony developers conference for the PS2, that was going to be a pain for most PC developers used to DirectX level APIs.

Over the years, however, the industry has matured and there are more people who can deal with multi-processor consoles. Many have had their trial by fire on the PS2 so they know what to expect. They've also got much better support this time around from Sony/nVidia so they can succeed. While I don't know if nVidia was the BEST move, it certainly was a billion times better than going it alone. Most developers (including PC developers) know, love, and understand nVidia folks. They have relationships with many of them on a first name basis and communicate with them often. Most assuredly, this level of relationship (with PC developers) would not have happened at the same level of success with Sony going it alone. Anyone out there from the development world can attest that Sony is just an 'okay' development partner.

I agree, well written post man .

I like seeing Tim Sweeney happy with Unreal Engine 3's performance on PlayStation 3 because if Unreal Engine 3 runs fast and smoothly on PlayStation 3 then many developers who are using Unreal Engine 3 will have one more incentive to bring their game to PlayStation 3.

 

[RobotChant]

Smart move to have big name PC guys on board.

This was how MS gained ground so quick.

 

[Chrono]

man the more I read about PS3 the more I'm convinced the console wars are over. It'd be a real shame if mictosoft's 'cool' marketing deceives the casuals and gets a head start. Whenever I'll see a game I like on 360 I'll be thinking how better it could be on PS3.

Just fix that controller!

 

[mrklaw]

sonycowboy, any idea what kind of stuff was planned for the Sony GPU? Were they going for a shader model, or would they have gone brute force again?

 

[gofreak]

I think Epic has a new favourite console...

It was definitely a smart move on balance between hardware, software and dev relations. I don't think Epic would have been there with UE3 if it had been a different GPU, to be very honest.

 

[Drek]

03. What is the word on how many more chips Microsoft will get from nVidia? Will they have that many systems available to sell from this November forward? I now the obvious focus for them will be the 360 launch, but PlayStation has been a pretty good example of the fact that a system doesn't need to be swept off of the store shelves after four years.

I saw a news story not too long ago that claimed Microsoft and nVidia's partnership had expired and that nVidia wouldn't make any future Xbox chipsets. Can't recall the link, but you might want to google it up, see what you find.

Anyhow, yeah, I think Sony made a brilliant move. nVidia was the reigning champ of graphics cards for quite a while until ATi's recent surge, so they have a lot of resources, talented staff, and drive to get back on top. They also know how to make good chipsets from an ease of development standpoint and reduce Sony's own in-house workload. Very good move I'd say.

 

[Prine]

i read last night that MS are trying to get every game BC with Xbox. Some MS technical engineer stated this in an article

 

[Doom_Bringer]

thank god the PS3 is getting the Unreal engine. I thought they were a MS 2nd party.

 

[Nikashi]

i read last night that MS are trying to get every game BC with Xbox. Some MS technical engineer stated this in an article

I would assume they will emulate popular titles first. Who knows, there may be full BC by the time the X360 launches, and MS is being conservative so they don't disappoint if there are still some issues with certain titles.

I'm actually wondering how PS3 is going to have BC. I haven't seen the specs, but are they doing the same thing they did last time, such as adding the original Emotion Engine chip with a 2ndary function for it? (The original PSX processor used for playing PSX games also handled peripheral input).

 

[Dr. Zoidberg]

Next gen all the big FPS will be on both PS3 and Xbox, but they will look better on PS3. No need to have an Xbox 360.

Really? All of them? How is Sony going to get Halo3 on PS3?

Face it, a lot of gamers are going to end up with multiple systems again next gen. Everybody's gotta have PS3, and there's enough Halo fans to make sure 360 will not be "shut out". If you like Nintendo games too, you end up with all three.

I'd have loved it this gen if all the good games ended up on the system with the best hardware but it didn't happen. The only reason I have a PS2 is for the exclusive games. The same thing will apply next gen.

 

[Phoenix]

I'm actually wondering how PS3 is going to have BC. I haven't seen the specs, but are they doing the same thing they did last time, such as adding the original Emotion Engine chip with a 2ndary function for it? (The original PSX processor used for playing PSX games also handled peripheral input).

As I understand it they are just using the Cell to emulate the PS1, PS2 chipsets directly with no additional hardware, and if the Cell is as powerful as they say - it is MUCH more than capable of doing that.

 

[Diablos]

ATI has been ahead of the game for a couple years now, so I think Sony would've been better off picking them. I also figured MS would have kept nVidia, and Sony would have used ATI.

A couple years ago if you were asked who they'd choose, you all would've said the opposite.