PS4 / Xbox One console war

[Ruldra]

Paid online is good because it drastically reduces the number of trolls in games, and funds a service that actually works.

XBL wouldn`t be such a cesspool of cheaters and underage trolls if there was even an ounce of truth to this.

It would be a whole lot worse. I know some really nasty types who have given up re-appearing after having so many paid accounts banned. Do you know how many bad people I run into playing Call Of Duty nightly? One or two a month.

During my whole time playing online on the PS3, I can only think of one or two cases of people being complete assholes. I don't play stuff like Call of Duty but in pretty much every game I played online, the community was great. Very satisfied with the online service being free.

On topic: Little time to play and big backlog on the PS3 means I won't be interested in the PS4 anytime soon. Slowly losing interest in gaming too so the PS3 might be my last console.

[Ed Oscuro]

Online communities in free PC gaming have been so shitty I haven't played a PC game online in years.

The last time I played Battlefield 2: Bad Company online, I got kicked by an admin for "hacking" (because I know how to follow-target an enemy, lol).

Unfortunately the space is such that you get 13-year old dipshits who have money running servers, instead of some kind of impartial group that you pay.

So while I do like the idea of free, and I think that Sony's discussion of it being focused on the "services" (otherwise you're just paying for a PC with Sony branding and car-mat styling! - see also the interview I posted above), it does seem reasonable to suspect that having to pay for the privilege of gaming online means that some people who get kicked for the usual reasons now have the financial barrier to rejoining, whereas with a free service you just fiddle with some numbers or whatever. But Friendly brings up a good point here; if the console ID is banned too then that is also a big barrier to rejoining (arguably a bigger one than having to pay again...some people are daft enough to make all the same costly mistakes again).

[null1024]

it would be nice if the CPUs in these things were clocked at a reasonable speed
and my ideal vision of next-gen systems is constant 60fps in every game, but we know that's not happening

Seriously, a fast single processor is worlds above multiple slow cores for most tasks, especially since getting good performance out of a single fast processor is easier on the dev.

On the other hand, the amount of RAM available is finally reasonable, and it's fast too. With the video sharing thing, I wonder how much RAM would be left for games though, that's almost definitely going to be eaten up a fair bit by the always recording game footage, depending on how long they record [and especially if it's uncompressed in memory].

[Friendly]

that's almost definitely going to be eaten up a fair bit by the always recording game footage, depending on how long they record [and especially if it's uncompressed in memory].

15 minutes, which should be way too much to store inside of only 8GB of RAM. I assume it'll be constantly written to hdd without ever using much RAM at all (only what is needed for a few frames during processing), just like modern cameras write hd video directly to SD cards.

[Ed Oscuro]

Did they actually specify the speed of the RAM? GDDR5 has been out for some years, but there's a lot of implementations of that standard and I think some are going to be far faster than others.

By the by, GDDR5 is developed for highly parallel applications - exactly the sort of situation you do not want a single-core desktop CPU to run on. The memory will be good for graphics but it will probably have vastly slower timings than would be considered acceptable for desktop computational uses. So I expect that there will be a lot of focus on getting a lot of processes to run on the GPU. Thankfully, this seems to be a pretty normal use case for games (I think that physics is pretty well parallelizable too).

I don't expect recording video would be a problem.

[null1024]

that's almost definitely going to be eaten up a fair bit by the always recording game footage, depending on how long they record [and especially if it's uncompressed in memory].

15 minutes, which should be way too much to store inside of only 8GB of RAM. I assume it'll be constantly written to hdd without ever using much RAM at all (only what is needed for a few frames during processing), just like modern cameras write hd video directly to SD cards.

Ah, makes much more sense then. Damn, that's pretty nice.



/me patiently waits for PS3 prices to drop like a rock even though there's no BC on the PS4 [I didn't expect it, unless they stayed with a Cell-like CPU]. A similar price drop happened to the PS2 and original Xbox, although there was BC [at the time] on their successors...

[Friendly]

Did they actually specify the speed of the RAM?

178GB/s, which would make it 2.6x as fast as the DDR3 RAM currently used in PCs.

[LtC]

Any information yet whether games are going to be region locked or not?

[BryanM]

Did they actually specify the speed of the RAM?

178GB/s, which would make it 2.6x as fast as the DDR3 RAM currently used in PCs.

DDR3 (being replaced this year) is around 17GBs. Graphical RAM, of the GDDR5 variety the Phantasy Star 4 is using, tops out at around 264GB/s on the high end. Per slot.

The bandwidth of this current monstrosity



Well... it goes without saying this thing alone has more power than the entirety of Sony's thingamajig put together. Which it should, considering you have to take out a mortgage on your house to afford it.

(And of course it's way too soon to get any more specific details on the RAM than that. But it's realistic to expect a bit lower than top performance numbers.)

Any information yet whether games are going to be region locked or not?

The quietest voice in the darkness. At this point we're grateful the region locks aren't per state, and that we can play used games.

[Friendly]

Any information yet whether games are going to be region locked or not?

The quietest voice in the darkness. At this point we're grateful the region locks aren't per state, and that we can play used games.

Let's see. PSP, launched in 2004/2005, is region-free. PS3, which was released in 2006/2007 has no region-locked games except for Perona 4 Arena by Atlus. PS Vita (launched in 2011/2012) is also region-free.
Why would they break the pattern now? My crystal ball says chances are PS4 will be region free, too. This is actually one of the most important aspects for me and greatly influences if and when I purcase a console.

BTW, that micro fusion reactor pictured in your post doesn't have 8GB, it would seem. And yeah, that price.

[ZellSF]

That's three titans, Friendly. So 18 GB, 10 more than the PS3 has, plus whatever (slower) system memory that computer has... I'm going to guess anyone who buys three titans have a lot of system memory.

[UnscathedFlyingObject]

If we gonna go all crazy, I'm sure there's government supercomputers that put anything we have to shame. The point is not that the PS4 will have bleeding edge technology but that it will have impressive specs for the money being paid. Why are people comparing a box that will cost around $500 to something that thousands? It's like comparing a freakin' Corolla to a Ferrari. Umm, yeah, of course the Ferrari is faster.

[system11]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rJDn0jRnUQ

[BryanM]

$500, oh lordy. It's a pretty safe bet the 3DS is going to come out on top this generation, again.

They'd be in a much better spot if the X-Box wasn't hovering around knifing them in the side. Marketplace competition; the Wii and DS aren't even on the same playing field these guys are fighting over.

Let's see. PSP, launched in 2004/2005, is region-free.

Ok ok, so discs are region free mostly and network stuff isn't. I didn't get the memo; thanks for forwarding it to me.

[TransatlanticFoe]

Meh. If they want to do the "turbocharged PC" or whatever they claim, it'll be:

a) more than £400
b) less than £400 but take a huge loss on console sales
c) as above but mitigate the loss with shitty mass produced hardware and inadequate heat sinking
d) actually a mid-range PC but software will be optimised for it

Meh. Why not buy a PC and get beefier hardware? Especially if Linux is going to finally take off as a mainstream gaming OS.

I'll see how long my current PC can hold out, then decide where to go. Which will likely be Wii U if it ever gets any games or I'll build a new PC. I really don't see what the PS4 brings to the party other than more of the same.

[Ruldra]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rJDn0jRnUQ

Awesome

[Specineff]

It's not the same without Giant Enemy Crabs, 599 USD and RIIIIIIIIDGE RACER.

[louisg]

Meh. Why not buy a PC and get beefier hardware? Especially if Linux is going to finally take off as a mainstream gaming OS.

I'll place bets on Linux not taking off as a mainstream anything, especially if Xorg with acceleration continues to be as crashy as it is. Not that I wouldn't like it to be-- it's very customizable in ways that Mac and Windows aren't, so it's potentially well-suited to gaming. But I think there are some really glaring problems on that OS which hold it back a lot from where it should be.

[moh]

different title every time i see the thread

[Ed Oscuro]

Did they actually specify the speed of the RAM?

178GB/s, which would make it 2.6x as fast as the DDR3 RAM currently used in PCs.

Bandwidth, not latency. In other words, not "2.6x as fast" because that's not the whole story. And I'm running 2400MHz RAM here, which (for its intended purpose) this GDDR5 won't touch.

This GDDR5 is really just a compromise. Even on top-end gaming graphics cards you don't typically see more than 4GB - definitely not 8GB; there's no purpose for it, especially with the high bandwidth. Maybe some GPGPU card out there has 8GB but is specialized for some high-bandwidth application to begin with. For holding regular data such as a regular PC program might use, low-latency DDR3 should be the better choice. Of course if you have to choose between bandwidth and latency for a monolithic block of memory which will be used in a bandwidth-intensive application like graphics, GDDR5 is going to be better, but this does not mean it is a better deal than using DDR3. On the other hand I remember hearing that the monolithic memory model in the Xbox 360 (if I remember right) was an improvement over having separate memory regions, so this is ignoring some of the niceties. But I for one am not rueful that my PC motherboard supports PC3 19200 DDR3 instead of GDDR5.

I don't think it is a massive difference, though: link

[MadScientist]

...my ideal vision of next-gen systems is constant 60fps in every game, but we know that's not happening...

...With the video sharing thing, I wonder how much RAM would be left for games though...

Yep, the next Killzone is apparently going to be 30fps. I'm guessing other major franchises that people have become accustomed to playing at 30fps will follow suit.

Recommended spec for the latest top-end PC games (e.g. Witcher 2, Far Cry 3) is 4GB of RAM so 8 should be more than enough to be getting on with.

[LtC]

Apparently Sony can't answer yet if the console is region free or not. I wonder if that's a bad sign

――では次に、PS3はリージョンフリーなハードでしたが、PS4ではどうなるのでしょう？
吉田　設計は終わっているのですが、これについてはまだお答えすることはできません。また改めてアナウンスさせていただくと思います。

source: http://www.famitsu.com/news/201302/22029219.html

[Ed Oscuro]

Serious question, what's this 18GB and three titans business? I don't understand.

[Ex-Cyber]

Serious question, what's this 18GB and three titans business? I don't understand.

Titan is a new GPU card that has 6GB of RAM. BryanM posted a pic of a board with 3 of them installed to make a point about how PS4 is not, in fact, going to be equivalent to top-of-the-line PC hardware.

[Friendly]

As was correctly pointed out by UnscathedFlyingObject

If we gonna go all crazy, I'm sure there's government supercomputers that put anything we have to shame. The point is not that the PS4 will have bleeding edge technology but that it will have impressive specs for the money being paid. Why are people comparing a box that will cost around $500 to something that's thousands? It's like comparing a freakin' Corolla to a Ferrari. Umm, yeah, of course the Ferrari is faster.

One Geforce GTX Titan currently costs 1000 EUR/1300 USD, meaning that a setup with three of them would probably cost you around 3,400 EUR/4,500 USD. The three titans alone would use about 750W of power, which means running a PC with them would cost you about 0.17 EUR (.22 USD) for electricity (average European price) per hour (=310 EUR/409 USD per year if used 5h per day).

[Ex-Cyber]

Well, yeah. Most high-end PC hardware is now targeting resolutions higher than 1920x1080 (largely for multi-monitor setups), whereas it appears that PS4 is only targeting 4K for video playback, which can be handled by a bit of specialized hardware. It wouldn't actually make a whole lot of sense for PS4 to have something on par with a high-end PC GPU if that's the case.

[Ghegs]

That's it, I've had enough.

I'm going to ban all three of you, talk with the mod team and we will come to a resolution about this. Any whining or trying to plead or pull favors with the mods will not work in your favor.

So hey, PS4. How about that? Where's Ridge Racer?

[KAI]

RR8 is not going to happen. Namco and Sega are still too busy with the current gen.

[CMoon]

I'm always down on new consoles for whatever reason, but with PS4 most of these new features don't match up with anything I really want out of games. Sure, maybe better graphics (though the current gen graphics are incredible, so...) All that talk about a 'share' button and more networking. I really don't have any interest in that, and it seems that's Sony's big push for this console.

[Ruldra]

All that talk about a 'share' button and more networking. I really don't have any interest in that, and it seems that's Sony's big push for this console.

That DriveClub game they announced is a sign of what's to come. The whole thing is being made with social networking in mind. Not slightly interested in that either.