PS4 / Xbox One console war

[BryanM]

Don't listen to him. Without the hyphen the initialisms are about Phantasy Star games. You don't want to look crazy on the internet, do you?!

[Ed Oscuro]

Pedantry Stars-3

A delightful simulation of a trademark enforcement and consumer relations representative. Make sure people don't use acronyms incorrectly or your boss will get steamed!

Coming to Wii U in Q4 2013

Also, for me it's still PSX

[BryanM]

acronyms

Initialisms. :colbert:

(PSX3 I liek, honestly)

....hory shiet I'm bored today. Somebody write a brick about their dream game they'd like to see on this thing or something

[Ed Oscuro]

Somebody write a brick about their dream game they'd like to see on this thing or something

I thought I just did? Juggling coffees and toffees in SCEA must be hellish in those narrow, byzantine corridors. (Cue Max Payne fight music)

[dave4shmups]

The only thing that concerns me is this: http://www.gamespot.com/news/all-sony-o ... es-6404449
If Sony's serious about supporting the PS3 for the next several years, how can they get games out for it with this going on? Or, will it just be cross-platform games from here on out for the PS3?

[null1024]

The only thing that concerns me is this: http://www.gamespot.com/news/all-sony-o ... es-6404449
If Sony's serious about supporting the PS3 for the next several years, how can they get games out for it with this going on? Or, will it just be cross-platform games from here on out for the PS3?

I'll be amazed if Sony themselves keep putting out PS3 games when the PS4 releases. Didn't they drop the PS2 fairly quickly in terms of first-party releases after the PS3?

[dave4shmups]

The only thing that concerns me is this: http://www.gamespot.com/news/all-sony-o ... es-6404449
If Sony's serious about supporting the PS3 for the next several years, how can they get games out for it with this going on? Or, will it just be cross-platform games from here on out for the PS3?

I'll be amazed if Sony themselves keep putting out PS3 games when the PS4 releases. Didn't they drop the PS2 fairly quickly in terms of first-party releases after the PS3?

Not IIRC. They even released Motorstorm: Arctic Edge on the PS2. Of course, that was a port of a PSP game. (And it rocks on the PS2, BTW!)

[Friendly]

@null1024
No, they kept supporting PS2 for quite a while after PS3 was released, for instance with God of War 2. Same for third party, with games like God Hand and Persona 4, which came two years later, iirc.

Microsoft (and virtually all third party devs) on the other hand basically dropped Xbox 1 the day 360 was launched, but they were losing money with each system sold and it wasn't popular at all, so that doesn't mean it's bound to happen again now (I don't expect it to). Their Xbox Live paywall scheme is making them free money, 360 is sold at a profit and even if first party support continues to be as weak as it has been for the past 3 years, there will surely be some more interesting third party games for 360. In that regard PS3 has been the exact oposite of 360; it started out slow but got better and better with time, whereas Microsoft started out very strong and then pretty much dropped the ball after Kinect was released. Around the same time, MS also gave up completely on Japan, where they had money-hatted a few high profile JRPGs (Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey) at the start of the generation. That's the really interesting question, imo: What will Microsoft do about Japan now?

Isn't it amazing how much things get shuffled around at the start of each new generation?

[nZero]

None of the new consoles are going to be MSRP levels of interesting for the first couple of years, most likely. I think the SNES was the last console I got at launch where I had no regrets about not waiting. I'd love to be proven wrong, though.

That's the really interesting question, imo: What will Microsoft do about Japan now?

I was wondering a bit if MS basically buying the SDOJ port and the small flood of X360 shmups coming out this year is part of some half-hearted strategy to keep themselves available to the smaller devs and to the market while waiting for the Durango launch.

[shmuppyLove]

The only thing that concerns me is this: http://www.gamespot.com/news/all-sony-o ... es-6404449
If Sony's serious about supporting the PS3 for the next several years, how can they get games out for it with this going on? Or, will it just be cross-platform games from here on out for the PS3?

Well "support" can mean a lot of things. I suspect PSN and Playstation Plus are going to be their primary delivery methods after a certain point.

Even still, with development cycles as long as they are on so-called "triple-A" titles, there's bound to be quite a few retail releases still in the pipeline that weren't even due until later this year or next.

Besides, who buys new games anyway?

[MadScientist]

I'm curious what will happen to PS+ as I'm signed up for it until well into next year. If PS+ is one service across PS3 and 4 and they start giving away 'free' PS4 games to existing subscribers it could be an effective way of enticing some people to buy the new console. Otherwise I don't see myself getting a new console anytime soon.

[Ed Oscuro]

Microsoft (and virtually all third party devs) on the other hand basically dropped Xbox 1 the day 360 was launched, but they were losing money with each system sold and it wasn't popular at all,

What wasn't popular? The Xbox, 360, or losing money?

[dave4shmups]

Well, I wonder if Microsoft will drop support for the XBOX 360 as fast as they did for the XBOX. I don't want to get OT into hardware, but what is all this X86 talk with the PS3? I have no idea what X86 is, except that people are saying that the PS4 will be a lot easier to program for then the PS3; that it will basically be like a PC.

[Ed Oscuro]

X86 is the name for the Intel-based instruction set used in most Windows PCs. It's a safe bet that it would actually be X86-64, which is a name for AMD's 64-bit additions to the "classic" Intel 32-bit set.

I know trap likes to complain about X86, but Intel has tried to start over fresh, with the Itanium CPU line, and that has been a flop in the market (it only runs 32-bit software with a speed penalty). For a games console it would probably be ideal to have a 64-bit only CPU because the game developers won't have much use for 32-bit instructions although it might limit flexibility somewhat (i.e. in using currently available software or in emulating older systems; I imagine a lot of non-game applications might need to be ported over from 32-bit versions). It may ultimately be cheaper just to go with a current Core-style part though.

A competitor to X86 type CPUs is the ARM CPU, developed from the start for low power use and a simple set of instructions.

[dave4shmups]

X86 is the name for the Intel-based instruction set used in most Windows PCs. It's a safe bet that it would actually be X86-64, which is a name for AMD's 64-bit additions to the "classic" Intel 32-bit set.

I know trap likes to complain about X86, but Intel has tried to start over fresh, with the Itanium CPU line, and that has been a flop in the market (it only runs 32-bit software with a speed penalty). For a games console it would probably be ideal to have a 64-bit only CPU because the game developers won't have much use for 32-bit instructions although it might limit flexibility somewhat (i.e. in using currently available software or in emulating older systems; I imagine a lot of non-game applications might need to be ported over from 32-bit versions). It may ultimately be cheaper just to go with a current Core-style part though.

A competitor to X86 type CPUs is the ARM CPU, developed from the start for low power use and a simple set of instructions.

Cool, that's interesting! OK, so a guy I subscribe to on Youtube says that the PS4 won't have a disk drive-huh? I never heard that one before! As far as used games go, some people are claiming that Sony's "Yes, we will allow them on the PS4" is pretty weak and that nothing is set in stone yet.

[trap15]

X86 is the name for the Intel-based instruction set used in most Windows PCs. It's a safe bet that it would actually be X86-64, which is a name for AMD's 64-bit additions to the "classic" Intel 32-bit set.

Yes, there's little reason to go with the 32-bit x86 since it's essentially phased out for anything better than low-performance CPUs.

I know trap likes to complain about X86, but Intel has tried to start over fresh, with the Itanium CPU line, and that has been a flop in the market (it only runs 32-bit software with a speed penalty).

That's because Itanium is shit. As in, ridiculously bad. I don't even know if they actually thought that it would be a viable consumer CPU.

It ran 32-bit x86 software through a recompiler-like execution mode, which is why it is slower than native x86 CPUs. The actual Itanium CPU instruction set is 64-bit and full speed (but Itanium is stupidly complex so is slow on its own).

For a games console it would probably be ideal to have a 64-bit only CPU because the game developers won't have much use for 32-bit instructions although it might limit flexibility somewhat (i.e. in using currently available software or in emulating older systems; I imagine a lot of non-game applications might need to be ported over from 32-bit versions). It may ultimately be cheaper just to go with a current Core-style part though.

There's no such thing as "64-bit only". That doesn't even make any sense. The way x86 works makes that literally impossible.

A competitor to X86 type CPUs is the ARM CPU, developed from the start for low power use and a simple set of instructions.

The key to ARMs advantage over x86 is that it's much more efficient. It can do more with less resources. Additionally, x86 wastes a ton of performance on legacy things that are completely unnecessary for a games console.
Furthermore, the PS4 is literally a PC in a box, so it also carries over all of the legacy crap from the IBM PC design in the early 80s.



Honestly, it seems like you put this together as an amalgamation of assumptions and things you read on Wikipedia. Try doing proper research before attempting to sound informed.

[Ed Oscuro]

Welp, looks like you showed up to set us straight anyway

[Ed Oscuro]

For a games console it would probably be ideal to have a 64-bit only CPU because the game developers won't have much use for 32-bit instructions although it might limit flexibility somewhat (i.e. in using currently available software or in emulating older systems; I imagine a lot of non-game applications might need to be ported over from 32-bit versions). It may ultimately be cheaper just to go with a current Core-style part though.

There's no such thing as "64-bit only". That doesn't even make any sense. The way x86 works makes that literally impossible.

I'm not limiting that discussion to PS3 or X64-64, which is apparent if you read the post. Itanium isn't X86, you know that. It should be obvious that I mean that a 64-bit machine would only need to have an instruction set for its own architecture, without as many 32-bit focused instructions. Yes, obviously with an Intel CISC architecture they are going to have all the usual instructions that work on high and low parts of a register etc. but you did a good job explaining how Itanium doesn't run 32-bit code natively, presumably for some savings in die space and likely also power consumption, which is the entire point.

A competitor to X86 type CPUs is the ARM CPU, developed from the start for low power use and a simple set of instructions.

The key to ARMs advantage over x86 is that it's much more efficient. It can do more with less resources. Additionally, x86 wastes a ton of performance on legacy things that are completely unnecessary for a games console.

I don't disagree with any of this I should've just called it RISC and been done with it. RISC's (traditional) reason for being was that the simpler instruction set correlated with faster instruction execution (also a bunch of other related benefits; people were interested in RISC for raw speed back before efficiency was quite as big a deal, you should remember). But yeah, ARM seems to have gone far beyond Intel in efficiency per die space.

My personal belief is that the "legacy stuff" isn't what would eat up current X86 CPUs for a games console, so much as the stuff which seems almost superfluous, like the massive cache size and the probably also substantial real estate dedicated to the memory controller. It seems to me that a fully-featured X86 CPU is almost superfluous when you have high-bandwidth GDDR5 and a parallel chip onboard.

Furthermore, the PS4 is literally a PC in a box, so it also carries over all of the legacy crap from the IBM PC design in the early 80s.

I don't see what's stopping them from writing their own UEFI BIOS. UEFI allows the use of 64-bit addressing before boot. Not sure what else you are referring to.

And it's rather execrable of you to accuse me of parroting nonsense while failing to contribute where I'm wrong, in the most interesting cases (I don't really think the ARM efficiency characterization is as bd as you want to portray it). It doesn't help anybody to just say "welp, I'm not an expert in this so I can't know anything." And I have spent more than my fair share of time reading through very old processor manuals...I guess this is the yearly "bring something to the table or fuck off, trap15" event; we were overdue for one of those!

[Ex-Cyber]

Furthermore, the PS4 is literally a PC in a box, so it also carries over all of the legacy crap from the IBM PC design in the early 80s.

I don't see what's stopping them from writing their own UEFI BIOS. UEFI allows the use of 64-bit addressing before boot. Not sure what else you are referring to.

There's a bunch of stuff, some of it reaching into the processor silicon and pinout, that's stuck around essentially for backward compatibility with shitty pre-1985 DOS programs. See e.g. the A20 gate, which is but one example.

[null1024]

There's a bunch of stuff, some of it reaching into the processor silicon and pinout, that's stuck around essentially for backward compatibility with shitty pre-1985 DOS programs. See e.g. the A20 gate, which is but one example.

That has to be the nastiest thing I've seen regarding legacy support ever. Bleh.

[greg]

I know trap likes to complain about X86, but Intel has tried to start over fresh, with the Itanium CPU line, and that has been a flop in the market (it only runs 32-bit software with a speed penalty).

You just need to run HIMEM.SYS in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file. Heh.


So can anybody guess how many pictures of naked little girls Friendly looked at before he found one that was crying, in order to prove some point that only he understood? What the heck was that about, anyway? Mods?

[Ed Oscuro]

Furthermore, the PS4 is literally a PC in a box, so it also carries over all of the legacy crap from the IBM PC design in the early 80s.

I don't see what's stopping them from writing their own UEFI BIOS. UEFI allows the use of 64-bit addressing before boot. Not sure what else you are referring to.

There's a bunch of stuff, some of it reaching into the processor silicon and pinout, that's stuck around essentially for backward compatibility with shitty pre-1985 DOS programs. See e.g. the A20 gate, which is but one example.

Thanks for this However I would stress again that part of what I was thinking of was the theoretical possibility of a "clean" 64-bit architecture - but it's essentially a moot point since Intel isn't going to make a special CPU that disables just that stuff for the sake of one games console, and I suppose it could break existing programs in entertaining ways as well.

By the way, I realized that I made a rather obvious error which trap15 was trying to expose - obviously a 64-bit architecture can deal with 32-bit data; it has to be able to deal with individual bits to be useful, for example (bitwise operations like shifts and rotates). What I wrote was definitely confusing and I apologize for that. A "clean" architecture without as much focus on 32-bit instructions could be attempted (like Itanium, of course) but its difference is not that it's incapable of running instructions on 32-bit data (I suppose they could only fetch 64-bit data for simplicity, but that should be possible without breaking any non-64-bit instructions or addressing, in a different design), but that it's a new architecture which wasn't X86 to begin with. Sorry for the confusion

Also it is ironic that the reason I didn't say ARM was more efficient from the start was because I didn't want to be seen as parroting trap15...guess I've learned my lesson then

[dave4shmups]

I'm excited for the Microsoft press conference, which will be (AFIK) in April. But I'm also worried. I mean, what will MS have for exclusives, besides Halo and Gears?? They don't have Rare, or Bizarre Creations, or Bungie (at least, not exclusively).

[xgunnBlaze]

None of the new consoles are going to be MSRP levels of interesting for the first couple of years, most likely. I think the SNES was the last console I got at launch where I had no regrets about not waiting. I'd love to be proven wrong, though.

That's the really interesting question, imo: What will Microsoft do about Japan now?

I was wondering a bit if MS basically buying the SDOJ port and the small flood of X360 shmups coming out this year is part of some half-hearted strategy to keep themselves available to the smaller devs and to the market while waiting for the Durango launch.

PS2 had Tekken Tag at launch. That game was more than enough to get a PS2 at launch alone- kept me playing for a long time.

[neorichieb1971]

The days of interesting Japanese launch games are well behind us. The last decent JP release on launch was RR5, Luigi's Mansion, super monkey ball.

Knack looks pretty good.

[Friendly]

Better closeups of the new controller:

[Skykid]

Still looks like a Dual Shock?

[Friendly]

Yeah, mostly. YMMV of course, but in my opinion that's a good thing. The only thing I don't like about dualshock is the d-pad, and this new controller seems to be addressing it. It has longer grips, concave analog stick nubs are a good idea, and the triggers (L2/R2) appear to be improved, too. And it looks like it'll be using regular USB, which is a great feature of PS3 (that way you can use regular USB extension cords, and you can use Sega Saturn USB pads to play PS1 and PS3 games).

[Ed Oscuro]

It's like the old dualshock, but with a touchpad you can't reach easily with your thumbs and a blue glowy triangle you can't see.

[Mortificator]

Wasn't the only reason PlayStation controllers had a segmented d-pad to try to be different from the Nintendo design? The time to pretend to be an auteur of controller design has long passed. They might as well connect the directions.

Or would their customers complain that the segmented pad is TRADITION?