Dangling Conversations

Xbox 360 and PS3

Posted 19 May, 2005 at 21:37 by brent in /Games | Permanent link

So E3 is in full swing and I wish I were there. However I'm here toiling away.

So some quick bits of information. I'll put up the press briefings from sony and ms on their consoles later today though presently you can get both if you are a member to IGN. There is also a quick comparison article on GameSpot.

My impressions are though of the sony briefing was that it has a lot of stuff in the box. If you have all the components to justify the use then I can see the point in getting one. Otherwise you are going to have a lot of components in your console that you may not use. Support for two video channels simultaneously? I don't know a lot of people who have two tvs to put side by side to generate the experience I think they are trying to deliver. That doesn't seem compelling and would take away half of my gpu activity to support the second view. I'd rather have the stunning graphics on one tv.

There is definitely a lot of differences in terms of the CPU: 6 general purpose hardware threads on the system in our case and 1 general purpose and 7 specific threads. Instruction sets will vary too as the SPEs have a reduced instruction set that are application specific and we have added more instructions for all 6 threads for processing numerous common game operations (such as dot product).

We both have network adaptors built in. They will apparently put in a gigabit network adaptor. I would guess the only compelling application for this is if you can wire you TV with a cell processor to the network as well (w00t! Hacking a person's TV!) so they can share processing power (somehow??). I don't think broadband will quite reach that stage in the next-gen era to make that level of performance that compelling. They will also have wi-fi built in too (b & g) so if you are close to your neighbour you can leach off them. It will be optional for us.

Controllers. Their controller does look crazy. We've made some minor adjustments to the akibono model (the small one) where the white and black have moved to essentially be shoulder buttons and we've added another that will let you get access to your profile, messages, etc while even in game. They will apparently support seven using bluetooth which strikes me as compelling only if you actually have two monitors going :).

They will also have 6 USB ports which seems excessive for a game console while we have 3.

I'm curious if they are going to do what they did with the ps2 with regard to back-compat: Are they going to include the hw for ps2 and ps1 in the ps3 or are they going to emulate? If the latter I hope they've started development already :).

Really, for everything included the bottom line is I either expect them to be significantly more expensive than us or to lose money on each console to stay competitive.

Be aware when you watch the e3 press briefing by sony that there number comparisons are "selective". A simple example is the dot product comparison: 9 billion is just for the CPU alone for the xbox 360 while they are including the CPU and GPU in their result. There is also a lot of contention on the web regarding whether the video clips shown are really in-game or pre-rendered. I am not familiar enough with techniques to distinquish to come to my own conclusion.

One last thought is that their convex design does inhibit the potential for stacking anything else on the console. I'd also like to find out what the final dimensions will be.

I'll post links to the press briefings later and hopefully our gentle readers won't hinder my game playing of City of Heroes (otherwise I will spite you all and configure queuing disciplines on my firewall mwuahahaha).

If you have some questions that I can answer, feel free to post since almost everything for the xbox 360 has now been revealed.

Here are the respective press briefings:
Sony - 1.27 GB
Microsoft - 882 MB

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Xbox 360

Posted 14 May, 2005 at 12:23 by brent in /Games | Permanent link

Well, I do feel mildly obliged to put up something on it now that it is out. Here are a couple of fun little pieces if you haven't gotten to see much on it.

The Colony -- movie of a bunch of MS employees talking up some of the info on the console.

Xbox.com -- Where most of the specs are, particularly hardware.

IGN -- IGN articles on it. They go into more commentary and opinion here too about the console.

OK, back to work for me so we can ship this mofo.

Oh, and finally saw Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Good!

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Long Time-No Write

Posted 07 May, 2005 at 04:58 by brent in /Chatter | Permanent link

It has been a while since I've blogged. So a couple of quick updates. Fun stuff first--Thomas is coming to visit next week! He's apparently here to do some stuff for work but will have some free time later in the week to hang out. So I'll be able to do the Seattle/Redmond Tour yet again.

Talking about the Redmond portion of the tour: it will now officially be back in full service as of the 12th. That is when MTV is showing off all the work we've been trying to keep mum all this time. W00t! I am tired of keeping so much info confidential. That means I can take him around the offices now and show him the hardware labs in the building as well as all the units we have been working on.

One more quick updated before I go to sleep: I've been diagnosed with sleep apnea so now my hideous snoring through university has an explanation. I now have this wonderful new machine that essentially inflates me as I sleep so my airways don't collapse and I can get some semblance of a good night sleep again. Even Lisa is ecstatic since I don't snore at all anymore I'm not keeping her up at all. It just isn't as easy to cuddle with the not insignificant mask on my head <grin>. Though it was entertaining the first time I said good night wearing it, she was thoroughly and abruptly alarmed seeing me wearing it the first time as she was groggily waking up enough to say good night. Reminds me of that episode in Back to the Future...

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