E3 2005 - PS3 and XBOX360 discussion found here Thanks Beard of Dan Higgs!

To be honest, I don't think I have "extreme" beliefs. If I can change my mind on Wesley, Van Gundy, etc., then I think I can change my mind on some of these things. Of course, that's not going to happen unless I actually see something other than "you're just a fanboy." That'll probably just make me even worse.

As for the rest of your post, you don't have to worry about some needless argument. I pretty much agree with what you said. Like I said earlier, I like power, but that isn't everything. Sure, I like the beautiful worlds of MGS 3 and GoW, but when I'm playing the game, I'm not thinking of the use of the bloom effect. I'm thinking about finding some food or killing the God of War. I tend to think that with better tools and tech, more great games like those will be created for that console, but we don't know for sure. Both consoles will have developers that take advantage of powerful hardware to give us their vision. Given the tech advantage and the previous developer support/publisher support that is on the PS3's side, I think it has the potential of giving me the best video game experience available.

This was already mentioned, but I think you may have oversimplified things a bit too much. Xbox owners used to be pretty much what you described, but not anymore. I'm sure that a large amount of their userbase does fit that category, but there's been a lot of great games for the Xbox that may convince gamers to go with the Xbox 360. Personally, I don't think it has enough to really rival that of the PS2, but it has a nice selection.

Also, I would think that sports gamers would lean towards the PS3 given the power advantage. In fact, for just about every multi-platform game, I would expect people to go for the PS3 version, much like they did this gen.

Like you, I think Sony will come up with a good online plan. For some strange reason, I don't see how it would be hard to do that. Creating a power advantage seems hard. Getting more developers/publishers on board seems hard. But for some reason, I don't see why it would be so hard for Sony to offer pretty much the same thing as Microsoft. All they've said so far is that their plan will offer just as much Xbox Live, but I wonder if maybe they're seeing what Microsoft is doing and plan to pretty much copy them if they have to. If they can set everything up right, they may even offer it at a better price, especially if they think they can bring more people online, which would lead to more microtransactions and whatnot. Just guesswork by me, but that has to be going through Sony's head.

FWIW, I read an interview where Kaz Hirai said that online play was like AC in a car. In the '60's, it was nice to have. But now, it is a necessity. Personally, I could really care less about the extra stuff that Microsoft showed about Xbox Live (although I did like the free weekends for Silver members), so as long as Sony makes it simple and easy to play others, I'll be happy.

Keep in mind I wasn't talking just about interviews when I mentioned how I never read/saw developers mention bad things about Sony. Like I said before, there are plenty of developers at other boards, including one from Heavenly Sword. There's a site called Beyond3D where it seems like everyone in the forums is either a programmer, developers, engineer, or something like that. I can think of at least 3 or 4 people there that at one time or another worked with Sony (most of them seemed to have worked with PS2), and none of these comments every come up. I know one of them seemed pretty excited once he learned that his company had a PS3 devkit. Over at GA, I know there's at least two guys working on next-gen games, and again, never seen those comments.

David Jaffe obviously does get paid by Sony, but considering how much he praised Sony in his own blog about letting him do his thing, then it might be true. Especially since they pretty much paid him a crapload of money, gave him 3+ years of development time, and let him keep the blood, gore, nudity, etc., in the game, despite it possibly hurting sales. They also are giving the Ico team another shot at giving us their vision, despite the poor sales of Ico. If you read the Heavenly Sword diaries, it seemed like NT had to pick from Sony and Microsoft (who they had worked with before), and we know who they picked.

Additionally, I'm sure some 3rd party developers can bash Sony if they wish, depending on the situations. I remember reading an article late last year where a Japanese developer from Japan, IIRC, was criticizing Microsoft for the lackluster efforts in Japan. I don't why the same couldn't be said for Sony when it comes to developer support. If the PSP is any indication, they care about developers and will listen to them (upgrade in RAM).

I also wonder if the whole devkit issue plays into this. Right now, Sony is giving their developers some great hardware to work on, which while not final, should give developers something to base their expectations on. Microsoft, on the other hand, will be going from 1/3 the power of their console to practically full power starting next month. From then until November, developers will have to get their games up to acceptable frame rates and polish up the graphics (I'm not even sure if their kits support SM 3.0). I wonder if some Sony/MS developers will actually base their games off of the Sony devkits in order to better prepare their games for the Xbox 360 launch.

Again, I just find it hard to believe that Sony really has that bad of a developer support system, especially with how many developers have already have seemed to be jumping on board again for the PS3. There have been some unique and original games based on the visions of several developers on the PS2, which I believe Sony supported, and I tend to think this will continue. I wish I could believe you, but I'm not quite ready to just ignore all that and assume that based on your 1st hand accounts. I'll keep notice of things from now on, however, and will definitely remain open to the idea. The PS3 should be much easier to develop given the tools Sony will be offering, but I'll keep a track of developer complains since they shouldn't be about the problems the PS2 had. What happened 5-6 years ago SHOULD NOT happen again with the PS3. All those complaints about the complexity of the PS2 should not occur again with the PS3; Cell will be complex, but developers should receive plenty of support from IBM, Nvidia, and of course, Sony. If there are more legit complaints, then I guess I'll start having to question Sony's support, especially if we see a lot of developers jumping ship, which shouldn't be too much of a problem since everyone is starting at zero consoles sold instead of 80-20.

 

FWIW, I see that as hype, but hype just like the "100 times the CPU performance of the PS2" stuff. He isn't really lying to us, and there's no way to he can let us down because Cell does offer "supercomputer"-like performances. What I would expect from a writer is to take this quote, and make a headline saying it is in the top 10 supercomputers or something like that.

As for the games comment, that is wrong of Kutagari IMO, although I see where he's going with it. If they were just going for gaming, we wouldn't have Blu-ray, wouldn't have as many memory stick/card slots, wouldn't have the ability to act as a media hub, wouldn't have any cool online features (like Microsoft), etc. I'm sure that 99% of the PS3 userbase will be buying the console because of games, but it sounds like Kutaragi is trying to broaden the video game userbase and give us other options to use the PS3 for. Sony and Microsoft are trying to take over our living room, as everyone knows. They're not contempt with making just a game machine, and I really don't care if they feel that way or not as long as the games are there. If the overall product suffers, screw the PS3. If it is just as good or better, then great, I may get to video chat and download some stuff from my PS3 onto my PSP while I'm in NY.

As I mentioned, yes, I do have a PSP. It did cost a lot of money, although the games I got with it are came in pretty good deals, so I could have spent more. It still ended up costing me several of my PS2 games, not to mention the ability to play others. But in the end, I saw the PSP as a great investment... not necessarily just for games though. I loved the games for it and love the selection still to come out, but one of the reasons I wanted one was because of the other things it offered: MP3+movie playing, pictures, internet browser, etc. I probably spend half the time on my PSP doing things non-gaming related. This was also more of a future investment, since I'll be going to college soon. Much easier to carry a handheld than carry a console. I expect to be loving this decision later in the year. So basically, while I wanted the PSP as a gaming device, I also wanted it so I would have a portable music player, movie player, etc., and that's something the other consoles couldn't offer me. FWIW, I've been loving those features too and have been trying to learn the art of movie/music conversions.

I was going to mention this earlier, but I've read some mixed reviews on KZ, despite all the hate it gets. I probably couldn't care less about the game really, but a friend of mine did like some of the online play features (I never got to play online). Some other people online mention it had some good things and thought it was solid (7 or 8 out of 10). Nowhere near a "Halo killer," but who knows what Guerilla could do with another chance. One thing being rumored was that Factor 5 was working with them on the game, or at least the game engine. Maybe that will let the focus on fixing the gameplay since they'll need plenty of time for that.

All that said, I don't see why the excitement over that demo means I want to get KZ. I see it as an example of what games could look like on the PS3. If Guerilla can come up with that, then Kojima sure can. And Kojima has no problems making good games, IMO.

That was a pretty funny picture, just like much of PA's stuff, but man were they bringing it down on Sony. They even brought out the comments on the PS2 tech demos that were so superior to anything we have today.

What I don't get is why anyone expected anything more than tech demos from Sony? I was thrilled to get what we got that Monday, yet people are complaining because they couldn't play anything? With the amount of time developers have had with PS3 devkits, it was either that or nothing. And then people would be complain because we didn't see the PS3, or they didn't show us anything else, and blah, blah, blah. Hopefully, Sony may have at least a few things playable at TGS this fall. Then, we might be able to tell if the Sony execs were lying their butts off about all this stuff being gameplay/realtime.

BTW, I starting to feel weird to still be posting in the E3 thread. I guess this is for PS3/Xbox 360 discussions, but E3 was over like 5 days ago. Not really sure what the solution would be, but I apologize if I keep bringing this thread back. I'll try to keep the small updates to myself since they don't have anything to do with E3. Once everyone's done discussing all these viewpoints on consoles and whatnot, I'll probably be ready to say goodbye to this thread.

 

From what I've read, there's supposed to be this giant push towards HDTV from now on. You probably won't see me with a 1080p TV/projector in 2005/2006, but it sounds like they might become somewhat affordable down the line. I read something about new 1080p projectors that would be cheaper than the price of the 720p projectors when they were released. Also, because of all the new HD disc formats and HD channels, I think I read something about the government possibly stepping in to ease the transition to HDTV's (don't have companies get $500 profits on TV's, or whatever).

I'm no expert on this though. Maybe some of the home theatre people can give some better insight on this stuff. I can only hope that the prices will naturally go down as more and more people will require this technology. I just hope I'm not stuck playing Madden 2010 on my crappy TV.

BTW, what are some of the moves by Sony that seem to suggest they are underestimating Microsoft. The tech side of me thinks that they should have just waited until mid to late 2006 in order to better develop the hardware in the PS3. A little more work on Cell and the transition to 65nm could have lead to something like a 2x16 setup (~512 GFLOPs, depending on the clockspeed). Plus, you leave more development for the GPU, XDR ram, Blu-ray, etc., ultimately ending up in a console that makes the current version of the PS3 seem way underpowered. Of course, that's an optimistic look on things, and the move to 65nm may not have been as easy as I put it. I still would have liked to see the PS3 with that design though.

By launching a little earlier though, they seem to be cutting out some of the things they may have planned for the PS3 in order to not let the Xbox 360 get a huge headstart. They may not admit it, but I think they might have been persuaded to move their launch up by a few months or so. Although I shouldn't really complain since that will mean I'll get to play it just that much sooner.

I haven't heard anything about a new game from that series anywhere. I guess iD could start working on a new engine and use it for that though. Unreal Engine 3.0 could use some competition for next-gen games. But basically, your guess is as good as mine.