Those screenshots look like what Gears of War does on a Standard tv. Also, seems like Sony and/or Resistance's developer was full of crap with their Blu-Ray "necessity" hype. See here: LINK
Guess so... The game isn't 22GB with ~17.75GB of wasted space. It is ~17.75GB with XXX wasted space (get to this later). From Ted Price's IGN blog on October 19th: http://blogs.ign.com/Ted-Insomniac/2006/10/19/34235/ The NeoGAF post was pretty stupid (and subsequently locked, prior to Joystiq's post IIRC), and Joystiq couldn't even report what was said in that thread correctly. Judging from the files, only about 1.9GB of the disc is "padding." Game assets take up a little over 6GB, FMV take up 7GB, and audio takes up a little over 2GB. If the game wasn't region-free (3-4 different SKUs, one for every region basically), and Insomniac didn't go with pre-recorded in-game HD video, they probably could have gotten it just under the 7-7.5GB DVD limit (English audio is ~600MB). That would probably have screwed up a lot of things though, not to mention it would have kept the game from being region-free.
Some 360 games are region-free, others aren't. I'm not sure about the Wii...I think they were going to be region-free (or Nintendo games were at the very least), but I think they pulled that prior to launch. I think only Sony has pushed all games being region-free, although even then, they can only promise to make all Sony-published games region-free. 3rd parties can still do whatever they want. If I'm not mistaken though, I think all the PS3 launch titles are region free (or at least they work on both NA and JP PS3s). I should note that I probably didn't describe region free that well in my previous post, at least in the case of Resistance. Technically, Insomniac could have put out 3-4 SKUs of the game, but each could have been region free (playable on all PS3s). But if you bought the Japanese version, you'd be stuck listening to Japanese audio and reading Japanese text. Insomniac is only putting out (AFAIK) 1 universal disc. In this case, if you bought the game in Japan, brought it to NA to play on your US PS3, you'd be able to play it in English (or even French if you so wished). Not sure why Joystiq hasn't retracted their statements. It is still a somewhat recent post, so they might get to that later (assuming they get hit with emails/comments saying how wrong they are). I wouldn't be surprised if they just left it though given some of their other posts.
I think Ted Price does a good job generating loyalty with Insomniac fans. He gives you a feeling that you're included from an insider's perspective. Sony should've included at least a gig of RAM after they decided to go all out on the PS3. What I got from this is that 1080p isn't easy to pull off if you want great graphics and "next gen" AI. IMO, it didn't matter if Resistance looked better than GoW because it was supposed to look better on a supposedly better system. People say it looks great, but on a resolution 360 games will mostly be in.
So I can use the red kawa file server to transfer files from my PC to the PS3... Can I send PS3 files to my PC? Creating a secondary hard drive? That would be sweet. I cant wait to see some more PS3s out there. The number of people online is SMALL. Nobody is making roster downloads for NBA 2K or Madden. Frustrating! I feel so alone out there...
Ted Price is one of the best people in the industry IMO. Seems like a great guy, and he work so hard to give the fans what they want. Along with the IGN blog (which is awesome), I know he also posts at NeoGAF: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=4634018&postcount=113 With him at the helm, I guess its not wonder why the company gets so many awards (seems like a great place to work). Given some of the reactions that Resistance has received from the gaming community, I'm glad to see things worked out well for him and Insomniac. At the very least, it appears as though they'll have a very solid FPS franchise on their hands, probably the best of any FPS franchises not named Halo or Half-Life. Not sure how practical this would have been. Are you thinking about a 512MB XDR/512MB GDD3 setup, or 768MB of GDDR3/XDR RAM? Extra XDR RAM probably would have been difficult to greenlight given how the PS3 was the first mass-market device it would be used in. GDDR3 RAM might be more likely (and maybe more helpful), although I suppose that could get quite costly at the 768+MB range. With Epic and other developers practically begging MS to put in 512MB of RAM, I can only wonder what it would have taken for Sony to put in 1+GB. It would have been interesting to see one console with 256MB of RAM next to another one that has 1GB though. AI shouldn't matter much at all since it is mostly a CPU task AFAIK, though yeah, 1080p isn't easy to do if you want great graphics. I'd liken it to framerate actually. You can have 4 guys on screen at 60 FPS (or 1080p), or 8 (or more) guys on screen at 30 FPS (or 720p). Sometimes, the developer is able to get 8 guys on screen at 60 FPS (or 1080p), but since this is a really hard thing to do, they'll often resort to one or the other. Given how most people wouldn't notice the difference between 30FPS/720p and 60 FPS/1080p, it is usually better to just put more stuff happening on screen (something that is noticeable). I've actually been a little surprised by the number of 1080p games for the PS3 thus far. I thought it would be a lot harder to do, especially early on with developers still learning the hardware and there being only a small number of displays that support the resolution. True, although it is difficult to get good results early on. The PS2 was capable of much better graphics than the Dreamcast (as we can all tell by now), but that wasn't obvious during the launch of the PS2. I haven't looked into it, but I believe that was the idea. Not sure if there are any restrictions though. In any case, I would expect this to be possible (and maybe even trivial) to do after installing Linux on the PS3. You might not have access to game data though (unless you copy it to an external storage device). Kikizo has put up a 4-page preview of the near-final build of MotorStorm, and the impressions are really positive: http://games.kikizo.com/news/200611/101_p1.asp Some quotes: There's way more info about the game in the link, I just grabbed some of the crazy quotes.
So that's what that game was called. I happened to go to Best Buy during lunch today and tried out a racing game on the PS3 kiosk. This was it. It was fun and looked real good. I did notice some graphical problems such as rubber tire marks on ramps that extended into midair. But overall the look was very good. The physics is indeed pretty cool and it was cool to see myself flip off the canyon in slow mo.
If you were impressed by the in-store version of MotorStorm, then you might love the final version. The version in-stores is from an early build (like August or earlier IIRC). There's a demo available on the PSN that apparently looks and plays much better (and I guess the final version looks and plays even better than the demo judging from Kikizo's impressions). YDL 5.0 is now available: http://lists.terrasoftsolutions.com/pipermail/yellowdog-announce/2006-November/000135.html Guessing some torrents will be up by the end of the night in case someone wants to check it out. BTW, Terra Soft will also be selling PS3s with YDL preinstalled: http://linuxps3.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=35&Itemid=33
I wouldn't mind slower unified RAM along with the newer XDR RAM since not everything depends on higher speeds. Recent cards are moving towards the trend of more RAM as GDD3 is getting cheaper. I guess since everyone calls for more RAM in a console since the PS days, it's more of a wish on my end. It's just different for a developer to say it. It would've done their devs a favor because Sony was boosting 1080p so much. I agree with your reasons in principle. 720p is 60 FPS capable. But for almost the same pixel coverage, you can take that 720p (0.92 million pixels) and blow it up to 1080i (1.04 million pixels) that's limited to 30 FPS. I think you meant that. Anyways, they could've fixed 1080p for single player if that was the main issue. You've written before about how they've crammed more than a dvd9's worth of non-graphics related code, and you've also said that a lot of things done on it couldn't be done on older generation consoles, so I assume a good portion of it's devoted to its highly acclaimed AI and to a lesser extent, its physics. No matter how much is on the disk, the PS3 can only handle what's in the RAM. Better physics, better AI, and least importantly better sound effects all impact total RAM. So what they did was sacrifice the largest RAM (and bandwidth) killer, the higher resolution (2.07 million pixels). Sports, racing, and fighting games aren't as RAM and bandwidth intensive as an FPS. 1080p will be the norm for those genres, and eventually it'll be like that on the 360. The issue is centered on games that showcase large, varied and detailed environments that would take advantage of 1080p...but only if it looked good. A dev would more likely downgrade to 720p for the game to look beautiful and risk some fanboys attacking the resolution than letting everyone know the game looks like crap at a higher res. The point is that games need to look much better for Sony if they want to overtake Microsoft and sell 80 million+ PS3s... The claims and goals their executives have spoken. The Xbox360's hardware isn't in the same situation as the Dreamcast.
Yeah, if this was done, it would make more sense to go with more GDDR3 RAM IMO. Only Cell needs to have XDR RAM, but RSX would be fine with GDDR3, and it could probably use the extra RAM more so than Cell. IIRC, GDDR3 actually isn't that much slower than XDR RAM (at least in terms of memory bandwidth), so it wouldn't be a bad idea. Still not sure if it would have been all that great as far as costs go though. Going by some of the analyst estimates, I think the GDDR3 RAM in the PS3 is probably costing them $40-$50 or so (XDR RAM is costing them ~$50 IIRC). The Cell CPU was estimated by iSuppli to cost like $90, so I'm not sure if Sony would be willing to pay more on RAM than on their state-of-the-art CPU. No, not exactly (maybe you took my post too literally). I was just trying to draw similarities with how developers look at framerate and resolution when designing their games. I didn't really try to relate the two things together. The usage of 720p/60FPS probably didn't help explain what I was trying to say. Basically, a developer has a limited amount of resources. They can either put those resources into achieving a high framerate (say 60 FPS instead of 30 FPS), they can up the resolution (say 1080p instead of 720p), or they can just add more stuff onscreen (say 20 cars in a race instead of 12). In the past (particularly on the PS2), only 2 of those were really options for the developer (no designing around higher resolutions, except for maybe 480p). I was trying to liken 1080p to developers going with 60FPS (as opposed to 30 FPS) games in previous generations. They have a similar impact on the design of a game from what I can tell. Can't remember when or where I posted that. Not saying I didn't, my memory is just failing me right now. If the ISO image of Resistance is any indication, it doesn't seem as though there is a DVD's worth of non-graphics related code. ~6GB of the data is actual game assets, while the other ~11GB are FMV, "padding", or audio for the multiple languages. The game data would include textures and other graphics-related code together with non-graphics code. I would guess that the non-graphics code takes up far less than what can be stored on a DVD, judging from the ISO image anyway. True, but that won't affect the amount of VRAM that is available (which is apparently what is making it difficult to output games in 1080p). All of those things would be calculated by Cell and would be stored in the 256MB of XDR RAM that is uses, while RSX would use the 256MB of GDDR3 RAM for whatever it needs to do. Both processors can use both pools of memory AFAIK, but they're still fairly specialized in what they do. And in any case, I don't believe the code for those things would take up that much space at all, at least compared to graphics data. True. But it still takes some effort to implement 1080p for PS3 games, so I was surprised to see some developers put up the effort to support it. Especially when you have some developers that seem like they're barely putting up much effort these PS3 games (Sega, Activision, Namco-Bandai, SOE, etc.). In any case, I'm sure that there will be games outside of those genres that will support 1080p. I know Lair supports it, as does EA's new SKATE game (unless that counts as a sports game). FPS games (particularly games on the scale of a Halo or Resistance) along with some other large scale games (say GTA-esque games) would probably be the most difficult games to design with 1080p in mind. Seems like most other genres could support it though (if they don't already). As I stated previously, developers might be able to achieve 1080p in future games better than they have so far, due to better knowledge of the hardware as well as an increase in the number of 1080p displays on the market. Ted Price seemed to hint that their future games (which undoubtedly includes a sequel to Resistance) will support 1080p. Since they were so close to having it implemented at launch, I'm confident that they'll be able to get it working in their future titles (assuming they think the higher resolution is worth the cost in resources). Well, if that all has to happen right away, then Sony will trail behind MS and will never get to 80 million+ PS3s. I don't care what their PR guys said, that's just not happening right away, especially with every game. Games like Resistance, MotorStorm, and even Genji (which sucks big time as far as gameplay goes, but apparently has great graphics) show off just a little bit of what the PS3 is capable of, but I'm guessing it will take at least a year for the PS3's hardware advantage to really start showing. I believe Ken Kutaragi actually said the same in a recent article, so I do know there is one guy at SCEI that isn't insane...well, OK, he is insane, but not when it comes to this subject. How so? They actually seem pretty similar IMO (from a hardware standpoint anyway). Not that I think the 360 will end up like the Dreamcast (far from it actually).
If I was going with wholesale costs, I'd ditch the card reader for a chunk of more RAM. Something about the math between the dummy version and the premium doesn't add up...Much like the core and premium 360s. I thought fill rate (pixel) limitations on a higher resolution explained what you were trying to say with the FPS example. Not quite the same, but I got your point. I was mistaken. You said it was more than a DVD's worth of game data, not graphics data. But then it begs the question of whether Resistance can be ported over to the 360 since the levels look much better and different than the ones before it. I don't think the GD and DVD format was the difference in graphics. There's similarity in the 360 and PS3's graphics processor (by their general architecture) compared to the PowerVR chip and the Emotion Engine. For all the talk about the 360's unified shader architecture, both companies chose well known GPU makers with widely familiar formats. While the 3 core cpu might be slower than the Cells in the PS3, it's not like developers are familiar with the Xeon cores as they were with Dreamcast's PowerPC processor when it came out. From a hype standpoint, whereas people held off buying the DC because they thought it was inferior to the PS2, you didn't see that as much this time around. But for all we know, the price might've been the bigger reason.
Harddrive question... Is SATA and ATA and Serial ATA all teh same? If not which ones are and which one does the PS3 need?
That would only save them like $5 in costs, so there wouldn't be much point in doing that, unless an extra 2MB of RAM counts as a chunk. Not to mention that it would only save them the cost on the 60GB PS3. Yeah, the math isn't supposed to add up. Sony wants people to buy the $600 PS3 since it costs them less to make (and thus, it creates smaller losses). It is like the core and premium 360s, as well as the core and value PSP packs. The difference in costs between the two systems is probably like $30-$50 or so, but Sony wouldn't mind if people paid $100 more for the premium SKU. I don't think I understand what you're saying regarding "...the levels look much better and different than the ones before it." At least with how it relates to porting Resistance to the 360. Whatever that meant, I think Resistance could be ported over to the 360 if the ISO file is any indication. As I said earlier, it would take some work and Insomniac would have to ditch the universal disc approach, but they could probably do it. The only problem I could see is if they were unable to convert the FMV movies (which were recorded using the game engine) to in-game cutscenes (ala Gears of War). The game might suffer some framerate issues (also like GOW I believe), and their loading scheme might have to be altered significantly. It would be possible though IMO. Of course, I'm completely ignoring the other hardware differences, just focusing on the actual size of the game. Some of the physics in the game (particularly the physics for breaking glass) might be difficult to replicate on the 360, especially if they had originally designed it to work on Cell. Neither do I, nor do I think that is really the case with the PS3 and 360 (though it might help in some cases, particularly with cutscenes). The Xenon CPU still holds an ease-of-development advantage over Cell though, especially since symmetrical cores are usually easier to develop for AFAIK. If you can program for one of the PPEs for the 360, you can use that code for each of the cores. For the PS3, the code needs to be a little more specialized depending on if you're writing the code for the main PPE or for the SPEs. Maybe there's not quite as big a gap in ease-of-development compared to gap with the DC and PS2, but it is still a decent gap. Plus, Microsoft probably provides MUCH better support for developers than Sega did, making the comparison a little better. Perhaps another way of putting this is that 360 developers have been able to tap into the 360's power much more so than PS3 developers have been able to tap into the PS3's power so far, mostly due to the 1-year headstart for the 360. Given another year or so, PS3 developers should be able to catch up a bit and start to show off what the PS3 is truly capable of (similar to how GOW shows what the 360 is truly capable of). Wait, how do you know that people haven't held off buying the 360? Not saying that is or isn't the case, but there's not really much evidence supporting either side AFAIK. I think that what you're saying will probably be what happens, but it has yet to happen (again, AFAIK).
Might as well talk about talk about this one: http://ps3.ign.com/articles/747/747759p1.html Video at link. I too am curious to see what some of the PS3 owners are looking forward too, particularly in the 1st and 2nd quarters of next year.
