[Deepblue]

[EtherShock]

Originally posted by Anaz

Halo has done a lot to legitimise gaming as mass media. Microsoft gets props for that

It should more like be Bungie, but since Microsoft bought them out I guess it goes to them anyway. Everyone seems to love Halo.

Originally posted by aldo_14

We are a thin wedge of society; wider than the very first consoles (thanks largely to the Ps opening up the adult market), but it's still only a small cross-section of society.  When you think of the amount in our age group, and how many will have a disposable income for spending on games regularly, it's a hell of a tight market.

For one thing, there's a whole other gender to be tapped; which AFAIK no-one has done, at least intentionally.  From what I've read, the Nintendo DS might not be as powerful or impressive as the PSP, but it's accessibility has opened up its potential market to people not normally regarded or targeted as gamers.

If they get it right, Nintendo can make a stupendous amount of money - simply by making games more accessible and less 'hardcore'; just imagine if every filmmaker in the world was making solely Jerry Bruckheimer style films, and then someone came out with Finding Nemo and When Harry Met Sally (etc).

The assumption is still that gaming is a juvenile pasttime; if they manage to break that, then they've got a massive market and will help legitimise the perception of gaming as a form of mass entertainment the same as TV, music, cinema, etc.

This is very true. We treat video games the same way as comics, "Oh, they're for kids." Although this barrier is slowly being broken down (for games at least). Nintendo doesn't seem like they're wanting to break this, even though it would be to their advantage. It's also a social stigma. There are plenty of adults that like games but if anyone new, they'd be branded as immature, childish, or juvenile.

The gaming industry is becoming way too comercialized though. They are getting too damn involved with Hollywood. You see all these movie licensed games that are synchronized with the release of the actual movie? How many of them were actually good?

They've also hit a dead-end. There hasn't really been anything revolutionary since the first-person shooter. I think the industry needs to get back to its grassroots.

[Nuke]

Originally posted by EtherShock

The gaming industry is becoming way too comercialized though. They are getting too damn involved with Hollywood. You see all these movie licensed games that are synchronized with the release of the actual movie? How many of them were actually good?

indeed. id like to see consoles become more standardized. using common hardware and code languages. like in the way dvd players and vcrs have become standardized. games come in a standard format and any company can make a console to support that format. the job the console does would remain the same, but the designing company could implement any extra features they see fit. you could buy the high end console that supports hdtv and wireless, or you can buy the cheepie that just has the basics, and they would use the same games. but i dnt see that working.

[Descenterace]

Originally posted by aldo_14
Looking more and more like PCs, surely?  The Cell architecture AFAIK is completely different from PC architecture; it's IIRC almost like a hardware based mobile agent system.

I'm not referring to the architecture. Macs are like PCs but use a different architecture.

Consoles now have hard disks, are Internet-capable, and some even have operating systems.
IIRC, there's even a word processor that runs on the XBox. Actually, since the XBox uses a cut-down version of the Windows API it's probably possible to port Office to it...

[aldo_14]

well.....

TV set-top boxes also have hard disks & internet/network connections  though; so I'm not sure what your implication was.

All I can think is that it's simply becoming more cost-effective to source parts which were originally developed for PC/computer use (with regards to HD).  Networking in hardware is scarcely unusual, though; vending machines (as an example) often have inbuilt wireless or wired internet connections to facilitate stock control.  With the whole ubiquitous computing aim, it's inevitable that we'll see more things normally associated with computers crop up as components of standard household goods.

[Descenterace]

What I meant was, consoles are becoming more and more general-purpose. Originally, they were the bare essentials for playing a game. Now, they're just cut-down PCs, with less of the 'cut-down' each time a new generation appears.

[kode]

that'd be more of a back-to-the-roots thing, actually.

[Mefustae]

Originally posted by EtherShock

They've also hit a dead-end. There hasn't really been anything revolutionary since the first-person shooter.  

 

Obviously you haven't been paying attention...ever heard of the new console, the Nintendo Revolution  Keep in mind that Nintendo code-named it the Revolution for a reason; it's said to be 'Revolutionary', why it is supposedly Revolutionary remains to be seen, but don't discount Nintendo yet, for as they say; It ain't Over 'till it's Over (E3 that is )...

[Kamikaze]

Originally posted by Descenterace
What I meant was, consoles are becoming more and more general-purpose. Originally, they were the bare essentials for playing a game. Now, they're just cut-down PCs, with less of the 'cut-down' each time a new generation appears.

Actually the difference between the cell and the x86 is far greater than that between the PPC and the x86. The cell is highly optimized for fast video and audio operations and isn't intended for general processing.

X86 and PPC are different, but they both use cache. The cell relies on using minimal cache and moving data really fast between the 7 APUs and the PPC controlling processor on a memory bus.

Programming for the cell is also supposed to be much different too. Devs apparently went through a lot of pain with the PS2 because it was hard to program for the emotion engine as it also used minimal caches.

More on that here: http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=149759&cid=12555153

[aldo_14]

I think the PS2 had miniscule cache and RAM, but had huge bus bandwidth for transferring stuff (1GB/s, IIRC).

  I remember doing a comparison of the 3 consoles for a uni project, although I've never been able to find the PS2 section of it in Googles cache (it was put on the web about 2 1/2+ years ago).  amusingly, I've seen it cited somewhere as evidence in an arguement over which is better.......

[Styxx]

Don't know if it has been posted already, but I think it's relevant:

http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php?id=5833&type=mov

Hot damn. Take that Halo.

[phatosealpha]

Ah, the killzone movie.  There has been considerable furor over that one, and I've heard at least one report that sony has admitted it's pre-rendered and not a real demo of the PS3.  For the time being at least, I'd be real real skeptical about it - One of the guys from Epic has gone on record as saying it's not actually running on the PS3 hardware.

[Fineus]

It does look highly possible though, given the Unreal 3 engine tech-demos I've seen elsewhere.

What I don't really understand though, is what point there is in releasing "faked" movies for these things - since if they don't live up to the hype in real life, it's less likely people will buy them.

[phatosealpha]

That one's easy.  X-box 360.  Sony is kicking the hype machine up into high gear to steal microsoft's thunder and keep people from buying the thing before the PS3 comes out.  By the time it's not living up to the hype, it's in the buyers living room and a X-box 360 isn't.

With the rising cost of developing games on this kind of super hardware, more and more developers are going to be cross-platform.  Sony's strength has been 3rd party software and the more developers release their games for X360 or Revolution as well as PS3, the less of a reason people have to buy a PS3.  And the less people who buy the PS3, the less people are buying PS3 games and paying Sony royalties.

Microsoft's got like half a year's worth of head start on Sony including a profitable holiday season.  It's not enough for Sony to just get people to buy both - they might buy X360 versions of cross platform games.  They need them to not buy the X, and to sony, that means they've got to dreamcast the Xbox pronto.

[Cobra]

*brain explodes*
*headless body wipes guts off monitor*

[Kamikaze]

Originally posted by phatosealpha

With the rising cost of developing games on this kind of super hardware, more and more developers are going to be cross-platform.

It seems you're underestimating the difficulty of cross-platform development. The Cell and Xbox have radically different architectures which require totally different style of development. The Cell is a super-optimized, low-cache, 8 processor setup. The Xbox 360 is essentialy a tri-processor Power5 deal. The PS2's emotion engine had a setup similar to the cell and that caused headaches for the devs, though that's partly due to the crappy devkit (PS3 is supposed to have a better kit). I really doubt cross-platform PS3 and Xbox 360 games will be too common.

[aldo_14]

They'll probably use middleware as a basis; Renderwares' next generation, Unreal 3, Havok, etc.

[phatosealpha]

Originally posted by Kamikaze


It seems you're underestimating the difficulty of cross-platform development. The Cell and Xbox have radically different architectures which require totally different style of development. The Cell is a super-optimized, low-cache, 8 processor setup. The Xbox 360 is essentialy a tri-processor Power5 deal. The PS2's emotion engine had a setup similar to the cell and that caused headaches for the devs, though that's partly due to the crappy devkit (PS3 is supposed to have a better kit). I really doubt cross-platform PS3 and Xbox 360 games will be too common.

It's not that I think it's easy - it's just that the engine itself is only a part of the cost, and with higher end hardware, the content itself becomes more and more expensive.  You figure the engine itself takes a considerable number of people to code, but for any complete game the amount of modeling and graphics work that needs to be done, to quite the level of detail if these pics are any indicator, is just extraordinary.  Even if they have to scrap the whole codebase and rewrite the engine, just being able to reuse the content is gonna be a big budget saver.

[Descenterace]

Originally posted by Kamikaze


Actually the difference between the cell and the x86 is far greater than that between the PPC and the x86. The cell is highly optimized for fast video and audio operations and isn't intended for general processing.

X86 and PPC are different, but they both use cache. The cell relies on using minimal cache and moving data really fast between the 7 APUs and the PPC controlling processor on a memory bus.

Programming for the cell is also supposed to be much different too. Devs apparently went through a lot of pain with the PS2 because it was hard to program for the emotion engine as it also used minimal caches.
 

Yes, I know what the Cell is, thank you.

I'm not talking about the technical side of things (for once). Y'think the average user cares what technology is behind the pretty pictures? When I say that 'consoles are becoming PCs' I mean that the features are similar.
In terms of marketing crap, XBox 360 <= PS3.