This was a good read, and the narrative between Sony's launch and Microsoft's launch has the feel of some pretty classic hero's journey stuff in it.
The interesting upstart this time seems to be the SteamBox.
The American Who Designed the PlayStation 4 and Remade Sony
21–30 of 124 posts
Re: The American Who Designed the PlayStation 4 and Remade Sony
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
The XBox One is an x86 architecture as well. Pretty much everything that you said about the PS4 also applies to XBox One. Now, there are differences between the consoles, but fundamentally both of the next-gen consoles are x86 CPUs tied to memory architectures that are designed to stream HD content to the screen as fast as possible.
What does processor architecture even matter to a consumer? Is the Xbox 360 a pre-Intel Mac because it uses PowerPC archictecture? I don't see why so many people mention this. Consoles have always been about custom software, not unique hardware architecture.
It does matter this time around because there's no direct backwards compatibility for older games.
Re: The American Who Designed the PlayStation 4 and Remade Sony
#23They should have mentioned the number of titles at launch for xbox one. If ease of making games is such a big deal why aren't there any facts on how far behind their main competitor is.
Re: The American Who Designed the PlayStation 4 and Remade Sony
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would I get a mac, when I could get a PC for much cheaper and it will be faster and I'll have more control over the hardware. Why would I get a iPhone, I can get a cheaper Android and have more control over how I use it. Why would I buy Windows when I can get Linux which is more powerful, customizable, and free. Not everything can be reduced down to specs and numbers. Everyone has different use-cases.
Funny, this is why I use a PC running Linux and an Android phone... and wait- so does my Grandma... And we have very different use cases.
And what are you trying to say exactly?
Re: The American Who Designed the PlayStation 4 and Remade Sony
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Funny, this is why I use a PC running Linux and an Android phone... and wait- so does my Grandma... And we have very different use cases.
And what are you trying to say exactly?
The poster I responded to mapped out why logically PC, Linux and Android is the best combined platform, but then suggested that it is not really true is intangible reasons ("Not everything can be reduced down to specs and numbers").
I was expressing that I follow his logic and think this logic is valid. And not just for techies like me, but lay people as well.
Re: The American Who Designed the PlayStation 4 and Remade Sony
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
The boring nature of the architecture is notable as it puts the focus back on software, which is what people care about. That devs this generation can just make shit without discovering the complexities of custom hardware is a good thing.
That's probably true for Playstation, but I think developing for Xbox was already pretty much like developing for Windows, even with different hardware architectures. Most game devs don't looking too deeply at the hardware but just use the tools they're given. The ones who want to understand what's going on in hardware will still study the details of the CPU/GPU.
The endianess of the Xbox 360 made "already pretty much like developing for Windows" not quite accurate. And causes a lot of problems relating to I/O.
Re: The American Who Designed the PlayStation 4 and Remade Sony
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Funny, this is why I use a PC running Linux and an Android phone... and wait- so does my Grandma... And we have very different use cases.
Your Grandma uses a Linux PC? I'd love to hear about her experience with it.
For both her, my mother, my mother-in-law and my my step-mother-in-law it is great. From their perspective they click on Firefox, thunderbird/gmail link, OpenOffice, Skype , etc they get what they expect.
Only unlike when they were running Windows they don't have to call me over every 6 months to de-worm their sick machines. They all use Ubuntu in gnome-fallback mode (so it looks like gnome 2.x). Now days I only have to deal with rare hardware issues from my family's machines (and PC desktop are easy as hell to service).
P.S. Reflecting I think Linux is actually ideal for very technical users (programmers/sysadmins/etc) and very basic users (icon clickers). I think "power users" are actually the people who have the hardest time. They have a use case that requires more leaning than the basic users one, and can't just figure it out intuitively like the technical because they don't understand how everything actually works like the technical users do.
Re: The American Who Designed the PlayStation 4 and Remade Sony
#28The Cerny Method sounds remarkably like the Lean Startup Method, but apparently pre-dates it quite significantly.
The product of this style of production is most often called a "vertical slice." A slice of cake has just a thin amount of cake, but it contains every layer of cake. In this analogy the cake is the whole game and the vertical slice is a tiny snippit of the game (ie. a short level) where all features (every layer of cake) of the core functionality of the game is present.
Re: The American Who Designed the PlayStation 4 and Remade Sony
#29The PS4 may well make for a better video game machine and more profit for Sony, but it's too bad the very interesting and powerful cell processor concept will be relegated to the dustbin.
The APU in the PS4 picks up many ideas from the Cell processor. You have some heavy cores for program logic and many small ones for graphics and computation tasks. Both on the same piece of silicon and attached to the same memory space.
Maybe, but it does not seem to be very powerful at all. I've seen most of the upcoming games for launch (and played about half of them) and I was far from being impressed. It feels like a mid-range gaming PC kind of power at best, and many games apparently struggled to run in full HD, with the framerate low enough to make you feel you were back in the PS2 days. If they are planning to sell these consoles solely on the graphics, they'll have a tough time.
Re: The American Who Designed the PlayStation 4 and Remade Sony
#30PS4 is just a PC stuck in one configuration, linked to a popular delivery system. I don't get what the hype is about. Yes, it's a pretty good configuration at a reasonable price. But that will only be the case for a few months. PCs will catch up very quickly and will become cheaper, and then much cheaper. As somebody who loves games, I don't see a reason to buy PS4. I'd rather spend a bit more on a PC, and then upgra…
Why yes... it is the same old x86 we run on our PC configurations, but that's just the instruction set we're talking about. Just look at the hardware and chip configuration, it's not a regular PC setup, they have some serious innovation going on there.
You've got 8GB of GDDR5 memory, plus a very modern, custom designed GPU embedded in the same CPU dye.
Sony has always launched systems that resist time, and I wouldn't be surprised if the PS4 stayed around for the next 4/5 years to come.