A 6 core processor is all well and good, but it's basicly worthless for anything that does benefit from lots of threads being processed simultaneously, like ray-tracing.

Plus, come back and talk to me when any of the current gen consoles can run Crysis.

lol Wow talk about having the attitude that ones shit doesn't stink! What arrogance! How pretentious! great article as always, Jim.

Remember when I was a newborn Dtoid Jim? Ahh it's coming full circle.

@PhazonYoshi Technically it doesn't work like normal processors. It's more easier to think of it as one processor with additional C1 memory able to run on multiple things. With this its processing power is somewhere around 4-5x the Xbox360. Not only that but it is able to simultaneously hold GPU data and run its mathematically calculations in essence enabling it to nearly double the GPU power compared to the Xbox 360. No ones yet to tap this power though. I think Killzone 2 might be one of their experimental titles to push it, though.

So technically he is right. Even some of the base stats without knowing the more technical aspects are nearly double to 4x the power of the 360.

That's why PS3 owners hate the Xbox, why PC gamers hate the Xbox. You hold us back.

@Hum.. so, why metal gear 4 and littlebigplanet, and resistance and the likes don't all look mind boggling good? I mean, they certainly look good, but not even 1.5x Xbox 360 power good. So, I call BS in your "holding us back" argument.
And I own a PS3 and a wii, so I gain nothing from my comment, except mythbusting!

phail

@Volomon
Yup, us xbox owners are totally the reason why developers are struggling with the PS3's architecture. If it wasn't for the availability of systems that are easier to design for the PS3 would be king. Totally the fault of all xbox owners that some developers actually have to hire someone from Sony to get their software to work on a PS3.

Maguire has totally missed the point that developers are going to be looking for the system that is most cost effective and use that as a development platform to then be ported to other systems. Especially in rocky economic times. They could care less about how much untapped potential there is in the PS3 when attempting to tap that power begins to damage their bottom line. This is probably even more true for indie game developers looking at xbla vs psn.

I have no doubt that the PS3's power will eventually be tapped and it will be glorious. Yet for the time being that is not happening. The real question is that by the time the PS3's power gets fully utilized will there be a new generation of console from Microsoft and/or Nintendo.

Build on the SNES then port down.

@Malovane First off saying something that has existed for 10+ years is easier than something developed 2years ago. Is kind of extremely dunce no offense. Xbox 360 runs off of DX and Windows basics. PS3 can't use these aspects without paying royalties.

It's ridiculously short sighted to even bring it up.

Also most developers (EA, Ubisoft, ect) are making their money from the PS3, these days. Sony also gives out people for free not for hire. Additionally the SDK is becoming more robust, meaning its easier to program for now.

@ Volomon: Havin fast Ram shure is nice, but what good is it if it is too small to support graphics that really are superior to the 360. I mean there is a reason why Pc games now have minimum requirements of 2GB Ram + a whole lot of ram on the graphic card. Sure a lot of it is because there is Vista/XP running in the background but it still comes down to the basic fact that textures, geometry, soundfiles etc. eat up a huge amount of ram. And streaming that stuff into the Ram via HDD/DVD/Blue-ray is not fast enough to support a fluid game. So it basically comes down to what you can fit into the Ram in the first place. And with the Ps3 having 2x256 MB of Ram and the 360 having 512 MB I don't see how the two systems are ever going to seperate themselves from each other. Sure the PS3 may be able to render it in 60 frames because of faster RAM, while the 360 may only render it at 30 frames, but the geometry and the textures won't be much better than on the 360 because that would take up more RAM, which the PS3 does not have. (And btw, I still haven't seen any proof that the PS3 can calculate graphics faster than the 360. As far as I know the 360's GPU can handle more shader operations/sec. So we will have to see if the mysterious Cell processor that wasn't even developed with graphic related calculations in mind in the first place will really help to deliver the stunning graphics that Sony has been promising for years now. And it better not take them another two years to deliver on that or they can stick their superior graphics up their butts.

OMFG ... Zorro: The Gay Blade... Jim, you do realize that most of the people on DToid probably have no clue about the movie, right? (Awesome movie, by the way.)

@Volomon

I'll disprove your disc limit theory by citing Lost Odyssey. Four discs on 360. While the dvd-9 is a smaller storage medium than blu-ray, it is not really a valid limitation as Lost Odyssey demonstrates multiple discs will work. Lost Odyssey could have fit on a single blu-ray disc, but it is fully functional as four dvds. While developers may choose to enforce a single disc for cost effectiveness and a larger profit margin, it is not an enforced limitation by the 360. It is a limitation resulting from a choice made by the developer not a direct result of the 360's chosen format and architecture.

Further, the no storage rule will also soon be gone as the fall update on the 360 will allow for an optional installation.

@dgschrei Ah this is where most make their mistake, it is not to small because the main CPU can share its 256 with the 256 of the GPU it is actually far superior to the 360 512. Why not solely for graphics as you put it but far superior AI. If you were purely doing AI the AI would be able to run 4x (if purely limited by speed) the Xbox 360. Meaning the command structure for the AI can be that many more times complex.

Also the streaming issue, is something the average developer does have problem with and was at one point an issue. However after you understand the SPU's you can understand that they serve as additional RAM. I believe each SPU has 124 (I believe could be more) as well.

So now think about that 6 additional 124M of cache. THINK ABOUT THAT.

Compare 4G + of ram vs Xboxs 512.

@Malovane It is valid, Microsoft paid for Lost Oddyssey, they charge licensing fees to everyone else but themselves. No one else is going to lower their profits by pushing the amount of discs.

The fee is for each additional disc.

@superhobo It seems to me that it would be easier to develop for the lower powered system and then port up, rather than trying to delete, reprogram etc for a machine with less power. This argument is compounded by the fact that, quite frankly, most laymen gamers (those without technical knowledge of the graphics etc) will most likely not be able to tell that the game is of arguably lower quality.

Well this is wrong. You can test this theory out with a picture. Take a High Resolution picture and put it on a image hosting website, however make it reduce the size by 5x or an just cut it in half.

Now try it with a very low resolution picture and blow it up.

Notice how going up makes it look like crap? This is why you always go down.

@Volomon: Your argument is very flawed. Image size etc has nothing to do with it. You are not"Blowing Up" the size of the game to put it on a PS3 disc. The textures, sound files etc are always created at the highest resolution at the development stage anyway, it then ammounts to different forms of compression for the different consoles.

@rewen I responded to your first part already read up, for the Bluray that use to be a problem. Companies that didn't use SPU often had redundancy assets instead. It actually has nothing to do with Streaming, it was actually the read speed of the bluray. I guess you could call that streaming, but not really. Streaming often means bandwidth issues. Anyway point being a 25G disc is harder to search than say a 9G disc.

Either way though this isn't an issue any more. Wasn't a complex problem in the first place really.

@superhobo Do you understand how art assets work? When people work on games they make textures, in order for them to go from low resolution to high they would have to do the assets TWICE meaning double the costs. When you down scale all you have to do is lower the data capacity of the files by lowering the quality.

I work with photoshop, that is the way it is done. You CAN'T go from lower to higher. Its just not possible without ruining what your working on.

"The textures, sound files etc are always created at the highest resolution at the development stage anyway, it then ammounts to different forms of compression for the different consoles."

Your quote contradicts what your talking about, if the highest is a DVD9 then obviously the assets are going to be lower than a 50G bluray. Common sense at this point.

@Mattchewie
Very true. Easier is not always better in terms of final product. However in the eyes of a developer, easier means shorter development time and lower development cost which is better for their bottom line.

@Volomon
Using the word hire was probably incorrect. Point was that bringing in an expert from Sony in order to get software working on a PS3 extends development time which costs money. Developers may not pay Sony for help directly, but such a case does end up costing additional resources.

Yes, the SDK for ps3 is getting more robust and developers are learning how to utilize that power. The point is this takes time and money and still isn't yielding results that are far and beyond what is being done for the 360. Arguable I know in the face of some of the recent and upcoming PS3 releases. They are looking good. Yet, by the time they are far and beyond the 360, its conceivable that there will be a new MS system on the market.

Back on the disc topic, you miss the point I think. Its not that the 360 is limiting any developer to a single disc. Its that developers aren't willing to invest the extra money for additional discs. This is a developer's choice and not the cause of the system. The option to utilize multiple discs is clearly available which is why your argument of discs being a limitation fails. The fact that developers want the largest profit margin possible is the cause of the limitation.

Things are changing, but I don't think we've reached the point of the PS3 being the core development platform especially with the continued problems developers are encountering with the platform and the rocky economic situation. The day may come, but that day is not today.

@Volomon Hold on a second so you are telling me that the PS3 suddenly is easier to develop for than the 360?
And you are also telling me that if you made a game engine that uses the oh so powerful SPUs of the Cell processor. You could just port that engine down to 360 and PC without redoing the whole thing from scratch?

And we are talking about a multiplatform title here because that is what Macguire was referring to.

Theoretical speak is entirely theoretical.

@rewen Most of what your saying doesn't make sense, so I'm not sure how to respond to it.

Also if the art assets starts at the highest possible that would mean PS3, and be ported down. Since more space means higher data allowance to increase the resolution and quality.

Which would still mean going from up to down instead of the other way.

Also where do you get the 124mb cache of each SPI from. I've never heard that before. I don't believe it for a second. Even if they did, it would be cache RAM, for commands, not for files and textures.

I'm too lazy to look this stuff up now too. But I have both systems. I use the PS3 for blu-ray only. Not only are gfx generally better on the 360, it's got everything else to back it up, like XBox Live and it's vastly superior friends system. It also supports more video than my PS3, and my IR remote.

Anyway I do remember reading about Cell being a Floating-Point processor, making it great for physics and math, but not so hot for general processes such as used in AI. In fact I remember reading that Oblivion had dumbed down AI for PS3. It may have been a different game, but I'm pretty sure...

@ rewen: and even whorse because every SPU has it#s own cache this memory can not be accessed by the other SPUs so if you were to calculate physiks on 3 SPUS you had to load your physiks engine into 3 caches which of course eats up your bandwidth.

I can't stress this enough. The Cell never was designed with a console in mind. IBM designed the thing so that they could build the worlds largest supercomputers. And they are rarely used to render graphics. Their main use are complex calculations for weather projectories or scientific researches like that DNA thing that you can participate in with your PS3. And that is where stuff like the enourmous cage of the SPUS helps. But in a game the majority of the RAM is eaten up by the graphics meaning 3d-models, textures etc. and they have to reach the GPU and NOT the CPU/Cell if you would try to render the game over the CPU in your PC you couldn't play any games done in the last 6 years, because your CPU lacks all the complex architecture like shader pipelines and therefore is not equipped to render graphics at a decent speed.

@gamegoblin
Yeah but arguing about something that doesn't really matter with some random guys on the internet is also a lot of fun.
And it's a nice little variation after having played farcry 2 for hours already. ;)