The technical side of gaming is something I leave to other people. All I know is that I plug the wires into my television and the pretty pictures come out, and that is as far as I really want to go. However, if Sony's crappy ad campaigns taught me one thing (and even that might be a stretch) it's that the PS3 has a Cell processor in it and Cell processors are akin to Gods. A Cell processor does things that other processors have wet dreams about, or so Sony claims.
It may come as a surprise then that Sony may be moving away from the Cell processor and towards a PC-like multicore setup when designing the Playstation 4. Technology writer Hiroshige Goto shared some of his inside knowledge of the gaming industry in his most recent article, and said that while Sony was looking into a different type of Cell processor this past summer they may have now moved away from it entirely thanks to developers input on the issue.
As for when we'll see this new PS4 and its possible non Cell-based inards, Goto believes that it will be some time in 2012 as it usually takes around 24 months for a console to go from early development stages to final product. It's too bad that Sony may be ditching the only successful part of its early marketing campaign, but if it means that it's easier for developers to make games then I'm all for it.
揺れるSCEの次世代ゲーム機「PlayStation 4」プラン [Impress Watch, via andriasang]
Matthew Razak is Destructoid's Associate editor and co-founder of film site
Flixist. He began as community member "cowzilla" and was since sequestered to write brainy features material. He lives in Los Angeles with his beautiful wife.
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Contest:
10:00 AM on 12.26.2009
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I have a feeling Sony learned the downside to pseudo-proprietary hardware: paying out the nose for it, akin to what happened to Microsoft with its contract for original Xbox harddrives.
I don't see how this could negatively effect anyone, so I say more power to'em.
Like shit?
when your platform is pretty much universally known to be more difficult to program for than the competition, it's time to rethink your approach.
can't wait for the next gen consoles, so PC games will stop being gimped to accommodate for out of date console hardware.
Look at the PS2. A 333 MHz processor with 32 MB of RAM and 4 MB of video RAM. Find a PC with specs that low that can play games that look like MGS2/3 or Gran Turismo 4. When you factor in the fact that it is a 128 bit processor with some really unique memory management under the hood, devs that can think outside the box can get some amazing stuff out of it.
Even the PS1 was unique with its 3-D Graphics Engine (3DGE). PCs barely had dedicated graphics at that time. This allowed for some amazing graphics at the time.
I think with the PS3 they were planning on using the Cell to some unique stuff, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to give them a worthwhile advantage. I still would like to see them try in the future instead of putting a glorified PC in my living room...
either way i dont care, cause im still gonna be playing video games no matter what kind of systems these companies come out with.
And the PS1 GPU was only good compared to other consoles of the time. Contemporary PCs were powerful enough to output the same or better graphics quality at higher resolutions all in software without needing hardware acceleration. Just look at some multiplaform games of the time, like Tomb Raider or Resident Evil to see the differences.
also, i think they learned that despite the huge possibilities the cell processor offers, the chip architecture was so weird that the only developers who took full advantage of it were their first party developers. What Sony should have done was open up a few studios of people who understand the PS3 architecture dedicated to doing proper PS3 ports. Also, they should have bought off a few top developers to say bad things about the competition like Microsoft did with Epic and Valve.
PS4 is going to be more like the XBox, as in more like a regular PC. Of course, they're Sony so they're probably going to throw in some sort of unusual technology to impress us with. Probably dual quad cores overclocked to 5 ghz or something.
I'm not buying this if they don't have PS3 backwards compatibility. Hell, if good games keep coming out for PS3 I might not buy it at all.
You do realize that a PS2 didn't have to run windows, an operating system that was always running whatever you did, and had to be made to run on a variety of hardware, right?
If you look at computers of the time, once you factor in the processing power used to run the OS and system tasks, were doing just as much, if not more, than the consoles of the era.
Aw, well. At least Blu-Ray took off.
Seriously though, as much as I want a PS3, I'm sick of all the PS3 fanboys clamoring about Cell like it was the second coming of Christ. Sony finally listened to the developers and might start making their consoles easier to develop for.
right, playstation not being a glorified computer in the living room. completely contradictory to your fluffy view is the ps3 which uses a dumbed down internet broswer and claims to be a media hub in all (failed) efforts to get rid of your pc.
@Noctis:
you really don't know how games are made don't you? making the architexture harder to program for does not lead to more complex, pushing-the-edge games. and not programming for it does not make you lazy, just sane. if i wanted to get from one end of the room to the other, putting in a maze in between doesn't make the task any more advanced - i just have a fucking maze to go through that makes the task needlessly longer. you just bought into the hype that the cell would bring in "b3yond" gaming when it was all a lie and don't want to admit that gabe newell was right all along at the same time failing to see that all sony wanted out of the cell was to secure exclusivity with 3rd parties (failed) and as an anti-piracy measure.
Seems Sony are atleast asking devs what they want from working on a console. Make it more like PC and they will come. Will it save Sony next time? We'll have to wait and see.
I wonder what this is going to do to backwards compatibility. Sony really shot their foot of with the last iteration. Are they not even going to promise it this time, or are they going to embed cell anyway?
... Or something. :S
FWIW, IBM is basically taking the Cell concepts to a new product line [url]http://www.techradar.com/news/computing-components/ibm-to-kill-off-ps3-cell-processor--653535]as outlined here[/url].. so Cell itself is basically fathering new tech ideas. I'd wager PS4 will have a Cell-that-is-not-a-Cell processor of some sort in.
http://www.techradar.com/news/computing-components/ibm-to-kill-off-ps3-cell-processor--653535
there. there's the link. *facepalm*
The original Xbox was more powerful than the PS2 but the PS2 already had a proven reputation and a huge library of games. Developers backed the PS2 and were unsure of Microsoft's excursion into the home video game market. Come time of the Xbox 360 and PS3 the situation had reversed where developers were unsure of the PS3 and were already quite comfortable making games for the Xbox 360. The Xbox 360 built a big library of games while the PS3 struggles to catch up. Now finally the PS3 seems to be holding it's own if not creating an edge over the Xbox 360 but not after a considerable loss for Sony in a market they once dominated. Some dragons you just can't slay and as long as games are easily made on PCs Sony is going to have to make future video game architecture compliant.
I'm not saying that nothing good can come out of it, because look at Uncharted 2 or Demons Souls. I'm just in agreement with Gabe Newell, they took the wrong approach with the hardware and many people just aren't willing to jump the hurdles that they are given to be presented with a console that isn't as powerful as you'd think.
besides easier doesn't mean better , after spending a year with games like killzone 2, demons souls, and uncharted 2 Im still waiting for the 360 to cough up a game of half the quality as those and it seems i'll be waiting a while, I think people have forgotten that those hard roads exist for a reason, because the easy roads won't churn out anywhere near the same results.
so yeah this is definitely a rumour with little backing.