Why is there no Unified Games Platform?

Ciaran500

madrab wrote:

is that just speculation?

Thats all it ever can be, we'll never know when something fully utilises the console.

the_syco

steviec wrote:

Again, if you look at Blu Ray and HD-DVD, it's not like Sony are making extra-great movies in order to push Blu Ray, movies compete with movies, the format they come on doesn't matter.

Actually, if you look at which studio's have signed up for each format, you'll see that the format they come on will matter, as some studio's will be releasing their movie's on bllu-ray, and some won't.

CiDeRmAn

Regarding Cosymaher comments of games on the PS3 and 360 not being easy to convert to the Wii due to processor differences, surely thats what middleware is for, to create a common development platform from which assets can be used across the different machines with eventual specialisation in each machines particular abilities.

As for the PC being a Unified Games Platform, by what criteria?
A modern PC can't run older titles without patches and DOS extending software and even then often not at all, you have to keep updating the machine to play the latest titles at the optimum quality and for that sort of expense might as well buy every other console instead, it'll be cheaper, and as for PC software competing with itself and coming up with the goods, sure from time to time, in just the same way as the GC, PS2 and Xbox, you still have to trawl through innummerable clones, FPS's, RTS's, MMORPG's etc. to get to the really good ones, so no, don't think the PC is any more the single format answer, any more than the consoles are.

flogen

Besides sony how many studios are backing one format or another exclusively (I know many indie ones are, but the big players)?
The split seems to be mainly between tech companies (MS, Apple, Toshiba etc.)

Ciaran500

flogen wrote:

Besides sony how many studios are backing one format or another exclusively (I know many indie ones are, but the big players)?
The split seems to be mainly between tech companies (MS, Apple, Toshiba etc.)

But which one is Vivid backing is the important difference

CiDeRmAn

Are the two formats so different that its unlikely they will end up integrated into one drive? That would be the likely outcome if they are compatible.
A bit like the various DVD recordable formats being combined, DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD-RAM etc.
Anyway for the companies to let this competition get this far is obscene, it's the consumer that will pay for this folly.

projectmayhem

conzymaher wrote:

The PS3 uses a Cell proccesser (which doesnt work yet BTW)
The Xbox 360 uses a tri core Processer with each core capable of running two harware threads each
The Wii's CPU is unconfirmed, but is rumoured to be a 700mhz dual core part.....

cell is working... in fact IBM are shoving cell into their top line servers atm... with all the 8 cores working on it (ps3 makes 2 "redundant" cores for OS and parity stuff).

didn't know that about the wii... that's quite a bit more powerful then i had originally thought

madrab wrote:

is that just speculation?

yes, hence "imo" (in my opinion)

the_syco

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_DVD
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu_ray

HD-DVD: Intel + Microsoft, Universal Studios
Blu Ray: Sony, 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney Company (and its home video division, Buena Vista Home Entertainment), Vivendi Universal Games (VU Games) and Electronic Arts (EA Games), Apple Computer,Lions Gate Home Entertainment, Samsung, Paramount, Warner Bros, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Warner Bros. announced they would release titles on the Blu-ray format, in addition to HD-DVD Video. Of the six largest Hollywood studios, this leaves only Universal Studios supporting HD-DVD exclusively.

Blu Ray looks like it'll win, as it has most of the companies that people use, in its corner.

projectmayhem

blu-ray also has Dell, which basically means the PC market will adopt blu-ray (like it or not). alienware already announced pricey blu-ray 2x drives for their top 2 PC models...

conzy

projectmayhem wrote:

cell is working... in fact IBM are shoving cell into their top line servers atm... with all the 8 cores working on it (ps3 makes 2 "redundant" cores for OS and parity stuff).

didn't know that about the wii... that's quite a bit more powerful then i had originally thought



yes, hence "imo" (in my opinion)

The cell processer is NOT working, it cannot read from cache, which is a fairly serious problem IMO

linkage

The cell is also a a totally different architechture and im pretty sure it cannot just be used as a 8 core CPU..........

The Wii could have a totally different CPU, all we know for definite is that its a Power PC CPU.........

But the Graphics card is based on the ATI r520 GPU (X1800XT) so it should kick ass

steviec

conzymaher wrote:

The cell processer is NOT working, it cannot read from cache, which is a fairly serious problem IMO

linkage

The cell is also a a totally different architechture and im pretty sure it cannot just be used as a 8 core CPU..........

The Wii could have a totally different CPU, all we know for definite is that its a Power PC CPU.........

But the Graphics card is based on the ATI r520 GPU (X1800XT) so it should kick ass

Yep, Sony and IBM, two of the world's largest technology firms, just forgot how to make a processor. And got through years of development of the Cell, implementation in Servers, thousands of devkits sent to developers, before finally an anonymous friend of a writer for the inquirer spotted that it's completely and totally broken. Who'd have thought!

conzy

ha ha sarcasm.................

If you were to read the whole article, you would know that this info is from a presentation that Sony made to games Developers.......

And why do you think the GT demo at E3 was running on a PC?

The PS3 is not working correctly, it has half the Graphics processing power of the XBOX 360, and it will cost twice as much as a 360 at launch.........

Its not looking good for Sony.....

Ciaran500

That article has been debunked by several other sites. The inq thought that slide was reffering to the local memory on the cell, while in reality its reffering to the RSX local memory. The cell aint broken.

projectmayhem

conzymaher wrote:

ha ha sarcasm.................

If you were to read the whole article, you would know that this info is from a presentation that Sony made to games Developers.......

And why do you think the GT demo at E3 was running on a PC?

The PS3 is not working correctly, it has half the Graphics processing power of the XBOX 360, and it will cost twice as much as a 360 at launch.........

Its not looking good for Sony.....

the article's source is some dude on a plane for god sake... they've shipped over 4,000 devkits with working cell chips.

and the GT demo (along with all other demo's) were working on devkits, which you can blatantly see on the side of the stage (hard to miss, it looked like a server rack).

as for half the graphics processing power of the 360....... what? stop using the teamxbox forums as your news source... for the love of god.

philologos

Most games are released on the PC at some point, so technically the PC is like a universal gaming machine. I don't know about you but I'm not getting a console i'm just gonna keep updating my PC spec

Torak

steviec wrote:

So is the movie industry. Different manufacturers could come up with better codecs and push the quality of their DVDs but they don't, they stick with an agreed standard so all DVDs will play in all DVD players.

I do get what you're saying though obviously, it was just a random idea.

I think you have hit on the key issue here, although from a different angle..

The question is who runs the business...

In movies the films are made by the studios, then distributed through various channels but always control is maintained by the studios. Films existed before DVDs => DVD or HD or BluRay is just a medium for the information.

In games the evolution and the ownership is different. In general, people buy a console based on the marketing for the console, because before consoles there was no mass market for games. Then people buy games made for that console (there are always exceptions). If the games companiesn came together and decided to distribute in a similiar fashion to movies then we might see a move in the same direction... but its unlikely..

gamer

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