Topic: Sony getting hit Hard lately

[IceCold]

Quote
Rubiks Cube: Fail. So does the PS3 have telekinetic powers is that what there trying to tell me?

Brain waves!

[SixthAngel]

I don't think these example are bad commercials.  They are made to get fans all riled up about the new technology, I don't think these will see much tv time.  I must agree with Arbok that I was disappointed by the actual game graphics because they had just showed me far superior cg.

Actual bad news seems to be that the PS3 will not have a unified friend system.  I hope somebody else can confirm this because I can't find the original link but it mentions Resistance having a friends list separate from the rest of ps3.

[Blue Plant]

I don't get the appeal of menacing.

And that space-age technology stuff is best left to rubber duckies and Emotion Engines.

[Hocotate]

Not bad... not really good, but not bad. I feel the main problem with the ad that shows game footage is; they show really nice CG early on, which makes the actual game footage look bad. I just don't see all this talk about how powerful the system is appealing to the casuals. These ads almost makes the PS3 seem "nerdy." Maybe it's just me.

[Renny]

"PS3 Buzzword Processor: It's smarter than you."

"PS3 Super-Double-Real-World-Time-Large Blu-Ray: The only thing you'll need more of, is money."

Please send my check in the mail for services rendered. Thank you.

[Flames_of_chaos]

About the cell being smarter than you thats impossible because a computer is only as smart as the user using it.

[JonLeung]

Did anyone care about the Emotion Engine?  Seriously!  It won't take long before people forget about the Cell.

Now, when I first heard about the Cell, I heard that it could "power-up" by sharing processes with other Cell processors.  I assumed that it's not about the eight parts of the Cell but that you could have multiple PS3s or have a Sony TV or other Sony products with a Cell all working together to make games impressive.  (Essentially a Sony product could be hyped up like "if you buy a Walkman, you can pump up your PS3 some more!)

Now, even if that were the case, it wouldn't matter one iota if developers don't put in the effort to use the PS3 to the max.  Is it worth investing all that time and effort to render individual snowflakes (whether it realistically can or not) when a few layers of randomized white pixels would have the same effect?  Are you going to make elaborate cutscenes in real-time and somehow think that's worth doing instead of a prerendered cutscene, for instance?

Granted, they could try and make a realistic game engine once (physics for every molecule!) and use it for a number of games...but then games would not only be more realistic but possibly more generic than they already are...which isn't a good thing.  Or developers would get obsessed with having big war scenes with hundreds of soliders, planes, and bits of shrapnel that they forget about having good gameplay.  

[couchmonkey]

Quote
Originally posted by: Hocotate
Not bad... not really good, but not bad. I feel the main problem with the ad that shows game footage is; they show really nice CG early on, which makes the actual game footage look bad. I just don't see all this talk about how powerful the system is appealing to the casuals. These ads almost makes the PS3 seem "nerdy." Maybe it's just me.

No, I'd definitely agree.  The problem is Sony is trying really hard to convince people that they're getting their $600 worth, so they have to try and "educate" consumers as to how great the system is.  If you look at the ads where Sony is explainging the advantages of Cell and Blu-ray, it's really trying to be educational (even though a lot of it is kind of B.S.)  The problem here is that if the system is so great with awesome next-generation graphics, why isn't it enough to show us video from the games?  Why do we have to be "educated"?

I actually don't think the "educational" commercials are bad, in fact they should be pretty effective on certain gamers, but I think they expose one of the big questions of this generation: can diminishing graphical returns still rope a large consumer audience into paying $300-$600 for new game systems?

[Nick DiMola]

Not to derail conversation, but I just played the PS3. Talk about unimpressive. The only game I could play was NBA 07 which had nothing unique. The floor display was in 720p and not 1080p and didnt look very impressive. The whole interface was like a shoddy 360 interface (upgraded PSP interface). Nothing about the system was appealing. I know this sounds like fanboyism but seriously this system could only be described as "blah."

About the only thing I liked about it was how they changed the controller. I like the new trigger buttons and I like how they stole the middle button from microsoft and did something similar with it. Other than that, I'll pass on this system, my 360 should suffice.

[KDR_11k]

Jon: Really, load sharing over network won't work for the huge data volumes and short response times games need. I think I called that bluff when it first appeared.

[JonLeung]

So "Cell Processing" might be this generation's "Blast Processing"?

Though I guess the Cell is an actual chip, whereas Blast Processing is only a buzzword (or buzzphrase, I guess).  I had a friend who had all the main game consoles for a while but usually skewed towards Sega, and was more convinced that there was a "Blast Processing" chip than a Super FX chip.

And if load sharing isn't possible with the Cell, that's kind of a dumb name for it.  Cells should work in conjunction with a bunch of other Cells to create some kind of freaky PS3 organism.

I guess like in the commercial it can do eight things at once, so there's still some "teamwork"...but, ugh, is it really that much better than a single-process chip?  Even if it is, I'm not convinced of its greatness if I just want to play games and the games aren't any more fun even if they're "smarter".  

[couchmonkey]

Blast Processing and all the other real or imaginary battles over power during the SNES-Genesis generation finally brought me to the conclusion that all that stuff doesn't matter.  It's the games that count.

Edit: Thanks for the impressions Mr. Jack!

[Smoke39]

Taking full advantage of having 8 threads working in cync at once seems like a bitch to program.

[Flames_of_chaos]

Yeah I agree there smoke especially that each chip can only do a SPECIFIC process thats why the PS3 needs 7 cores running (1 is for redundancy). And earlier this year IBM had trouble keeping all 8 alive. The local independant gamestore I go to, the manager said that he is refusing to sell PS3s until March of 2007 because he doesn't see it viable to take a risk of the high percentage of those PS3s to be returned to him as defective and it will make him lose a lot of money (because he cant resell any dead units) and the fact that he told me that his profit margins would be razor thin for him. And the manager whenever I see him in the afternoon since sometimes I get out of school early so I drop by and whenever I go to the shop I see him constantly repairing dozens and dozens of the big PS2s.  

[Kairon]

You're so lucky to have independent game stores. I live in the Bay Area California, high land prices and urbanization has weeded out all but the big box retailers here... /cry

~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

[Arbok]

Quote
Originally posted by: Kairon
You're so lucky to have independent game stores. I live in the Bay Area California, high land prices and urbanization has weeded out all but the big box retailers here... /cry

I live there too, and actually don't miss the independent game stores at all. I recall one in paticular that used to be around when I was growing up, which, during the 16-bit era, would charge $80 or so for used games like "The Little Mermaid" for the NES on the basis that they were "Out of Print - Collector's Item" as a sticker placed on the box would often state. I was able to get a used copy of Final Fantasy III (6) there, though, for $60, which I was happy to pay due to the fact that it became extremely hard to find by the time I got into RPGs (which was due to Super Mario RPG).

[Flames_of_chaos]

Well in this independant store I found Cubivore for 20 bucks which was amazing. And they have tons of used genesis, game gear, DC (US and JPN), SNES,N64,GBA games for fair prices. And they have this card they give out for free is that you get 3.5% of your purchase stored as store credit which slowly builds up after each transaction.

[Smash_Brother]

Wish we had indie stores around in the NE. As it stands, we got nothing of the sort.

And I don't blame the guy for not wanting to sell PS3s. After the PSP fiasco with bubbles in the screens, massive dead pixels, etc., I don't blame him at all, especially with Sony refusing to take them back.

[KDR_11k]

Though I guess the Cell is an actual chip, whereas Blast Processing is only a buzzword (or buzzphrase, I guess).

AFAIK Blast Processing referred to the Megadrive's ability to overclock its CPU when needed.

Taking full advantage of having 8 threads working in cync at once seems like a bitch to program.

Not really, it's not eight equal threads but one main thread and up to seven helper threads that are usually batch vector operations. So you'd take two lists of vectors, tell an available SPU you need these added and a number of cycles later you can grab the result from the SPU's memory. Most of the time you wouldn't even have 7 helper threads running, you'd only start one when you need to do a large operation and after that it ends. Depending on how your game works you might not even reach the 7 helper thread count at all. Of course you can speed some of the tasks you'd hand the SPUs up enough to make one task run in parts that fit on an SPU each. I'd guess that could be nasty to time properly, though since I don't think you get a guaranteed processing time that way and you need to coordinate your SPU tasks so you never throw too many at once (e.g. you throw a vector addition while all SPUs are idle, decide that since they're idle you can split it on all of them and while they're busy another part of your program wants to throw an SPU thread so it has to wait until the first job finishes which might not have been necessary had you not clogged up the SPUs earlier).

he doesn't see it viable to take a risk of the high percentage of those PS3s to be returned to him as defective and it will make him lose a lot of money (because he cant resell any dead units) and the fact that he told me that his profit margins would be razor thin for him.

Shouldn't Sony refund him for any defective PS3s he sends them? After all, if he has to cover them it was a warranty issue and the warranty is issued by Sony (unless he pushed an extended warranty and the unit died in that, shouldn't allow extended warranties on the PS3 then).

[Ceric]

I know at Sears the Company wouldn't always refund the warranty stuff if the deemed that it wasn't covered under the warranty conditions or they only give partial credit.

[Smoke39]

Quote
Originally posted by: KDR_11k
Taking full advantage of having 8 threads working in cync at once seems like a bitch to program.

Not really, it's not eight equal threads but one main thread and up to seven helper threads that are usually batch vector operations. So you'd take two lists of vectors, tell an available SPU you need these added and a number of cycles later you can grab the result from the SPU's memory. Most of the time you wouldn't even have 7 helper threads running, you'd only start one when you need to do a large operation and after that it ends. Depending on how your game works you might not even reach the 7 helper thread count at all. Of course you can speed some of the tasks you'd hand the SPUs up enough to make one task run in parts that fit on an SPU each. I'd guess that could be nasty to time properly, though since I don't think you get a guaranteed processing time that way and you need to coordinate your SPU tasks so you never throw too many at once (e.g. you throw a vector addition while all SPUs are idle, decide that since they're idle you can split it on all of them and while they're busy another part of your program wants to throw an SPU thread so it has to wait until the first job finishes which might not have been necessary had you not clogged up the SPUs earlier).

If you're not utilizing all 7, then it seems to me that you're not using the full potential of the processor.  Seems like you either need to come up with some funky way of utilizing them all efficiently, or you're wasting a lot of that fancy, expensive processor.

[wandering]

A bit late, but the problem with the commercials is that they're too weird by half. I can accept the ps3 giving a living baby doll images telepathically, and the baby finding the images so beautiful that it cries. I can accept the ps3 telekinetically solving a rubicks cube. I can even accept the ps3 floating. But why the hell did the babies tears go back inside its head? What was with the entire room suddenly becoming a rubicks cube? ///7? That kind of stuff makes people feel like there's something they should be getting, but aren't. Which makes them feel dumb. I suspect people will react to these commercials the same way the omicronians reacted to the episode of 'Single Female Lawyer' where the title character proposes to the judge.

Though now that I've said that, the infomercials weren't that bad.

Quote
Did anyone care about the Emotion Engine?

Unfortunately, yes.  

[MaryJane]

I didn't like the baby PS3 commercial.

It was kind of like in Donnie Darko when he and Gretchen had that idea for those night time goggles that babies wear, why would a show a baby images of death and destruction?

 

[GoldenPhoenix]

I always consider it a huge problem when commercials center around the technology of the gaming system and not the games!

[Arbok]

Quote
Originally posted by: VGrevolution
I always consider it a huge problem when commercials center around the technology of the gaming system and not the games!

Hey, it worked for the Atari Jagua... oh wait...