May 16th, 3pm PST: PS3 Launches. May 16th, 6pm PST: Xbox2 Launches

[Nostromo]

The 360 versus the PS3, according to Microsoft. There are four parts.

http://www.majornelson.com/2005/05/20/xbox-360-vs-ps3-part-1-of-4/

[Asher]

It's a ridiculous comparison.

[Nostromo]

Why?

[Asher]

The thing that gets me most is the bandwidth comparison.

While it's true that the Xbox360 has 256GB/s to the 10MB of EDRAM...it's not really fair to aggregate that with the main system RAM and compare the two platforms.

By that metric, the PS2 was also way more powerful since it had 4MB of 48GB/s EDRAM (so 48GB/s + 3.2GB/s system bandwidth = 51.2GB/s total), versus Xbox's 6.4GB/s total.

It's not a fair comparison.

[Asher]

Excellent article (as usual from Ars) for those interested in the innovative hardware in the Xbox 360: http://arstechnica.com/articles/paed...box360-1.ars/2

Kinda funny how the Xbox 360 hardware is getting more attention than the PS3.

[Asher]

More info on the Xbox 360 from this month's Official Xbox Magazine:

- The 20GB HD will be standard, and drives with up to 160GB will be available
- The camera peripheral captures 30fps @ 640x480, and 8fps @ 1280x1024
- You will be able to have your own online shop selling addons for games. They had the example of shirts for Tony Hawk Pro Skater.
- In some games you will be able to design the game extensions on the PC using tools found on the DVD, then stream over network to X360. Also had the example of using Adobe Illustrator to make game logos for Tony Hawk Pro Skater shirts.
- Ninja Gaiden 2 confirmed as Xbox 360 title
- Soul Calibur III confirmed as Xbox 360 title
- Will support VGA connections
- Every single game will support custom soundtracks
- Will launch in US, EUROPE AND JAPAN before Christmas 2005. Europe and US will be a week or 10 days apart, Japan closer to Christmas.
- Will be no hardware variations on launch (single model only)
- Can use the camera peripheral (optional) to use your photo in your Gamercard on Xbox Live, and for video chat
- Integration with MSN Messenger within 18 months of launch (ie, video chat with someone on MSN Messenger via Xbox Live)
- Can show a slide show of pictures to someone else on Xbox Live, can play games AND videochat with someone else on Xbox Live, can stream music from the Xbox, a connected PC, or connected audio device (ie, iPod) to someone else on Xbox Live
- Perfect Dark 0 will support 64-player multiplayer
- Faceplates will have access to a USB port, meaning they can receive power for various effects/functionality

[Verto]

Originally posted by Asher
- In some games you will be able to design the game extensions on the PC using tools found on the DVD, then stream over network to X360. Also had the example of using Adobe Illustrator to make game logos for Tony Hawk Pro Skater shirts.

I would love it if Xbox360 allowed people to create and download mods for games like Oblivion.

[Maquiladora]

I havent read all the pages before this one in this thread, will Xbox games work on Xbox 360?

PS3 will play PS1 and 2 games, not that ive ever owned a PS but thats pretty tempting with such a massive catalogue of games available for one console.

[Nostromo]

Have you seen recent screenshots of Oblivion? They don't really look next-gen. I hope its only the PC version and I hope they're not holding the game back, graphically, for the sake of puny PC hardware...



You could do this on the current Xbox, no problem.

[Verto]

Here's a screenshot which is supposed to be from the 360 version. Not jawdropping graphics, but very respectable.

[Nostromo]

Here's the second part of the fairly technical Ars Technica article on the 360

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/xbox360-2.ars/1

The conclusion:

Like the Playstation 3's Cell processor, the Xbox 360's Xenon processor represents a fundamentally different approach to performance than that which characterized the previous generation of consoles—and the previous generation of PCs for that matter. The Xbox 360 will rely on multithreading and procedural synthesis to make visual environments that are more immersive than anything that's possible on the present generation of either game consoles or PCs. Still, with all that pixel-pushing power at its disposal, there are a few probable flies in the Xbox 360 ointment.

Rumors and some game developer comments (on the record and off the record) have Xenon's performance on branch-intensive game control, AI, and physics code as ranging from mediocre to downright bad. Xenon will be a streaming media monster, but the parts of the game engine that have to do with making the game fun to play (and not just pretty to look at) are probably going to suffer. Even if the PPE's branch prediction is significantly better than I think it is, the relatively meager 1MB L2 cache that the game control, AI, and physics code will have to share with procedural synthesis and other graphics code will ensure that programmers have a hard time getting good performance out of non-graphics parts of the game.

Furthermore, the Xenon may be capable of running six threads at once, but the three types of branch-intensive code listed above are not as amenable to high levels of thread-level parallelization as graphics code. On the other hand, these types of code do benefit greatly from out-of-order execution, which Xenon lacks completely, a decent amount of execution core width, which Xenon also lacks; branch prediction hardware, which Xenon is probably short on; and large caches, which Xenon is definitely short on. The end result is a recipe for a console that provides developers with a wealth of graphics resources but that asks them to do more with less on the non-graphical side of gaming.

Still, there is some hope on that front. In the PC market where there are multiple processors to support, developers can't fine-tune games for a specific CPU. This heterogeneity of hardware especially hurts with platform-sensitive optimizations like branch hints, which is one reason they don't get used much. In contrast, with the Xenon, the hardware will be fixed, which means that programmers can go all-out in profiling and optimizing branchy game control, AI, and physics code using every trick in the book. Furthermore, console coders can also take heavy advantage of prefetching to overcome the Xenon's cache size limitations. So it's quite possible that as time goes on developers will find ways to get much better branch-intensive code performance out of the hardware. Just don't count on it in the first generation of games, though.

At any rate, Playstation 3 fanboys shouldn't get all flush over the idea that the Xenon will struggle on non-graphics code. However bad off Xenon will be in that department, the PS3's Cell will probably be worse. The Cell has only one PPE to the Xenon's three, which means that developers will have to cram all their game control, AI, and physics code into at most two threads that are sharing a very narrow execution core with no instruction window. (Don't bother suggesting that the PS3 can use its SPEs for branch-intensive code, because the SPEs lack branch prediction entirely.) Furthermore, the PS3's L2 is only 512K, which is half the size of the Xenon's L2. So the PS3 doesn't get much help with branches in the cache department. In short, the PS3 may fare a bit worse than the Xenon on non-graphics code, but on the upside it will probably fare a bit better on graphics code because of the seven SPEs.

In sum, the Xenon will certainly make the Xbox 360 a 3D graphics powerhouse. Though history suggests that the Xbox 360's games will probably never attain the level of graphical realism promised by Microsoft's pre-launch hype and portrayed in the pre-rendered "game demos" that were shown off at E3, gamers can nonetheless expect a significant advance in levels of graphical realism and visual immersiveness.

[Asher]

I'm very impressed with the hardware in the upcoming consoles. They're all very innovative and unique.

IMO, the Xenon is more balanced than Cell. Cell made more sense when the original plan was several Cells with a dumb Raster chip. All that insane vector-processing power is kinda pointless with a GPU from Nvidia.

[Asher]

Did any of that article even make sense to most people who read it?

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Verto
Here's a screenshot which is supposed to be from the 360 version. Not jawdropping graphics, but very respectable.

You're kidding me with this understatement, right? To me, those graphics are ****ing great.

[Asher]

By the way, at what point can we declare the Gamecube dead?

April's top20 game sales:

1 Doom 3* Xbox
2 Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition PS2
3 Jade Empire* Xbox
4 God of War PS2
5 Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory Xbox
6 Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition Xbox
7 MVP Baseball 2005 PS2
8 Lego Star Wars PS2
9 WWE WrestleMania 21 Xbox
10 Lego Star Wars Xbox
11 Gran Turismo 4 PS2
12 Major League Baseball 2K5 PS2
13 Need For Speed: Underground Rivals PSP
14 Lego Star Wars GBA
15 Twisted Metal: Head On PSP
16 MX vs. ATV Unleashed PS2
17 Untold Legends: Brotherhood of the Blade PSP
18 Mario Party Advance GBA
19 Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory PS2
20 MVP Baseball 2005 Xbox