Xbox 360/Playstation 3/Revolution Thread (Part 2)

[Asher]

27 days until the Xbox 360 launches in North America.

IBM has is using 2 of its fabrication plants to mass produce the triple-core 3.2GHx Xenon CPU: it's state-of-the-art chip fab plant in East Fishkill, N.Y., and at Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing in Singapore.

Xbox Live went down for 24 hours on Monday for a massive infrastructure upgrade and software update in preparation for Xbox 360.

[Asher]

The hardware specs have now been finalized. There was no downgrade before release like the PS2 and Xbox and Gamecube all suffered.

3 x 3.2GHz PowerPC CPU
500MHz Xenos GPU with 48 pipes and dedicated 10MB EDRAM with 256GB/s bandwidth
512MB RAM
320 audio channels with 32-bit precision each (CDs are 16-bit), including Dolby Digital 5.1 real-time encoding

[Nostromo]

An Ars Technica article on the upcoming console war. He compares the three consoles. Obviously, things get a bit speculative at times, especially when he talks about the Revolution.

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/hardware/revolution.ars/1

Beyond the hardware: development and connectivity

The hardware aside, there's quite a bit more to the next-gen console showdown than who has the best graphics. There are a few other very important pieces of the puzzle that have to fall into place for one of the consoles to take the lead, and two of those pieces are worth thinking about out in light of Bill Gates's recent comments on the DVD format wars and yesterday's launch of the new "My Xbox" service. I'll talk more about these news stories in a moment, but the two pieces of the console World-Domination puzzle that I'm thinking of are:

1. Ease of game development
2. Connectivity

Making developers happy

Microsoft has already, by all accounts, won the dev tools battle. Everyone from John Carmack to Hideo Kojima has said that Microsoft's XNA toolchain is superior to the PS3's development environment in terms of getting games out the door quickly. That Microsoft can put together a great development environment should come as no surprise, given that the company is the world's largest software vendor.

Sony, on the other hand, has historically not been so developer-friendly. For years, the number-one developer gripe about the PS2 was poor documentation, and indeed I've heard from more than one developer that my own articles on the PS2 were often used as English language introductions to the console. (The documentation situation must have been dire, because those articles weren't even written as developer documentation, and I can't imagine using them as such.) It's too early to say how quickly the PS3 development situation will improve, but it almost certainly will because it has to. Nonetheless, Microsoft currently appears to have the jump on Sony in this crucial area.

As for Nintendo, all the Nintendo developers are raving Revolution as a development platform. One expects a certain amount of this out of loyalty, but it is likely that it's quite easy to develop for. Its hardware is probably the most conventional of three, so that alone will make developers' lives easier.

Connectivity

The second piece of the console World Domination puzzle is connectivity, and by "connectivity" I mean what we used to call "convergence," i.e., the integration of PC-like functionality, such as the ability to connect to a network (Internet and/or LAN) and to play downloaded media and game content, with a "living room"-friendly form factor and interface.

To start with Nintendo first this time, it's clear that Revolution's connectivity options were included for the purpose of enhancing the multiplayer gaming experience. Nintendo seems completely focused on games, and appears to have none of the ambitions of the other two console makers to see Revolution used as a more general-purpose digital entertainment device. So for Nintendo, "connectivity" means "multiplayer gaming."

As for Sony, I'll just ask a simple question: who here has ever used a Sony device that connected to a PC? If you have, then you know where I'm going with this. The PC software side of Sony's "connected" devices is just awful. The company is obsessed with digital piracy, and the PC interfaces for their digital devices are invariably buggy, intrusive, slow, and almost seem to be designed to make the user just give up and buy Sony physical media.

Regarding the network angle, Sony has nothing like Passport or Windows Media Center, but even if they do manage to make the PS3 interact somehow with the PC then what are the odds of the experience not being bad? Actually, I'll tell you the odds: they're zero. That's because the PS3 isn't made to be connected to PCs, which are nasty little piracy-enabling devices that Sony's media arm doesn't trust with its precious music and movie content. Better to keep that stuff off the PC entirely and have it move in its own separate Sony ecosystem.

To this end, the Playstation 3 is made to connect with two things:

1. Other PS3s and/or various Cell-based and Sony-blessed (if not Sony-produced) entertainment devices such as DVD players, TVs, etc.
2. Sony's "Playstation World" online service.

Sony therefore envisions an alternate, proprietary universe of its own making, consisting solely of devices that are DRMed to the gills and that connect in a trusted and secure manner to each other and to Sony's online entertainment hub. Sony will use the PlayStation 3 to invite you and your credit card into that alternate, sealed-off universe and to live, play, and consume content, all via the security of Cell + HDMI + Blu-ray + Sony only knows what else.

The advent of the PS3 and the coming wider array of Cell-based products signals that Sony is tired of trying to make their products and content work securely with the PC, so they've decided instead to have a go at simply replacing it. The PS3 isn't a convergence device, but a sort of anti-PC that takes Sony's practice of proprietary everything to the next logical and global, networked level. Sony is through trying to get along with the Internet and the PC, so they'd like to take their toys and leave.

Microsoft also intends their next-generation console to be connected to other entertainment devices and to a proprietary and well-guarded online network. And Microsoft by all means plans to load up on DRMed file formats and protocols. But the software maker's approach to connectivity is ultimately quite different than Sony's. Sony, after all, is both middleman and content owner, while Microsoft is solely a middleman.

First, the Xbox 360 will be a Windows Media Center client, capable of playing content served up from a WMC PC sitting elsewhere on the LAN. The idea is that you'll purchase WMA-protected video and audio content off the Internet using a WMC PC and a Web browser, and then stream it over the LAN to the Xbox 360 in your living room. Right now, WMC hasn't been widely adopted, and if consumers continue to snub it then look for Microsoft to roll many of its features into Windows XP Home Edition.

At any rate, Microsoft's WMA-based plans for the Xbox 360 show that there's a reason that Bill Gates has blasted Blu-ray as too restrictive, and that Microsoft has embraced the more consumer-friendly and PC-friendly HD-DVD format. Gates's comments on the format wars in a recent interview are worth quoting:

[Daily Princetonian]: There has been a lot of debate about the next generation Blu-ray and HD DVD technologies in recent weeks. It seems more and more companies are backing the Blu-ray standard. The current debate seems to harken back to the Betamax vs. VHS format war in the 1970s and 80s, where Betamax was ostensibly the superior technology yet it did not gain wide acceptance. Why is Microsoft not backing Blu-ray today Ñ a technology that many consider to be superior?

Gates: Well, the key issue here is that the protection scheme under Blu-ray is very anti-consumer and there's not much visibility of that. The inconvenience is that the [movie] studios got too much protection at the expense consumers and it won't work well on PCs. You won't be able to play movies and do software in a flexible way.

It's not the physical format that we have the issue with, it's that the protection scheme on Blu is very anti-consumer. If [the Blu-ray group] would fix that one thing, you know, that'd be fine.

For us it's not the physical format. Understand that this is the last physical format there will ever be. Everything's going to be streamed directly or on a hard disk. So, in this way, it's even unclear how much this one counts.

If you're one of the folks who have been wondering why Microsoft is now waving the flag of openness and interoperability, then wonder no more. Physical media formats are indeed going away eventually, and others beside Bill Gates now acknowledge that online distribution is the future of entertainment. When it comes to the online distribution game, Gates has seen the alternate universe of "PlayStation World," and he realizes that a closed, proprietary hardware/software ecosystem benefits content producers like Sony way more than it benefits service providers like Microsoft. Ultimately, Microsoft wants content and money to flow through its online services, but once the content gets to the consumer it's less concerned about what happens to it than about having the consumer come back for more.

Take a look at this quote from an IGN interview with Microsoft's J Allard:

Q: One of my favorite things about the system is that you can plug in your iPod or a portable music player into it, and stream music. Are there any worries that certain companies will update their software to somehow make their systems not work with the Xbox 360?

Allard: You can't worry about stuff like that. I'm pro consumer on this one to the end. Anybody in my company who thought this was a bad idea to plug in Sony or Apple devices into this thing, I ended that conversation pretty quickly. This is the right thing to do for consumers. Once they invest $500 in their digital media library, you can't ask them to go buy a 360 music player and a 360 digital camera, and a 360...NO! They got their stuff. They're going to want to plug it in. We're going to be open here, guys. And if anything, I wish we could be more cooperative with the other companies that are doing those things. And if Sony or Apple were to call me up and say, "Hey, we want to some special things with the 360," I'm on it. I think it would not be in anybody's interest to say, we're not going to work with 360. It's good for them, it's good for us, and it's good for consumers.

That's why the recently announced union of the Microsoft Passport Network, Xbox.com, and Xbox Live services is about creating a unified constellation of online services with multiple entry points and multiple internal destinations under one roof (Passport). The key for Microsoft is not in restricting access to digital media, but in enabling such access in as many formats and venues as possible. Thus Microsoft wants you to have gaming, instant messaging, e-mail, shopping, and media downloads all via a single sign-on with multiple client options: a regular Windows XP flavor, Windows Media Center, a Windows CE device, the Xbox 360, an iPod, a Sony device like the PSP, or whatever.

Sony, as a content producer, has to be more conservative. If their digital goods get boosted somewhere on the long path from their online service to your HDTV, they take a monetary hit directly to their bottom line. In fact, if anyone else's digital goods get boosted via a hole in Sony's service, Sony still takes a hit because if you can rip one company's content you can rip them all. Microsoft, in contrast, just provides the pipes and not the content that fills them, so the software maker only takes a hit to its standing with other content producers in the event of a security breach somewhere in the chain. That hit may or may not translate into fewer content choices for Microsoft's customers, depending on how large a chunk of the audience for digital content Microsoft controls.

This last point brings me to one final thought about how we should measure the success of the next generation of consoles. Initially, success will be measured in console units sold. But that's the previous generation's metric, and by itself it won't be enough give a fair picture of each console's true level of success. The real measure of each next-gen console's success ultimately will be in the amount of money that the network to which it attaches moves annually. The total network sales volumes and the individual take-home amounts for the console makers are the scores that will decide who's really winning the next-generation console war.

[Asher]

The article is loaded with speculation.

The cores in Xenon are not PPEs like they say, they can just appear that way from a high level overview. Xenon's cores have more transistors than PPEs, there's more to them.

[Sandman]

You know, I couldn't care less about connectivity when buying a console.

[Nostromo]

Gamespot's Xbox 360 launch center.

http://www.gamespot.com/features/x360hilite/index.html

Here's the revised launch lineup:

- Need for Speed: Wanted
- Ridge Racer 6
- NBA Live 06
- Perfect Dark Zero
- Kameo: Elements of Power
- Tony Hawk's Wasteland
- Quake 4
- Gun
- King Kong
- Condemned
- Amped 3
- Madden NFL 06
- Dynasty Warriors 5
- FIFA 06: World Cup
- Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06
- NBA 2K6
- Dead or Alive 4 (it has been delayed, IRC)
- Call of Duty 2
- NHL 2K6
- PGR 3

A decent lineup, to be sure. But not a single killer app, as far as I'm concerned. Quake 4 looks boring. Call of Duty also. What else? Perfect Dark Zero? Meh... Condemned looks cool, though. But I'll bet that it'll take about 10 to 15 hours to finish it. Hence not worth buying. Oblivion OTOH is is supposed to be released in february. So is anybody planning to get this bad boy?

[Asher]

I preordered it from Future Shop (the premium Xbox); along with an extra wireless controller, Perfect Dark Zero, Project Gotham Racing 3, and NHL 2K6.

[Nostromo]

I won't get one anytime soon. There's no way in hell I'm playing that on a standard TV. So I'll have to buy an high def TV first, so that means that it will cost me a lot of $$$. Unless there's a way of hooking it up on my LCD...

[flash9286]

http://1up.com/do/feature?cId=3145154&did=1

funny, but some of it could be debated.

[Asher]

Especially because most of it is related to the marketing strategy, and it's the same guy (Peter Moore) behind the marketing for both...

[Asher]

Originally posted by nostromo
I won't get one anytime soon. There's no way in hell I'm playing that on a standard TV. So I'll have to buy an high def TV first, so that means that it will cost me a lot of $$$. Unless there's a way of hooking it up on my LCD...

VGA adapter: http://www.xbox.com/en-US/hardware/x/xbox360vgahdcable/

[flash9286]

well for those of us that don't know who markets what and when, its pretty funny.

[Asher]

Originally posted by flash9286
well for those of us that don't know who markets what and when, its pretty funny.

It's mentioned specifically as one of the comparison points.

[flash9286]

ah damn I did not see that

[Nostromo]

Originally posted by Asher

VGA adapter: http://www.xbox.com/en-US/hardware/x/xbox360vgahdcable/

Thanks for the link. But I assume it would look like crap if your monitor isn't HD ready. My monitor's native resolution is 1280x1024.