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

[Asher]

Originally posted by flash9286
Sony is planing to build a service like xbox live called underground. They hired the person that designed Live to build it. How do you call Devil May Cry and Soul Calibar not good exclusives. PS3 doesnt need a Halo killer because Halo sucks. A mediocre shooter with decent mp support can kill Halo.

Underground will be too little, too late. The fact that they tried to hire the guy who designed Live away says a lot that they're just trying to copy what they criticized heavily in this generation.

And since when was Soul Calibur a PS3 exclusive?

And yes, Devil May Cry is not a good exclusive. Its sales have sucked compared to the Xbox's exclusives...

[flash9286]

The next Soul Calibur is going to be a Playstation exclusive, Devil May Cry may not sell well but its a awesome series. We will have to wait and see what they do with underground, but it will atleast give microsoft compettion in the online market. What exclusives does xbox, other than Halo, that is good.

[Kuciwalker]

Devil May Cry may not sell well but its a awesome series.

Have a cookie. It may be TEH GREATEST SERIES OF ALL TIME, but if no one buys it, it's irrelevent.

[flash9286]

Well people do buy it, for a couple of weeks it was at the top of the sales charts.

[Kuciwalker]

But you admitted it didn't sell well.

[flash9286]

I was reffering to asher post about xbox exclusives, the only good exclusives I can think of is Halo and DOA series, and I know DMC sales dont compare to Halo, and I really dont how well the DOA series sell but I assume they are pretty good.

[Asher]

Originally posted by flash9286
I was reffering to asher post about xbox exclusives, the only good exclusives I can think of is Halo and DOA series, and I know DMC sales dont compare to Halo, and I really dont how well the DOA series sell but I assume they are pretty good.

Halo
DOA
Jade Empire (Bioware games in general)
Forza Motorsport (if you're including DMC, it's only fair...Forza is higher rated anyway )
Ninja Gaiden
Project Gotham Racing...

The main point is that PS3's top selling "exclusive" games make their ways on other platforms (GTA3:SA comes out for Xbox this week).

Even Soul Calibur III is "exclusive" in the same sense that Splinter Cell was an Xbox exclusive and GTA3 was a PS2 exclusive. Sony just forked over money for a limited exclusivity period.

The PS3/Xbox2 are fairly even in terms of power, and if both launched at the same time the games would look virtually identically. But, the Xbox2 has about a year advantage on the PS3...developers will know how to use the hardware more efficiently.

I'm going to bet the Xbox 360 has the best multi-platform next-generation, too.

[flash9286]

Its not like thats the only exclusives we have. We got god of war, ratchet and clank, gran turismo and others. Im pretty sure SC is only going to be on the ps2 though im not sure. Im not a harddrive expert but every review I have read buts the PS3 ahead. I dont know what you mean by multi-platform, do you mean multi-platform games?

[Asher]

The reviews I've read from uninformed journalists put the PS3 ahead, the previews I've read from tech geeks put them about even, but too many unknowns.

Not much is known about the PS3's GPU, aside from it's a derivative of the G70, which is based off the GeForce 6000-series.

There's also an interesting article on how Cell came about.

Sony wanted to just build a "network on a chip", a bunch of small processors working together to perform lots of calculations.

Toshiba (Sony's longtime partner for Playstation) proposed using a ton of really small chips on the same chip (basically, the tiny SPE processors).

IBM was contacted for their opinion, and said best real-world performance would come from several powerful chips in a single chip, not a ton of tiny processors.

Ken Kutaragi, Sony Computer Entertainment CEO/Playstation Father, is an engineer himself. His lifelong friend, Mitsuo Saito, was head of the "Toshiba System-LSI Technology Laboratory". Due to the nature of Japanese business/honour/friendship, Kutaragi couldn't decline Toshiba's proposal outright. He also thought the IBM solution would be too expensive.

So it was a political merger of the two ideas: It'd have one powerful IBM core, and 7 tiny SPEs.

It's interesting that when MS talked to IBM, it was after Cell had already basically been designed. IBM had the same engineers work on MS' CPU, but without the complications of the Japanese political scene, and with the knowledge they gained from working on Cell.

The end result is tri-core 3.2GHz Xenon CPU, which is more than likely going to be faster in real-world game performance.

[flash9286]

Nice overview, but I would still like to wait and see the end specs and what game developers say about the finished systems. Plus Sony still has a year and half to the release of the system. Also could you give me a link to that article, I would like to read it.

[Asher]

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=23713

[Asher]

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=9320

Analysts predict $75 launch subsidy on Xbox 360 hardware
Illustration
Rob Fahey 13:36 06/06/2005

Speculation points to $375 manufacturing price, $299 retail price

Microsoft's Xbox 360 will be priced at $299 when it hits shelves later this year, according to analysts at major investment bank UBS, with Microsoft subsidising each console to the tune of $75 in order to meet that price point.

Predictions by the analysts, reported last week in the Toronto Globe and Mail, suggest that Microsoft will pay $375 per unit to its manufacturing partners, with the final retail price of the console pegged at $299.

That's in line with comments from Microsoft boss J Allard, who told the media at E3 that the Xbox 360 would launch "in the neighbourhood" of the $300 price point at which the original Xbox launched in late 2001 in North America.

The $75 subsidy reportedly required to hit the launch price is quite high, but not unusual for a new console. Platform holders routinely subsidise their consoles at launch in order to build an installed base, and then make back the money from software sales and the rapidly falling price of hardware manufacture late in the lifespan of the console.

However, Microsoft found it more difficult to do this with the original Xbox, since it had to continue buying components from partners such as NVIDIA and Intel at high prices - unlike Sony, which has been able to hugely reduce the manufacturing cost of the PS2 as it builds most of the core components itself.

For Xbox 360, Microsoft has moved to a more Sony-like model, and expects to be able to realise similar economies as the scale of manufacturing ramps up and the component costs fall.

Nice. They supposedly lost $150/unit on the original Xbox launch.

[Asher]

On the flipside, the CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment, Ken Kutaragi, said: "The PS3 will be priced at an amount not plausible for a game machine."

http://www.itmedia.co.jp/games/articles/0506/02/news001_2.html

That makes sense given the huge array of media (including the expensive blu-ray) that they have given in their specs. Looks like a $349 launch price at the lowest, $399 likely.

Would Sony be screwed if they launched a year after the 360 with a higher price?

[mrmitchell]

Only $75? Girlie men.

Subsidize my unit $375, Microsofties. If I had a free XBOX I would buy the games, controllers, XBOX Live etc. to make up for the loss.

Do we know how much Sony and Nintendo make off of their consoles?

[mrmitchell]

On the flipside, the CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment, Ken Kutaragi, said: "The PS3 will be priced at an amount not plausible for a game machine."

http://www.itmedia.co.jp/games/arti.../news001_2.html

That makes sense given the huge array of media (including the expensive blu-ray) that they have given in their specs. Looks like a $349 launch price at the lowest, $399 likely.

Would Sony be screwed if they launched a year after the 360 with a higher price?

You can buy whole goddamn computers for $500.

You have to consider if they launch a year later it will drive the cost down some. But then, they can't just equal the XBOX in power (graphics, games, features, etc.). They'll have to crush it, I mean, they've had a year more to work on it, theirs should be a lot better.

In the end they'll probably end up cutting something - blue ray, a hard drive, etc. to make $349 and the launch date.

$399 console a year after XBOX 360, yes, I call Sony screwed.

OTOH - Nintendo is not screwed. They will not sell for $399. The Revolution looks like it will not be one of these "must have the top graphics addiction" machines like MS and Sony are releasing. I bet on it coming out for under $250.