Ken Kutaragi - PS3 Hardware Upgrade Possible

This generation's console was will be won or lost on AAA developer support, although the numerous boastful comments coming from executive management are probably succeeding in drumming up interest in both platforms.

Thanks to Sega and Nintendo's failures (32X/Saturn/Dreamcast and N64), it should be clear to Sony that a system will live or die based on your developers' AAA-exclusive title. The audio and visual capabilities of the next generation of systems is not in doubt, since these systems can all claim life-like visuals at the highest resolution currently available in television technology (Unless OLED technology takes off, I don't forsee any real graphics wars in the distant future). Despite Nintendo's superb motion-sensing idea, I would be concerned since Sony is smart enough to have gone to great lengths to lock up more AAA exclusives than both Nintendo and Microsoft.

The Japanese aversion to the American system is, while at times a bit baffling, the main reason Microsoft has little chance of winning this generational war despite its early and (quite) successful launch. This leaves Nintendo and Sony to do battle, with Sony's terrible recent publicity track record going up against Nintendo's unwillingness to shell out risky amounts of money to lock up AAA third party support. In my opinion, Nintendo is looking to maximize profit without necessarily "winning" the generational wars while Sony and Microsoft feel the best way to maximize profit is to take care of maximizing market share first, suffocate the competition second and profit handsomely during the later years of the generation (a strategy Sony employed to unparalleled success with the PS2). Thanks to an excellent E3, Nintendo's almost ensured a profitable showing with the Wii and Sony is probably setting their sites on snuffing out Microsoft because they showed weakness not being able to penetrate the Japanese market.

Despite the $600 pricetag, Sony is positioning itself to continue its winning steak if they convince the 25-49 demograph to think along the lines of "I can justify the $600 because we can use the system to watch movies and burn exact copies of DVD's we rent thanks to some software that I found online with my amazing knowledge of the internet." The lame press releases are not accomplishing this for me, but the publicity doesn't really stick in my mind except when it is released during E3 and the pre-launch month. If enough upper middle class families and college graduates buy the PS3 during the initial launch, the resulting steady stream of Japanese, European and North American AAA titles (coupled with the price drop once the early-adopter phase is complete) will not present Nintendo with an opportunity to counterattack.

Should the PS3 launch fail due to the pricepoint or (more likely) being unable to weave itself into North American culture because it comes off as arrogantly Japanese, Nintendo could counterattack by focusing it's 3rd party campaign towards becoming the "Sports Console" to combat North American child obesity and eventually grabbing the overall lead in 3rd party AAA titles as parents lap up the reasonably priced console for their (perceived) out-of-shape children. Nintendo will have to grab exclusive third party support the hard way - by showing developers that their installed base is higher than Sony's - if they want to win the market share battle and this generation's war. I don't think Sony is as blundering as we make them out to be - ensuring strong third party support within the first year of launch is probably even more important than a strong advertising campaign thanks to the Playstation's strong culture image, although they really have to shut their traps until they have come up with a less elitist message.

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Thanks way...you are still an idiot.

I am a software engineer. i did game programming fior about 2 years till i realized how little profit there is in independant game programming without securing a publisher...which then means I lose all creative freedom in my design.

If you knew the first thing about software design you would know as an industry wide fact that technical support for software is the most costly aspect of software design. Not programming, not art design, not game design, not anything else. Support by itself is the most costly aspect. This includes the beta testing and the bug fixing, and the bug patching, and the compatability testing and everything else that goes with shipping out a final product and then making sure said product continues to work on later hardware.

In a console you have a fixed system that relies on fixed components. This is why testing and support for consoles is so much cheaper then on computers. You think that because my computer has a directx 9c video card and is running xp, that BF2 should run flawlessly on my machine because it was written in dx9c. Wrong because I was using a soundblaster live32 audio card i was getting driver conflicts between the out of date sound card hardware not working properly with the latest direct sound release which is a part of the directx api. So I had to upgrade my sound card in order to enjoy BF2.

This is not the case with fixed consoles. When Ken is talking about upgrading the ps3, he is not talking about changing the fixed internals, he is talking about changing the I/O capability, such as video or sound outputs, Blu-ray upgrades etc.

You dont have a clue what you are talking about and there is no point to try to argue. You can reply all you want but i wont entertain your ignorance any more with any further responses.

Not that I plan on responding...but what exactly is a 2 gig machine??? Does that mean a 2 gig harddrive, 2 gigs of ram??? 2 gighz processor??? What an idiot.



There really was no compelling reason for gamers to upgrade from 2k to xp because MS released dx9 across both platforms. The reason to upgrade to vista is because only vista will support DX10 which all the new games will be using.

This whole thread is full of subsurface fanboyism, feeblemindedness and bad form...

Completely ignoring almost everything in this thread previous...

As long as Sony is talking about upgrading I/O components only, its really a non-issue...they're just peripherals, big freaking deal. More significant than removable face plates, but only just. The example mentioned, a Blu Ray recorder, affects a gaming purist only if he wants one.

If, however, they plan on upgrading capabilities more integral, and create a have/have not situation well, that would definitly tend to validate the "I bought a console specifically so I wouldn't have to put up with this s**te, you poxy bastards!" view.

As to comparing the difficulty of programming and suchlike, the difference between a few different console configurations, all produced and controlled under a central authority and the vast multituide of electronic mishmashes that call themselves PCs would be of a quantum nature. So, we have another non-issue. Unless it was some really stupid buggers doing the configurating, oh wait, this IS Sony...

The media hub bit is gonna be one of those things that just creeps up on your average consumer, sooner or later (perhaps much later) its going to feel like everone has one but them, and people who, if they thought about it at all, thought they'd never need one, will be buying whatever everyone else has, or (more likely) getting media hub functionality (wether they want it or not) included with their next PC.

p.s. I knew precisely what he meant by 2gig machine, you should have stopped just before the whole childish bit at the end...

p.p.s. don't bother replying to this...

jpohn,

Good take.

Sorry, we seem to have got our wires crossed with the other rude reply I got.



Means, who gives a stuff about anybody else or the facts, as it doesn't concern your machine. Plus, you emphasised it with a not so polite WTF. I have regularly given plenty of time in the past to repeatedly simplifying and explaining things to people that have to high an opinion of themselves, and low opinion of others and the truth, to read to understand, but would rather look just to dismiss. My explanation gave the reason, for the same reason XP is popular and if you want the best support, you will be forced to upgrade to Vista eventually as well. Unfortunately MS can do this to us, and still not offer a bug free product, and that is where the future lies. If you stick with 2K you will be stuck in a similar situation to Geoworks users eventually, with a lack of support and new games. It doesn't matter how good it is today things move on. So, it is a question with an obvious answer. Plus, eventually 2GB is going to be so cheap, as to make it an none objection, which is what MS is depending on. People objected that Windows 95 needed 32MB to run properly, and that Geoworks could do it less than 1MB (and better in most cases) but now who cares. Geoworks does not even support all the latest hardware. They also objected to XP, and the same fate as Geoworks is scheduled for 2K.

The rest of the stuff is more of an answer to the other rudely ignorant post. Don't just look at the replies, think about what is said.

I said this programming related stuff has to be done right, nobody is saying here that the PC was done right, but it is totally possible and reasonable to do a multi hardware platform programming system cheaply without a large amount of bugs, and in fact there are many game development systems that already do this. The problem is just how the PC is setup, wrongly, and there are hundreds to thousands of configurations messing this up. If it was done right new configurations would be handled almost automatically and be much less problem. Everything you know is a disillusionment of the PC industry, it is sub standard programming that is not regularly tolerated in the regular embedded and consumer electronics industry, which is why washing machine and fridges usually work better.

This child's games up.



Yes, I picked you for a salivating moron :). Experience is a poor substitute for ability, experience teaches you mistakes, ability helps you find solutions, and wisdom helps you determine which is which. You make the mistake, thinking you know it all before you have worked it out, and before you are able to work it out.

What did you develop for, on what machine were you developing, 2D platformers/race games on a PC, Pocket PC? Re-edit, read to the end, yep PC. I doubt that you worked on a single configuration platform, or the bigger games that require heaps of graphics sound and artwork, as well as motion capture. So which types of games are you talking about and which machine that needs this support, PC?

Maybe the ratio of code to graphics has changed in the last ten years, maybe the cross platform development systems took a step back.

Your examples are weak and empty and reflect something seriously wrong. You try to legitimise your arguments by including "beta testing and the bug fixing, and the bug patching, and the compatibility testing" but you should know, if you were taught properly, that they are all part of the programming process. I have been programming since the early 80's, I have been doing intricate complex OS design since the late 80's/early 90's with the aim to solve the issues we have been discussing. I have spent this time complementing and designing better and better ways of doing these things, and have learnt a lot more since the early 90's. I work at very deep design levels into these concepts. I have a bent interest in 100% game performance, efficiency and minimal programming. The original Taos OS, a contemporary of mine, claimed 80%+ speed of machine code in the early 90's for cross platform, and somewhat similar to very good C code. Please note, this is overall game performance, and certain critical sections of code could get even greater performance difference from machine code, and also not representative of a full OS system performance.

99% of software developers do not know how to design a system to properly reduce these issues, ideally OS companies and development tool makers, need to hire the other 1% to design systems to stream line the development work of the other 99%. Unfortunately the PC industry has a bad record at this, and lots of customisations and loose standardisations, which is why it is particularly stuffed, as you have discovered.

I know that most people might not have an idea, but it never ceases to amaze me that when you layout a blindly obvious improvements, they miss it. "oh, little boy, it doesn't work like that" instead of asking themselves what is being said, and making it work. What other people do is irrelevant to the limits of what can be done, unless they are already doing it, let alone a restricted example of what people do. If you don't want to think about it, I am not interested in replying.

Funny, you called me an idiot (well a few time) and yet you are the only one here that doesn't understand I mean 2GB, like what is being said in recent testing of vista with games (1 GB will also work apparently). I do not need to fill the gaps that much.

If you want to know the problem, you are not nice and have a big ego about it, rather then considering, thinking and listening. Unfortunately, while I have lots of time for nice people that I can talk with, that will consider themselves and what they think as well as what I do. But I have learned being nice to ignorant people that believe what they know defines the world is like p... in the wind, they respect themselves but not the truth. So, in future, I suggest being nice, courteous ("blah blah" and "retard" things are a dead give aways) and thinking about what is being said and where it can go, because it can go anywhere way past our experience.

Sorry I have been so tough on you, but certain things get under my skin, and I have had to courteously put up with a lot of rude people, who just usually turn out to be wrong and using reinterpretations of the facts.

The rest of your comments basically prove what I was saying. If properly organised 4 configurations only requires a fraction extra work compared to one configuration and less then the PC, or even 4 configurations through the windows OS in the older days. The latest MS windows game development system is supposed to be cross windows platform, but I don't know if it lives upto the hype yet. Look at Taos Intent/Elate2 Vos, my main competitors, for how seamless cross platform used to be done in the old days, when we all started (Oak/Java as well).

Save me Preciosue, save me, from these people!



I think Sony does, from previosue statements, oterhwise in ten years the PS3 could be like 64+ times less than the cutting edge.



Thanks, I think {:-)



I just saw a news release on something like a 40inch display panel with Media PC built in, poor Apple, lost the introduction of that one. Yes, I want one, maybe based on a PS3 though.