PS3 Launch Thoughts (and Humor!)

Me and my wife went to circuit city on union square in nyc and the line there was ridiculous. I laughed because we were there to pick up an extra 360 controller since she wants to try to co-op gears of war. Yes she is a gamer, yes I am lucky but she kinda a sony an girl but has been losing interest in the ps3 since she has been playing the 360.

Sony should have pushed the release back since they just couldn’t get enough systems made in time. At the very least they shouldn’t have tried a global launch.

JFetch, there is no global launch for the PS3. Sony pushed the release in Europe back to March, with no certainty there’ll be enough consoles when they do finally get here. Not to mention the requirement for people with an HD-TV to purchase an extra cable to be able to truely see the PS3′s graphical capabilities.

Of course it’s easy to beat Sony now they’re down, especially if you’re not a Sony fan, but they’re still the biggest and with a lot of PS2 owners wanting a PS3 they might still win this round. At least Microsoft’s strategy is working and they’re gaining ground with a very loyal gaming community.

That penny arcade strip says more than we might think though. Surely its true the queues are ridiculous, surely its easier to get a 360 today but the strip, perhaps accidentally, is also showing just a guy purchasing a 360 with lots of guys waiting for a PS3. I am not a Sony fanboy, if I purchase any next-gen machine it would be a 360, but I believe the PS3 will still win this round.

I just can’t figure out why anyone actually wants one right now. Final Fantasy and Metal Gear later? Sure, okay. But does that really warrant putting yourself through a couple days of boring line torture to spend 200 extra bucks on a system that is in every single way outdone by the 360 now?

I thought it was funny a couple weeks ago when some of the games hit the shelf, like I go into FYE and they have PS3 copys of Tony Hawk and Marvel Ultimate Alliance.  Needless to say I bought BOTH of those on the 360 and felt no need to wait a few more weeks AND pay more.

What burns me is that everyone is selling them on eBay.  I thought eBay clamped down on that.  I feel sorry enough for the poor sots who actually want a PS3 and believe it to be "the better and more powerfull system" enough already, I feel really bad that the people who actually want one will most likely need to hit up eBay with 2 grand in hand to get a so far sub par system.

What burns me even more than that is the nerve of that Sony dude (forget which one) for saying… ah yeah, we aren’t worried about the 360… it’s already dying.

Yup, did everyone here know that? Apparently, according to sony the Xbox 360 is already dead or dying.

Gee, and here I thought it was getting better and better day by day P Guess I better go trade it in since it’s apparently dead (hahahaha) I’m joking by the way, the 360 is SO FAR from dead it makes the sony comments laughable.  Halo 3 would be enough of a system seller alone to insure competition and system sales but meanwhile new reasons to buy a 360 come out every week.

Viva Pinata and Gears anyone? Not bad for a "dead system" lol.

NBA 07 is Sony’s first party game, Electronic Arts’ NBA Live 07 (notice the difference?) for PS3 has been canceled.

I started reading your blog because you originally provided a unique and balanced perspective on the video game industry.  This has changed.  I’m sorry, but making statements like "meh reviews" and "titles are generally looking better on the 360" just shows your incredible bias.  The Madden reviews I’ve read have said there is clearly a visual improvement over the 360 version, and it’s just a port!  The reviews for Resistance are close to the reviews for Gears of War (clearly the most impressive 360 title 1 year after launch).  Let’s add to that its 40 person multiplayer and the fact that it’s a launch title, and you’d realize the game is really something special!  That is, a game that could only be made (in it’s current form) for the PS3.  Don’t try to feed us garbage about the PS3 being a ho-hum console.  You may not think it’s a huge leap over the 360, but it IS better than the 360.  It’s true that it may be a while before we really see the differences, but the PS3 is technically superior.  That’s an advantage the original Xbox enjoyed over the PS2, and I’ll bet you would have been really pushing this if your blog had been around at launch, even though the games sucked just as much as the 360 launch (Call of Duty 2?  Please!  At least the Resistance multiplayer isn’t broken!).  

I’m not a fanboy, in fact, I probably won’t buy either console for at least a year.  I don’t feel like I can enjoy next-gen console gaming until I get an HDTV, and I’m not ready to spend that kind of money right now.  So it’s PC gaming for me, with my kick-ass computer.  By the way…since when is Time magazine the authority on video gaming?  It’s like watching the atrocity of 50-something’s pretending to have fun on the Wii during a newscast!  Don’t get me wrong, I’ll be playing games when I’m an old man, but the difference is that I’ve grown up playing video games.  Our current "traditional" news media personnel haven’t.

imaginedbug,

What I meant was that they should have launched in Japan first(and not just by a week) like they always have in the past. Just because Microsoft did it, doesn’t mean everyone has to.

insane_cobra,

I noticed the same thing – the link and quote are from the review of Sony’s NBA ’07.  However, out of curiosity, I looked at Gamespot’s review of NBA 2K7 and found a similar statement:

"NBA 2K7 is one of the few PS3 launch games that supports 1080p. The game looks nice in "true HD," but you’re more likely to notice the aliasing around players’ bodies, as well as blurry names and numbers on their jerseys. All of this extra resolution comes at the expense of the frame rate, though even in 720p, the action gets choppy. The frame rate’s not too bad when you’re playing from the default camera angle, but it isn’t as smooth as on the Xbox 360."

Kypdurron5,

I agree that this is a bit of a biased post, but that doesn’t mean  that it is automatically wrong.

Here is a 1up review of PS3 madden….

http://www.1up.com/do/reviewPage?cId=3155330

‘With the same mechanics, it comes down to visuals and it isn’t even as close as you might think. From the first play it becomes clear that the presentation lacks the vibrancy of its cousin, and everything looks flat by comparison….’ and ‘Nor do the graphics themselves hold up to a side-by-side comparison. The fields don’t just look flat, they appear muddy. And there is a blurry, soft-focus effect — almost like you’re looking at the screen while trying to cross your eyes.’

As for Resistance, I will never understand why having 40 players automatically makes it good?

http://www.1up.com/do/reviewPage?cId=3155184

‘…Forty players, though, may be a little bit of overkill. It’s nearly impossible to coordinate teams of many more than a dozen. The map design for these big matches also gets a little overzealous, spreading out too much. Even with the full 40 people present, it’s possible in a couple of maps to wind up wandering around without seeing a soul.’

Clearly it is a good game, but it is not good simply because it has 40 players online. When all people do is quote the figure it winds up feeling like a pissing contest – the measure should always be how fun it is – e.g. 4v4 GOW.

Thanks for the catch on NBA 07 – fixed above!

XPlay rated a few of the release games.  Great review on Resistance Fall of Man.  Then two games for one out of five stars, and Madden with three out of five (because that’s what they gave the 360 version and they said it’s the same) and one with two stars.

It’s still early, and future games will be better, but then so will the 360 games, and there is zero on the horizon for Sony that looks like there will be no Sony FPS to compete with Halo.  Resistance is getting "Almost as good as Gears of War in single and better in multiplayer."

Incidentally, does anyone know any first hand accounts of these 20 versus 20 multiplayer matches for Resistance Fall of Man?  I’ve heard good things about the multiplayer, but not from people playing at home, on a home network, using DSL and Cable.  After all, let’s face it, playing at your company’s (gaming  review magazines and such) site with massive bandwidth would make Chromehounds seem stable and lag-free.

Kalroy

Huh? What’s all this about Resistance getting as good as reviews as Gears? Last I checked at Metacritic and Gamerankings was on average being reviewed at 95 and 95 out of 100 (respectively) whereas Resistance was being reviewed at 89 and 88 out of 100. and apparently the overall online package is broken, to say the least.

Does Resistance have co-op? Cause in my opinion that’s where its at.  Most online players are idiots, I easily prefer a good co-op with a solid buddy any day to having random twelve year olds tell me to "stick your controller up your p***y and learn to play better"… then talking to his mom over the microphone lol.

Still… why is the PS3 better? It’s obviously not processing power (as many developers have informed us about by now) so what is it? bigger hard drive? HDMI?  Doesn’t anyone realize these things are unimportant to the actual gameplay??

I dunno, as far as I care let the system EARN its stripes, don’t just rave and praise it off the bat, give me some good games, give me some in game proof that it is actually better than the 360.. then I’ll make the purchase. Also let sony show me they are actually ready to step up to the online bat, cause untill now they have sucked online and the PSP is a sad unfullfilled (yet awesome system) that proves "Features" are meaningless unless you USE them as a developer.

I don’t undrestand why people who have decided to commit to the 360 need to spend so much time and energy trying to point out every little failing of the PS3 they can lay their hands on -especially since the thing is still so damn new.

Slamming first-gen games as if this is conclusive proof that the PS3 is not worth buying is just plain silly.  I’ve read at least a couple of technical reviews that give Sony’s hardware a big thumbs up in terms of the technology they are packing into this unit, and I have very little doubt that within 2-3 years the games for the PS3 will start to leave the games on the XBox behind, from a purely technical perspective.

And until Halo 3 comes out, I still fail to see a game for the 360 that demands I purchase the console.  If Halo 3 does not come out prior to the launch of the PS3 here in NZ (March 07) I will absolutely be buying a high-end PS3 both as a truly next-gen games machine and a Blu Ray movie player.

Bruce,

You had me with your first two paragraphs but your last comment about Halo 3 being the the only game worthy of a 360 purchase is ridiculous (especially since you know nothing about Halo 3 except for rumors).  

Why do you feel the need to appear unbiased when you really are?  How can you be considered a gamer when you don’t think games like Splinter Cell, Rainbow Six, Oblivion, Gears of War etc. are worthy enough to play.  These games have meta reviews over 90%.  What more do you want?  You must be either (i) a hardcore Bungie fan, (ii) uninformed or (iii) Sony-biased.

Here’s hoping for Okami on the Wii!

I looked at the lines with a tear in my eye.  This is the first console I haven’t bought on launch day, and I fondly remember the camaraderie of the PS2 line, the esprit de corps of the XBox 360 line, the unified front each line presents to the late comers and intruders, and our smug daydreaming about what titles we’re getting and how many controllers we’ll really need.  Oh, and the pelting of the ebay resellers with fruit and garbage.

I didn’t do the line on the ps3 – tragically there was nothing really compelling to lay out the cash.  Even blu-ray fails to impress.

LOL – I did get a Wii. XBox 360 and Wii – marching hand in hand into the future.  wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

While in general cross-platform games seem to be better on the 360 (expected for any launch title) the reviews and ranking show that the differences are marginal, with the Live features being the main game breaker.

Exclusives like Resistance do look pretty damn good and fun to play.  It’s basically the GoW for the PS3, so if you consider GoW a console seller than Resistance is too.  Both are amazing graphics and gameplay, each with their own "gimmick", whether its taking cover or an overload of weapons and functions (which remind me of GOlden Eye and Perfect Dark).

Anybody who wants to buy a console should probably buy a 360 which finally is worth owning after a year with a decent library of quality games.  But if you don’t care too much for either exclusive (GoW = Resistance essentially) than it doesn’t matter.

Re: "Here’s hoping for Okami on the Wii!"

Yes! Totally agree… crossing my fingers. Haven’t had a chance to play through Okami yet. Will do so on the PS2 if needed, but would love a Wii version that really uses the new controller!

Okay, first off everyone knows why the PS3 is better than the 360: because Sony says so.

Secondly, it was XPlay that gave the review of GoW compared to Resistance, and it slammed neither in the comparison, though in the Resistance review (independant of the comparison) it did mention the graphics weren’t what were to be expected, but they loved the multi-player.  As to the multi-player, it doesn’t seem (though I could easily be wrong) that they actually played "online" but rather played on their own network, since they didn’t say anything about matchmaking.

GamerAndy had some rather disparaging remarks about GoW’s ranked game system, and I’m betting it’s accurate and the kind of thing that needs to be addressed.

Hardware.  I’m reading that the PS3 is superior in most ways.  I am also, however, reading that it’s not superior enough to make an appreciable difference (please don’t ask me to go hunt the gamasutra article).  It seems that development software is another matter with MS having a major advantage in this area (just read another John Carmack interview to this effect).

As to games, the PS3 has nothing I’m interested in (other than multi-consoles such as Splinter Cell) now or in the forseeable future.  The 360 had Oblivion and will have Halo3, in addition to having proven adept at online (or that could just be Bungie).

That’s my opinion.

kchigg

Nice try.

I recently purchased Splinter Cell DA for the original XBox.  Have you read the reviews?  It got a higher score than the 360 version.

Yes, I LOVE Halo (1 and 2) but have enjoyed many other great games on the xbox.  None of them have brought me back, time and time again, like Halo.  So I’ll repeat, at this point in time, I’m yet to see a game for the 360 that says it’s time to jump into the next gen with the 360.

To be frank, in my opinion if the 360 had launched with Halo 3 I would have purchased the console on day 1, and I guarantee you that many people would be of exactly the same opinion, so I think you are wrong to try and marginalize my POV.

If it’s good enough, I may still buy it anyway, even if I do get the PS3 first -this is definately a case of the game selling the hardware.

An no, I’m not a Sony fan (have never owned a PS2), but there has been so much BS being spun from MS fan boys about the PS3 being some sort of strategic failure by Sony that in the name of balance, I’ll beg to differ on the thoroughly unbalanced and exagerated viewpoints I’m reading on this forum.

When I chose the XBox, I did so because it was the superiour hardware.  It did not have the same amount of games, but I did my research and decided it was a better system and that the games would eventually reflect that.  I was right.  It is for exactly the same reason I’m going with the PS3.

I hate "bullet point comparisons" between Xbox 360 and PS3. Why? Because you get something like…

Resistance (PS3)… 40 players

Call of Duty 3 (Xbox 360)… 24 players

People see that and just see a number. But what about quality of service? What about features? What about talking to a friend while you’re playing different games? What about checking your friends list online and sending messages through xbox.com?

When I talk to my friends about Xbox Live and PS3′s online service, I always say to them that an online service like that is a huge engineering project, a huge software engineering project, and Microsoft is a software company. And that’s make a difference you notice when you try both.

With regard to the performance of the 360 and the PS3, things are more complex, and you cannot say with certainty that ‘X is better than Y’.

If I were to sum it up, I’d say the 360 has a significant advantage in terms of available memory (which would show in higher texture detail), frame buffer bandwidth (more particle effects, compositing, post processing, etc) and some unique graphical capabilities (think of it as shader model 3.5). The PS3 has advantages in it’s storage format, and the SPE processors.

When both systems are exploited on first party titles, they will achieve results not possible on the other system. But for cross platform titles, I’d be inclined to suggest the 360 has an advantage.

To go into more detail:

Memory:

the 360 has a 512mb memory pool. The PS3 has two 256mb memory pools, one for RSX (the gpu) and one for the cpu (RSX can access the cpu pool of memory, but it’s very difficult to do – as is my understanding).

This may sound fairly equal, but the devil is in the details, as they say.

Consider the case of a game with masses of textures, geometry, but fewer non-visual assets. In such a case, it is easier to use (say) 400mb of memory for visual assets on the 360.

Also, popular opinion states the 360 OS reserves 32mb of system memory, while the PS3 OS reserves 64mb of cpu memory + 32mb of graphics memory + 16mb if you want the on screen keyboard.

Furthermore, the 10mb EDRAM on the 360 acts as the front buffer. What does this mean? it means the pre-MSAA downsample render targets are temporary in nature. On the PS3, these must be stored in graphics memory.

1280×720 with 4xaa * 8 bytes (colour + depth/stencil) = 30mb. That isn’t trivial.

Finally, although details on the RSX are not easy to find, the 360 gpu also supports Ati’s 3Dc+ texture compression formats, which are especially good for things like normal maps (very common).

3Dc was used in the Ati toyshop demo, which fits in 256mb of graphics memory:

http://www.ixbt.com/video2/images/r520/ati-demo-toyshop.jpg

Frame buffer bandwidth:

Both systems provide approximately 20gb/sec bandwidth to the GPUs. This is 128bit memory controllers running around 700mhz. About the same as a geforce 7600. However, a good proportion of that bandwidth (I’d guess 25%+) will end up being used for frame buffer read/writes (ie, drawing stuff to the screen) instead of looking up textures/geometry data. Because the 360 has EDRAM, the bandwidth hit is internal (between the gpu and EDRAM) and there is enough bandwidth there (256gb/s) so that the system is never bandwidth limited (for the framebuffer). This means overdraw is less of a problem, so things like particle effects can be extremely efficient, not hitting main memory bandwidth.

That said, the downside is tiling, but there is software and hardware designed to take care of that for the developer. There is apparently a max ~15% performance hit for using 3 tiles (4xaa) over a single tile (no aa).

Also note that for the 360, CPU memory access goes through the GPU, and through the same path, but CPU memory access is generally less than the GPU for a console. The PS3 has a second 17gb/s (?) link especially for the CPU. So in CPU memory limited cases, the PS3 has a significant advantage, but then again it’s a cost/design thing too.

Unique graphical abilities:

FP10:

This format allows floating point colour data to be stored in 32bits (8 bytes), instead of FP16, which requires 64bits (16 bytes). The sacrifice is alpha channel accuracy (2bit), but it saves gobs of memory bandwidth. Something both systems lack.

Lots of games make good use of this already. It’s a key component of ‘real’ HDR effects – eg Halflife 2 does ‘hdr’ as a shader process, an

*Sigh*

I really wasn’t thinking:

32bit = 4bytes,

64bit = 8bytes

I was thinking back to front, and doubled the second one by mistake.

Sorry bout that