ars technica has a great article that ruminates about the rumoured launch date of the Revolution (Thanksgiving next year) and about how powerful it will be (twice the GameCube).

Personally, I think it will be more powerful than twice the GameCube, and I have no thoughts whatsoever about the launch date. But ars technica has some interesting conclusions about a potentially weak Revolution:

The lack of power in the console is striking for another reason, too. If you’ve read Jeremy’s excellent article on game development, you know that studios push heavily for cross-platform titles. With a serious discrepancy between the Revolution and its contemporaries in raw power, this could have three potential effects. The least-likely effect is that the Revolution becomes the Lowest Common Denominator, and ends up being the platform that games are designed for initially. On the opposite side of the spectrum there’s the possibility that Nintendo becomes too niche, and falls further out of the game release cycle than they are now. The last, mostly likely option is that Nintendo’s cross-platform games are moderately customized for the console, with little to no effect on how games play on the offerings from Sony and Microsoft. Will this end up creating a gaming universe where Sony and Microft duke it out on the high-end, while Nintendo is off in its own world? Perhaps. Some would already characterize the current PS2/Xbox/GameCube scenario as precisely that.

Revolution launch, pricing, and scheme? Cheap, SD, and fun.

I looked it up today.

Microsoft announced the release date of the Xbox 360 two months and 1 week before actual release. Announcement date: September 15th. Release date: November 22nd. Before that it was always “before Christmas” or “this year” or “when Allard farts 5 times in a row”.

But for some reason the fact that Sony hasn’t announced the actual release date of the PlayStation 3 (PS3) is being treated as if Sony is doing us wrong. We’re much more than two months away from the release date, so there’s nothing unusual going on here. Sony will announce the release date when they’re good and ready, and it’s their perogative to do so. Of course, I’ll be the first person in line to find out when the release date is.

So chill, man. Enjoy the calm before the storm.

Discuss here or in the new forums.

PS3Blog.net - Xbox 360 Release Dates

Since when did the Cell become the Cell Broadband Engine™ (Cell BE) Architecture? That’s what those whacky folks at IBM call it. Since they co-invented it, we’ll let them have their fancy names. The Cell BE will be the processor in the PlayStation 3 (PS3).

But if you ever wanted a whole whack of data about the Cell Cell Broadband Engine, then those whacky IBM folk are just what you need. They put up a big article analyzing the architecture up on their website. They really seem to like the Cell, saying in their introduction that “This paper shows that Cell BE can outperform other state-of-the-art processors by approximately an order of magnitude, or more in some cases.”

The Cell processor has a main PowerPC core (the POWER Processing Element or PPE) and eight Synergistic Processing Elements (SPEs). Interestingly, the PowerPC core has dual-thread support, just like each of the cores in the Xbox 360’s CPU.

The paper goes into detail about the SPE’s: ” The SPE is a modular design consisting of a Synergistic Processing Unit (SPU) and a Memory Flow Controller (MFC). … At 3.2GHz, each SPU is capable of performing up to 51.2 billion 8-bit integer operations or 25.6GFLOPs in single precision.” The Cell will be capable of decoding an HDTV MPEG2 18Mbps stream at 77 frames per second. Or each SPE can decode 324 FPS of 5Mbps SD MPEG2.

Most interesting…

IBM - Cell Broadband Engine Architecture and its first implementation

If you’ve been a long time reader, then you may remember that a long time ago I mentioned a Japanese game developer questioning the small capacity of the DVD drive built into the Xbox 360. (I’m too lazy to look it up. But feel free!) At the time there was a small debate about whether or not disc capacity would ever become a problem for the 360.

It seems like it has.

According to this Joystiq article, a premium Xbox 360 title will have to be shipped on four discs! That’s what, 36GB dual-layer DVD or 18GB single-layer DVD. Gosh, 36GB would easily fit on one dual-layer Blu-ray disc, or one triple-layer HD DVD disc. 18GB would fit on a one single-layer Blu-ray or one dual-layer HD DVD disc. Makes me think that maybe Microsoft shoulda stuck an HD DVD drive or Blu-ray drive into the 360.

Whoops!

Couldn’t have done that now. Then they wouldn’t have had that 6 to 12 month lead over the PS3! Ho ho ho. What was I thinking? (eHomeUpgrade asks why the 360 didn’t ship with an HD DVD drive. This is why! Just my personal opinion.)

;)

All kidding aside, how many games do you think this problem will affect? Is it a problem at all? Is the Blu-ray drive in the PlayStation 3 really going to be all that helpful to gaming companies, or is it just part of the media center thing?

Joystiq - Certain “highly anticipated” Xbox 360 title filling four discs worth of space

Personally, I think this is going a little too far. Feel free to disagree!

Microsoft Xbox 360 is now in a proposed class action suit which claims that in Microsoft’s big to gain share in the global video game market, the company released the Xbox 360 as a defectively designed unit.

The class action suit also claims that Microsoft was so intent on releasing the Xbox 360 before competing with Sony PlayStation 3, and rival Nintendo Revolution, that the video game machine has far more defects than earlier found.

I heard that Microsoft claims that the 3% error rate was industry norm. Personally, I thought that 3% was high, but then I’m no expert at these things. So I guess my un-expertness is coming back to bite me. If 3% is high, then maybe this class action lawsuit isn’t so frivolous. But if 3% is the norm, it’s silly.

I set up a poll question about this Xbox 360 lawsuit for this over at my forum. What do you think, is this going too far, or not?

GameSHOUT - Xbox 360 Class Action Lawsuit

Those Microsoft commercials are great! I saw the one with the balloons on TV a while ago and thought it was fun. The others I saw online. I like the gun one, which was never aired on TV (it was not banned, it just never made it). The taxi driver was the best.

But seeing these commercials and other advertising from Microsoft has some people upset. Why is Microsoft pushing the 360 so hard when you can’t even walk into a store and pick one up?

Some people are taking exception to this. They think that Microsoft should stop what they’re doing and wait for the channel to get some decent supply of 360’s before turning on the advertising faucet.

Personally, I don’t care. If Microsoft wants to make people aware of the 360, that’s up to them. Creating demand is what companies have to do, and if you want to buy a 360, you’re probably willing to wait until one becomes available. That’s Microsoft’s thinking, and I don’t think they’re far off.

Low availability is part of a console launch. That’s a fact. If advertising bothers you so much, then turn off your TV.

Discuss here or in the new PS3Blog.net forums.

Joystiq - Microsoft’s marketers frustrated gamers. Why?

The NPD Group (not to be confused with the Canadian NDP political party) talked to about 15 thousand people recently, just to talk next-gen gaming. Now that’s dedication!

“What did they find?” you ask in a rather impatient voice.

“The same old same old,” I say. “Just that the PlayStation 3 has the highest consumer awareness among gamers and non-gamers.”

“So what?” you ask in a somewhat peeved tone.

“My point exactly!”

“Huh?”

“Oh ya, and this:”

More telling, however, may be the respondents’ attitudes towards pricing. Xbox 360 launched with $299 and $399 models, a smart move if NPD Group’s study accurately reflects the market; roughly half of the respondents were willing to spend between $200 and $299 on a next-generation system.

“Better, but I still don’t see the point,” you say.

“Me neither.”

Respond here or in the new PS3Blog.net forums.

PS3 Leading Consumer Awareness News Story From 1UP.com

GameTomorrow has a small piece about some experimenting they did with the CPU in the PlayStation (PS3), and their relative performance. They ported a piece of graphics CG (nVIDIA language) code to the Cell to see how it performed.

To our surprise, well not really, we found that using only 7 SPEs for rendering a 3.2 GHz Cell chip could out run an Nvidia 7800 GT OC card at this task by about 30%. We reserved one SPE for the image compression and delivery task. Furthermore the way CG structures it SIMD computation is inefficient as it causes large percentages of the code to execute in scalar mode. This is due to the way they structure their vector data, AOS vs SOA. By converting this CG shader from AOS to SOA form, SIMD utilization was much higher which resulted in Cell out performing the Nvidia 7800 by a factor of 5 - 6x using only 7 SPEs for rendering. Given that the Nvidia 7800 GT is listed as having 313 GFLOPs of computational power and seven 3.2 GHz SPEs only have 179.2 GFLOPs this seems impossible but then again maybe we should start reading more white papers and less marketing hype.

Discuss here or in our new PS3Blog.net forums.

GameTomorrow - GPUs vs Cell

So, you’re thinking that next-gen gaming is for you, but you don’t know whether or not to spring for a new HDTV. It’s a lot of money, and you’re unsure if you should spend it, or how.

Well, 360 Insider has an article that may help. They have several screenshots comparing 480p to 720p. So what you see there will probably not be as drastic as what you might see, because most TV’s are 480i, not 480p. But still, you can see how much clearer and detailed the 720p images are. Something that doesn’t come out very well in these screenshots is how good it really looks. Once those images start moving, all memory of 480p is tossed and you revel in the future of TV. Not only that, but HDTV’s are generally bigger than normal SD TV’s, so you’ll get a huge screen on which to enjoy your games.

I already have an HDTV and it’s great. I can’t wait to hook up an HD gaming console. And remember, the PlayStation 3 will support 1080p, not just 720p. If you have an HDTV with a 1080p display and input, that’ll be the ultimate.

Discuss here or in the new PS3Blog.net forums.

360 Insider - The real comparison: 720p vs. 480p

Ne Waza in the forums pointed out this game. It looks great! I mean really great. Awesome explosions, particle effects everywhere, destructable scenery. It’s got it all. If this FPS supports 4 players, I’ll be in heaven!

And it’s a PS2 game!

I know this is a PS3 site, but really. This game looks so great with current-gen hardware, I wonder what next-gen games will look like.

PS3Blog.net Forums - Wow Black looks fantastic!!

Where: Tokyo Game Show
When: September
What: Survey
Findings: Bizarre

At the Tokyo Game Show a few months ago Microsoft got to show off playable Xbox 360 games. That may have been part of the reason that of those surveyed at the show, 23% said they were “looking forward to picking up an Xbox 360″. What about the Revolution? Only 20.3% interest.

Hmmmm… I always thought the Japanese preferred Nintendo over Microsoft. The fact that the Xbox 360 was playable while the Revolution was just a twinkle in Nintendo’s eye may have had something to do with it. And it was just a survey and all. But still.

How did the PlayStation 3 (PS3) do? Seventy percent. That’s 70%.

Discuss here or in the new forums.

GameSpot - Xbox 360 interest tops Revolution at TGS 2005

Copenhagen-based studio Zero Point has recently announced that it’s working on a first-person shooter for the PlayStation 3 (PS3), Xbox 360, and Windows PC platforms. It’s a science fiction game and is planned to be the first of a trilogy of such games. The game uses Epic’s Unreal Engine 3 as its graphics/etc engine.

Follow the link below for screenshots and teaser video.

Discuss here or in the Project IM forum post.

Zero Point - Project IM

Congratulations Sony!

One hundred million dollars! ** Ahem… ** One hundred million PlayStation 2 consoles! Yup, Sony has now shipped 100 million PS2 consoles, and it breaks down like this:

Cumulative console shipments by territory give a total of 40.65 million units in North America, 37.14 million units in Europe/other PAL territories and 22.22 million units in Japan and other Asian countries.

What’s interesting is that the PS2 has shipped almost double the number of units to North America than to Asia.

Also, there have been 6,200 titles for the PS2 released, which is slightly less than the number of PSone software titles. But still, 6,200 is a very healthy number. I wonder how many of those will work on the PS3?

So, what do you think? Will Sony ship 100 million PS3 consoles within 5 years and 9 months, like the PS2? Or better? Worse? Discuss here or in the forum.

Gamasutra - Sony Ships 100 Million PlayStation 2 Consoles