Video game company blunders

[Warmaker]

EA is not the developer to turn to for reaching above and beyond or exploring greater frontiers. They're all about milking the same engine used in the previous iteration of the same tired franchise, copying over elements from other successful titles to tout as new innovative features in their upcoming games and massively try to cut down development time so they can flood the market with a whole batch of new releases with their respective support teams fading away 2 weeks after launch.

Yea. I hate EA.

WORD! I jumped off the Madden Wagon a loooooonnggg time ago in the 90s.

[JB0]

Does anyone know when the game developer might max out the Chip sets on the X-box 360, PS3, Wie ...

There is not one system in the entire history of the industry that has been pushed to it's limits.

Period, end of story.

Hell, they're still finding new tricks to squeeze out of the Atari VCS/2600.

A system with 128 BYTES of RAM and TWO sprites.

THIRTY YEARS LATER.

You look at that and THEN try saying anything's been pushed to the limit with a straight face.

[mikeszekely]

Yea. I hate EA.

welcome to the club

WORD!

I guess you guys missed the memo, but we like EA since they started publishing new original IPs like Dead Space, Mirror's Edge, Mass Effect, and Brutal Legend. We also appreciate that they've slowly been dialing back on DRM for their PC titles, referring to the rampant piracy of the Sims 3 as "downloading a big demo."

If you need to know where to redirect your hatred, the answer is Activision, mostly for their continued exploitation of existing IP, often without the original developers (Guitar Hero, Call of Duty), but also for their unwillingness to publish games that don't fit with their IP-whoring model. At one time or another, Activision was supposed to be the publisher for Ghostbusters, Brutal Legend, and Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena. I'm honestly surprised they hung onto Prototype.

[Black Valkyrie]

The Saturn X-Men vs Street Fighter kept the tagging. Another reason the Saturn was my favorite over the PSX. It was purely due to PSX's memory limitations. Saturn + RAM Cart = fighting game goodness back then.

Frankly speaking I still play with that old grunt, until now to me, its still awesome when playing Vampire Savior.

[Radd]

The Sega vs. Sega blunder was the biggest I can think of. The Saturn was a great system. Sure, it couldn't do 3D as well as the Playstation, but 3D in general sucked for that entire generation, with few exceptions. 2D games looked great, and there was a lot of untapped potential to continue the trend of better and better looking 2D games. And no console in that generation did 2D as well as the Saturn. Out of the entire generation, the Saturn's 2D games hold up better to the scrutiny of age than most of the popular 3D games of the time. Let's face it, the prettiest parts of Final Fantasy VII were the prerendered backgrounds and the FMV cut scenes.

If the 32x had never happened, and the Saturn was properly supported, we might have seen more done with 2D gaming (which Sony was famously hostile towards) even into the following generation when 3D gaming really matured.

[Cent]

I guess you guys missed the memo, but we like EA since they started publishing new original IPs like Dead Space, Mirror's Edge, Mass Effect, and Brutal Legend.

Dead Space was great. Mirrors Edge not so much, but good try anyway. Brutal Legend didn't strike any chords with me.

EA infuriated me with their chain of lackluster titles after taking over the Command and Conquer franchise. Not only did they recycle it into juvenile trite, but slapped together some poor writing and plot and threw universe consistency to the wind. Of course, then they'd try to feed you the storyline plothole fixup by having you purchase the expansion.... In which you get a 5 second explanations during FMVs, often just saying that so-and-so died before the game events occurred, or that Tiberium underwent a mysterious overnight transformation and that researchers could not come up with any answers. Wow. Lame. By 'filling the gaps' they meant just acknowledging their poorly written inconsistencies in an official FMV.

When they dumped their Tiberium FPS game, I was the happiest guy ever... Finally thinking that they were acknowledging they had no idea how to turn the wheels on this franchise, and that they'd turn their resources to a better investment. No. Then they went and announced CNC4, which is shaping up to be the biggest slap in the face ever. After reusing the SAGE engine to death, you'd think that they'd do something a little more innovative so that they'd maybe fix some of the bugs that has plagued the entire series of games from the beginning. Nope. They don't even support the games much at all, and barely ever release hotfixes, especially when their next title releases in the next half year or so. (They call them hotfixes, but are really patches that get released as quickly as a month after the game breaking bug becomes rampantly exploited.) I'm not sure how many personal apologies were given out by EA directors... I lost count.

Of course, thats not where the hatred stems from. MPBT was binned, although it was great. Possibly not EAs fault (could have been Microsoft licensing issues), but we'll never know. Their sport series basically got farted on PC, since they basically went 4 years in reverse as they began to prominently code for consoles and just port the stuff over back to PC. BF2 got the worst milking mod sequel ever in the form of BF2142 (which Tiberium basically looked identical to... Except more post-apocalyptic).

Tech Support has always been terrible. Ive had EA games just flat out BREAK on me when you update to their latest patch. Rewind the patch one update and it works fine again. EA recognizes the problem as legitimate and claims they will locate and solve the bug by the next patch which should be a few weeks. A few months pass, and if you're lucky, a new patch does come out. However, it does nothing to fix the problem, and still fails to load the game. By this time, EA has entirely forgotten about the minority of people screwed out of playing and have just moved on with their current demographic, until the next game in the series is properly hyped and released. And have you been to the EA boards? Sure, EA gets a lot of flak for being EA... But their mods are the most egotistical smart asses ever, forever defending over-hyped future releases with statements of 'You haven't played it so you can't criticize it (but you can sure join in on the hype bandwagon)' or 'Make your own game before criticizing ours.' Bwuuhhhhhhhhhhh???????????????????? I'm not even going to get into how that logic fails so miserably. And you know what, I don't blame the mods. They NEED to do that as a part of their job. Heck, a friend of mine on their boards became mod, but essentially lost his freedom to opinion because of it. He had to remain 'optimistically neutral' regardless of previous personal opinion. And have you even tried to use EAlink, their online distribution system? It's slow, unoptimized, prone to catastrophic fault on delivery and game execution, and frequently inaccessible (which you need to do to play your games, btw... Since there is no CD to check, you have to connect online to do checks) with some of the slowest support teams I've seen for what is supposed to be a 24/7 online service.

For every game that EA does make that is new and actually something interesting, they've got 10 others just milking the same mold. And I don't mean continuing a franchise, because that's perfectly fine. But if you continue the same franchise (or even a set of franchises within the same genre) with the same engine, same gameplay elements that we've seen in a previous installment or a direct competitor's recent game... That's just a waste of my $50. I love the Playstation, but even I looked down in shame when the PS3 tried to mimic the Wii's remote gimmick. That's what EA is like with most of their games: a cheap copy cat but with a overpriced price tag and support teams with cotton in their ears.

[shiroikaze]

I guess you guys missed the memo, but we like EA since they started publishing new original IPs like Dead Space, Mirror's Edge, Mass Effect, and Brutal Legend. We also appreciate that they've slowly been dialing back on DRM for their PC titles, referring to the rampant piracy of the Sims 3 as "downloading a big demo."

If you need to know where to redirect your hatred, the answer is Activision, mostly for their continued exploitation of existing IP, often without the original developers (Guitar Hero, Call of Duty), but also for their unwillingness to publish games that don't fit with their IP-whoring model. At one time or another, Activision was supposed to be the publisher for Ghostbusters, Brutal Legend, and Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena. I'm honestly surprised they hung onto Prototype.

EA has undergone a transformation and for the better, but it still doesn't mean they have thrown away all things less-positive associated with their name. I feel Activision is no different.

[wolfx]

I thought the reason it looked worse on the PS3 was the PS3's RAM limitation?

Either way, the 360 is a much more popular, and therefore more profitable, console to develop for. So game developer's hands are tied if they want to make the money. Not a blunder to put your effort where it will show the biggest payoff.

That's more or less what I heard too.

While I'm not denying that I've seen some great-looking PS3 games, I haven't actually seen any that make me stand up and say, "Yes, the PS3 is clearly more powerful than the Xbox 360!" Multi-platform games are 90% of the time identical, and when they're not RAM limits or shoddy porting on the admittedly-more-difficult-to-program-for have the PS3 version getting the short end of the stick more often than you see a well-programmed port that really takes advantage of the PS3's hardware. That's not exactly what I'd call "dumbing down to fit in the Xbox 360." If anything, it's the other way around.

yeah, it's not because they "dumbed it down" but because the PS3 memory structure limited the size of the textures they could use.

Hmmm...was this from later reports cause i read the opposite from lensoftruth which interviewed the developers. They mentioned they couldn't take advantage of the PS3's 8-9 processors and had to design it for the XBOX360's dual processors and port it over to the PS3 which ironically ended up fugly probably due to to the shoddy load balancing.

The irony was the developers marketed the game to take full advantage of the PS3 system (not the 360) but it ended up looking like the opposite.

I don't know about the RAM issue....and it sounds ludricious that the PS3 has less RAM than the 360....though sometimes i do wonder why games like "inFamous" have alot of "jumping in" for sprites.

[shiroikaze]

I don't know about the RAM issue....and it sounds ludricious that the PS3 has less RAM than the 360....though sometimes i do wonder why games like "inFamous" have alot of "jumping in" for sprites.

360 has 512mb of RAM shared, whereas the PS3 I believe is 256mb RAM and 256mb VRAM. Someone correct me if I'm wrong though.

[eugimon]

Hmmm...was this from later reports cause i read the opposite from lensoftruth which interviewed the developers. They mentioned they couldn't take advantage of the PS3's 8-9 processors and had to design it for the XBOX360's dual processors and port it over to the PS3 which ironically ended up fugly probably due to to the shoddy load balancing.

The irony was the developers marketed the game to take full advantage of the PS3 system (not the 360) but it ended up looking like the opposite.

I don't know about the RAM issue....and it sounds ludricious that the PS3 has less RAM than the 360....though sometimes i do wonder why games like "inFamous" have alot of "jumping in" for sprites.

I dunno where or when I read it but it was after the game had shipped or had gone gold and they had a bunch of screen shots illustrating where they had to use lower res textures on the PS3. The article made it pretty clear that it was due to the way the PS3 handled memory that was the culprit.

[mikeszekely]

Hmmm...was this from later reports cause i read the opposite from lensoftruth which interviewed the developers. They mentioned they couldn't take advantage of the PS3's 8-9 processors and had to design it for the XBOX360's dual processors and port it over to the PS3 which ironically ended up fugly probably due to to the shoddy load balancing.

But here's the thing... the PS3 doesn't have 8-9 processors, and the Xbox 360 doesn't have "dual processors." The Cell is a single Power Processing Element (aka the main CPU) with 8 Synergistic Processing Elements served up on a single chip. And, if I recall correctly, developers are limited to using only seven SPEs because at the time they were starting to manufacture the PS3, it was assumed that some SPEs would be duds.

The Xbox 360 uses a processor called the Xenon, which is sort of like three modified PPEs on one chip.

[wolfx]

360 has 512mb of RAM shared, whereas the PS3 I believe is 256mb RAM and 256mb VRAM. Someone correct me if I'm wrong though.

Shouldn't VRAM be dynamically scalable? But even if that's the case, i'm not sure why other games don't have this problem with textures but Ghostbusters does. Don't really accept the explanation.

But here's the thing... the PS3 doesn't have 8-9 processors, and the Xbox 360 doesn't have "dual processors." The Cell is a single Power Processing Element (aka the main CPU) with 8 Synergistic Processing Elements served up on a single chip. And, if I recall correctly, developers are limited to using only seven SPEs because at the time they were starting to manufacture the PS3, it was assumed that some SPEs would be duds.

The Xbox 360 uses a processor called the Xenon, which is sort of like three modified PPEs on one chip.

Sorry , you may be right and i don't really know what's the actual technical mumbo jumbo names. But yeah the gist of what i read was PS3 had 8 whatchamacallits and 360s had less than that, so they scaled down the game, and that's why PS3 version of Ghostbusters sucks.

[shiroikaze]

And, if I recall correctly, developers are limited to using only seven SPEs because at the time they were starting to manufacture the PS3, it was assumed that some SPEs would be duds.

Whooops. Reading up the wiki, six are accessible to devs, the seventh is mainly reserved for the PS3's OS... and the eighth is just there for improving production yields?

Edited July 29, 2009 by shiroikaze

[eugimon]

Shouldn't VRAM be dynamically scalable? But even if that's the case, i'm not sure why other games don't have this problem with textures but Ghostbusters does. Don't really accept the explanation.

Sorry , you may be right and i don't really know what's the actual technical mumbo jumbo names. But yeah the gist of what i read was PS3 had 8 whatchamacallits and 360s had less than that, so they scaled down the game, and that's why PS3 version of Ghostbusters sucks.

here's what the developer said;

Instead of leaving it up to internet Matlocks, we asked Terminal Reality to comment on the controversy. A spokesperson for the developer told us, "For the record, the PS3 version [of Ghostbusters] is softer due to the 'quincunx' antialiasing filter and the fact we render at about 75% the resolution of the 360 version. So you cannot directly compare a screen shot of one to the other unless you scale them properly. The PS3 does have less available RAM than the 360 – but we managed to squeeze 3 out of 4 textures as full size on the PS3."

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/06/17/ghostbus...loper-explains/

So I think you got taken in by the Terminal Reality hype machine... that is, they talk a good game but couldn't deliver and instead of owning up to the fact that they suck for developing on the PS3 they blamed it on the 360... even though pretty much every other current crossplatform game looks identical and games like uncharted 2 and gears of war 2 show that each system is capable of delivering similar "wow" graphics.

Edited July 29, 2009 by eugimon

[Ladic]

X-Com sequels

[mikeszekely]

Shouldn't VRAM be dynamically scalable? But even if that's the case, i'm not sure why other games don't have this problem with textures but Ghostbusters does. Don't really accept the explanation.

Sorry , you may be right and i don't really know what's the actual technical mumbo jumbo names. But yeah the gist of what i read was PS3 had 8 whatchamacallits and 360s had less than that, so they scaled down the game, and that's why PS3 version of Ghostbusters sucks.

That would depend on a bit of factors. But as far as I know, not in this case... the Cell has 256MB dedicated to it for system use, and the RSX has 256MB dedicated to it for graphics, and neither can use the other's, while the Xbox 360 just has 512MB of RAM that is used for both system and graphics.

I read the same article you did at lens of truth, and while they talk about reducing the number of objects on screen at a given moment to keep things in line with the 360's capabilities, they were also implying that the final versions would be equal. Clearly that's not the case.

If the differences in the way each console's RAM is set up, doesn't explain it, perhaps its worth pointing out that the RSX has 24 pixel-shader pipelines and 8 vertex shader pipelines (32 total pipelines), and the custom ATI job in the 360 has 48 pipelines that can be used for either pixel shaders or vertex shaders. So maybe the PS3 could have had more objects on screen or rendered more polygons, but maybe the Xbox 360 does a better job of filling in textures?

[DJ Loe Kee]

here's what the developer said;

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/06/17/ghostbus...loper-explains/

So I think you got taken in by the Terminal Reality hype machine... that is, they talk a good game but couldn't deliver and instead of owning up to the fact that they suck for developing on the PS3 they blamed it on the 360... even though pretty much every other current crossplatform game looks identical and games like uncharted 2 and gears of war 2 show that each system is capable of delivering similar "wow" graphics.

and i want to add on that maybe they rushed it to market to soon and maybe (with an emphasis on maybe depending on if the programmers had already hit their programming talent wall) it could have looked better if they had delayed it for 6-9 months and fixed the graphical problems on the ps3.

[wolfx]

here's what the developer said;

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/06/17/ghostbus...loper-explains/

So I think you got taken in by the Terminal Reality hype machine... that is, they talk a good game but couldn't deliver and instead of owning up to the fact that they suck for developing on the PS3 they blamed it on the 360... even though pretty much every other current crossplatform game looks identical and games like uncharted 2 and gears of war 2 show that each system is capable of delivering similar "wow" graphics.

Thanks for the link. I like the quote:

Mr. Leadbetter: it's like "time-warping back to the dawn of PS3 development

The excuse to blame the 360 is really unacceptable. I'm sure they could do it in such a way that th whatchamacallit quincunx should render well on the PS3 but meh.

That would depend on a bit of factors. But as far as I know, not in this case... the Cell has 256MB dedicated to it for system use, and the RSX has 256MB dedicated to it for graphics, and neither can use the other's, while the Xbox 360 just has 512MB of RAM that is used for both system and graphics.

I read the same article you did at lens of truth, and while they talk about reducing the number of objects on screen at a given moment to keep things in line with the 360's capabilities, they were also implying that the final versions would be equal. Clearly that's not the case.

If the differences in the way each console's RAM is set up, doesn't explain it, perhaps its worth pointing out that the RSX has 24 pixel-shader pipelines and 8 vertex shader pipelines (32 total pipelines), and the custom ATI job in the 360 has 48 pipelines that can be used for either pixel shaders or vertex shaders. So maybe the PS3 could have had more objects on screen or rendered more polygons, but maybe the Xbox 360 does a better job of filling in textures?

Forgive me if i don't understand most of what you're saying But i think we all agree that this qualifies as a video game company blunder.

[anime52k8]

But here's the thing... the PS3 doesn't have 8-9 processors, and the Xbox 360 doesn't have "dual processors." The Cell is a single Power Processing Element (aka the main CPU) with 8 Synergistic Processing Elements served up on a single chip. And, if I recall correctly, developers are limited to using only seven SPEs because at the time they were starting to manufacture the PS3, it was assumed that some SPEs would be duds.

The Xbox 360 uses a processor called the Xenon, which is sort of like three modified PPEs on one chip.

IIRC, the Xbox has a 3 core Processer, which like you mentioned is a single chip with 3 PPE's (which are functionally independent processors). Aditionally, the 360's processor has dual-threading which allows it to function as if it were a less powerful processor with 6p PPE's.

The PS3 has a single PPE with the same performance as one core on the 360's processor. It then has 8 SPE's which are very simplified processors that suplament the Main PPE. The main difference between an SPE and a PPE is that the PPE can freely access all the systems RAM on it's own, an SPE cannot access RAM unless it's allocated to it by the PPE.

Now one of the cell's is permanently disabled in order to increase silicon yield during production and one cell is dedicated full time to running the PS3's OS. part of a 3rd cell is used to run the OS as well, but it can be re-tasked to running a game if needed. so developers actually have access to 6 Cells and the Main PPE.

but in relation to the whole Ghostbusters thing, the processors have nothing to do with it, the problem is with the fact that the Xbox has a better Graphics card.

[Radd]

X-Com sequels

True enough. The second game was ok. X-Com with uglier sprites. I could deal, tho. After that, every game was a mess.

Add the Master of Orion sequels in that category, too. The first game is genius, simple and addictive. I'd have games that lasted weeks, and other times I'd spend most of a day blowing through a game and starting again.

The sequels just kept adding more micromanagement, making things more complex and unintuitive. Took all the fun right out of the concept. I'd kill for a clone of the original game ported to the DS or iPhone. Maybe just pretty up the graphics a little, add more customization options to the races and ships? The gameplay of the first game was just perfection.

[Wanzerfan]

And to add to the pile of sh*t that was Advent Rising...

Boy, did Majecso really screw that one up. Not only did they mess up the game, they clusterf'd the million dollar sweepstakes.

[kaiotheforsaken]

I actually enjoyed Advent Rising to a certain degree. While I don't know which version you played, the PC one had much nicer controls overall vs the console version. Still it wasn't perfect by any means. I mainly played through it since the story was penned by Orson Scott Card.

Now a real stinker was Too Human. I wanted that game to be good, I was intrigued by everything about it, but the controls killed it within the first 45 minutes.

[CoryHolmes]

Now a real stinker was Too Human. I wanted that game to be good, I was intrigued by everything about it, but the controls killed it within the first 45 minutes.

While the controls took some getting used to, the part about Too Human that drove me nuts is that the gameworld was so large and expansive in the promotional materials and manual, but very little of that got into the game itself. A good example is the Valiants that helped out on the later levels. In the pre-release infodumps, they got backgrounds and explanations and a reason to be there. In the game itself... none of that was given. They simply dropped out of the sky with no explanation and I was left going, "Wha...?"

[chrisk]

True enough. The second game was ok. X-Com with uglier sprites. I could deal, tho. After that, every game was a mess.

Add the Master of Orion sequels in that category, too. The first game is genius, simple and addictive. I'd have games that lasted weeks, and other times I'd spend most of a day blowing through a game and starting again.

Whoa! X-com Apocalypse is a blunder? I liked that game as a whole, though it definitely had its quirks. It's that ridiculously hard Terror From The Deep that didn't sit too well with me. And that ending...

I think the biggest blunder here is Microprose believing they could branch out the X-com franchise to a Space-sim and an FPS... Sorta like when Westwood Studios thought the C&C franchise could be made into a FPS. Don't get me wrong, Renegade was OK, but... you get my drift.

EA infuriated me with their chain of lackluster titles after taking over the Command and Conquer franchise. Not only did they recycle it into juvenile trite, but slapped together some poor writing and plot and threw universe consistency to the wind. Of course, then they'd try to feed you the storyline plothole fixup by having you purchase the expansion.... In which you get a 5 second explanations during FMVs, often just saying that so-and-so died before the game events occurred, or that Tiberium underwent a mysterious overnight transformation and that researchers could not come up with any answers. Wow. Lame. By 'filling the gaps' they meant just acknowledging their poorly written inconsistencies in an official FMV.

Wasn't EA was in a transition period when they did Kane's Wrath? Something about trying to reconnect with the fans? But yeah, Kane's Wrath's story was fan0fic at its poorest... "New" Titan designs aren't that great either. Though Cent, I'm sure you're excited about Command & Conquer 4! Another blunder, maybe?

[Cent]

Wasn't EA was in a transition period when they did Kane's Wrath? Something about trying to reconnect with the fans? But yeah, Kane's Wrath's story was fan0fic at its poorest... "New" Titan designs aren't that great either. Though Cent, I'm sure you're excited about Command & Conquer 4! Another blunder, maybe?

It definitely is another blunder. Inconsistent with the universe. Misuse of existing characters. No more base building. No more teching. DOW1-type population caps. Mandatory persistent experience system (mix of DOW2 and DOTA). No more Construction Yards. Supposed to conclude universe, but god knows how they'll do it with the apocalyptic plotholes they have now. I'm not half as angry about it though, since I'm not going to be suckered into buying it like the first one.

[JB0]

Whooops. Reading up the wiki, six are accessible to devs, the seventh is mainly reserved for the PS3's OS... and the eighth is just there for improving production yields?

Since you put a ? on the end, I assume that doesn't make sense and shall attempt to explain.

The disabled coprocessor wasn't ADDED to improve yields. It was DISABLED to improve yields.

The original PS3 design called for all 8 coprocessors to be enabled. But they had a very high failure rate on Cells.

Assuming one would be defective increased their yield dramatically, since they could disable the defect instead of throwing the entire chip out. It didn't do any good if the defect landed on the CPU portion, but they no longer needed all the coprocessors to come out right.

Does that extra coprocessor make more sense now?

This is actually a common practice in the CPU industry. Back in the ancient prehistor of of 1992, the 486SX wasn't a separate chip from the regular 486. They were regular 486es with defective floating-point coprocessors. So Intel disabled the FPU and sold it as a cheaper component*.

More recently, AMD's 3-core Athlon64s are actually quad-core parts where one core failed.

And both AMD and Intel offer parts with two different cache sizes. The smaller-cache parts are the same as the larger-cache parts, but one half of the cache failed. So they disable the bad cache and sell the processor as a lower-spec part.

*(Once the yield on 486es went up and FPU failures became less common, the 486SX WAS a separate part that didn't have an FPU at all, but that's another story)

IIRC, the Xbox has a 3 core Processer, which like you mentioned is a single chip with 3 PPE's (which are functionally independent processors). Aditionally, the 360's processor has dual-threading which allows it to function as if it were a less powerful processor with 6p PPE's.

The PS3 has a single PPE with the same performance as one core on the 360's processor. It then has 8 SPE's which are very simplified processors that suplament the Main PPE. The main difference between an SPE and a PPE is that the PPE can freely access all the systems RAM on it's own, an SPE cannot access RAM unless it's allocated to it by the PPE.

The MAIN difference is actually that the Cell's extra "processors" aren't really full-fledged processors. They are coprocessors optimized for certain types of complex math, that can ONLY perform those specific complex math functions.

Not coincidentally, the forms of math they are good at are the same kinds of math that modern video chipsets process*. It's very useful for graphical effects, but not so useful for general game logic.

*(In fact, nVidia offers provision for using their graphics chipsets in supercomputers for precisely that reason. The specialized design of graphics processors means they can run these complex math problems MUCH faster than traditional processors.)

The 360's three processor cores are all full-fledged processors, much like a dual-core processor on a modern PC.

This gives it more general processing power, but less complex math power.

The end result is the 360 is more powerful in some respects, but the PS3 is more powerful in others. Which is superior depends on what you're trying to do.

As I understand things, the 360 design offers more of the kind of power which is useful to game logic, while the PS3 offers more of the kind which is useful for graphical effects.

Edited July 30, 2009 by JB0

[shiroikaze]

@JB0: I did thought it was odd that AMD released triple-cores recently, but thanks alot, that does make sense. Not to mention, I was thinking in terms of performance rather than actual production. :doh:

[David Hingtgen]

Yeah, I was wondering where the tri-cores came from too.

[Einherjar]

Anything involving a blue or black hedgehog by Sega for the last couple of years.

[VT 1010]

Sega releasing games in those huge and fragile CD cases. They just break so easily...

I also think Nintendo canceling the Virtual Boy was another blunder.

[shiroikaze]

I'm suddenly reminded,

why the hell is the PC version of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2... effin' $60?

[Cent]

I'm suddenly reminded,

why the hell is the PC version of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2... effin' $60?

*gasp* the traditional $50 threshold has been broken! Its kinda about time that happened though, even though I'm not happy about it either. The prices for everything else were rising, so it wasn't going to be long before PC games had to take a hit too.

[eugimon]

...

The 360's three processor cores are all full-fledged processors, much like a dual-core processor on a modern PC.

This gives it more general processing power, but less complex math power.

The end result is the 360 is more powerful in some respects, but the PS3 is more powerful in others. Which is superior depends on what you're trying to do.

As I understand things, the 360 design offers more of the kind of power which is useful to game logic, while the PS3 offers more of the kind which is useful for graphical effects.

Carmack says Rage runs 60 fps on the 360 and 20-30 on the PS3... if Carmack is having problems getting the PS3 to reach parity with the 360...

"just 20-30fps" on Sony's console. Carmack places the blame on the PS3's GPU -- the RSX -- saying that, "The rasterizer is just a little bit slower -- no two ways about that...the RSX is slower than what we have in the 360." He sees both consoles as being comparable in terms of raw processing power, however. "The CPU is about the same, but the 360 makes it easier to split things off," he told the magazine. "...that's what a lot of the work has been, splitting it all into jobs on the PS3."

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/07/30/edge-rag...o-30fps-on-ps3/

[Vostok 7]

Daikatana comes to mind.

'Nuff said.

Vostok 7

[eugimon]

Daikatana comes to mind.

'Nuff said.

Vostok 7

Daikatana wasn't Carmack it was Romero... they used a modified Quake II engine but that it sucked is hardly Carmack's fault.