Effort to outsell? Yeah, that's the business world. Honestly though - let's look at how the game played out so far. Microsoft sucker-punched Sony and they took the bait hard. Let's review.
1. MS wanted to take out at least a 20% market share on their next generation box, the 360. 2. So they leveraged their PC hardware contacts and built the best system they could manufacture based on current technology. 3. Sony, never one to be outdone on a hardware platform, went and built something so advanced it couldn't even be reliably manufactured for the first two years. This meant they were selling $2000 hardware for $600 and being crapped on by consumers for price-gouging. Not an enviable position to be in.
The result? Nintendo pulled a ninja miracle by betting on the wii and XBox 360 has ridden high for 18 months now as the top-end enthusiast system; problems be damned.
Now MS is cruising on easy-upgrades and yeah, PS3 still has the better hardware. No one is going to pretend an octacore system doesn't just destroy the 360's performance. Then again, if we're talking 2010, then we're talking about 38nm octacore. Intel has been showing them off already at trade shows and they scream.
So MS is doing what it's good at - sustaining technology upgrades - while developing the next generation systems for 2010. The whole competition will come down to who can get the best price to performance ratio: Intel or IBM.
An effort to reduce manufacturing and refurb costs. The current Falcon chipset is much more reliable, these 16% failure rates we are still hearing about are the older chipsets still overheating.
If the PS3 hardware is so much better for at least playing games, how come none of the games look any better than the 360's? In fact, most of the multiplatform games look better on the 360. Having a monster CPU doesn't necesarily translate to a better gaming system. There's a lot more to it than that.
The cell as designed is an octocore system but as utilized in the PS3 it is only a 7 core system. While the cell is a great multimedia chip, it's usefulness for actual game play and RAM pooling issues mean we have yet to see how much potential the system has from a graphics standpoint btw the 360 is running three cores that each process 2 threads per core thus making the 360 virtually a 6 core system.
Alright getting technical, One PPE and 8 SPE with 1 SPE disabled to increase production yield. The thing is the PPE in the Cell's architecture primary purpose is to coordinate the SPEs.
"If the PS3 hardware is so much better for at least playing games, how come none of the games look any better than the 360's? "
If you believe that, you haven't seen a PS3 in action. Heavenly Sword & Gran Turismo 5: Prologue beg to differ. If you can't tell those two games look better than anything on the 360, you're in denial.
Geez, testy. I'm actually a Microsoft fan for lots of reasons that don't belong in this thread.
Thank you for correcting my mis-understanding. I haven't read a white paper on the cell chip in several years. My point had more to do with MS strategy to make Sony over-extend (brilliant) than with the finer technical details of the chip. If I wanted to be a bastard I'd say something about technical vs executive job skills here but I'm also feeling charitable.
My apologies for getting the technical details of the cell chip a little off.
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An effort to outsell the PS3 again..?
Effort to outsell? Yeah, that's the business world. Honestly though - let's look at how the game played out so far. Microsoft sucker-punched Sony and they took the bait hard. Let's review.
1. MS wanted to take out at least a 20% market share on their next generation box, the 360.
2. So they leveraged their PC hardware contacts and built the best system they could manufacture based on current technology.
3. Sony, never one to be outdone on a hardware platform, went and built something so advanced it couldn't even be reliably manufactured for the first two years. This meant they were selling $2000 hardware for $600 and being crapped on by consumers for price-gouging. Not an enviable position to be in.
The result? Nintendo pulled a ninja miracle by betting on the wii and XBox 360 has ridden high for 18 months now as the top-end enthusiast system; problems be damned.
Now MS is cruising on easy-upgrades and yeah, PS3 still has the better hardware. No one is going to pretend an octacore system doesn't just destroy the 360's performance. Then again, if we're talking 2010, then we're talking about 38nm octacore. Intel has been showing them off already at trade shows and they scream.
So MS is doing what it's good at - sustaining technology upgrades - while developing the next generation systems for 2010. The whole competition will come down to who can get the best price to performance ratio: Intel or IBM.
It should be fun to watch.
An effort to reduce manufacturing and refurb costs. The current Falcon chipset is much more reliable, these 16% failure rates we are still hearing about are the older chipsets still overheating.
If the PS3 hardware is so much better for at least playing games, how come none of the games look any better than the 360's? In fact, most of the multiplatform games look better on the 360. Having a monster CPU doesn't necesarily translate to a better gaming system. There's a lot more to it than that.
The cell as designed is an octocore system but as utilized in the PS3 it is only a 7 core system. While the cell is a great multimedia chip, it's usefulness for actual game play and RAM pooling issues mean we have yet to see how much potential the system has from a graphics standpoint
btw the 360 is running three cores that each process 2 threads per core thus making the 360 virtually a 6 core system.
Alright getting technical, One PPE and 8 SPE with 1 SPE disabled to increase production yield. The thing is the PPE in the Cell's architecture primary purpose is to coordinate the SPEs.
You're good dude, I was talking to Ian.
"No one is going to pretend an octacore system doesn't just destroy the 360's performance."
Ian, 90 percent of the time the PS3 does NOT outperform the Xbox 360 in the CPU department, so your statement just went to hell.
Not to mention the fact the the Xbox 360 already uses a better GPU...
@ Scoobydoo
"If the PS3 hardware is so much better for at least playing games, how come none of the games look any better than the 360's? "
If you believe that, you haven't seen a PS3 in action. Heavenly Sword & Gran Turismo 5: Prologue beg to differ. If you can't tell those two games look better than anything on the 360, you're in denial.
Geez, testy. I'm actually a Microsoft fan for lots of reasons that don't belong in this thread.
Thank you for correcting my mis-understanding. I haven't read a white paper on the cell chip in several years. My point had more to do with MS strategy to make Sony over-extend (brilliant) than with the finer technical details of the chip. If I wanted to be a bastard I'd say something about technical vs executive job skills here but I'm also feeling charitable.
My apologies for getting the technical details of the cell chip a little off.