Sunday, May 15, 2005
E3
Bringing out the fanboys in droves ....
Ah the console wars. Every five years the next-generation of consoles is revealed, promising everything but the kitchen sink. I still remember getting excited over the Nintendo 64, pouring over the Spaceworld images, downloading shitty little videos over AOL (yes it was that long ago). So for the longest time I was a nintendo supporter, until I turned 4 and started playing games other than mario. I picked the ps2 over xbox mainly because of the games and controller (aesthetically both are rather ugly).
Being a extreme fanboy is really stupid, and wasting time arguing the merits of each individual system is time lost forever. When you could be doing some scintillating like working or studying or watching Blind Date. My opinion on the whole matter is that these fanboys are either (1) extraordinarily loyal (2) 15 years old or younger (3) mommy only promised them one new console for christmas (ding-ding!). They fail to comprehend this most basic principle. Competition GOOD monopoly BAD!
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Okay here where I throw out some specs like I know what I'm talking about. Blah blah blah blah 940234093 GB of bandwidth, woot! Way too many people writing about shit they don't know about (me included). Why can't John Carmack or Tim Sweeney write something that shuts everyone up.
XBOX 360: Three IBM Power PC cores running at 3.2 GHz and a custom ATI GPU. The latter of which is rather intriguing. It sports 48 unified pipelines, which means any number of pixel/vertex configuration is possible. By comparison the highest end PC cards have 16 pixel pipelines and 6 vertex pipelines. So more than double the number PLUS much more flexible. Sounds great in theory, we'll have to see how developers wrangle with it. There is some disparity between the early screens, Gears of Wars looks amazing, PD0 looks like crap. The dev kits should be better to work with this time around.
10mb embedded DRAM. Which means NO MORE JAGGIES. Which was ultimate pet-peeve for the ps2. For all the EE's power, most of the advanced stuff had to be done in software. The good news for PS3 is that Nvidia is going the GPU which means that AA should be a thing of the past on that platform as well. PS2 also had the problem of the tiny amount of VRAM which meant low-res texture maps. Hence most of the games had the same "look." This should be rectified as well.
Playstation 3: rumored to be more powerful than God.
Coolness: wireless controllers, wireless connectivity built into all machines. Online play. More support for media formats. HD, live, and AA required for all xbox games. Nintendo removing their head from their ass and using a non-proprietary format (DVD).
All this tech stuff is making my head hurt, time for a bottom line. Everything will be more clear after E3. Hopefully X360 can suck in the developers and make use of their headstart. Then Sony might actually have to innovate for once (if the ps3 controller is the same damn controller as the dualshock I'll be disappointed). Nintendo is a wild card, who knows what they have planned. ¶ 4:04 PM
Ah the console wars. Every five years the next-generation of consoles is revealed, promising everything but the kitchen sink. I still remember getting excited over the Nintendo 64, pouring over the Spaceworld images, downloading shitty little videos over AOL (yes it was that long ago). So for the longest time I was a nintendo supporter, until I turned 4 and started playing games other than mario. I picked the ps2 over xbox mainly because of the games and controller (aesthetically both are rather ugly).
Being a extreme fanboy is really stupid, and wasting time arguing the merits of each individual system is time lost forever. When you could be doing some scintillating like working or studying or watching Blind Date. My opinion on the whole matter is that these fanboys are either (1) extraordinarily loyal (2) 15 years old or younger (3) mommy only promised them one new console for christmas (ding-ding!). They fail to comprehend this most basic principle. Competition GOOD monopoly BAD!
--------------------
Okay here where I throw out some specs like I know what I'm talking about. Blah blah blah blah 940234093 GB of bandwidth, woot! Way too many people writing about shit they don't know about (me included). Why can't John Carmack or Tim Sweeney write something that shuts everyone up.
XBOX 360: Three IBM Power PC cores running at 3.2 GHz and a custom ATI GPU. The latter of which is rather intriguing. It sports 48 unified pipelines, which means any number of pixel/vertex configuration is possible. By comparison the highest end PC cards have 16 pixel pipelines and 6 vertex pipelines. So more than double the number PLUS much more flexible. Sounds great in theory, we'll have to see how developers wrangle with it. There is some disparity between the early screens, Gears of Wars looks amazing, PD0 looks like crap. The dev kits should be better to work with this time around.
10mb embedded DRAM. Which means NO MORE JAGGIES. Which was ultimate pet-peeve for the ps2. For all the EE's power, most of the advanced stuff had to be done in software. The good news for PS3 is that Nvidia is going the GPU which means that AA should be a thing of the past on that platform as well. PS2 also had the problem of the tiny amount of VRAM which meant low-res texture maps. Hence most of the games had the same "look." This should be rectified as well.
Playstation 3: rumored to be more powerful than God.
Coolness: wireless controllers, wireless connectivity built into all machines. Online play. More support for media formats. HD, live, and AA required for all xbox games. Nintendo removing their head from their ass and using a non-proprietary format (DVD).
All this tech stuff is making my head hurt, time for a bottom line. Everything will be more clear after E3. Hopefully X360 can suck in the developers and make use of their headstart. Then Sony might actually have to innovate for once (if the ps3 controller is the same damn controller as the dualshock I'll be disappointed). Nintendo is a wild card, who knows what they have planned. ¶ 4:04 PM
