....PS3 in 2007???XBOX2 in 2005??

I actually think hype is more dangerous than actual PS3 substance.

Hype can indeed be a very dangerous thing, espically considering the power Hype plays in the uniformed mainstream consumer. DC had an amazing game title line up yet, every mainstream yuppie I talked to at the time was bragging how much better ps2 was going to be, it would make coffee and toast in the morning, etc...However I’m glad MS is bringing out the XBOX2 before ps3, I too believe that this is there best shot at grabbing hold of the next gen market segment.

All I care is if XBOX will hook up to my PC, and lets me plug in a mouse, plus hook it up to my Monitor, if XBOX2 can do this I"M SOLD.

I think MS is a huge company who knows exactly what they doing.

No doubt they\'ve learned quite a bit in the subsequent three years and I can only hope it\'s enough to launch a successful Xbox 2.  

The one thing they seem to be slow on picking up is that they need a lineup of exclusive killer games, more than that they need a steady flow of them.  MS\'s first party efforts have been less than adequate and it will always hold them back until they deliver a higher quality of games.  In other words, don\'t give me Blinx or Azurik as my platformers when I can play Jak & Daxter or Ratchet & Clank.  it feels wrong to even compare them  

Third party support is important and I think MS has done a good job, finally getting EA support will do good things for Xbox and their Live service.  I can only assume EA will continue with Xbox 2.  Several developers have started to work on Xbox 2, a full 17 months ahead of the rumored release date.  The eagerness to start indicates they are excited to jump into the next generation, and on Xbox 2.  

It\'s already been commented that Xbox 2 will be difficult to develop for, MS needs to make sure that the developers have all the tools and support needed to create their line up of games.  XNA has garnered alot of attention from the development community inlcuding Square so there is always a chance things could turn around, however unlikely they are.  Unfortunately I don\'t think MS will ever be successful in Japan and the big box will continue to lose the heavy weight titles to Sony.  

Can MS take on Sony?  I think so...

The first generation of Xbox 2 games have to be a cut above of what any of the current consoles can offer, in terms of graphics and gameplay, otherwise consumers won\'t budge.  I\'m confident MS knows this and that the Xbox 2 will have what it takes to deliver.  What\'s more important is that there has to be a steady release of top notch games between the Xbox 2 release and the PS3 launch, don\'t give gamers a reason to anticipate the PS3 any more than they already will be.

[clips]

i still don\'t know how to quickquote!  anyway i agree with everything you said ginks, but i didn\'t think xbox2 would be difficult to develop for...

It has to do with the new architecture, some people have compared it to PS2.  It has to do with multi-threading or something like that.  I\'m not a techy so I couldn\'t even begin to tell you about it.

I\'m not sure what you mean by quick quote...I always copy then paste what I want in between quote tags.

I don\'t believe for one second ps3 will launch in 07 it will surface in 06.

I don\'t believe for one second ps3 will launch in 07 it will surface in 06.

I thought the same however after reading quite a bit of general information I\'m starting to think differently.  The cell processor itself, not to mention all the plans Sony has for it, is quite ambitious.  Sony\'s spending billions of dollars on research and development, they aren\'t going to release it until it\'s ready.  

Cosidering that they said PS2 hasn\'t even hit its\' peak yet I wouldn\'t be suprised at a later launch date.

Originally posted by clips
i still don\'t know how to quickquote!  anyway i agree with everything you said ginks, but i didn\'t think xbox2 would be difficult to develop for...

That\'s basically because Microsoft\'s marketing at XNA. Reality though, is that the game development is going through a steady growth: projects are getting larger, more ambigious, more complex and more expensive. Animators and level designers will have to deal with more data, much more.

On the other hand, Xbox2 seems to be quite a complex peace of hardware. As of yet, the hardware is still more or less unknown. We do know however that it\'s a very custom design, featurung 3 double core IBM CPUs and somewhere in there, you have the ATi designed GPU (which will be something between a R500, possibly with features of a R600). It will be interesting how much XNA will abststract the hardware and make it easier for developers. On the other hand, as I said, XNA won\'t reduce the amount of art-assets and the work level-designers and all those people will have to do.

Microsoft is a software company: of cours they\'re promoting their software as their strength (XNA). Sony is a hardware company. It\'s obvious their promoting their strength, which is hardware (CELL).

In short: development is always going to get harder. Creating content will be the biggest challenge though.

doesnt matter I bought my xbox with the warranty with BEST BUY and apparently according to the contract if a newer version comes out during the PSP period they will replace my xbox with newer version CHA CHING...

after XNA being a major point brought up in this thread, here\'s a good read for those that still see XNA purely as a way to make development easier:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?section_name=pub&aid=3489

some quotes for the lazy:

Of course, it\'s easy to see why Allard, and the rest of Microsoft, would be keen on a market model in which they simply created a reference design and let others take care of the actual manufacture of consoles. After all, the company has lost billions of dollars on the Xbox to date, largely because of the significant loss it takes on every hardware unit it sells; and it is seemingly coming around to the idea that it isn\'t a hardware company after all. It would prefer to design the specification, let others do the hard work of building and selling the systems, and then rake in profit from the software sales. However, third party hardware manufacturers won\'t sell hardware at a loss. The change required to the business model of the games industry to accommodate this would be huge - and may indeed be entirely unfeasible, as outlined above.

XNA is presented by Allard as a technology which will allow games to operate across a wide range of devices; a basic genome which will link a whole menagerie of gaming devices and experiences. When he talks about it, he sounds convincing; but when XNA is boiled down to its most basic, the whole thing appears less exciting - and potentially more interesting, in fact.

XNA is designed as a framework to make Xbox 2 more easy to develop for. It has applications beyond Xbox 2, of course, since Microsoft is also providing it for PC developers, but it\'s Xbox 2 that is the core of the matter here. The raison d\'etre for XNA, in a nutshell, is that Xbox 2 is going to be incredibly tough to develop for; with a six-processor design which will require game developers to start worrying about multi-threading and other such concepts in their code, all ideas which are completely alien to the development process as it stands.

On one level, XNA will help slightly by providing standard, familiar DirectX style interfaces to programmers on Xbox 2, but that will make very little odds to the actual complexity of coding for the system. More importantly, it is likely that XNA will form a framework for a whole set of technologies - such as RenderWare, or Havok physics - which will be supplied in multi-threaded, or thread-safe, form to developers, allowing them to take advantage of the multi-CPU design of Xbox 2 more easily.

and finally

Allard\'s future vision is compelling, there\'s no doubt, but it\'s also highly idealised and parts of it are in desperate need of more detailed explanation; or perhaps of more detailed thought. The actual effect on Xbox 2 of his projections will be minimal, perhaps even none; it would seem that he is thinking more in terms of the following generation, or even beyond that.

It\'s also telling that Microsoft\'s gameplan now differs substantially from Sony\'s. Sony wants to own the market from end to end; it is happiest with a vision of a future where it owns the content creation platform (Cell workstations), the content delivery system (UMD and Blu-Ray discs), the content platform (PS3, PSX3, PSP) and much of the software market (Sony Pictures, Sony Music, SCE\'s publishing divisions). Microsoft wants to be a software company, providing a reference design and games.

There\'s probably only room for one of those models in the games industry. The coming decade of conflict between the two companies can almost certainly have only one winner - and with Allard\'s cards on the table, along with Sony president Nobuyuki Idei\'s, the battle lines are well and truly drawn.

The raison d\'etre for XNA, in a nutshell, is that Xbox 2 is going to be incredibly tough to develop for; with a six-processor design which will require game developers to start worrying about multi-threading and other such concepts in their code, all ideas which are completely alien to the development process as it stands.

How does PS3 compare to this?

I\'ve read that before and it doesn\'t say much, just raises several important questions and some of which probably won\'t apply to this upcoming generation.  

I\'m more interested in the fact that several developers have shown interest in XNA.

I\'ve read that before and it doesn\'t say much, just raises several important questions and some of which probably won\'t apply to this upcoming generation.

The main point of posting it was due to a lack of understanding I noticed surrounding XNA - mainly some people (not you Ginko) seeing XNA as something that will make Xenon software all the more attractive to develop due to it reducing costs, time and effort significantly.

What this article nicely points out is what XNA is and what Microsofts vision is. It goes way beyond just serving as a framework or middleware. The main point is also that it won\'t reduce development costs by a large factor - but will of course make it easier to deal with certain aspects of the hardware.

I remember reading in some other articles that one of its strong points is the basic library which will make it easy to deal with the multiple threads, making the learning curve somewhat easier for new developers to jump in and get sufficiant results.

The more important question however is, how will it compare to what Sony or Nintendo are working on?

How does PS3 compare to this?

Not much is made public on what kind of an API Sony will include for PS3 at this time unfortunately. Sources indicate that they are building software in close alliance with IBM (which has had experience in computer grids and software over quite some time) to make development easier on PS3. It will be complicated, but press also indicates that it will be more like PSP development or PSone (more libraries, better support, some API).

On a more interesting note, it very well seems that PS3 developer kits will be CELL based machines. People that have studies CELL know that it\'s a network processor, not only being scalable in its own entity, but can also draw more performance over hispeed networks.

Imagine the following scenario:

If future game studios buy CELL workstations and hook them up via highspeed network, each and every workstation gets more powerful as it will be able to draw performance over the network from the other workstation that are idle. Think of it like this: during development, the longest and most time consuming task is rendering. Already today this is a problem and development times could already be greatly reduced if these could be reduced. if you\'d have a CELL based network with CELL workstations, every time when a computer needs to render, it just fetches performance over the network and would be able to get an amazing increase in performance. Imagine a huge developer studio with 20 CELL workstations - 19 being idle and one being ready to render? 19x increase in performance?

I\'m sure you all read the visions on having a CELL based TV, a CELL based Radio all hooked up over a network. Well, IMO, I think what Sony is after is CELL workstations. If this turns out to be true and they get the necessary support from Maya, 3d studio max and all the others, this may be the reason to support PS3 and the CELL platform. The benefits would be unbeatable.

Thoughts?

Thoughts?

Sony might rock the gaming industry again.  Then again its\' full potential might never be realized due to lack of support...I doubt this will be the case as this is Sony we\'re talking about.

Just don\'t put MS or Nintendo under, I\'d be extremely upset no matter what my new PS3 could do.

[Jumpman]

Owning a PS is "cool" to everyone so yeah Sony will never lose another console "war" again.

Originally posted by Ginko


I\'m more interested in the fact that several developers have shown interest in XNA. [/B]

after reading seven\'s posts probably developers are interested mainly for developing on PC using XNA.It doesnt mean that they have XBOX2 game development in mind.Probably its just a general interest.