The Next-Gen War has Begun!

[Pai Pai Master]

So, here we are. March 2005. The most exciting battle in the video game industry has begun it's next cycle: the battle of the next generation video game consoles.

Before was simple talk and confrontation. However, the ultimatum, Game Developer's Conference, has sprung the first move: console announcements.

Who made their moves? Microsoft and Nintendo announced their next consoles publicly. Sony announced its console in a closed room open only to a select few. Microsoft one this first move quite massively, as we the public now have most of the specs of the Xbox's successor, currently codenamed the "Xbox 2."

Here are the specs and details for Microsoft's new console:

Processor: Three (3) CPU cores, all running at 3.0 GHz.
Graphics: One GPU developed by ATI, codenamed "Fudo." The Fudo is one complete generation beyond current generation cards, in comparison to the ATI X800. The Fudo's clock speed is a massive 500 MHz, is compatible with DirectX 9 and DirectX 10, and supports Shader 3.0
System Memory: 256 MB of system RAM. In comparison, the currect Xbox carries only 64 MB of RAM.
Format - Xbox 2 will use Dual-Layer DVD9 discs, the same format as Xbox. The drive will run at a higher 12x speed.
Removable Storage - Xbox 2 will support up to 64 - 1,024 MB memory cards.
Hard Drive - Xbox 2 will support an optional Hard Drive. Actual space of drive is undetermined, but it has been confirmed that 2 GB of space will be designated towards system use. Microsoft actually lost money on every Xbox console they made because of the Hard Drive. Microsoft is planning to only allow HD users to play Xbox games on their Xbox 2.
Controllers - Xbox 2 will support 2 controllers, with an additional USB port on the back of the system. Unfortunately, this seems to rule out the possibilty that Xbox 2 First Person Shooters like Halo 3 will support keyboard/mouse use, unless Third Party developers create some sort of keyboard and mouse which connect to the controller port. The Xbox 2 will have built-in support for wireless controllers.
Additional Features - The Xbox 2 comes with a 1.2 Megapixel digital camera, for use in player profiles, video capture, and possibly "Eyetoy"-like gameplay. The system also supports wireless networking out of the box.

Microsoft is pulling all the stops on multiplayer with the Xbox 2, demanding that all developers make multiplayer games compatible with Xbox Live. Special features for Xbox Live are also being created, such as a massive database for gamer profiles, to allow for easiest matching with similar gamers.



Nintendo didn't announce nearly as much about the Revolution as Microsoft did about their system, but a few details were made public. The Nintendo Revolution will support WiFi and networking out of the box. Many people have been worried that the Nintendo Revolution, in all it's "revolutionary glory," would not be nearly as powerful as other consoles in terms of visual quality and processing power. However, in multiple interviews, Nintendo of America Sales and Marketing Vice President Reggie Fils-Aime has stated, when asked about the powerful specs of the Xbox 2, that "a stronger processor and great graphics card is just the price of entry," hinting that the Revolution could very well be even more powerful than the Xbox 2.



Which leaves us with with the Playstation 3, this time around the Xbox of the bunch. The PS3 is expected to be the last of the next-gen consoles to be released, and will be the most technologically advanced, possibly by a much larger gap when comparing the PS2 with the Xbox. However, as Sony demonstrated with the PS2, pure power is nothing in comparison to a perfect slew of quality games. Even the Xbox's superior online support couldn't take the PS2 out of the first place slot. The Playstation 3 will be powered by the CELL Processor, developed by Sony, Toshiba, and IBM. Although the first CELL processors used in computers and household appliances will only be a small leap ahead of today's standards in terms of processing speed, the CELL processor used in the Playstation 3 at the end of next year is expected to run at a whopping 4.6 GHz. While the Xbox 2 runs on 3 processing cores, the Playstation 3 runs on 9. On top of that, Playstation 3 games will run on Blu-Ray discs, one of the formats fighting to take the place of DVDs. Microsoft's Xbox 2 will be using 7.0 GB DVD9s, while the latest iteration of Blu-Ray being developed can store 200 GB of memory (although the discs used for PS3 will likely be made for up to 20-40 GB). This could mean the world in terms of content and quality in games.




All three developers will be giving the works in showing off their new consoles at the E3 conference in May. While more information will probably be leaked until then, that's when we'll get the final specs for all three consoles, and will be able to see (and play Xbox 2) in action.


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...I'm probably gonna get all three next-gen consoles. Goodbye, college money.

[TBoTB]

Sweet content in all its glory.

Well informative ^_~

*Sticky*

[Nodachi]

Oh my... can't wait to see what they'll have at this year's E3...

Thanks for the info.

[TheMidg]

Goodbye and good riddance Xbox

[Aliria]

PS2 rules all!! But the prospect of that new processor is really intersting and hopefully some of the RPG games will evole and not have small pixelied characeters anymore... :sweat:

[Elsurion]

*is digging a graveyard for WiX-Box and WiX-Box2*

Things the world don't need
I don't think that we need the patchwork software producer Microsoft in the real world...

[Balfree]

now that the money i spend is my own...























i can buy all teh consoles i want XD gogogogo ps3, must have! MUST HAVE! ill prolly get in the nintendo figure too... hm...

xbox is a big nono, it simply has no style, no glamour.

[EliteYuna]

Re: The Next-Gen War has Begun!

Originally posted by Pai Pai Master
The Playstation 3 will be powered by the CELL Processor, developed by Sony, Toshiba, and IBM. Although the first CELL processors used in computers and household appliances will only be a small leap ahead of today's standards in terms of processing speed, the CELL processor used in the Playstation 3 at the end of next year is expected to run at a whopping 4.6 GHz. While the Xbox 2 runs on 3 processing cores, the Playstation 3 runs on 9. On top of that, Playstation 3 games will run on Blu-Ray discs, one of the formats fighting to take the place of DVDs. Microsoft's Xbox 2 will be using 7.0 GB DVD9s, while the latest iteration of Blu-Ray being developed can store 200 GB of memory (although the discs used for PS3 will likely be made for up to 20-40 GB). This could mean the world in terms of content and quality in games.

woah what the hell, 4.6 GHz from the cell processor?? is that umm more powerful than most computers out now?? or what??? im confused >?

[Pai Pai Master]

Reminder!!!

This is the big week.

Microsoft will be revealing the new Xbox console live on MTV this coming Thursday at 9:30 PM EST. Tune in to catch the actual revealing of the hardware, release details, and hopefully a few game demos.

[Metrou]

hopefully some of the RPG games will evole and not have small pixelied characeters anymore...

All of my favorite RPG's ( with the exception of FFXI ) are of that style :sweat:



My favorite RPG ever!

[kuu]

Cell is interesting except shrouded in mystery. Could be the biggest thing in resent computer history, or just a lack luster flop.

Cell is supposely all about distributed computing. Sony is betting on broadband mostly, which japan has no problem with, and is annoyed with the US being turtles.

In the sony ideal world, everyone would buy sony products, and subscibe to sonyonline, and then everyone shares resources into one giangantic super computer(s).

There is also a more simliar speculation of teirs of ps3, with say 3 cell processors, 4, 5, etc.

Most CPUs on the market only has limited multi processor suport, but Cell in essence is a type of cpu made for expansion.

We'll know soon...

[Pai Pai Master]

The Xbox 360...or...Xbox 1.5

If anyone else managed to catch the lackluster MTV debut of the Xbox 360 console earlier tonight, I'd like to hear your opinions.

I however, am disappointed with Microsoft's new console. Personally, I find nothing "next-gen" about it.

I'm not saying I wasn't impressed. The Xbox 360's graphical capabilities seem to be well ahead of today's PC standards, and on par with the games which will be hitting the PC next year.

That's just it, however. Most every game that was shown was a game built around current or near-future PC technology. The best example? Epic's Gears of War. This game looks absolutely stunning, but my problem with it is that it's just an Xbox 360 game running on the Unreal 3 Engine. It looks identical to the Unreal 3 Engine demo we saw at last year's E3, monsters, areas and all.

That's my only problem with the Xbox 360. Next-gen games should not be "on par with PC standards" or anything of the sort. Seeing as how the system is gonna hit the US this November, it's launch games should be light-years ahead of today's PC standards. However, it's not.

The only playable game shown was Rare's Perfect Dark Zero, the prequel to the N64 hit original. The title was still in heavy development, however, and did not surpass current Xbox titles like Halo 2 or Doom 3. Activision's Quake IV is another example. As I was fearing, it looks like once again, the Xbox 360's library will be jam-packed with PC ports. Something that Microsoft has been notorious for with the Xbox, and something Sony has managed to properly avoid. I won't be suprised if Half Life 2 and Unreal Tournament 2007 make their way onto the Xbox 360 next year.

Technology aside, the Xbox 360 will definitely deliver in one department, as expected: Xbox Live. As earlier mentioned by Microsoft, all Xbox 360 titles will be Xbox Live supported in some way, whether it's online score ranking, head-to-head online play, or downloadable content. In another suprising note, Microsoft revealed that the Xbox 360 will ship with a removable 20 GB Hard drive. That's pretty unexpected, seeing as how Microsoft lost money on every Xbox console manufactured because of the measly 8 GB HDD included with the Xbox; something which many developers didn't take much advantage of.

In rather disappointing news, Microsoft made it seem pretty bleak about the Xbox 360 having backwards compatibility with Xbox games. According to IGN, a Microsoft rep. stated that because the Xbox was built around Nvidia technology and the 360 is being developed with a completely different ATI chip, backwards compatibility may not be financially worth it for them. They did, however, mention that a form of emulation my be possible, similar to what the Playstation 3 does to play original Playstation games.

Speaking of the Playstation 3, according to IGN PS2, Sony Chief Financial Officer Takao Yuhara made a statement which inferred that the PS3 may see a 2005 release. This is suprising and possibly devastating to Microsoft, who seemed to be hoping to get a nice head-start ahead of the 2 next-gen consoles to follow, in hopes of raking in sales as the lone system, much like the Playstation 2 was the only next-gen system available for about a year.

With the Xbox 360 launching this November, the Playstation 3 launching some time between late this year and late next year, and the Nintendo Revolution launching sometime in the middle of next year, I'm sure we can have a lot to look forward to at E3 next week.

Nintendo Wants a Revolution

Following suite from the Xbox 360 debut, Nintendo released a few tidbits regarding the Nintendo Revolution. I feel that these details lay to rest a number of ideas people had about the Revolution, and gives the sense that Nintendo is really thinking about conforming to the standards with technology.

Unexpectedly, the Nintendo Revolution will play standard DVDs, much like the Xbox 360. The system is completely backwards compatible with Nintendo Gamecube games, able to run Gamecube Proprietary media. The system will be able to "go online regularly," and WiFi support will be available out of the box. Also like the Xbox 360, the Nintendo Revolution will be able to play games in high definition, offering screen quality of up to 720p. And again, Like the Xbox 360, the Nintendo Revolution-super-secret-gyroscopic-and-other-crazy-things controller will be completely wireless, hopefully a feature which will also be seen in the Sony Playstation 3.

I've always been excited about the Revolution. Despite it's relatively weaker library, the Gamecube was a quality system, and the games that were good were all exceptional. Super Smash Bros. Melee is still a game I play for hours daily with my friends, something that no system has been able to offer. If Nintendo can continue its latest trend of offering their licenses to third-party developers and create great games, I'm sure the library for the Revolution will be far beyond that of the Gamecube. Not to mention, Zelda....

These latest details really make me feel like Nintendo is considering themselves a serious competitor with Microsoft and Sony this time around, not a "niche-player" as that douchebag Bill Gates stated when he needed someone to put down when being asked about the Xbox360. My biggest conviction with the Revolution earlier was that the gameplay would be too far-out on the system and would alienate developers of "standard" videogames. I thought the controllers would be too crazy, the actual way the games are played would disable the Revolution from playing games the way we're used to completely. However, due to the fact that it is backwards compatible with the Gamecube, it's obvious that it can play the kind of games we're used to playing, and Nintendo will be able to refrain from alienating such developers and not limit the Revolution's library to games designed around the unique gameplay style Nintendo is promising from the system.

Just 4 days until the E3 Conferences begin, 5 days 'till the actual Convention. Expect a lot more details in the coming days.

[Pai Pai Master]

Bill Gates has confirmed that Halo 3 will launch on or near the release of the Playstation 3.

Playstation 3 teaser posters have appeared in Los Angeles to hype up the Sony Computer Entertainment E3 press conference, which will be held tomorrow at 6 PM EST.

[Balodoth]

Just a few points:

Microsoft lost money on every XBOX they sold, but not because of the hard drive. Every component costs money, so it was a joint loss. If you feel the need to peg something specific, it wouldn't be the cheap HD but rather the CPU and GPU. The licenses were held by Intel & nVidia respectively, meaning MS had to pay more and more for the chips every time they needed more from those companies.

It still has to be confirmed, so take this with a grain of salt, but Nintendo's console is expected to have 2 CPU's running at 2.5 Ghz each. There's actually a small benefit to running 2 separate CPU's as opposed to multi-cored ones, but likely not enough to keep up with XBOX's 3 core CPU. You can likely expect Nintendo to build a very streamlined, intelligent system. If XBOX is the V-8 loaded with every conceivable trick to go faster, Nintendo is the japanese V-6 model that does almost the same thing with less only more efficiently.

PS3's cell processor is confirmed nothing more than multi-core. Don't expect it to run much faster than the XBOX's 3.2 Ghz, assuming it isn't clocked slower. PS3 has been in development longer than either of the contenders, so even with bumped up specs you can expect to see a few legacy items in there limiting the system. In my personal opinion, as long as they don't use RDRAM this time around, I'll be happy. (Nintendo 64 bombs with RDRAM so Sony thinks it's a great idea. . . I'll never understand that one.)

And as for the comment about comparison to PC specs. Consoles have never exceeded what PC's could offer. In fact, this current set of consoles are the closest to PC's specs at the time ever! The whole idea here is that consoles don't run an OS (in the traditional fashion anyway), or a firewall, or a myriad of other things that compete for the hardware's attention. In addition, since the specs are the same every single time, game makers can exploit any hidden strengths, tricks, etc. that the system has to offer. In other words, consoles can do more with less: they don't have to compare to PC specs because they can still keep up.

[Pai Pai Master]

The Playstation 3 Lives!

Sony Computer Entertainment revealed their Next-Generation video game console today at their E3 Press Conference in Los Angeles. The system, suprisingly called the Playstation 3, seems to be geared towards heavy duty processing, graphics, and high-tech support.

Among the many features of the system, the most prominent are the Blu Ray Disc support, the resolution support of up to 1080p (For reference, the Xbox360's highest resolution supported is 720p), the six USB ports, and the support of up to 7 wireless Bluetooth 2.0 controllers.

Here are the specific specs of the Playstation 3, care of IGN PS3:

Product name: PlayStation 3

Logo: PLAYSTATION(R)3

CPU

Cell Processor
PowerPC-base Core @3.2GHz
1 VMX vector unit per core
512KB L2 cache
7 x SPE @3.2GHz
7 x 128b 128 SIMD GPRs
7 x 256KB SRAM for SPE
* 1 of 8 SPEs reserved for redundancy
total floating point performance: 218 GFLOPS

GPU

RSX @550MHz
1.8 TFLOPS floating point performance
Full HD (up to 1080p) x 2 channels
Multi-way programmable parallel floating point shader pipelines

Sound

Dolby 5.1ch, DTS, LPCM, etc. (Cell- base processing)

Memory

256MB XDR Main RAM @3.2GHz 256MB GDDR3 VRAM @700MHz

System Bandwidth

Main RAM 25.6GB/s
VRAM 22.4GB/s
RSX 20GB/s (write) + 15GB/s (read)
SB< 2.5GB/s (write) + 2.5GB/s (read)

System Floating Point Performance

2 TFLOPS

Storage

Detachable 2.5" HDD slot x 1

I/O

USB Front x 4, Rear x 2 (USB2.0)
Memory Stick standard/Duo, PRO x 1
SD standard/mini x 1
CompactFlash (Type I, II) x 1

Communication

Ethernet (10BASE-T, 100BASE-TX, 1000BASE-T) x 3 (input x 1 + output x 2)
Wi-Fi IEEE 802.11 b/g
Bluetooth 2.0 (EDR)

Controller

Bluetooth (up to 7)
USB 2.0 (wired)
Wi-Fi (PSP)
Network (over IP)

AV Output

Screen size: 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p
HDMI: HDMI out x 2
Analog: AV MULTI OUT x 1
Digital audio: DIGITAL OUT (OPTICAL) x 1

Disc Media

CD PlayStation CD-ROM, PlayStation 2 CD-ROM, CD-DA, CD-DA (ROM), CD-R, CD-RW, SACD, SACD Hybrid (CD layer), SACD HD, DualDisc, DualDisc (audio side), DualDisc (DVD side)
DVD: PlayStation 2 DVD-ROM, PlayStation 3 DVD-ROM, DVD-Video, DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW
Blu-ray Disc: PlayStation 3 BD-ROM, BD-Video, BD-ROM, BD-R, BD-RE

So, it's not the "supercomputer" Sony had been boasting about a year ago, but it is still extremely powerful and features a lot of things you wouldn't expect from a videogame console.









Here's a small list of mentioned game releases in development for the PS3. Some, such as Tekken 6, Killzone 2, Gran Turismo 5, and Grand Theft Auto are expected to be launch games.

-Tekken 6 -- Namco.

-Killzone 2 -- Guerilla

-Gran Turismo 5 -- Polyphony Digital

-Formula One -- Sony Liverpool

-Untitled Old West Game -- Rockstar

-Oh-Ni -- Koei

-Mobile Suit Gundam: Gundam World -- Bandai

-Devil May Cry 4 -- Capcom

-Super Gory Wolfenstein Style FPS -- Insomniac

-Metal Gear Solid 4 -- Konami

-EYEdentify Voice Recognition Game -- SCEA

-Fifth Phantom Saga -- Sega

-Heavenly Sword -- Sony

-Warhawk -- Incognito

-Killing Day -- Ubisoft

-Motor Storm -- Evolution

-GTA Next -- Rockstar

-New Final Fantasy -- Square Enix


In addition, Sony announced that the Playstation Portable would be fully connectable, both through USB 2.0 and WiFi, to the Playstation 3. They mentioned that in some cases it can even be used as a controller, a l Gameboy Advance and Gamecube hybrid games such as Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicals or The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures.

For its tech-demo showcase, Sony featured a slew of exciting video demos running in real-time on the Playstation 3. Some of the featured demos included a showcase of the actual Spiderman model used in the film Spiderman 2 running in real-time on the Playstation 3, as well as an exciting recreation of the opening scene of Squaresoft's 1997 masterpiece Final Fantasy VII. And no, sorry, there's no PS3 remake of FFVII in the works. The third big tech demo was the Unreal 3.0 Engine demo revealed for PC at E3 2004, and recently shown running on the Xbox360 as Epic's newest next-gen title, Gears of War. This same demo was shown running on the Playstation 3.

That's all for now, kiddos. You can keep checking various gaming sites such as Gamespot or IGN for the latest info, since I'm pretty much certain that more was shown in the press conference than is available on the web at this very moment in time.

And just in case you were wondering, Sony Computer Entertainment has confirmed that the Playstation 3 will launch in Spring 2006. So I guess you Xbox360 fans will be getting your Halo 3 fix at that time as well.