New Sony Console scheduled for 2013

[Drumheller769]

Sony has a *new* PS3 console to come out in 2013.

http://www.slashgear.com/next-gen-plays ... -29220516/

Looks like it's just a money grab though, kinda makes me sad to see all the blatant greed, if the article is to be believed.

[Dauric]

The "anti-used-games" bit is probably part of it, but the PS3 has been having problems with newer games like Fallout: New Vegas and Skyrim because although it has the same amount of memory as the XBox360, the memory is split half and half between video processing and other game engine tasks, where on the 360 developers can re-allocate the whole block of memory to either task as they see fit. Grand upshot (at least the article that I read) is that on the PS3 loading and saving game data takes longer.

[AvatarIII]

The "anti-used-games" bit is probably part of it, but the PS3 has been having problems with newer games like Fallout: New Vegas and Skyrim because although it has the same amount of memory as the XBox360, the memory is split half and half between video processing and other game engine tasks, where on the 360 developers can re-allocate the whole block of memory to either task as they see fit. Grand upshot (at least the article that I read) is that on the PS3 loading and saving game data takes longer.

That's only the problem with multi platform games, PS3 exclusives which are designed specifically to make the most of the PS3s memory structure look and run just as good as any Xbox/PC exclusives.

if games were designed for PS3 and then ported to Xbox/PC, we wouldn't have these problems on either system.

I don't see a problem with the anti-used games thing, as long as used games sellers price used games at "(used price) < (new price) - (cost to unlock used game)" which doesn't seem to be the case at the moment

[Dauric]

The "anti-used-games" bit is probably part of it, but the PS3 has been having problems with newer games like Fallout: New Vegas and Skyrim because although it has the same amount of memory as the XBox360, the memory is split half and half between video processing and other game engine tasks, where on the 360 developers can re-allocate the whole block of memory to either task as they see fit. Grand upshot (at least the article that I read) is that on the PS3 loading and saving game data takes longer.

That's only the problem with multi platform games, PS3 exclusives which are designed specifically to make the most of the PS3s memory structure look and run just as good as any Xbox/PC exclusives.

if games were designed for PS3 and then ported to Xbox/PC, we wouldn't have these problems on either system.

Except the developers have shied away from 'Exclusives' in that multiplatform games reach a broader audience. Mass Effect 1 was an XBox exclusive, 2 and 3 are both multiplatform. Saints' Row 1 was XBox exclusive, 2 and 3 are multiplatform. Developing for the PS3 has always taken longer than developing for the XBox or PC so building exclusives for PS3 to take multiplatform to XBox and PC means your budget has to stretch out longer and returns are delayed.

When PS3 first came out they did the memory partitioning to improve performance, and at the time it worked. Problem is that the technique hasn't aged well as games have gotten more ambitious.

[Game_boy]

So it has an x86 AMD CPU and GPU. How is this not just a PC in a box with a Sony logo on it?

If they charge $599 again (or indeed anything over $250) it won't sell until they slash prices to that level, since the console can't differentiate itself graphically from a PS3/360 (kinda-realistic graphics have been stagnant at that for years, sure it has more pixels but it's no PS1 -> PS2 -> PS3 kind of leap). And if they don't have an innovative interface it won't sell like a Wii or a DS. Pushing 3D will make it sell like a 3DS (bad). Not having any distingusihing features combined with a high price will make it sell like a Vita i.e. completely dead.

Console companies need to realise that hardware doesn't sell, games do. Not having games people want for the first year of release (3DS, Vita) means it doesn't sell; giving up supporting a console prematurely (Wii*) means it will drop off sharply.

*2009's Wii Sports Resort and NSMB Wii were the last serious attempt by Nintendo to support the Wii. Other kinds of games they make for it like Galaxy 2/Zelda SS aren't bringing in new people. They need to get back to their core market of sports/fitness/party games and give up on these expensive Zelda and Mario outings.

[Dauric]

...since the console can't differentiate itself graphically from a PS3/360 (kinda-realistic graphics have been stagnant at that for years, sure it has more pixels but it's no PS1 -> PS2 -> PS3 kind of leap)...

The thing about this is that we've hit a point in 3D gaming graphics that the bottleneck isn't how many polygons a video-card can push per second, that's been growing by leaps and bounds for the last two decades. The bottleneck is how many polygons a 3D modeler can create per hour, how many pixels they can texturemap per hour, how many lights they can rig per hour, how many Animation Bones can they rig per hour, etc. etc, etc. The computers can push terrifyingly realistic graphics, -if- you can afford to have enough employees to build those graphics. With console game prices effectively capped at $60 I doubt that we're going to see a serious pressure to vastly increase graphics capabilities in the near future.

[KnightExemplar]

So it has an x86 AMD CPU and GPU. How is this not just a PC in a box with a Sony logo on it?

If they charge $599 again (or indeed anything over $250) it won't sell until they slash prices to that level, since the console can't differentiate itself graphically from a PS3/360 (kinda-realistic graphics have been stagnant at that for years, sure it has more pixels but it's no PS1 -> PS2 -> PS3 kind of leap). And if they don't have an innovative interface it won't sell like a Wii or a DS. Pushing 3D will make it sell like a 3DS (bad). Not having any distingusihing features combined with a high price will make it sell like a Vita i.e. completely dead.

Console companies need to realise that hardware doesn't sell, games do. Not having games people want for the first year of release (3DS, Vita) means it doesn't sell; giving up supporting a console prematurely (Wii*) means it will drop off sharply.

*2009's Wii Sports Resort and NSMB Wii were the last serious attempt by Nintendo to support the Wii. Other kinds of games they make for it like Galaxy 2/Zelda SS aren't bringing in new people. They need to get back to their core market of sports/fitness/party games and give up on these expensive Zelda and Mario outings.

Some of your facts are wrong however.

http://www.joystiq.com/2012/03/06/ninte ... -outperfo/

The 3DS is doing better than the original DS, which is saying something especially when its competing against the new market of Smartphones and Ipads. Pushing for 3D content might not be a bad thing. Furthermore, it was those "expensive Mario Outings", Mario Kart 7 (>5 Million Sales) and Super Mario 3D Land (Also >5 Million Sales).

Also, Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword was the fastest selling Zelda game of all time. As a near-end of life Wii Title, its definitely injecting life into the Wii.

IMO, Nintendo's core audience has always been the Mario / Zelda players like me. They've managed to suck money out of the video game fad of cheap crappy games like Wii Sports long enough. I'm happy to see Nintendo's return to serious games. Frankly, Nintendo can't compete against the IPad/Androids when it comes to cheap $1 games that hold your attention for 20 minutes before you put it away forever. Any damn programmer can write up Fruit Ninja in a weekend and sell it for $1 on ITunes. Hell, there are pretty damn good bowling clones available on any smartphone. However... it really does take a large and creative team to create the next Mario or Zelda game.

---------------------------

As for graphics: PCs have reached the holy grail of 1080p. Consoles are not powerful enough to do this yet. If you've ever played a game on PC at 1080p and compare it to XBox / PS3 720p... you'll notice that the PC games just look better. Right now, the graphics crowd has all gone to PC because 6+ year-old consoles can't compete.

[Ghostbear]

The thing about this is that we've hit a point in 3D gaming graphics that the bottleneck isn't how many polygons a video-card can push per second, that's been growing by leaps and bounds for the last two decades. The bottleneck is how many polygons a 3D modeler can create per hour, how many pixels they can texturemap per hour, how many lights they can rig per hour, how many Animation Bones can they rig per hour, etc. etc, etc. The computers can push terrifyingly realistic graphics, -if- you can afford to have enough employees to build those graphics. With console game prices effectively capped at $60 I doubt that we're going to see a serious pressure to vastly increase graphics capabilities in the near future.

Well, there's still a lot that more powerful hardware can do for those situations (two easy examples: most textures are made at higher resolutions than we get in game, and are downsampled for the game itself. There'd be little extra work to use those with more powerful hardware. Or, memory limitations frequently force developers to make some complicated level design stuff. With more RAM, you can skip having to spend time coding in workarounds.) just developers/publishers aren't willing to stop at just the gains they can get from that. Someone else will go the full distance, and then it'll make their game look bad for marketing purposes.

All the same, I'll be glad when the next generation gets here, because it'll mean cross platform PC games will stop having their level design dictated by Uncle 360 with his 512 MB of RAM. It'll also be interesting to see if the x86 rumor is true. I never understood why Sony and Microsoft both used processors that were really terrible fits for gaming. Cell in particular didn't make much sense. Well, actually I sort of understand why Sony made that decision, as they were hoping to shoehorn Cell into everything at that time, and shoving it in the PS3 would help them ramp yields up and get costs down for that eventual "shove into everything" time, but it was a poor decision for the console itself.

[Dauric]

The thing about this is that we've hit a point in 3D gaming graphics that the bottleneck isn't how many polygons a video-card can push per second, that's been growing by leaps and bounds for the last two decades. The bottleneck is how many polygons a 3D modeler can create per hour, how many pixels they can texturemap per hour, how many lights they can rig per hour, how many Animation Bones can they rig per hour, etc. etc, etc. The computers can push terrifyingly realistic graphics, -if- you can afford to have enough employees to build those graphics. With console game prices effectively capped at $60 I doubt that we're going to see a serious pressure to vastly increase graphics capabilities in the near future.

Well, there's still a lot that more powerful hardware can do for those situations (two easy examples: most textures are made at higher resolutions than we get in game, and are downsampled for the game itself. There'd be little extra work to use those with more powerful hardware. Or, memory limitations frequently force developers to make some complicated level design stuff. With more RAM, you can skip having to spend time coding in workarounds.) just developers/publishers aren't willing to stop at just the gains they can get from that. Someone else will go the full distance, and then it'll make their game look bad for marketing purposes.

All the same, I'll be glad when the next generation gets here, because it'll mean cross platform PC games will stop having their level design dictated by Uncle 360 with his 512 MB of RAM. It'll also be interesting to see if the x86 rumor is true. I never understood why Sony and Microsoft both used processors that were really terrible fits for gaming. Cell in particular didn't make much sense. Well, actually I sort of understand why Sony made that decision, as they were hoping to shoehorn Cell into everything at that time, and shoving it in the PS3 would help them ramp yields up and get costs down for that eventual "shove into everything" time, but it was a poor decision for the console itself.

You're still focused on hardware. I'm talking about man-hours. Not having to code workarounds is a relatively small expenditure of effort and texturemap sampling running in real time is a hardware issue. I'm referring to the time some guy spends making $XX.xx and hour plotting vertices in 3D space, checking that the rendered surfaces all face outside the model, rigging bones to the model, setting movement limits on each bone and editing large bitmap files that put textures on the models. Also placing lighting, arranging volumetric and particle effects, etc. etc. etc. Better hardware doesn't significantly change the amount of time it takes to build, texture and rig for animation a 3D model from 2D concept art, these are pretty much limited by the skill and available man hours of the art team.

[Ghostbear]

You're still focused on hardware. I'm talking about man-hours. Not having to code workarounds is a relatively small expenditure of effort and texturemap sampling running in real time is a hardware issue. I'm referring to the time some guy spends making $XX.xx and hour plotting vertices in 3D space, checking that the rendered surfaces all face outside the model, rigging bones to the model, setting movement limits on each bone and editing large bitmap files that put textures on the models. Also placing lighting, arranging volumetric and particle effects, etc. etc. etc. Better hardware doesn't significantly change the amount of time it takes to build, texture and rig for animation a 3D model from 2D concept art, these are pretty much limited by the skill and available man hours of the art team.

No, I understand all of that and I agree with it. I was pointing out that there are some benefits that you get from better hardware that doesn't have such costs associated with it. It's just that the developers and publishers don't stop at getting just the "free" gains, they have to go all out and get 20 new texture artists so that they can advertise ever better graphics. They are going to do that in most cases, and it's unfortunate, but I'm just pointing out that improved hardware can still give some decent gains without hugely increasing costs, if only the people in charge are wise enough to do so.

[AvatarIII]

The "anti-used-games" bit is probably part of it, but the PS3 has been having problems with newer games like Fallout: New Vegas and Skyrim because although it has the same amount of memory as the XBox360, the memory is split half and half between video processing and other game engine tasks, where on the 360 developers can re-allocate the whole block of memory to either task as they see fit. Grand upshot (at least the article that I read) is that on the PS3 loading and saving game data takes longer.

That's only the problem with multi platform games, PS3 exclusives which are designed specifically to make the most of the PS3s memory structure look and run just as good as any Xbox/PC exclusives.

if games were designed for PS3 and then ported to Xbox/PC, we wouldn't have these problems on either system.

Except the developers have shied away from 'Exclusives' in that multiplatform games reach a broader audience. Mass Effect 1 was an XBox exclusive, 2 and 3 are both multiplatform. Saints' Row 1 was XBox exclusive, 2 and 3 are multiplatform. Developing for the PS3 has always taken longer than developing for the XBox or PC so building exclusives for PS3 to take multiplatform to XBox and PC means your budget has to stretch out longer and returns are delayed.

When PS3 first came out they did the memory partitioning to improve performance, and at the time it worked. Problem is that the technique hasn't aged well as games have gotten more ambitious.

True, but exclusives were still the order of the day when the current generation came out, and it's probably something Sony are going to address with it's new console,
the fact that it's quicker to develop for PC or Xbox and port to PS3 has hurt many multi platform games on PS3, I almost wish there had been a clear winner this generation just so more time and effort went into games, which is what it was like in the 90s, a developer would make a SNES game or a Megadrive game in the early 90s or a PS game or a N64 game in the late 90s, not one game that gets spread over every console, and is hurt because of it.
I know it's easy to place blame, but I do feel that Microsoft are to blame, the reason games were mostly exclusives in the 90s is because the consoles were so different, the Xbox was too similar to the PS2 and therefore games started being multi platform, and then the 360 came out, and then the PS3 which wasn't similar enough to the 360 for perfect multi platform games, but it was similar enough for some level of multi platform gaming.
and the fact is, because there are so many multi platform games, there is no pressure to own both a PS3 and a 360, which would be pretty expensive, which just compounds the problem,

[Ghostbear]

[...] the Xbox was too similar to the PS2 and therefore games started being multi platform [...]

I'm not sure under what sense you're making that comparison. Hardware? The PS2 and the Xbox had hugely different hardware, and even underlying software too. Hardware capability? The Xbox was much closer to the Gamecube as far as its processing abilities were concerned. Market share? Again, much closer to the Gamecube. Target audience? Most reports I read indicated that Microsoft took far more potential customers away from Nintendo than they did from Sony.

They made it into a 3 player market, which combined with rising development costs, did encourage the shift to multi-platform, but none of that had to do with the Xbox being similar to the PS2.

[Darryl]

The "anti-used-games" bit is probably part of it, but the PS3 has been having problems with newer games like Fallout: New Vegas and Skyrim because although it has the same amount of memory as the XBox360, the memory is split half and half between video processing and other game engine tasks, where on the 360 developers can re-allocate the whole block of memory to either task as they see fit. Grand upshot (at least the article that I read) is that on the PS3 loading and saving game data takes longer.

If it goes live with the anti-used-games bit intact, I predict a complete flop. Because even though PC gamers have long abandoned the idea of used games being common (and love Steam for digital distro), console gamers are never going to abandon used games.

[Iulus Cofield]

I understand why they want to do away with used games though. I read an article about Gamespot's business model circa 2007. Supposedly they were selling, and probably still are, around 9 used titles for every new title. Gamespot loves used games, because the profit on new games is only a few dollars, and that's only accounting for the cost of buying the disks from the manufacturer, while the profit on a used game is often half the retail price. And Gamespot usually ends up rebuying and reselling the exact same disk several times. The manufacturer sees zero income fro
used titles, even when the total value of all purchases of a game can be signifcantly or even primarily from used copies. This is a big reason why Steam has become nearly ubiquitous on the PC. I just hope whatever they've come up with will be as convenient as Steam is most of the time.

[Game_boy]

http://www.joystiq.com/2012/03/06/ninte ... -outperfo/

The 3DS is doing better than the original DS, which is saying something especially when its competing against the new market of Smartphones and Ipads.

The original DS was a failure until NSMB DS and Mario Kart launched.

Pushing for 3D content might not be a bad thing. Furthermore, it was those "expensive Mario Outings", Mario Kart 7 (>5 Million Sales) and Super Mario 3D Land (Also >5 Million Sales).

3D Land selling 5 million is pathetic. A 2D game would have cost a lot less to develop and would have sold like a 2D Mario, i.e. 20 Million lifetime.

Also, Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword was the fastest selling Zelda game of all time. As a near-end of life Wii Title, its definitely injecting life into the Wii.

No, Zelda has never moved console. It's irrelevant.

IMO, Nintendo's core audience has always been the Mario / Zelda players like me. They've managed to suck money out of the video game fad of cheap crappy games like Wii Sports long enough. I'm happy to see Nintendo's return to serious games.

Are you happy to see Nintendo in the red for the first time in 100 years? Coming off of the most profitable company per employee in the world at the height of the Wii and DS social/casual games boom? They should have stuck to that, they were making lots of money. I HATE those games but that's what they should be doing.

Frankly, Nintendo can't compete against the IPad/Androids when it comes to cheap $1 games that hold your attention for 20 minutes before you put it away forever. Any damn programmer can write up Fruit Ninja in a weekend and sell it for $1 on ITunes. Hell, there are pretty damn good bowling clones available on any smartphone. However... it really does take a large and creative team to create the next Mario or Zelda game.

$1/game means that they're not making much. Huge creative teams mean they don't make much. The way to win is to use an iphone-sized team but then sell it for $40 anyway: Wii Sports and Wii Fit.

As for graphics: PCs have reached the holy grail of 1080p. Consoles are not powerful enough to do this yet. If you've ever played a game on PC at 1080p and compare it to XBox / PS3 720p... you'll notice that the PC games just look better. Right now, the graphics crowd has all gone to PC because 6+ year-old consoles can't compete.

The graphics crowd is tiny but vocal. Actually graphics were already good enough for immersive 3D games by the time of the PS2. At that point no dev could say graphics were holding back the world they wanted to create. Everything since then (1080p) is worthless paper-only numbers.

Also graphics are too expensive for gaming to support. If an "AAA" title doesn't sell 2m then the studio pretty much goes bust because the graphcs and cutscenes are so expensive. The return for that investment isn't worth it, they should be going 2D or simple/cartoony 3D.

[Game_boy]

I understand why they want to do away with used games though.

If developers would put enough long term value into a game so that people don't give away their copies as used, that is the better fix. The fact that the game becomes $10 on the market is a true expression of that game's value. Notice how the truly high selling games of this gen didn't really come down in price.

[Endless Mike]

So it has an x86 AMD CPU and GPU. How is this not just a PC in a box with a Sony logo on it?

The same way the original Xbox with an x86 Intel CPU and Nvidia GPU wasn't just a PC in a box with an MS logo on it. Or, really, the same way the Xbox 360 (PowerPC CPU and AMD GPU - incidentally, the same architectures as the Gamecube and Wii) isn't just a PC in a box. Or why a PS Vita (ARM CPU, PowerFX GPU, GSM antenna of some sort) isn't just a big cell phone.

Also, should we be posting rumors in the news forum?

[Heisenberg]

Are you happy to see Nintendo in the red for the first time in 100 years? Coming off of the most profitable company per employee in the world at the height of the Wii and DS social/casual games boom? They should have stuck to that, they were making lots of money. I HATE those games but that's what they should be doing.

You seem to be under the impression that the Wii Sports phenomenon is reproducible. I sincerely doubt that. The initial Wii boom was due to the novelty of the system. Releasing Wii Sports 2012 isn't going to draw the same attention or popularity as the original.

Companies are still releasing "jump around like an idiot in front of the television" games. They aren't selling not because they're worse than Wii Sports, but rather because the fad is over.

[Ghostbear]

(PowerPC CPU and AMD GPU - incidentally, the same architectures as the Gamecube and Wii)

That's not how architectures work. You could make some argument for the CPUs, but even then it'd be fairly weak, as while both chips are POWER based, the actual architecture of the CPUs is quite different. They're just in the same "family". It'd be like calling a Pentium 2 and a Pentium 4 the same architecture. This is especially true for the Broadway processor vs. Xenon. Broadway is based off of the Gekko chip used in the Gamecube (this holds true for just about everything in the Wii actually; it's practically just a die shrunk GC), which is based off of the POWER7 architecture. The Xenon processor is based off of the PPE used in Cell, which is itself based off the broad "POWER" architecture, but not without some modifications. They aren't the same architecture.

On the GPU front however, there is no basis for this claim. The Wii's Hollywood processor is based off the Flipper chip, which was a design by a company called ArtX, who were later purchased by ATI (who were then later purchased by AMD) around the time the design was completed. While the people that worked on it helped make ATI's big re-entry-into-relevance GPU (The 9700! I still have mine! ) the architectures weren't the same, and even if those were, the Xenos architecture is based off the R600 architecture from ATI, while the 9700 was the R300 architecture; they're three generations removed. They aren't in any way, shape, or form, the same architecture. They were just developed (in the case of Hollywood, it's more "evolved") by the same company, which is no basis for a system of government claiming that they're the same architecture.

[AvatarIII]

[...] the Xbox was too similar to the PS2 and therefore games started being multi platform [...]

I'm not sure under what sense you're making that comparison. Hardware? The PS2 and the Xbox had hugely different hardware, and even underlying software too. Hardware capability? The Xbox was much closer to the Gamecube as far as its processing abilities were concerned. Market share? Again, much closer to the Gamecube. Target audience? Most reports I read indicated that Microsoft took far more potential customers away from Nintendo than they did from Sony.

They made it into a 3 player market, which combined with rising development costs, did encourage the shift to multi-platform, but none of that had to do with the Xbox being similar to the PS2.

That's what I saad getting at when I went on to say that it wasn't similar enough, but compared to the difference between the PS1 and N64, they were relatively similar, in the same ball park in power, and both used same storage media.
The N64 on the other hand was much more powerful than the PS1 but the PS1 had a much higher capacity for the size of it's games, multi platform games were completely out of the question in that generation.

[Ghostbear]

That's what I saad getting at when I went on to say that it wasn't similar enough, but compared to the difference between the PS1 and N64, they were relatively similar, in the same ball park in power, and both used same storage media.
The N64 on the other hand was much more powerful than the PS1 but the PS1 had a much higher capacity for the size of it's games, multi platform games were completely out of the question in that generation.

No, the hardware between the PS2 and the Xbox were amazingly different. The Xbox was, hardware, a PC in a box, pretty simple with nothing outlandish about it. The PS2 was based off the emotion engine, which was one of the most difficult sets of hardware to code for in the history of video game consoles. It was the CPU and GPU and many functions of the north bridge all glued into a single package, and if I remember correctly, had one of the most infuriating clocking systems ever devised by man. The PS1 and N64, while each having fairly different hardware, didn't have hardware that was that wildly different.

Computational capability, sure, they weren't that far off. But the GC and the Xbox were even more comparable to each other. With the exception of the fact that the GC didn't use DVDs, it fits all of the other qualifications at least as well, if not better, as the Xbox does. I'll say it again: the cause was the market being fractured even more combined with rising development costs. An AAA game could no longer reliably and consistently make enough profit off of a single console anymore -- only certain AAA games could get away with that anymore, instead of all of them. The specifics of the Xbox's hardware doesn't factor into this equation at all.

[KnightExemplar]

Hey Gameboy, "Omnislashing" posts kinda makes you lose paragraphs and so forth. It'd be nice if you can attack the argument in general, as opposed to splitting up my paragraphs. A series of snipes is just harder to deal with in general. So, I'm not going to point-by-point all of your posts, so I'll just pick a few. If you want me to specifically tackle them, try to emphasize which ones you think are more important for me to pick out, okay?

Also, Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword was the fastest selling Zelda game of all time. As a near-end of life Wii Title, its definitely injecting life into the Wii.

No, Zelda has never moved console. It's irrelevant.

IMO, Nintendo's core audience has always been the Mario / Zelda players like me. They've managed to suck money out of the video game fad of cheap crappy games like Wii Sports long enough. I'm happy to see Nintendo's return to serious games.

Are you happy to see Nintendo in the red for the first time in 100 years? Coming off of the most profitable company per employee in the world at the height of the Wii and DS social/casual games boom? They should have stuck to that, they were making lots of money. I HATE those games but that's what they should be doing.

Again, you make assertions that do not match up with the data.

First: Nintendo has continued to make casual games. In fact, Nintendo created 5 different "casual" games in 2011: Wii Play Motion, Sonic and Mario at the Olympics, Rhythm Heaven, Fortune Street, and Nintendogs + Cats. On the 3DS, there was PilotWings Resort. Didn't hear about them? Thats my point! The fad is over for 'casual Nintendo'. Nintendo was able to do casual when they were the only guys with accelerometers in their controller. But today, they are facing down competition from Microsoft Kinect, Sony's Playstation Move, and extremely commoditized cell phones and the tablet industry. Hell, Verizon and AT&T are giving away Cell Phones for free that have more sensors than a Wii controller now, and its trivial to find a $1 replacement for Wii Sports now. (Consider that those free cell phones have GPS, cameras, accelerometer and compasses standard now).

So the best casual games of 2011 on Wii were Just Dance 3 (Ubisoft) and Sonic / Mario at the Olympics. (Don't bother even looking at "casual 3DS" games, they'll hurt your argument even more). On the other hand, the "core crowd" for Nintendo has responded well for Skyward Sword, Super Mario 3D Land, Mario Kart 7. These three games easily have more sales than all of the casual games I listed earlier. (Even if you count Ubisoft's "Just Dance 3" which wasn't created or published by Nintendo). The release of Kid Icarus:Uprising has also been pretty good, it seems well on its way to getting a large amount of sales as well.

The market has changed. Nintendo no longer has a monopoly on accelerometers in controllers. Thus, Nintendo has to attract customers on more than just "innovative controls".

As for graphics: PCs have reached the holy grail of 1080p. Consoles are not powerful enough to do this yet. If you've ever played a game on PC at 1080p and compare it to XBox / PS3 720p... you'll notice that the PC games just look better. Right now, the graphics crowd has all gone to PC because 6+ year-old consoles can't compete.

The graphics crowd is tiny but vocal. Actually graphics were already good enough for immersive 3D games by the time of the PS2. At that point no dev could say graphics were holding back the world they wanted to create. Everything since then (1080p) is worthless paper-only numbers.

Also graphics are too expensive for gaming to support. If an "AAA" title doesn't sell 2m then the studio pretty much goes bust because the graphcs and cutscenes are so expensive. The return for that investment isn't worth it, they should be going 2D or simple/cartoony 3D.

I have to again remind you that no one does 2D anymore because 2D is more expensive than 3D.

TM: Well, when making a 2D fighting game these days, people tend to do almost all the work using 3D models, which usually ends with them saying, "Well, why don't we make the whole game 3D, then?"

For me, the graphics in a 2D fighter have to retain that hand-drawn feel, no matter what technology is being used. So, even if we're starting out with 3D models, we have to go back over them by hand, and make them come alive that way.

Basically, BlazBlue was first made in 3D. Then, they hired an army of artists to trace the 3D images and go over them by hand. This is because its cheaper to create a bunch of 3D models to trace... than to draw 2D images from scratch. I definitely applaud Arc System Works for making an artstyle that I really like... but I understand the reality of the situation now. 3D games are cheaper to make. So even suggesting 2D be used to "save money" is ludicrous.

As for "cartoon" 3D graphics: cheap games aren't about "cartoon style". A game like Dead or Alive which simply recycled models for 4 generations of games saved a ton of money. When you look at the lower class 3D games, its about recycling models from generation to generation... not about the art style. I'd imagine that "Dynasty Warriors 7 Empires" (which recycled the models from "Dynasty Warriors 7") was cheaper to make than a cartoon game like Sims 3.

Also: here's the magic about upgrading your game to higher resolution: its free to make your game look better in it. Every game will look better on higher resolution. True, AAA titles have to constantly innovate the graphics, but for those of us who are happy with say... Bastion level graphics. Well... those simple games just looks better in 1080p. Hell, Bastion is a 2d game and it looks better on higher resolution! (I'm not sure if its sprite-based or not... but they did hire 3d modelers)

XBox360 (720p)
http://supergiantgames.com/site/wp-cont ... 1_0003.jpg

vs

PC (1080p)
http://gamernation.co.uk/wp-content/upl ... stion4.jpg

It just looks better on PC, and the game costs the same on both. Why should I get an XBox360 today when even the $10 games look better on PCs?

[AvatarIII]

That's what I saad getting at when I went on to say that it wasn't similar enough, but compared to the difference between the PS1 and N64, they were relatively similar, in the same ball park in power, and both used same storage media.
The N64 on the other hand was much more powerful than the PS1 but the PS1 had a much higher capacity for the size of it's games, multi platform games were completely out of the question in that generation.

No, the hardware between the PS2 and the Xbox were amazingly different. The Xbox was, hardware, a PC in a box, pretty simple with nothing outlandish about it. The PS2 was based off the emotion engine, which was one of the most difficult sets of hardware to code for in the history of video game consoles. It was the CPU and GPU and many functions of the north bridge all glued into a single package, and if I remember correctly, had one of the most infuriating clocking systems ever devised by man. The PS1 and N64, while each having fairly different hardware, didn't have hardware that was that wildly different.

Computational capability, sure, they weren't that far off. But the GC and the Xbox were even more comparable to each other. With the exception of the fact that the GC didn't use DVDs, it fits all of the other qualifications at least as well, if not better, as the Xbox does. I'll say it again: the cause was the market being fractured even more combined with rising development costs. An AAA game could no longer reliably and consistently make enough profit off of a single console anymore -- only certain AAA games could get away with that anymore, instead of all of them. The specifics of the Xbox's hardware doesn't factor into this equation at all.

I see what you are saying, but my point is that the reason a AAA title can't get away with being on a single platform is because of the fact there is more than one console it can be on. you seem to be saying that a game has to be on more than one console to succeed, I'm saying if there was only one console for it to be on, it would be able to succeed by just being on that one console.

You're saying about the actual hardware in an Xbox and PS2 being vastly different, but as consumers are mostly unaware of this, the perception to the layman is that they are relatively similar, which makes them ask "I have a PS2, but not an Xbox, I don't need both because they are pretty similar, so why can't I have every game?" the prevalence of multi platform games was in response to this misconception. this wasn't an issue in the PS1/N64 era because the 2 consoles were perceived to be very different, even if the Xbox and PS2 were different, the perception was that they were similar, and like I said about storage media, the fact they both used DVD meant that a developer made a 2GB game, the publisher would want it on both consoles, in the PS1/N64 era, a PS1 developer could make a 600MB game, but a N64 developer was limited to 40MB or something (not sure of the exact maximum but it was definitely in that ballpark) but a N64 game would never be able to run on the less powerful PS1, so no one asked for multi-platform games so publishers didn't try to push developers to make multi platform games.

do you see what I'm saying now?

[Gelsamel]

Uh, the Orbis isn't a new model of PS3, it's the PS4. It can play games at 4k resolution (although finding a TV/monitor for that will be interesting). It won't have backwards compatibility. This is not just an updated PS3 and the performance power jump from the PS3 is actually quite large.

[Game_boy]

No, I'm literally advocating for a return to SNES graphics for 2D and GC graphics for 3D. Those were good enough and much cheaper.That is getting off the point of this thread though.

The problem with Sony going for a very PC like box is that by 2013 even the lowest of low end PCs will have great graphics (Llano, Sandy Bridge or Brazos on-die graphics). I don't think PCs will displace consoles or anything, but the console that will win (profitability not unit sales) will differentiate itself from a PC the most.

[Derek]

No, I'm literally advocating for a return to SNES graphics for 2D and GC graphics for 3D. Those were good enough and much cheaper.That is getting off the point of this thread though.

That might be fine for small teams with a tight budget, but there is both the technology and the demand for 2D and 3D graphics that look much, much better than that. It would actually really suck to have to play nothing but games with those low quality graphics. Even when I play old PC games, I like to play them at native resolution (1920x1200) at 60 FPS. It makes a big difference (especially the 60 FPS).

The problem with Sony going for a very PC like box is that by 2013 even the lowest of low end PCs will have great graphics (Llano, Sandy Bridge or Brazos on-die graphics). I don't think PCs will displace consoles or anything, but the console that will win (profitability not unit sales) will differentiate itself from a PC the most.

The customer doesn't give two shits what the internal architecture is, and he shouldn't. Using a different architecture just makes it harder for developers to program for your system, discourages multiplatform releases from visiting it, and makes it more expensive for you to manufacture it. You're absolutely right that the consoles need to differentiate themselves from PCs, but changing the architecture doesn't accomplish that. You have to differentiate the user experience to do that.

[Vanzetti]

There is something I don't quite understand. Why must realistic games always cost so much? I mean, it's not like you have to draw everything from scratch with every new game you produce. if you made a model of a human being, with all the bones, textures, moves and gestures, its stays with you forever. Next game you just need to improve it. The same goes for every other object.
How wrong am I?

[Dauric]

There is something I don't quite understand. Why must realistic games always cost so much? I mean, it's not like you have to draw everything from scratch with every new game you produce. if you made a model of a human being, with all the bones, textures, moves and gestures, its stays with you forever. Next game you just need to improve it. The same goes for every other object.
How wrong am I?

In general if you're using -exactly- the same model from game to game people (read: The Internetz) will notice and it will become a joke at the developer's expense.

Even if you're using the same characters (Say you're making a big Mass Effect series) the problem is that everyone's always trying to push the boundaries of the computer/console engine to squeeze the most out of them. Remember that, if the developer is pushing the capabilities of the system, every polygon rendered in your characters means a polygon you lose in the scenery. Fewer polygons in the environment means shorter sighting distances, fewer polygons in the characters and they risk looking strangely angular. Of course this is just the main characters, you still have all the NPCs to deal with and if they're all identical you run in to the "Clone Troopers" jokes (see above).

You may have all sorts of textured models at your disposal, but ultimately they have to run smoothly in the chosen game engine and at the same time the computer is running the game logic and AI. If for example AI improves significantly you may have to sacrifice some portion of the data being passed to the video card to squeeze out a few more bytes of memory for the AI to run smoothly. So improvements to your game rules and processing may necessitate optimization to your models.

In some cases, mostly with realistic weapons, military hardware or cars in racing games, the big expense is with getting the license to use that likeness. If you look at games like "Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X." a large segment of the credits is nothing but acknowledgements to various military aircraft developers around the world for granting Ubisoft the rights to use the likeness of their aircraft. Doesn't matter if you have the perfect models from a previous game and they work flawlessly in your current game engine if they're models of a copyrighted/trademarked object you still can't use them until you sign -yet another- contract with the company that holds the rights to that object for the current game.

Last and probably the most influential aspect to game prices is the price of a game you see on the shelf is pretty well divorced of the actual price to develop -that particular- game. Publishers (especially EA and ones following their example) tend to take the aggregate view of their properties. Games tend to be priced based on their genre description rather than a specific price based on what went in to develop that particular game and even then the difference is fairly minimal. It's how they hedge their bets on the popularity of any title. For example let's say that the furor over the ending to ME3 caused a shortfall of sales and they didn't make budget (EA totally did, but let's just say not for the sake of the hypothetical) They're going to make up that shortfall on their next Battlefield release. The next game is still going to cost $60 new on the shelves, but in the accounting that is going to pay off the shortfall in expected sales from the previous title.

[KnightExemplar]

There is something I don't quite understand. Why must realistic games always cost so much? I mean, it's not like you have to draw everything from scratch with every new game you produce. if you made a model of a human being, with all the bones, textures, moves and gestures, its stays with you forever. Next game you just need to improve it. The same goes for every other object.
How wrong am I?

Dauric makes a strong point about the AAA games. On the other hand, there are also the cheap games that he ignored. Personally speaking... I tend to play those cheaper games because I'm not as much of a graphics guy. I mentioned the Dynasty Warriors series. To answer your question... yes, they do that exactly on the cheaper games. Dynasty Warriors is probably cheap to make because of how much they recycle their models. One of the most pronounced characters is Sun Shang Xiang:

Spoiler:

Dynasty Warriors 2:


Dynasty Warriors 3:


Dynasty Warriors 4:


Dynasty Warriors 5:

Thats right. They recycled her model for four different games. Aside from her weapon getting inexplicably bigger and minor variations on her costume... her model is practically identical. By the time they got to DW6, they finally had enough money to create a new set of models for nearly everyone. Then... they revamped the models in DW7. Until they released the $10 DLC package with "new old" models.

Dynasty Warriors 7 DLC (an extra $10 gets you):

Spoiler:

Everyone knows that Dynasty Warriors is that cheap game with bad voice acting of course. But there is aniche audience that doesn't care about little details like recycled sprites... recycled maps... recycled story... recycled mechanics... and erm... the same damn game for the last 10 years... This definitely wouldn't pass in a AAA game as Dauric noted above... but there are definitely the series of games where everything is recycled. (Lol, why do I still buy Dynasty Warriors? Well... I guess I just like these games...)

Which is my point: its much easier to do 3D cheaply than it is to do 2D cheaply. Cheap 3D games do exactly as you say. They recycle everything they can.

The problem with Sony going for a very PC like box is that by 2013 even the lowest of low end PCs will have great graphics (Llano, Sandy Bridge or Brazos on-die graphics). I don't think PCs will displace consoles or anything, but the console that will win (profitability not unit sales) will differentiate itself from a PC the most.

Even though a large number of games are multiplatform now-a-days... its pretty easy to distinguish yourself as a console by simply getting a few key exclusive games. Ex: Super Smash Bros was the distinguishing game for the N64, Gamecube, and Wii. XBox had Halo for a while (before it got ported to PC). Sony used to have Final Fantasy on lockdown... but I guess today people are talking more about God of War, maybe Little Big Planet. (I'm a fan of Razing Storm myself... but no one talks about that)

[Dauric]

There is something I don't quite understand. Why must realistic games always cost so much? I mean, it's not like you have to draw everything from scratch with every new game you produce. if you made a model of a human being, with all the bones, textures, moves and gestures, its stays with you forever. Next game you just need to improve it. The same goes for every other object.
How wrong am I?

Dauric makes a strong point about the AAA games. On the other hand, there are also the cheap games that he ignored.

Well, I ignored the cheap games because the question was rather explicitly about games that cost a lot.

[KnightExemplar]

There is something I don't quite understand. Why must realistic games always cost so much? I mean, it's not like you have to draw everything from scratch with every new game you produce. if you made a model of a human being, with all the bones, textures, moves and gestures, its stays with you forever. Next game you just need to improve it. The same goes for every other object.
How wrong am I?

Dauric makes a strong point about the AAA games. On the other hand, there are also the cheap games that he ignored.

Well, I ignored the cheap games because the question was rather explicitly about games that cost a lot.

I read his question the other way actually. As in, "why don't developers recycle models" ? The answer to his question is... well... yeah... in cheap games, developers indeed recycle models. Either way, both points IMO are of some importance to the thread.

* Expensive games will use the new graphical capabilities of the Sony Console
* Cheaper games will eventually build up the art assets to cheaply use the new graphical capabilities of the new console. (Early on, they'll have old models recycled from PS3 games. But they'll incrementally update their models to the next console).

So in both cases (cheap and expensive games...), the higher resolution and faster processing will be put to good use.