Sony to Shrink Cell/B.E. in PS3 to 45 nm

[Marcus Yam]

The PlayStation 3 is arguably the most advanced of this generation of consoles, with the only other runner being the Xbox 360. All that technology does come at a price, both for Sony and for gamers.

Sony to Shrink Cell/B.E. in PS3 to 45 nm : Read more

 

[tayb]

What Reeves and others fail to understand is that the main difference between the 360 and PS3 is what is forced upon the consumer. Some people just don't NEED a blu-ray player to play their games, they don't NEED bluetooth wireless to play games, and they don't NEED wi-fi or an HDD to play their games. How many customers could Sony have gained had they shipped a model for $200 without the features listed above? Quite a few I'm willing to bet. Pushing Blu-ray is destroying potential sales.

I personally own a PS3 and think it is an AMAZING value but I can also understand why consumers would pick up a $200 Xbox 360, play virtually the same games, and save some money.

 

[jkflipflop98]

You have to look at the big picture, Sony (being the primary backer and developer of Blu-Ray) now makes tons of money off other people simply putting movies onto their format.

Are they making more back in licensing fees than they're losing on the PS3? That's the balance Sony is going for.

 

[The_Blood_Raven]

Their not forcing blu-ray on people, it is needed. There is an Xbox 360 game that has 4 disks to it. The PS1 had games like that with CDs and DVDs fixed it. Now DVDs are not enough so Blu-ray must come in and become the normal format.

 

[tayb]

[citation][nom]The_Blood_Raven[/nom]Their not forcing blu-ray on people, it is needed. There is an Xbox 360 game that has 4 disks to it. The PS1 had games like that with CDs and DVDs fixed it. Now DVDs are not enough so Blu-ray must come in and become the normal format.[/citation]

No, for playing games blu-ray is not needed. The wording you used is "an" because there is only ONE Xbox 360 game that requires more than one disk. My roommate has over 30 Xbox 360 games and not one of them requires more than one disk. For this current generation of gaming a DVD9 is plenty of space. If they can fit GTA IV with all of those cut scenes, audio, and map space onto a DVD9 then DVD is fine for this generation. Games aren't too big... yet.

I can understand the argument of pushing the format for the money off of royalties but it is a dangerous game.

 

[Guest]

GTA IV was made smaller so that it would fit on one dvd disk. Fact of the matter is, GTAIV has much less game play (side missions etc) than San Andreas probably so that they would not have to pay MS for multiple disks. R* have said that they wont be making another GTA for the 360. Blu-ray is nice for games because 1) your disks don't get scratched 2) Uncompressed audio (which is noticeable when using surround sound 3) Metal Gear.

 

[tayb]

[citation][nom]billd[/nom]GTA IV was made smaller so that it would fit on one dvd disk. Fact of the matter is, GTAIV has much less game play (side missions etc) than San Andreas probably so that they would not have to pay MS for multiple disks. R* have said that they wont be making another GTA for the 360. Blu-ray is nice for games because 1) your disks don't get scratched 2) Uncompressed audio (which is noticeable when using surround sound 3) Metal Gear.[/citation]

It is funny that you would say Rockstar isn't making any more GTA games for the 360 when they are just about to release the exclusive GTA Expansion Pack... exclusively on the Xbox 360...

 

[Tindytim]

Exactly. I remember there being a few development halts on GTA IV, and one of them happened when Rockstar had a hard time fitting all the content on a DVD-9.

The fact of the matter is, Developers don't want to put games on multiple Discs. Look back at the PS2, there were multiple games on multiple discs, and the textures were lower resolution, there were much fewer polygons, less complex game engines. And they still had to put a few games over multiple Discs.

The point is, games aren't breaking more than 1 disc not because developers simply aren't using it, it's because they don't want to ship multiple discs.

 

[Tindytim]

[citation][nom]tayb[/nom]It is funny that you would say Rockstar isn't making any more GTA games for the 360 when they are just about to release the exclusive GTA Expansion Pack... exclusively on the Xbox 360...[/citation]
Funnier still, it's DLC. Not all models can even use it.

Their just fulfilling a deal with Microsoft.

 

[megamanx00]

I don't need Blu Ray myself. Upscaling DVDs to my 42" Panasonic 720p is fine for now. It would be nice to have, if I had a bigger 1080p TV, but I wouldn't pay that much more for it. As for storing photos on it, the Panasonic has an SD card reader and it's awesome to show photos on a nice big plasma. Even then, most people just store their photos on their computer so I don't really think that's a compelling feature for the PS3. The 360 has more games, and generally games aren't much better on the PS3. Granted there are a few games that show off the extra power of the PS3, but they are far and few between. I also don't think the $100 difference is correct, since the big 360 seller is the version without the hard drive so really it's more like the $200 difference between the cheapest 360 and the cheapest PS3 that's holding Sony back. The PS3 is really gonna end up like the 3DO because when in finally comes down to a price that people are willing to pay for, their competitors will have something out that's faster, while still being easier to program for thus giving developers more results for their programming hours. If you don't think development complexity is a factor you should consider that the extra man hours and overtime you spend to develop a game for the PS3 vs the 360 has a very real affect on a companies bottom line. Those programmers don't work for free and overtime is time and a half.

 

[Tindytim]

I have all of my Music and Media stored on my PS3. Windows automatically will stream media to the PS3, depending on what in the WMP library. So all your photos, music, and video can be streamed to the PS3 without any setup.

 

[eklipz330]

@The Blood Raven,
if there is a multiple disk game for 360, i do not know of it...

gta iv is larger on ps3 simply because of the uncompressed audio, like their other games

but im glad the ps3 is moving forward despite all this hate geared towards them... yes microsoft is an american company, but the more i look at it, the more i see than sony is offering more to us, and by april when the price cut finally reaches us, than they should be praised... btw i only have a 360, ill get a ps3 when i see a must have game...still none yet, not even killzone

 

[Tindytim]

[citation][nom]eklipz330[/nom]@The Blood Raven, if there is a multiple disk game for 360, i do not know of it...[/citation]
Blue Dragon is 3 Discs, Lost Odyssey is 4 Discs, Infinite Undiscovery is 2 Discs.

Rage will ship on 2 Discs for the 360, and 1 on the PS3.

 

[hannibal]

The blue ray is the future of hd-consoles. The other thing is, when it is really needed. It may even be that the next MS console does not have BR. It all depends on timimg, but by little by little the DVD is getting too small media. And yeah, the online streaming is not gonna be the "best" thing for many years. There are so many areas where even 1MB connection is only a dream... Until we have really fast wireless connection to offer to sparsely populated areas, the physical media is deeded. 2-20 years from now.
One posibility can be games on memory cards (like in good old days when we had cardridges for games
It may be even a way of avoiding some pirasy, by making custom memory chip based game delivery. Does anyone have an idea how much it would cost to make a game to memory chip format compared to BR format? It is easy to say how muct empty storage cost, but it's very different thing than making one with a program stored in...

 

[falchard]

I will buy a PS3 if this means the price will go down.

 

[The_Blood_Raven]

[citation][nom]eklipz330[/nom]@The Blood Raven, if there is a multiple disk game for 360, i do not know of it...gta iv is larger on ps3 simply because of the uncompressed audio, like their other gamesbut im glad the ps3 is moving forward despite all this hate geared towards them... yes microsoft is an american company, but the more i look at it, the more i see than sony is offering more to us, and by april when the price cut finally reaches us, than they should be praised... btw i only have a 360, ill get a ps3 when i see a must have game...still none yet, not even killzone[/citation]

I know of a few but I only own 2. 1 is The Last Remnant with 2 disks, and the other is the Lost Odyssey with 4 disks. Also Blue Dragon has 3 disks, Infinite Undiscovery has 2 disks, ES4: Oblivion GOTY is 2 disks, and finally Final Fantasy XIII may be up to 6 disks.

 

[PrangeWay]

I got my blueray player free with my new TV (LG BD300). An actual remote, streaming netflicks built in, 7.1, upscaling on DVD's, all the bells and whistles. Outside of the fact it is wired network instead of wireless, it's prefect. Goes for about 300 now, should drop to the 200 range when the next product line comes out. The PS3 WAS a great blueray players a year ago... And again it came free with my LG. Sony will never admit mistakes but their billions in losses speaks for itself.

 

[eccentric909]

[citation][nom]Tindytim[/nom]I have all of my Music and Media stored on my PS3. Windows automatically will stream media to the PS3, depending on what in the WMP library. So all your photos, music, and video can be streamed to the PS3 without any setup.[/citation]

The 360 does this as well? Mine does at least and vice-versa, I can stream whatever is on my 360 (multi-media) to my PC. Each time I start my 360, as long as my PC is on, it displays a pop-up letting me or anyone else on the network stream whatever is on the 360, and vice-versa with the 360 streaming what's on the PCs within the network.

 

[eccentric909]

Doh, I wish you could edit comments.. as far as number of discs goes, that doesn't really matter as much (to me personally) anymore, since I can install them to my 360's hard drive now. That was a nice little update option that I wish MS would have given us from the start.

 

[tenor77]

[citation][nom]hannibal[/nom]The blue ray is the future of hd-consoles. The other thing is, when it is really needed. It may even be that the next MS console does not have BR. It all depends on timimg, but by little by little the DVD is getting too small media. And yeah, the online streaming is not gonna be the "best" thing for many years. There are so many areas where even 1MB connection is only a dream... Until we have really fast wireless connection to offer to sparsely populated areas, the physical media is deeded. 2-20 years from now. One posibility can be games on memory cards (like in good old days when we had cardridges for games It may be even a way of avoiding some pirasy, by making custom memory chip based game delivery. Does anyone have an idea how much it would cost to make a game to memory chip format compared to BR format? It is easy to say how muct empty storage cost, but it's very different thing than making one with a program stored in...[/citation]

I think it's short sighted to say that any direction is the absolute future of storage. I don't think you were specifically saying that, though. Truth is we're seeing SSD getting larger and larger, and honestly I could see HD's being a neccessity in the next generation. I'm actually disapointed that MS isn't requiring HD's as they could do installation of games to lower the disk limit.

The problem with running solely off of any disk is that once you hit the memory limit of the disk, the next disk HAS to include many of the same files. This increases cost, which naturally is passed onto us.

That said Blu-ray, while it's storage capacity is superior, it doesn't lower cost for anyone but Sony as they own the rights, so if you want to use Blu-Ray you have to deal with them.

Back to the article at hand, if this lowers cost and power consumption I'm all for it. I'm still waiting for someone to manufacture a 360ish controller that'll work with the PS3. I can't stand the dual shock, so I will always play a multi-console game on the 360, multi-disk or not.