PS3 limited release, EU not til march

[fractured78]

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/09/06/business/AS_FIN_COM_Japan_Sony_PlayStation.php

Just thought this should go here because of its impact on the "HD Wars."

[quenelf]

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fractured78 said:
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/09/06/business/AS_FIN_COM_Japan_Sony_PlayStation.php

Just thought this should go here because of its impact on the "HD Wars."

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I don't think the EU delay will have much of an impact - at least according to my impressions, HD is less well advanced overall here in the EU than it is in the US.

The severely limited supplies for Christmas in US might do some damage to Blu-ray's prospects though. (Although, Sony are supposedly buying up all the blue laser diodes they can get, and not selling on those from their own division that produces them, which means supplies are limited for HD-DVD players and standalone Blu-ray players also.)

--quen

[Chacranajxy]

Even more interesting is this:

http://kotaku.com/gaming/sony/no-1080p-for-ps3-games-198852.php

Apparently, the PS3 won't play games at 1080p like Sony was pushing at E3... it has not been a good day for the system.

[fractured78]

Not really surprising since the most powerful PC's today still need SLI or Xfire to do 1080p in current gen computer games. I'm actually shocked that anyone ever really believed more than a handful, if even that, of games would ever play at 1080p. *shrug* Truth in business and marketing? It's a rarity nowadays.

[Sensuifu]

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fractured78 said:
Not really surprising since the most powerful PC's today still need SLI or Xfire to do 1080p in current gen computer games.


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You can get playable framerates at 1080p and beyond without SLI or Crossfire. Check out some (http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2821&p=9) benchmarks (http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/2560_1600_gaming_preview/page3.asp) on the X1900 and 7900GTX.

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I'm actually shocked that anyone ever really believed more than a handful, if even that, of games would ever play at 1080p. *shrug* Truth in business and marketing? It's a rarity nowadays.

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They can run games at 1080p..just not as graphically pleasing. /images/graemlins/wink.gif

[fractured78]

I think you and me define current gen video games a bit differently. To me that's FEAR, Oblivion, and HL2: Lost Coast. COD2, Pacific Fighters, and Quake 4 aren't really current gen in terms of their engines. Why? They don't have the bells and whistles of the other games. To me I'd define them as last gen. In "game time" their engines are old and haven't been updated with the latest video tricks. /images/graemlins/happy.gif

But hey, that's this my way of defining games, nothing wrong with yours. Also, none of those benchmarks had AA enabled. Depending on the size of the screen that's going to make a large difference in visual quality.

PS-I have all the games except for Pacific Fighters.

Crysis.....now THAT'S next gen.

[Sensuifu]

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fractured78 said:
I think you and me define current gen video games a bit differently. To me that's FEAR, Oblivion, and HL2: Lost Coast. COD2, Pacific Fighters, and Quake 4 aren't really current gen in terms of their engines. Why? They don't have the bells and whistles of the other games. To me I'd define them as last gen. In "game time" their engines are old and haven't been updated with the latest video tricks. /images/graemlins/happy.gif
But hey, that's this my way of defining games, nothing wrong with yours. Also, none of those benchmarks had AA enabled. Depending on the size of the screen that's going to make a large difference in visual quality.



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Check the rest of the benchmarks, there are two URLs I linked, Anandtech being the other. While the games you listed might not be as graphically intensive as the more notable ones, Quake4 does give an idea about the performance you'll get from Prey, which does take a hit by at least 10fps. The F.E.A.R. benchmarks look pretty good, so does HL2:E1. At those resolutions and framerates, I'd be surprised if the PS3 were able to pull that off. You're talking about 1st-gen G70 architecture, nothing compared to what's released in the PC market now.

[Sensuifu]

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kaiyouske said:
Crysis.....now THAT'S next gen.

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so next-gen that people have a difficult time distinguishing the renders from the photos. /images/graemlins/sdsmiley.gif Too bad the character models will always be one step behind.

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Sensuifu said:

so next-gen that people have a difficult time distinguishing the renders from the photos. /images/graemlins/sdsmiley.gif Too bad the character models will always be one step behind.

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The character models (http://www.crysis-online.com/Information/Character%20Technology/) look pretty next-gen to me as well......

[Skywise]

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Chacranajxy said:
Even more interesting is this:

http://kotaku.com/gaming/sony/no-1080p-for-ps3-games-198852.php

Apparently, the PS3 won't play games at 1080p like Sony was pushing at E3... it has not been a good day for the system.

[/ QUOTE ]

We've already gone over this in the hardware forum - the PS3 is capable of playing games at 1080p, but it'll be up to the developers to evaluate the tradeoffs. Some games would be more suited for 1080p than others for instance. Experience with developing for the console is also a factor. There will be 1080p games - just not as many, or the particular ones that some people were hoping for.

[SamTheMan]

Just great!!! I was hoping to get my first experience with Blu-Ray this november but nooooooooo. We europeans always get kicked in the head when it comes to console releases. Oh well, Nintendo's gonna get my $$$ next. Wii, here I come /images/graemlins/sdsmiley.gif

[quenelf]

It has been known for a good six months or so that developers are not working in 1080p for fast action games with next-gen graphics, so this is not news. The system can't do it (which is not surprising). It's telling that the sole 1080p example they've shown so far was a last-gen game - yes, if you want last-gen graphics, it can do it at 1080p. And of the other games recently announced to (maybe) support it, some have it as an option - which sort of suggests that framerates must suck or the graphics are worse, since why bother offering 720p if 1080p is fine?

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Skywise said:
We've already gone over this in the hardware forum - the PS3 is capable of playing games at 1080p, but it'll be up to the developers to evaluate the tradeoffs. Some games would be more suited for 1080p than others for instance.


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Yep. I'm sure mahjong will look awesome in 1080p. /images/graemlins/happy.gif

More seriously, I don't know how the video interfaces work - is it feasible to switch resolutions mid-game, or would that screw things up? Or can you output in 1080p but with the graphics card just scaling up from a 720p (or so) buffer?

It could obviously use 1080p for pre-rendered cutscenes, which could look very nice, and for other sections of games where the graphics doesn't need to be high-powered, for example map screens and the like which might benefit from sharp text.

(IMO there isn't much point in using ultra-high resolutions for 3D action games - there isn't enough memory to store textures at the resolutions you need, and it'd probably run into the PC gamer resolution-waving syndrome where people run games at stupidly high resolutions and it's so sharp you can clearly see the edge of every polygon; waste of time.)

1080p could be awesome for things like point-and-click adventure games (think Sierra or Myst), using prerendered graphics and movie sequences which the Blu-ray disc provides sufficient room for, with only a few 3D-rendered characters on top. Unfortunately PS3 doesn't have a mouse to point/click with, and nobody makes that kind of game any more anyway. /images/graemlins/sad.gif

--quen

[Skywise]

Mmm.. strip mahjong in 1080p /images/graemlins/noseblee.gif.

You could switch resolutions in-game on the fly, but some displays may take a bit to resynch to the new resolution. For some you may even have to temporarily switch channels or disconnect and reconnect the cable. But then that's just bad TVs really.

What I am hoping for is that they offer some kind of upscaling on the PS3 to 1080p rather than doing it in the display itself. The real problem is that when you do it on the display, text has a tendency to become blurry. If you do the scaling on the PS3 itself you could (in theory - no idea if anyone's actually doing it) do vector scaling of text in a separate buffer before overlaying it onto the image. You could also do similar things for say HUDs, by having separate 1080P versions of those.

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1080p could be awesome for things like point-and-click adventure games (think Sierra or Myst), using prerendered graphics and movie sequences which the Blu-ray disc provides sufficient room for, with only a few 3D-rendered characters on top. Unfortunately PS3 doesn't have a mouse to point/click with, and nobody makes that kind of game any more anyway.

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Some Japanese RPGs are still like that, except of course for the interface. Whether you use a mouse or a gamepad shouldn't really matter though. I actually think the PS3 could be a great platform for remakes of older games that way, like the FF series.

[VanG]

So I guess most of the 1080p games will be dating sims and all age version of pc h-games... awesome /images/graemlins/devil.gif

[Sensuifu]

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kaiyouske said:
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Sensuifu said:

so next-gen that people have a difficult time distinguishing the renders from the photos. /images/graemlins/sdsmiley.gif Too bad the character models will always be one step behind.

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The character models (http://www.crysis-online.com/Information/Character%20Technology/) look pretty next-gen to me as well......

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I agree they're next-gen, except in gameplay, the models never look as realistic as the renders from something like FF:TSW or in-game, pre-rendered cutscenes; it's getting close though. It just seems that everytime developers enhance the lod and complexity of the maps/environments, the models have one less thing missing from them. Crytek is breaking barriers though.

[quenelf]

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Skywise said:
Some Japanese RPGs are still like that, except of course for the interface. Whether you use a mouse or a gamepad shouldn't really matter though.

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Mmmm... I guess you mean they're like that in terms of how they are rendered, so they would also work in 1080p. That's true.

(As for adventure games though there's a real shortage - the only recent games I've played like that are Another Story and Phoenix Wright on DS, both of which use the traditional interface (with stylus instead of mouse, same difference). Even with these few releases DS seems to be the adventure-game console platform right now in terms of legal releases... I suppose I should also be hoping for adventure games to come to the Wii with its own pointer interface, but this is getting way off the HD topic...)

I guess in general it is better to use realtime rendering now that consoles can handle it, but prerendered stuff would still be pretty cool for adventure games and probably is cheaper to make. (It sucks in action games like Resident Evil pre-4 though, because of the camera angle issues i.e. a zombie attacks from behind and you can't see the bloody thing, which is totally not fair. So I wouldn't want to see a return to prerendered graphics just so we can have 1080p. /images/graemlins/happy.gif)

--quen