Until a DEVELOPER counters Insomniac's TECHNICAL claims, their word is law!

[QUOTE="dirktu"]

Graphics, graphics, graphics... will it never end? I own none of the Next-Gen consoles, and I won't be buying any of those untill some games come out that I find superb (playing games is a personal taste thing).

I just wanted to react, because the TC states that only "DEVELOPERS" may counter Insomniac technical claims... well, I thought that was kinda weird to post on a gamespot system wars forum.

As personal opinions or reasoning don't really matter here, I'll post a nice link. If you would be truly interested in a graphical comparison between the 360 and PS3 I would recommend you to read the following:

http://ac-revolution.gametrailers.com/gamepad/index.php?action=viewblog&id=72463

These are real technical claims, and although it may not be from a developer, this particular blog entry rocks.

 

Have fun reading ;)

 

 

klactose

EDIT: Oh, and to clarify again why my criteria is "until a DEVELOPER disproves him" is just because everyone knows who the game companies are, so it's easier to admit that they actually know about making games. While no one has a clue who, for instance, the guy is who wrote the article you linked too. And just like with that Michael "Optimus" Perry article, if you don't know who the person/company is giving the analysis it's easier to disparage (even if they may be telling to truth).

First of all: your welcome. Secondly, however, if you really read the blog you'll see that it does counter Insomniac!

Like the poster above me indicated (at time of writing),the 360 has no 'slight' GPU advantage over the PS3.

Let me summarize Insomniac:

1) GPU of 360 and PS3 are comparable, although the 360 has a slight edge

2) CPU of PS3 is way more powerfull

Conclusion: from 1) and 2) it follows that PS3>360

However, this is not true as indicated in my link. Insomniac uses damage control in its 1st argument.

This is how it should be (source of the quotes: the link I posted):

1) "The 360's amazing shader performance & efficiency along side its eDRAM frame buffer, gives it a large advantage in graphical performance. It has the upper hand in shading & HDR lighting as well as no texturing bottlenecks (or virtually none for that matter), giving it a naturally better texturing ability."

2) "PS3 whilst the RSX is much weaker than the 360, it has Cell which can compensate for many of its shortcomings such as a frame buffer & limited shader functionality. Cell has a greater potential for physics thanks to its amazing computing power."

Conclusion:  "However All this doesn't mean 360 = graphics PS3 = physics. Games vary and will rarely take full advantage of everything a system can do. A game like Alan Wake on 360 will have better physics than most or all PS3 games this year. MGS4 may have better graphics than most 360 games this year, there are varying titles taking advantage of the systems in different ways so they'll be on par."

Wow, I really seem to be promoting this guy's blog... 

[QUOTE="klactose"]Yeah, that article is interesting, and it also says the same thing that Hastings says about the GPUs and CPUs. Thanks for the link though.

EDIT: Oh, and to clarify again why my criteria is "until a DEVELOPER disproves him" is just because everyone knows who the game companies are, so it's easier to admit that they actually know about making games. While no one has a clue who, for instance, the guy is who wrote the article you linked too. And just like with that Michael "Optimus" Perry article, if you don't know who the person/company is giving the analysis it's easier to disparage (even if they may be telling to truth).

dirktu

First of all: your welcome. Secondly, however, if you really read the blog you'll see that it does counter Insomniac!

Like the poster above me indicated (at time of writing),the 360 has no 'slight' GPU advantage over the PS3.

Let me summarize Insomniac:

1) GPU of 360 and PS3 are comparable, although the 360 has a slight edge

2) CPU of PS3 is way more powerfull

Conclusion: from 1) and 2) it follows that PS3>360

However, this is not true as indicated in my link. Insomniac uses damage control in its 1st argument.

This is how it should be (source of the quotes: the link I posted):

1) "The 360's amazing shader performance & efficiency along side its eDRAM frame buffer, gives it a large advantage in graphical performance. It has the upper hand in shading & HDR lighting as well as no texturing bottlenecks (or virtually none for that matter), giving it a naturally better texturing ability."

2) "PS3 whilst the RSX is much weaker than the 360, it has Cell which can compensate for many of its shortcomings such as a frame buffer & limited shader functionality. Cell has a greater potential for physics thanks to its amazing computing power."

Conclusion:  "However All this doesn't mean 360 = graphics PS3 = physics. Games vary and will rarely take full advantage of everything a system can do. A game like Alan Wake on 360 will have better physics than most or all PS3 games this year. MGS4 may have better graphics than most 360 games this year, there are varying titles taking advantage of the systems in different ways so they'll be on par."

Wow, I really seem to be promoting this guy's blog... 

OK, "saying the same thing" was an oversimplification, but let's explore it and I will explain why I simplified it and moved on. BTW this is another reason I said "Devs", because there is a bunch of this exact type of commentary on the web (i could point you to several similar blogs/forum but I believe they are a waste - at least for the laymen). Ok let's dive in.

Due to the poor summations found within the article it isn't all too clear "exactly" what he means. The guy does say what you have quoted but also at the conclusion of the "Graphics & Graphical Performance" section he says the following.

When it comes to producing amazing graphics, I would expect the two systems to be virtually on par, 360 will have big advantages in this area though.

Remember, its not just how powerful the system is, its how you take advantage of the system to produce amazing graphics. Games on 360/PS3 will rival each other in graphics for the entire life cycle.AC

In my opinion he is contradicting himself directly within the same sentence "expect the two systems to be virtually on par, 360 will have big advantage"... that is a incoherent statement. He then follows it with the statement saying that the graphics will rival each other for the entire life cycle. Then at the end of the "Processing & Performance" section he says

By my calculations from technical data derived from benchmarks and performance efficiency from IBM, each Cell core allegedly has the performance of a Pentium IV 3.8GHz CPU. In addition, as I've mentioned before, the Cell processor has architecture suitable for graphics functions.

With such processing power, Cell has greater potential for physics than Xenon in the future.AC

At the end of the day he doesn't DISCOUNT what Hastings presents (he didn't say that the PS3 GPU is more powerful than the 360's or that the 360s CPU is more powerful than the PS3s), although he did attempt to elaborate on the differences. And while he did mention several times that the 360's GPU was much better than the RSX he also said that they were "on Par" with each other (he may have been on acid I'm not sure, but he couldn't seem to make up his mind :lol: ). Furthermore, he's not a developer (or at least he doesn't claim to be), so he doesn't stand up to the challenge presented even if he had discounted anything. But as I mentioned it WAS an interesting read.

Ok, by now everyone is aware of the "10 Reasons Sony Wins" article the Chief Creative Officer at Insomniac, Brian Hastings, wrote. Well this post ISN'T about his forecast for the future, half of his article is speculative and he isn't a fortune teller (I'll ask Cleo if I want to know the future).

What he is, however, is a Game developer with intimate knowledge of software and hardware. So the specific items he touched on regarding the technical attributes shall be considered true by me until another developer claims differently. I don't want to see any crappy posts in here from "anonymous devs". If they have something to say the should be willing to speak openly. I respect Brian for having the guts to put his professional opinion on the line. With that said, let's get busy and explore the technical issues he discussed.

1: Gears is the best looking game to date, including RFOM.[QUOTE="Brian Hastings"]Gears of War is a beautiful game and shows off the highest resolution textures of anything yet released, partly because of the Unreal Engine's ability to stream textures. This means that you can have much higher resolution textures than you could normally fit in your 512 MB of RAM.

...

Sometimes people ask us, "If Resistance takes 14 gigabytes, why doesn't it look better than Gears?" Well, for one, Resistance didn't support texture streaming, so we had to make choices about where we spent our high-res textures.klactose

2: 50GB of data WILL make games better.

As games get bigger, more advanced and more complex, they necessarily take up more space. If developers were filling up DVDs last generation, there are clearly going to be some sacrifices made to fit current generation games in the same amount of space.

...

There's no question that you can always cut more levels, compress the audio more, compress the textures more, down-res the mpeg movies, and eventually get any game to fit on a DVD. But you paid for a high-def experience, right? You want the highest resolution, best audio, most cinematic experience a developer can offer, right? That's why Blu-Ray is important for games, and why it will become more important each year of this hardware cycle.Brian Hastings

3: The Hard Drive MATTERS.

The problem with including a hard drive in one version of the 360 and not in the other is that developers can't use it for the games. Or, at least, they can't use it for any required features. When you are guaranteed to have at least a 20 GB hard drive in the console, you can write your load caching routines around it, or use it for your application's storage needs. To a developer, an optional hard drive is roughly equivalent to no hard drive at all.Brian Hastings

4: 360's GPU has slight edge over PS3's.

The GPUs on the Xbox 360 and PS3 are roughly equivalent, with the Xbox 360 arguably having a slight edge.Brian Hastings

5: PS3 has major CPU advantage over 360.

The difference in CPU power, however, is far greater with the PS3 enjoying the advantage. The PS3's eight parallel CPUs (one primary "PPU" and seven Cell processors) give it potentially far more computing power than the three parallel CPUs in the Xbox 360. Just about any tech programmer will tell you that the PS3's CPUs are significantly more powerful.Brian Hastings

So there you have it. Anything that disputes these points that doesn't come from another developer will be ignored, or proclaimed as bunk. However if another dev disputes this then we will finally have a real discussion in the gaming world about the real limitations of both of these consoles.

EDIT:

People PLEASE READ the post BEFORE you respond. Alot of you are making yourselves look silly.:shock: This post is NOT saying that Insomniac's word is law concerning PS3 winning the console war. This post IS saying that the TECHNICAL issues that Mr. Hastings has broached will be considered TRUTH up until the time that another developer counters them. If you do not understand this, please take a reading comprehension course. Thank you.

why the insomniac developer and not some other developer?omarguy01

How is this thread still going?  Insomniac has no class, and niether does Sony.  They're just doing what a Sony company does, and that's talk the big talk.  Sony is scared b3yond belief!  Ofcourse everybody is going to come to the aid of a sinking ship.  Sony has been doing nothing but talking, and they've been doing it since E3 1999.  Sony's response to the 360 Elite was instant.

They may have gotten away with that against Sega, but that's the last thing Microsoft will put up with.  The new 360 Elite is further proof of Microsofts dominance.  They made the best machine period!  Why can't people believe this?  It shows up in every single game that comes out.  The 360 has the better hardware.  It always had!

Until a PS3 game can proove otherwise, then Sony is still the biggest joke in gaming.  I love how the 360 Elite can come out an entire 5 months after the PS3, and destroy it with year and a half old hardware.:)

The only console that was future proofed was Microsoft's.  No risk at failing formats.  Just a pure gaming experience, with incredible online, and the best games across all genres! 

They may have gotten away with that against Sega, but that's the last thing Microsoft will put up with.  The new 360 Elite is further proof of Microsofts dominance.  They made the best machine period!  Why can't people believe this?  It shows up in every single game that comes out.  The 360 has the better hardware.  It always had!

Spartanx23

[QUOTE="klactose"][QUOTE="Spartan_024"]How is his word the law? His words are neither true or false unless he either proves it or another devs disprove it. So anyone can state anything and it is reagarded as teh truth without even proving it? And the only way for it to be false is if anyone challenges or dispute it. One individual can always argue that men have larger brain than women, but that doesn't neccessarily make it true if someone did not dispute itSpartan_024

For the record, and I've said this before, but I'm not referring to his "10 reasons" and saying that those are the law. I'm referring to the TECHNICAL aspects that he presented in a FEW of his "10 Reasons". Ok that's out the way, again.

Next, I agree that he most likely is biased. So what? I'm only referring to his "technical expertise" that concerns video games development. These would include an understanding of computer science and some electrical engineering. When dealing with science it's hard to try to pass on Biased answers as facts, because your peers WILL review what you write. And as I've stated about a million times now. IF he is wrong, then HIS PEERS will step up and debunk his claims. But in the absence of that happening, who else are you going to believe when no other dev has spoken publically about the technical issues mentioned in my first post? Should we believe anonymous blogs and forum posts?

To the TC: Your word isn't the law, therefore rendering this entire thread invalid.

Ridiculous proclamations FTW!

To the TC: Your word isn't the law, therefore rendering this entire thread invalid.

Ridiculous proclamations FTW!

heretrix

What he said about thos issues hardly proves it. It is his opinons and the only proof he cab provide is through games and services realated to the console. So far there are no games that justifies his claims. You can not force people to believe if there's no proof other than opinion. Expetise and credebility alone are not proof. His words are not true nor false. Simple as that. The answer to your question is simple. believe him if he provides proof other than his expert (devs) opinion. Do not believe him if he can not prove it by other means AND if another devs disprove his claims.Spartan_024

[QUOTE="Spartan_024"]What he said about thos issues hardly proves it. It is his opinons and the only proof he cab provide is through games and services realated to the console. So far there are no games that justifies his claims. You can not force people to believe if there's no proof other than opinion. Expetise and credebility alone are not proof. His words are not true nor false. Simple as that. The answer to your question is simple. believe him if he provides proof other than his expert (devs) opinion. Do not believe him if he can not prove it by other means AND if another devs disprove his claims.klactose

Some people can be believed, you are right about that. But this person is not my doctor, my accountant, or a scientist who deals with other things.

[QUOTE="klactose"][QUOTE="Spartan_024"]What he said about thos issues hardly proves it. It is his opinons and the only proof he cab provide is through games and services realated to the console. So far there are no games that justifies his claims. You can not force people to believe if there's no proof other than opinion. Expetise and credebility alone are not proof. His words are not true nor false. Simple as that. The answer to your question is simple. believe him if he provides proof other than his expert (devs) opinion. Do not believe him if he can not prove it by other means AND if another devs disprove his claims.Spartan_024

"he GPUs on the Xbox 360 and PS3 are roughly equivalent, with the Xbox 360 arguably having a slight edge. The difference in CPU power, however, is far greater with the PS3 enjoying the advantage. The PS3's eight parallel CPUs (one primary "PPU" and seven Cell processors) give it potentially far more computing power than the three parallel CPUs in the Xbox 360. Just about any tech programmer will tell you that the PS3's CPUs are significantly more powerful. The problem is that it has been challenging thus far to take advantage of the Cell's parallel architecture."
I tohught it was well known that the 360's Gpu and Cpu were better? Even if only marginly...


"ranted, some really great Xbox 360 games have squeezed onto a DVD9. Gears of War is a beautiful game and shows off the highest resolution textures of anything yet released, partly because of the Unreal Engine's ability to stream textures. This means that you can have much higher resolution textures than you could normally fit in your 512 MB of RAM. It also means that you're going to chew up more disc space for each level. With streamed textures, streamed geometry and streamed audio, even with compression, you can quickly approach 1 GB of data per level. That inherently limits you to a maximum of about 7 levels, and that's without multiplayer levels or mpeg cutscenes."

But currently games can easily fit onto DVD9s so whats the problem? I bet if you asked 'Epic Games' about this they would say it fitted fine...



 "4. Casino Royale"

Wow this guy is an idiot, Casino Royale was an alright film. By far the worst Bond film though all its purpose is is to introduce Daniel Craig as the new Bond why do you think they went back into his past?

about the price of Sony's console, I almost never see anyone mention the significance of Sony's free online service. Xbox Live Gold costs $70 to sign up for 1 year, or $20 for three months [It's actually now $49.99 for a one-year subscription - Ed.]. You can renew your membership for $50 a year. So if the Xbox 360 stays around for five years, you'll be paying 70 + 50 + 50 + 50 + 50 = $270 to access features that Sony gives you for free. "

PSn will collapse, they aren't making money on it so why bother running it?  After all all these companies are there to make money. Where did he get $70 from anyway? ISnt it weird how 360 users have the option to use Live for free on silver but they choose to use Gold instead?

 1st of all I'd like to say I havn't read a thread so intellectually dishonest in quite some time. 2nd of all, Todd Howard, project lead on Oblivion, already dismissed the claims that storage is superior to compression solutions. He said drive access speed is far more important. You can find a lot of devs in Sony's pocket making ridiculous statements because they want people to buy the systems so that they can sell them their games. Duh! donalbane

2) As far as the Cell goes, I think he was trying to simplify the conversation for the laymen. But if it is so far off (eventhough it's pretty close to what I've read everywhere else about the Cell - 1 PPU & 8 Cell processors with 1 disabled), won't someone come along and correct that too? So basically UNTIL a developer/university OPENLY comes out and CORRECTS this information, who are we to believe?klactose

So is it correct to say it has 8 processors? Absolutely... it's just misleading. Especially since one PPU is reserved for the OS, and one must be ceded to the OS at any given time, but those are software concerns. The fact that is has 8 physical, working processors doesn't change. More accurately, I'd say it has one superscalar processor and 7 vector processors (Not to be confused with vector units).

 Edit: I should point out that he DID clarify it to say that the design was asymmetric, and that 7 of them were PPUs, so it was eventually perfectly descriptive. Simply initially misleading.

[QUOTE="Spartan_024"][QUOTE="klactose"][QUOTE="Spartan_024"]What he said about thos issues hardly proves it. It is his opinons and the only proof he cab provide is through games and services realated to the console. So far there are no games that justifies his claims. You can not force people to believe if there's no proof other than opinion. Expetise and credebility alone are not proof. His words are not true nor false. Simple as that. The answer to your question is simple. believe him if he provides proof other than his expert (devs) opinion. Do not believe him if he can not prove it by other means AND if another devs disprove his claims.klactose

[QUOTE="klactose"] Maybe we can make this easy. Which points don't you believe?Spartan_024

Wow, he believes the same thing you believe it seems. So you actually AGREE with him. He doesn't mention the relevance of the HDD size but he is basically saying that the 360 should have included the HDD in all of it's SKUs

The problem with including a hard drive in one version of the 360 and not in the other is that developers can't use it for the games. Or, at least, they can't use it for any required features. When you are guaranteed to have at least a 20 GB hard drive in the console, you can write your load caching routines around it, or use it for your application's storage needs. To a developer, an optional hard drive is roughly equivalent to no hard drive at all.Hastings

Yeah he is probably right, but for the 90% of us who don't own an HDTV all this technical garbage is just that. You dont need super high res textures to have fun playing a game.. and that what it boils down to, are you having fun or not? Im all for using 50gb of space for a game.. but if its a game as big as the world and as long as the worlds history itself, but its boring as *&% then who cares?Berem

[QUOTE="Spartan_024"][QUOTE="klactose"] Maybe we can make this easy. Which points don't you believe?klactose

The problem with including a hard drive in one version of the 360 and not in the other is that developers can't use it for the games. Or, at least, they can't use it for any required features. When you are guaranteed to have at least a 20 GB hard drive in the console, you can write your load caching routines around it, or use it for your application's storage needs. To a developer, an optional hard drive is roughly equivalent to no hard drive at all.Hastings

 I also believe that Blu-ray is needed for gaming because games are going to get bigger. And what is the proof for this, and why do I agree with him.

remember the GameCube medium? I believe it is only 1.5 Gb and third party devs have to cut some thing off the game and it resulted into games that lack sounds and certain features that the PS2 and Xbox games have.

[QUOTE="heretrix"]

To the TC: Your word isn't the law, therefore rendering this entire thread invalid.

Ridiculous proclamations FTW!

klactose

My question is why is a so called "independent" developer so pissed that Sony has been getting mauled by the press? It just came off as a bit fanboyish too me..

The last thing I need is some developer making comments about other systems that they don't make games for trying to pass them off as non-biased comments. It's dishonest no matter how you look at it.

Seeing how this Insomniac guy probably doesn't have an x360 dev kit, his word is hardly "The Law". If he was a multiplat developer rather than a Sony shill, then his words might have more weight to them. 

But I'll play this game:

50GB BR:

First off, games last-gen rarely filled up more than 1/2 of a DVD9. They definitely were not "filling them up" like he said. Maybe he meant DVD5 and not DVd9?

While I do agree that DVD9 will be maxed out this gen, the PS3's 2x BR drive is too slow to be a true advantage over the x360's 12x DVD drive. IMO, a faster data transfer rate is more important to games than higher storage capacity.

HDD Matters:

Completely agree with the Insomniac guy. It was a mistake by MS.

GPU:

Yup, the Xenos is slightly superior to RSX.

CPU:

More power doesn't equal better games. The problem Sony is having is being able to harness all that power. The x360's CPU was designed with games in mind. Not so for the Cell.

If there's a hard drive, the game uses caching. If there isn't, the game doesn't.magus-21

Two stupid things he said: [QUOTE="klactose"]As games get bigger, more advanced and more complex, they necessarily take up more space. If developers were filling up DVDs last generation, there are clearly going to be some sacrifices made to fit current generation games in the same amount of space. ... There's no question that you can always cut more levels, compress the audio more, compress the textures more, down-res the mpeg movies, and eventually get any game to fit on a DVD. But you paid for a high-def experience, right? You want the highest resolution, best audio, most cinematic experience a developer can offer, right? That's why Blu-Ray is important for games, and why it will become more important each year of this hardware cycle.magus-21

The problem with including a hard drive in one version of the 360 and not in the other is that developers can't use it for the games. Or, at least, they can't use it for any required features. When you are guaranteed to have at least a 20 GB hard drive in the console, you can write your load caching routines around it, or use it for your application's storage needs. To a developer, an optional hard drive is roughly equivalent to no hard drive at all.klactose