Sony shoots down Backwards compatible problem with the XBOX 360

[dream431ca]

Here's the article:

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/06/13/news_6127392.html

Seems interesting enough...but I think sony is right on this one. No backwards compatiblilty = more people frustrated, which leads to sales dropping for the Xbox 360.

EDIT: For those of you who have been hiding under a rock for the past month...the Xbox 360 will only be compatible with the top selling Xbox games "Halo and Halo 2" (just a guess) :E

 

[^Ben]

There is backwards compatibility on the xbox 360

No, it will be compatible with all xbox games that used the standard libary to implement stuff, they will have to work on the games that used specialised routines.

And PS2 didnt manage to pull off 100% backwards compatibility between the PS1-PS2, probably be the same for the PS3 and xbox 360.

 

[Kangy]

But... it is backwards compatable! Didn't you read the many, many bits of news on it? MS handed nVidia some dosh to get the emulator up and working for the system, and games that're difficult to emulate at first will be worked on, and have the relevant updates placed on the HDD.

Which the PS3 won't have as standard, which is sad. You'd have thought they'd learn their lesson from the HDD boost the original Xbox had.

 

[Cormeh]

Although I will buy an Xbox 360, I'm still uncertain, even with all I've read about the backwards compatibility debates (will it, won't it, is it game specific etc.) I doubt it will be 100% fully backwards compatible.

I'll buy a Revolution too, looks like that'll be completely backwards compatible.

 

[A True Canadian]

Were there really enough good games on the Xbox to warrent backwards compatibility?

 

[Cormeh]

Were there really enough good games on the Xbox to warrent backwards compatibility?

My point of view is from someone who never owned an Xbox, so to me backwards compatibility makes the console a more worthwile investment.

 

[Noobulon]

Backwards compatibility will make a big difference to my choices next-gen.

From what I've seen, the X360 offers a more complete package than PS3. I would choose X360 next gen because of the excellent (and generous) online service, multimedia business, auto-TV-recording capabilities... and all the myriad extra stuff it does (Llamasoft VMU for teh win etc). And I want PD0.

BUT! Because I missed out on PS2 this gen, PS3 will have shedloads of games I want to play available at launch. Stuff like Katamari Damacy, Shadow of the Collosus and Okami I'm desperate to play, and add to the value of PS3 for me, even if they're 'last-gen' titles. This is the only reason I'm not plumping for X360 just yet.

So yeah, a working backwards-compatibility function in the 360 might help MS get a sale from me.

 

[IchI]

My money goes in Microsofts pocket because I believe there console has more potentional than Sony, at the end of the day I will be buying both because its all down to the games. But if I had to judge the consoles of current specs and also what they plan to do with them I would go with xbox260 as it seems more online orientated and I love that.

 

[jonbob]

What's so bad is that while this claim is hardly true it will still stick in people's minds. The chap said MS had a 'technically difficult' problem to solve; this is true but doesn't mean that it won't be solved.

MS have a lot of money to throw at software development, and lest we forget, they already bought at least one company who specialised in emulating x86 stuff on a PPC. The only cause for concern will be the graphics stuff.

 

[Sparta]

To be honest i dont really trust either Microsoft or Sony when it comes to this stuff. Sony pimped their "Emotion" engine when the PS2 originally came out and said it was revolutionary but it was nothing different from anything else.

I dont trust Microsoft because they are Microsoft. But at least you could play some of the Xbox360 stuff that they showed.

I think i'm going with the Xbox360 in the end. Xbox just has better games then the PS2 anyway.

 

[Prince of China]

To be honest i dont really trust either Microsoft or Sony when it comes to this stuff. Sony pimped their "Emotion" engine when the PS2 originally came out and said it was revolutionary but it was nothing different from anything else.

I dont trust Microsoft because they are Microsoft. But at least you could play some of the Xbox360 stuff that they showed.

I think i'm going with the Xbox360 in the end. Xbox just has better games then the PS2 anyway.

Ninja Gaiden!

 

[Sparta]

Especially Ninja Gaiden

 

[Prince of China]

I can't imagine Ninja Gaiden 2 on the Xbox 360. As a bonus, we're getting Ninja Gaiden Black for the Xbox. Tecmo is definitely supporting Microsoft's Xbox; however, if something does happen, I'll still be able to play Ninja Gaiden on the Xbox 360 right? Is the backwards compatibility only for certain titles?

 

[craig]

Quite honestly I can say I don't give a shit about backwards compatability. Console games aren't games I rarley go back and play time and time again. Infact if I can I prefer to buy them, play them, and then sell them so I can buy more games.

 

[Pesmerga]

Quite honestly I can say I don't give a shit about backwards compatability. Console games aren't games I rarley go back and play time and time again. Infact if I can I prefer to buy them, play them, and then sell them so I can buy more games.

But....who has a PS1 anymore? My brother sold mine, so I was lucky that PS2 was backwards compatible with such great games as Suikoden II, Final Fantasy 7, and Crash Bandicoot.

 

[Kyorisu]

Even if the X-box had 100% compatibility I still wouldn't buy one. The 360 has 10mb onboard video memory and 512mb system memory. Basicly you lose about 70mb of that system memory on the frame buffer alone. I'm not sure about the PS3, it probably does the same thing.

Console makers allways seem to have problems with memory.

 

[IchI]

Even if the X-box had 100% compatibility I still wouldn't buy one. The 360 has 10mb onboard video memory and 512mb system memory. Basicly you lose about 70mb of that system memory on the frame buffer alone. I'm not sure about the PS3, it probably does the same thing.

Console makers allways seem to have problems with memory.

Thats because its expensive and also gpu ram is transfered to onboard ram rather than your standard pc system.

 

[jmjneary]

yep word is xboxs ati video card is gonna blow the socks off of the Nvidia NSX

 

[jonbob]

Even if the X-box had 100% compatibility I still wouldn't buy one. The 360 has 10mb onboard video memory and 512mb system memory. Basicly you lose about 70mb of that system memory on the frame buffer alone. I'm not sure about the PS3, it probably does the same thing.

Console makers allways seem to have problems with memory.

An uncompressed 1080p@24bpp image is just under 64MB (1920*1080*24=66355200 if you're bothered), which isn't very much when you have 512MB to juggle with. More importantly a 720p compressed image fits in ~9MB.

That paltry 10MB isn't really video memory in the conventional sense; it's something that the PC world has never seen before; it allows the GPU to do FSAA on a 720p image for essentially free (ie, with no appreciable performance hit). Just to reiterate, Xenon has made FSAA trivial to carry out.

The PS3 doesn't have this and will most likely do FSAA in the way we're used to. I'm not a big fan of ATI but even I gave them kudos along with NEC for that little bit of eDRAM.

512MB is more than ample memory overall, the XBOX didn't have anything to worry about besides the game it was running and a PC can have any number of tasks to juggle in the background. Compare an XBOX with an aging Celeron and GF3 with 64MB RAM running Halo2 to what the equivalent PC could pull of with the same hardware.

The XBOX will win hands down everytime because developers can optimise their code in a way that simply isn't possible on a PC. They know exactly what hardware is in every single box, which is more than can be said for the PC world; we rely on brute force to do what consoles can do with hackery (that's a good thing). The downside is of course, that next-generation consoles have specialised in media applications to the point where they aren't much use for anything else. However, this isn't a problem when you bear in mind that media applications are all that they will be used for anyway.

In addition, the ATI chip will be using a Unified Shader Model, which is something that us PC folk won't be seeing for quite a while yet. Basically a desktop GPU will have pixel shaders and vertex shaders which can only operate on either pixels or vertices. A unified model means that you have shaders which can do either. This does wonders for speed when you consider load balancing. The Xenon GPU will be a very efficient piece of kit: anyone should read this article.

 

[Cole]

The PS3 doesn't have this and will most likely do FSAA in the way we're used to.

True, they found that they could not use the type of video memory the Xbox 360 uses for anti aliasing and things because they have 2 HD outputs and couldn't fit enough(costs and space).
I forgot the way they did it but I believe it's a little diffrent method than computers.

 

[clarky003]

Banter fodder. Sony are pooing their collective pants after E3 , I heard Xbox 360 was star console of the show, and its incorporated features and changable face plates brought it closer to the attention of personalised gaming consoles with their own really unique user setups, basically Sony's has great specs aswell, but they might aswell of made it a working toasty maker or an industrial sized cigar case to attract the extra attention.

 

[Sparta]

Banter fodder. Sony are pooing their collective pants after E3 , I heard Xbox 360 was star console of the show, and its incorporated features and changable face plates brought it closer to the attention of personalised gaming consoles with their own really unique user setups, basically Sony's has great specs aswell, but they might aswell of made it a working toasty maker or an industrial sized cigar case to attract the extra attention.

Or maybe the KillZone 2 trailer gave Sony all the attention they needed.

 

[dream431ca]

Or maybe the KillZone 2 trailer gave Sony all the attention they needed.

As soon as I found out that it was pre-rendered...I didn't pay attention to sony anymore and I got more skeptical of sony's PS3.

 

[Raziaar]

Were there really enough good games on the Xbox to warrent backwards compatibility?

Sure. I have tons of good games for the Xbox.

Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict
Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders
Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath
Mercenaries
Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy
Jade Empire
Brothers in Arms
Star Wars: Republic Commando

And plenty more.

 

[jonbob]

Halo and Halo2 are probably the prime targets though.

 

[JellyWorld]

An uncompressed 1080p@24bpp image is just under 64MB (1920*1080*24=66355200 if you're bothered), which isn't very much when you have 512MB to juggle with. More importantly a 720p compressed image fits in ~9MB.

24bpp is 24 bits per pixel, so according to your calculations that would be 64 Megabits = 8 Megabytes. not 64 Megabytes.

 

[jonbob]

Sorry, that should have read 64Mb. I always get the case wrong for some reason. 32bpp raises it only slightly, but this is all academic when you consider the fact that noone uses 1080p anyway.

 

[Kyorisu]

That paltry 10MB isn't really video memory in the conventional sense; it's something that the PC world has never seen before; it allows the GPU to do FSAA on a 720p image for essentially free (ie, with no appreciable performance hit). Just to reiterate, Xenon has made FSAA trivial to carry out.

Free FSAA hmm now let me remember. If 3dfx hadn't died we would have had that years ago for pcs.

In the end it all comes down to the developer. That is to say not every dev out there is going to utilize the system in the best possible way.

 

[jonbob]

3dfx didn't die; Nvidia bought them out. If 3dfx were working on something like this (because my voodoo5 was absolutely shite with AA turned on) then surely Nvidia would have used that IP instead of they had already. Perhaps you could elaborate on what _might_ have been, since 3dfx aren't around any more to tell us what they were cooking.

 

[X-FacToR]

Personally I am going with the xbox 360 and a 30'' Widescreen HDTV.

 

[Cole]

Why not go with the Ps3 and have Dual 30inch Widescreen HDTV's??

 

[X-FacToR]

Mainly because the xbox comes out first, and I like microsoft products.

 

[WhiteZero]

And PS2 didnt manage to pull off 100% backwards compatibility between the PS1-PS2

Every PS1 game I played on PS2 worked just fine...

 

[Warbie]

.... that doesn't make the statement any less true now, does it?

 

[Gargantou]

Every PS1 game I played on PS2 worked just fine...

It doesn't handle "addons" that require you to put in a disc then switch it, such as MGS Special/VR missions or GTA London.

 

[Kyorisu]

3dfx didn't die; Nvidia bought them out. If 3dfx were working on something like this (because my voodoo5 was absolutely shite with AA turned on) then surely Nvidia would have used that IP instead of they had already. Perhaps you could elaborate on what _might_ have been, since 3dfx aren't around any more to tell us what they were cooking.

When I say die I meant Nvidia bought them out. Duh half the employees left or where discarded. Anyway I'm talking about the Rampage that 3dfx produced. It was more impressive than the geforce 3 and Nividia didn't like that, so they took over 3dfx.

The Rampage was running Q3A and running it well aparently. Anywhoo it did have Free FSAA (ie no performance loss) Nvidia should have used this tech in the fx series of Nividia cards, but that didn't happen due to a bizzare set of reasons no one is quite sure of.

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[Sober]

PS3 is still unknown I guess. Alot of the PS3 E3 videos were prerendered, while they proved the Xbox 360 could do what they showed. I for one haven't bought a console since the N64, and I'm hoping that MS gets backwards compatibility on the 360 so I can still play Xbox games. I'm definitely going to buy a 360.

 

[Sir Phoenixx]

Alot of the PS3 E3 videos were prerendered

So, about 2 videos out of the dozen(s) of videos or how ever many they showed is your idea of a lot?

 

[Absinthe]

So, about 2 videos out of the dozen(s) of videos or how ever many they showed is your idea of a lot?

Most were either tech demos of pre-rendered. Neither of which really show off games. And considering how Sony pimped up the PS2, there's plenty of room for speculation about the PS3's real power and capabilities.

Not to say it won't be a powerful console. I just think that any statements about Sony "owning" MS from a technical standpoint are premature and are primarily the products of gullibility and/or fanboyism. *glares at Eurogamer*

Plus, powerful technology by itself does not make the game. Sony's PS2 was apparently a bitch to develop for. The only reason it had so many games for it was because the PS2 reached a broader audience than the other two consoles.

/rant