-
8 years 4 months ago
- Posts: 948
|
PS3 is not that much more powerful than the 360. Not "blow it out of the water" powerful anyway. Even with slightly more power to it, you won't see noticably better results on the 360 because of production costs. Keep in mind that to make a game that looks "next gen" takes a staggering number of programmers, designers, model artists, texture artists, voice actors, motion capture actors, sound engineers etc. Each generation of games costs more money to make, which means less profit per game. Developers have to decide where to draw the line when it comes to how much they can pay for. That's a limiting factor already, but the Cell processor is unusually hard to take advantage of. To take advantage of its theoretical power, you've got to specifically code parts of the game to run each of six sub-cores as well as the main core (Cell has 8 cores, but can only use 7, one of which is the main core). Processes that run on the sub-cores have to be compiled in a completely separate compiler, which means more time and more work for the programmers, and more cost to the developer. As a result, very few games are going to take good advantage of this. Without the sub-cores, the 360's Cell processor may actually be less powerful than the IBM Xenon chip used in the Xbox 360. Also, because games are often so expensive to develop now, developers and publishers are increasingly less willing to risk losing money on a game on only one console. To maximize potential sales, they're going to put their games on as many platforms as possible. For conventional games, this is going to mean 360, PS3, and possibly PC. Some developers have already said that they plan for the 360 and PS3 versions of their games to be identical, so more often than not, you'll be seeing no technological advantage on either console.
Also, the 360 is already available, already has good games, and isn't $600.
|
