lou_dias wrote:
If you listen to some developers, there is no good compilers to take advantage of the second and third cores on the 360. That means that first gen 360 titles will used about twice the processing power of the original Xbox. Same goes for the PS3 and their SPU's. Nobody's going to use all 7 for a very very long time.
You don't need a good compiler to take advantage of all 3 cores, you need to learn how to write a multi-threaded game. It won't be an incredibly easy transition, but games that were actually designed for next-gen hardware (like PGR3) instead of just beefed up versions of current-gen games look quite good already. Compilers still could stand to be better given that the cores are in order and have relatively poor branch prediction, but things are looking good with current compilers.
Nintendo states that their system is going to be 3-5 times more powerful than the GC.
Source please. Only numbers I've heard from Nintendo are 2-3 times more powerful not 3-5.
What you don't understand is that when they make that statement, it applies to every aspect of the system, not an overall value.
I don't see how you can come to that conclusion. They said the Revolution would be 2-3x more powerful than the Gamecube, not that each individual component would be.
It will be 2.5GHz out-of-order executing PPC G5. The 360 is using an in-order executing core...to save money but have a higher clock.
That's just rumor at the moment and I don't particularly buy it. The G5 is an expensive part and it would have been foolish of Nintendo to say that the Revolution would only be 2-3x more powerful when the chip that would power it has 5x the clockspeed a more complete vector unit and a substantially improved FPU.
Show me one cross platform game that looks better on the PS2 than on the Gamecube! - Exactly - doesn't exist.
The PS2 has a "weird" architecture compared to the Gamecube and XBox. Getting anywhere near what it's capable of requires that you tailor your game around the hardware. When developing a multi-platform game you have to shoot for the middle of the pack. In the next generation, the PS3 and XBox360 will be relatively similar. Both have high speed, but not incredibly sophisticated processors and both depend on thread level parallelism for high performance. If the rumors about the Revolution are true, then it will be the odd-man out next generation, much like the PS2 was this generation.
Nintendo is also coming out about 9 months after the 360.
Nintendo hasn't published a release date other than saying sometime in 2006.
Don't count out Nintendo.
They've sold fewer consoles with each generation and I so no reason that trend won't continue. The Gamecube has some great first and second party games, but the third party lineup was quite weak and that's not going to improve unless they manage to get some more marketshare.
That 3D motion and positional sensing controller with plug-in configurations will make FPS games a dream to play on the machine...not to mention RTS. It will be a better interface than the mouse.
FPS games will still suck on the console for lack of buttons. I'll reserve judgement on how well the whole motion sensing works out until I can try one, but I'm not crazy about having to attach extra junk to my TV to make it work. The plug-in concept seems to defeat the purpose of making the controller simple and remote shaped in the first place. The thing was supposed to be simple and approachable, but the plug-in add-ons just make the thing mroe complicated. I sort of see the following situation happening. Some games just need the remote, some need the analog stick, Gamecube/N64/SNES games and maybe some multi-platform games need the funny shell that makes it more like a standard controller. Would have been simpler if they had just added the motion/position sensing to the Gamecube controller and given it a minor tweak or two.
As for the XBox 360 and compatability, the game itself doesn't have to come with an emulator. The emulator comes with the hard drive. At the moment it's unclear which games will work. Popular titles like Halo and Halo 2 will definately work, more niche titles are more of a crap shoot at the moment. If compatability is important to you, I'd wait for a few months and see what people say. My guess is they will try their best to make every game work, but they aren't likely to test all games.
