In hindsight, how would you have changed the design of the current gen consoles?

[zerocool84]

I disagree with this sentiment. DRM and Disney won the war for blu-ray. Maybe porn, but I think they were just publishing to both formats.

Cheaper blu-ray players than the PS3 were available, and they weren't flying off the shelves until after the war had been won and the price dropped significantly.

What the PS2 did for DVD, the PS3 did not do for blu-ray.

When the PS3 was released, it was the cheapest Blu-ray player. Of course cheaper ones eventually came out but it was the best and cheapest for a while and to this day it's still a good player.

 

[cmdrdredd]

I disagree with this sentiment. DRM and Disney won the war for blu-ray. Maybe porn, but I think they were just publishing to both formats.

Cheaper blu-ray players than the PS3 were available, and they weren't flying off the shelves until after the war had been won and the price dropped significantly.

What the PS2 did for DVD, the PS3 did not do for blu-ray.

Not Disney...Warner Brothers. Remember Warner was releasing for both formats for a long time. Then when push came to shove dropped HD-DVD. Almost overnight HD-DVD died.


In 2006 when the first gen blu-ray players were releasing, the PS3 was $500 and that was $800 less than the Panasonic DMP-BD10 and $400 less than the Philips BDP9000. A PS3 was also the only HDMI 1.3 player on the market. It also loaded and skipped chapters tons faster. It also got the updates to the Blu-Ray specs first and had network features built right in where as the first gen stand alone players did not and to get network features from your movies you would need to purchase a new player.

 

[Silmatharien]

I would have included a longer charging cable with the PS3.

 

[Anarchist420]

Xbox360:
made in japan with all japan made caps, fan bearings, etc., etc.; 1 single large fan at stock voltage +/- 3%.
increased clock speed for the GPU to 875 MHz
made the CPU cache run at full speed
made the VMX units double precision.
strip it of hardware texture compression
better trilinear filtering (same as G80, even though the 8800 GTX wasn't out)
made it so that 2 or 4x RGSS could be used in every game
32 bit fixed point z buffer and 32 bit fp z buffer formats only, stripped it of hardware stencil buffer.
stripped it of all RGB10A2 formats; color buffer could only be R16G16B16A16 floating point or linear.
double floating point precision, single (full) precision fixed point shaders.
wired controllers, 1khz rps, 4 controller ports; 4 USB ports can be used for Keyboard/mouse
GB ethernet port (I'm assuming it doesn't have one; I don't remember for sure).
display logic integrated into GPU die and capable of user adjustable input rates from 24Hz to 120 Hz.
built in HDD, exactly the same as my WD Black 500 GB.
integrated the northbridge and all other processors except the GPU into the CPU.
from a software point of view, no audio lossy formats allowed to be used; games would simply have to be downloads and/or on more discs.

 

[KentState]

MS should have just offered a 3-pack bundle. When the first Xbox360 dies, throw it out and you plug in the next one 🙂 The biggest issue was quality of the system. MS lost a lot of money replacing and appeasing customers.

Sony should have focused more on the UI, online capabilities and licensed rumble from the start. MS was so much further ahead in those areas that it took Sony years to get close. Even updating the OS takes many minutes more than the 360 which can be frustrating when you are on a limited gaming schedule.

 

[2is]

Out of all those complaints, only the online play hurt sony, and even then, not so much because even though it wasn't as polished as XBL, it was free which appealed to a lot of gamers. Sony's biggest problem was the price and that it came out a year after the 360

 

[sweenish]

Not Disney...Warner Brothers. Remember Warner was releasing for both formats for a long time. Then when push came to shove dropped HD-DVD. Almost overnight HD-DVD died.


In 2006 when the first gen blu-ray players were releasing, the PS3 was $500 and that was $800 less than the Panasonic DMP-BD10 and $400 less than the Philips BDP9000. A PS3 was also the only HDMI 1.3 player on the market. It also loaded and skipped chapters tons faster. It also got the updates to the Blu-Ray specs first and had network features built right in where as the first gen stand alone players did not and to get network features from your movies you would need to purchase a new player.

I meant Disney, as they sided exclusively with blu-ray. They're still kind of a big deal. Warner dropped HD-DVD when it became apparent they were the only ones publishing them. The war had been won, and Warner went along. They weren't the deciding factor. Just the last nail.

You mention launch players, but it's not as if PS3s were being purchased en masse near launch, either. The PS3 didn't start gaining traction until it dropped to $400USD, and by that time, there were cheaper standalone players.

Your point about the PS3 being updated quickly is valid. However, I still don't believe that the PS3 had nearly the same impact on blu-ray that the PS2 did for DVD.

As a tangent, I appreciate that Warner gave consumers a choice in the matter. Luckily, the better format won out. At least I believe blu-ray to have been the better format.

 

[Bman123]

The ps3 needed more ram. All my xbox buddies played ps2 before and said they didn't buy a ps3 because they couldn't party chat.

 

[digiram]

The only two things are really

1. Better QA or Manufacturing to prevent RROD for Xbox
2. PS3 should have not included BC or Sony should've done what ever they could possibly have to cut the cost of the initial luanch units. I think it hurt them quite a bit initially.

Other than that, these consoles have lasted a very long time and the games have pretty entertaining.

 

[2is]

Interesting, I think Bluray was one of the main redeeming qualities of the PS3 personally.

EDIT: Sorry, I misread.. That the above post said BD.

 

[nextJin]

Sony:

- Drop backwards compatibility
- 512 Unified Ram as opposed to 256/256
- Drop Siaxxis support and stay with dualshock
- Take the loss and release at 499
- Release with PSN+

Microsoft:

- Better Q&A testing
- User upgradable HD (still not doing this)
- Integrated controller batteries

Nintendo:

TL;DR

 

[juiio]

- Integrated controller batteries

Ugh no. Using rechargeable AAs is way better.

 

[dagamer34]

Sony:

- Drop backwards compatibility
- 512 Unified Ram as opposed to 256/256
- Drop Siaxxis support and stay with dualshock
- Take the loss and release at 499
- Release with PSN+

Microsoft:

- Better Q&A testing
- User upgradable HD (still not doing this)
- Integrated controller batteries

Nintendo:

TL;DR

You realize that there was always a $499 model of the PS3 at launch, right? And it had an even greater loss of $300 than the $599 model ($240 loss).

 

[2is]

Ugh no. Using rechargeable AAs is way better.

Disagree... I've got a wii and a ps3 and much prefer the integrated battery philosophy.

 

[exdeath]

Disagree... I've got a wii and a ps3 and much prefer the integrated battery philosophy.

This. AA is a terrible obsolete form factor and standard. NiCad and Nimh are dated too.

I'd prefer CR123 it 18650 for external batteries.

Better AA can't be made because it can't exceed AAs low brow specs for existing devices.

 

[lamedude]

I would say 384/128 instead of 512 unified or at least some cheap RAM by the chipset to store the OS. XDR RSX instead of GDDR on package but I guess time constraints prevented that since using Nvidia was allegedly a last minute decision.

 

[insertcarehere]

Blu-ray was a smart move for the PS3. I think that contributed quite a bit to the system's success in the long run. Arguably, it's why BD won the format war.

The thing is, manufacturing blu-ray drives was very expensive in 2006, when the PS3 launched. IF BD was so important, Sony should've waited until 2007 to release the PS3, in order for BD tech to decrease in price significantly. Considering that early x360 sales were sluggish and the PS2 was still pretty dominant. Delaying until 2007 would also have allowed access to 65nm process nodes and more mature unified shader tech. A 8800 GS equivalent (G92) would've been pretty cheap in 2007 and would take a big dump on xenos in gpu performance.

The Cell itself was difficult to program for. I'm not sure what Sony could have used alternatively.

Probably something with less SPEs and more PPEs.

 

[exdeath]

Cell isn't difficult. People just need to take a multiprocessor design course or something.

I know game engines SEEM like they don't adapt because of linear dependencies (graphics waits for position updates from physics waits for player /AI) but at each linear component of the main serial loop is abundant need for parallel tasking. Physics running by itself has hundreds of independent parallel tasks that can keep all cores and DMA channels full for the duration of the physics tick, likewise with every other component.

PS2 pros should have felt right at home with Cell with the concurrent DMA, double and tripple buffering SPR, dynamically uploading code and data together, same exact streaming architecture philosophy.

 

[purbeast0]

PS2 pros should have felt right at home with Cell.

probably why naughty dog games were the best of the best on ps3.

 

[exdeath]

If anything people hated Cell because it was a slightly diff arch and increased effort required for simultaneous cross platform dev. And as we well know the paradigm this gen was anything but effort on software, but easy profit multi platform lowest common denominator cookie cutter work.

I'd bet THAT is the real reason devs like to hate on Cell. It as different enough that it required you to think about engine architecture and how it would abstract and map on two drastically different platforms, not just an easy PS3 checkbox.