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The Playstation 4 Rumours, Innuendo, and Speculation thread

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Medu said:
Why would Sony put a GPGPU into a gaming machine? As Kepler has shown there is a big decent performance advantage in stripping that stuff out.
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-The 7870/7850 & 7770/7750 have a lot of the GPGPU functionality (notably DP performance) of the 7970/7950 stripped out. In all likelihood this will be a custom designed GPU/CPU combo anyhow (much like the 360's Xenos CPU was some freakish middle-ground between the X1900 and the HD2900). They're saying southern islands only because that will be the base this GPU is derived from, probably with all the GPGPU stripped off.

What would be far more interesting is they leave it in, with the express purpose of leveraging it for game physics and AI etc...
 
alent1234 said:
steam has ridiculous sales on good games

i rarely see good sales on digital copies of console games
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Perhaps that would change if Sony moved to a system that worked more like Steam. Given Steam's success, I wouldn't be surprised if Sony and Microsoft will begin to try and emulate that. Awesome sales or not, I still love Steam despite the fact that the games I buy are permanently tied to my account. I can never get any portion of that money back, and I don't care.

It's funny how most people seem to love Steam, yet when a console manufacturer tries to move to a similar type of service they throw a hissy fit because they'll no longer be able to sell or buy used video games. I don't think it should surprise anyone that services like Steam (digital distribution, games tied to your account) will be the future of game distribution.
 
I like Steam because it lets you install a game as many times over as many computers you feel like. No need to worry about scratched disks.

Plus I don't have to use any of that stupid Games for Windows crap. And I don't have to buy a console or a TV (I don't have a TV) when I can make my PC do double duty as a work and gaming machine.
 
chubbyfatazn said:
I like Steam because it lets you install a game as many times over as many computers you feel like. No need to worry about scratched disks.

Plus I don't have to use any of that stupid Games for Windows crap. And I don't have to buy a console or a TV (I don't have a TV) when I can make my PC do double duty as a work and gaming machine.
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Some of that isn't true at all. If a game requires gamea for windows then it's still installed and used. That's the case with the Batman games, regardless of if it's bought on steam or not.
 
Cuda1447 said:
If the PS4 locks out buying used games, I will absolutely never buy a PS4. If the new Xbox does the game thing, I may buy one of the two consoles, but I can guarantee you I will pirate a lot of games. I have never pirated a game before on console. Mostly because I can rent them and if they are trash like most games, I only wasted a few bucks. But there is no way I will shell out 60 bucks for a game I know I most likely won't like. Instead, I'll pirate it and try it out. If it turns out to be good, no need to buy it, I've already got it.

My point, DRM is a REALLY REALLY bad idea. There are many more people like me. Its going to do a hell of a lot more harm than good.
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Or....you could just control your impulses and not game at all. Not stealing is still a viable alternative to piracy. Try a book. I hear there are some pretty good ones out there.

Anyways, it is absolutely inevitable that used game sales will be ended at some point. Ironically, digital distribution on PC has been a tremendous success and has pumped much needed capital back into the community, especially when considering games that were previously considered dead or out of print are not making solid profits for developers.

Console developers will gladly sacrifice gamers that lack broadband for more control and likely higher overall profits. Of course we won't know for sure until it's announced, but I'm willing to bet that online game activation will be required for all titles for the PS4 and 720.
 
hans030390 said:
Perhaps that would change if Sony moved to a system that worked more like Steam. Given Steam's success, I wouldn't be surprised if Sony and Microsoft will begin to try and emulate that. Awesome sales or not, I still love Steam despite the fact that the games I buy are permanently tied to my account. I can never get any portion of that money back, and I don't care.

It's funny how most people seem to love Steam, yet when a console manufacturer tries to move to a similar type of service they throw a hissy fit because they'll no longer be able to sell or buy used video games. I don't think it should surprise anyone that services like Steam (digital distribution, games tied to your account) will be the future of game distribution.
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years ago i bought a copy of medieval total war for almost $50. scratched the disks and then bought it on steam on sale for like $15 or less including the add on pack. at that price i don't care if i can't resell it

bought an xbox with kinect in december 2010. mostly for my older son but i think it was too early. bought some games for myself. played black ops and sold it because its useless replaying it. played GoW 1 and part of 2 and got bored and sold that as well.

at this point i won't buy another $60 game for the xbox unless i can sell it if i don't like it or i'm 90% sure it's going to be awesome. in fact there are enought $20 GOTY editions i haven't played yet to keep me busy for the next few years so if MS and Sony actually execute this crazy idea i'll just dump my PS3 and/or xbox at some point and won't look back. or i will dump one and buy very few games for it and only months after release after there is a lot of information on how good it is

at least half the budget these days is for marketing. did EA/bioware really need to send copies of ME3 into space? did they really need to spend all this time and money for internet trailers of the reapers attacking earth? back in the 1990's all you needed was a preview in a magazine and/or a demo for decent sales. Activision spent something like $400 million on marketing for Black Ops in 2010. they are screaming piracy will hurt dev budgets and yet using a 5 year old engine and spending all that money for marketing instead of development
 
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GodisanAtheist said:
-The 7870/7850 & 7770/7750 have a lot of the GPGPU functionality (notably DP performance) of the 7970/7950 stripped out. In all likelihood this will be a custom designed GPU/CPU combo anyhow (much like the 360's Xenos CPU was some freakish middle-ground between the X1900 and the HD2900). They're saying southern islands only because that will be the base this GPU is derived from, probably with all the GPGPU stripped off.

What would be far more interesting is they leave it in, with the express purpose of leveraging it for game physics and AI etc...
Click to expand...

Custom designed maybe. Sony is looking to embrace off-the-shelf hardware as we saw with the Vita. Cuts manufacturing costs considerably. AMD is scheduled to push out the successor to the Bulldozer line of FX chips in 2013, codenamed Steamroller.

If I had to make an educated guess, I'd say it will be an APU with a Steamroller CPU core and possibly an HD 7800 series GPU core. AMD uses the past generation graphics for their APU chips, so it does make sense. The upcoming Fusion Trinity architecture will have HD 7660 graphics.
 
90% of the games I play anymore, are used games traded on Goozex. If Sony and Microsoft make the new consoles that used games cannot be played,.. Im back to a PC.

Im also still hoping that Steam is coming out with their rumored console. They are good about sales and offering games at good prices. $60 for a new game is getting harder to swallow.
 
7000 series gpu? Really? ugh. Well i guess that is how it has to be when it takes 2+ years of careful planning to release a console. Lets just hope its closer to a 79XX chip than a rebadged 6000, of which most are rebadged 5000 series cards...
 
If any of these anti rental or buying used crap ends up being true for any console then that pretty much seals the deal for not getting it IMO.

If both MS and Sony do this on their next gen consoles then I'll have to look at going back to PC I guess.
 
If prices of new games weren't rising to above $60 I wouldn't mind the used game lock out. The perfect example of this is Steam as mentioned before, when I can grab a game for $10-$20 then I've received all of the value from the title even if I don't like it too much. But when I spend $60+ and then they expect me to shell out more cash for DLC, I don't feel like the benefits outweigh the cost.

The lack of backwards compatibility is just the cherry on top of the reasons I won't be purchasing an Orbis. I'll keep my PS3 and continue to pick up $20 GOTY editions and various used games and play all of the new upcoming games on PC. There aren't enough console exclusives that make an Orbis a must have IMO.

This is of course assuming all these rumors come to fruition.
 
What's really ass backwards is that many games released now are just not a finished product. May be due to the complexity of the games now but still. Getting a game that works completely out of the box seems to be rare these days.

So my new years resolution was this. 3 months. I won't buy any new games until they have been out for at least 3 months. And what's better is you can usually get that game at a 50% or so discount on steam around that time. So instead of buying a partially working game at full price your buying the fully working game at a partial price.

I would love to see a steam console..
 
lokiju said:
If any of these anti rental or buying used crap ends up being true for any console then that pretty much seals the deal for not getting it IMO.

If both MS and Sony do this on their next gen consoles then I'll have to look at going back to PC I guess.
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Honestly, I don't think they will. It would alienate a lot of gamers. The simple fact is that all console makers would have to do it for it to work. IIRC, Microsoft mulled the idea but later changed their mind. If only one or two companies do it, gamers will migrate to whoever is not. The ones that do will have to reduce game prices to stay competitive, and there's no way in hell they will.
 
Reading the OP MS would be rolling on their floor laughing off their asses at Sony's sheer incompetence, while Apple is preparing to take both down in one fell swoop.
 
alent1234 said:
It's called iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Right now the iPad is about as fast as an Xbox 360, but graphical power is doubling every year. To play on tv you need the apple tv
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Nope. Not even close.
As impressive as the performance of modern low-power GPUs is, it helps to put things in perspective:

Tegra 2 - 4.8 GFLOPS (8, 1-way ALUs @ ~300MHz)
PowerVR SGX543MP2 - 19.2 GFLOPS (8, 4-way ALUs @ ~300MHz??)
Radeon 9700 Pro - 33.8 GFLOPS (8, 4-way ALUs (pixel) + 4, 5-way ALUs (vertex) @ 325MHz)
Radeon 2400 Pro - 42 GFLOPS (8, 5-way ALUs @ 525 MHz)
Radeon 5450 - 104 GFLOPS (16, 5-way ALUs @ 650MHz)
Xenos (Xbox 360) - 240 GFLOPS (48, 5-way ALUs @ 500MHz)
RSX (PS3) - 255.2 GFLOPS (24, 2 x 4-way ALUs (pixel) + 8, 5-way ALUs (vertex) @ 550MHz)
Radeon 6970 - 2703.4 GFLOPS (384, 4-way ALUs @ 880MHz)

Granted, this only compares theoretical peak shader performance, and doesn't take into account the better ALU utilization of modern designs, but it should roughly correlate with general performance on modern workloads. Note that the iPad's GPU is just starting to approach Radeon 9700 (circa late-2002) levels of performance. It's impressive given the power-profile, but still nowhere near the performance of the 5-year-old consoles, and quite a bit lower than even a very low-end Radeon 2400 Pro from 2007.

The MP4 however, might come close to the Radeon 2400, depending on clocks. Once the next generation of consoles launch (hopefully next year, we'll see at E3) and game graphics likewise catch up to what modern high-end GPUs are capable of, the low-power GPUs will once again be put in their place for a number of years.
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iPad could do ray tracing for all I care. I'd rather play on a NES with a controller than use touch screen controls.
 
lamedude said:
iPad could do ray tracing for all I care. I'd rather play on a NES with a controller than use touch screen controls.
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This. If apple or any other touchscreen device becomes the standard gaming platform I will give up gaming.
 
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