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Insomniac Chief Creative Officer Brian Hastings speaks out on the PS3
- Thread starter Kittonwy
- Start date
Ignatz Mouse
Banned
I don't think the PS3 will be a big success, and may yet be a huge failure. However, I agree with mosr of the points made.
The market may not agree, but generally, they are true. The "Wii fad" is one I don't agree with-- nobody knows how that will go. And "Something for everyone" has been true for past Sony consoles, but far from certain right now.
And I am amazed that people dismiss the XBL argument out of hand. At the least, it costs $50 more than the advertised price to play XBL. That makes the price difference between the two systems that much smaller. Do any of the HD-DVD add-on, XBL-subscribed GAFfers think they paid less for a 360 than a PS3 costs?
The market may not agree, but generally, they are true. The "Wii fad" is one I don't agree with-- nobody knows how that will go. And "Something for everyone" has been true for past Sony consoles, but far from certain right now.
And I am amazed that people dismiss the XBL argument out of hand. At the least, it costs $50 more than the advertised price to play XBL. That makes the price difference between the two systems that much smaller. Do any of the HD-DVD add-on, XBL-subscribed GAFfers think they paid less for a 360 than a PS3 costs?
How does this
*resisting urge to argue about PS2 vs. 360 sales of GH 2*
have anything to do with this???Sho_Nuff82 said:
Do you mean to say that the 360 version will outsell every other game on the 360 because that would make sense in dispelling the supposed nonsense of which you speak?Sho_Nuff82 said:
*resisting urge to argue about PS2 vs. 360 sales of GH 2*
quest said:
So what do you want to talk about in 2 months then? The weather? Your life playing video games? Will we have "regime changed" Iran by then? That the PS3's sales will likely drop off rapidly after a long-anticipated launch? A very likely possibility I would think...
the ps3 will be in fine shape if what sony says regarding a 10-year cycle this time comes true. it's *extremely* premature to forecast a 360 worldwide sales victory, but sony is going to sell those first few million a lot more slowly than they sold the first few million ps2s. if people are looking at some nifty new systems in five years that are somehow compelling beyond the ps3 then there isn't going to be a ps2 repeat.
wii is only going to be a fad if the only good games that anyone releases are the same quick-play party games. if it can build a good first *and* third party library of diverse titles, it's going to sell like gangbusters for years.
according to wikipedia, insomniac has never put out a game for a non-sony platform...
wii is only going to be a fad if the only good games that anyone releases are the same quick-play party games. if it can build a good first *and* third party library of diverse titles, it's going to sell like gangbusters for years.
according to wikipedia, insomniac has never put out a game for a non-sony platform...
squatingyeti said:
Did you see what he said? Texture Streaming makes for bigger games. Texture Streaming allows you do use high res textures for everything. If you're using high res textures for everything, you need more storage. The reason Resistance takes more space on disc than Gears (besides the video) is because it has twice as many levels.
Ratchet and Clank will have texture streaming, so if the game is similar size compared to Resistance, it'll need MORE space on the disc.
squatingyeti said:
Processing time is not related to RAM requirements. You can have a 16KB application that is more taxing on the CPU than one that is 16MB.
But since you brought it up, I could point out that the system bus between the Cell and XDR is 3x faster than the GDDR3 that feeds the Xenon.
Obviously neither system is being pushed to 100% potential (which they never will be), but PS3 inarguably has more room to grow. The difficulty of programming for the system is a function of that.
ROFL said:
Yes, that's impressive, and I'm not denying that. But everyone should learn by now after seeing the U.S. launch that the real test is to see if PS3 continues that momentum. And as funny as it may sound, right now the PS3 is the one that has to prove itself.
My point was simply that no one should be making statements about either systems demise, and the Insomniac guy never tried to claim the 360 was on it's way out either. He simply made his case for why the PS3 can compete for the long haul. It's only Xbots who are making the outlandish claims right now. This blogpost is just a refutiation of those claims.plagiarize said:
KyanMehwulfe
Member
I have to really take what he says with a grain of salt. Insomniac may be independant of Sony but the fact remains that he is vested in Sony.
However, most of what he said I have to agree with, either in fact or in strong potential.
The main thing I'm unmoved on is the "Wii is a fad" argument. I've presented the potential for it be be true myself. But I did so much more in theory and with much less certaintity. I disagree that he can really so conclusively write-off that the Wii will only receive "Wii" esque games. They desperately need more content games to succeed, but there is a large chance they'll receive them, especially in Japan.
It would only take a couple big action games from the west and a couple big roleplaying games from Japan to really support the content and narrative line-up of basically just Zelda and Mario & friends right now.
However, most of what he said I have to agree with, either in fact or in strong potential.
The main thing I'm unmoved on is the "Wii is a fad" argument. I've presented the potential for it be be true myself. But I did so much more in theory and with much less certaintity. I disagree that he can really so conclusively write-off that the Wii will only receive "Wii" esque games. They desperately need more content games to succeed, but there is a large chance they'll receive them, especially in Japan.
It would only take a couple big action games from the west and a couple big roleplaying games from Japan to really support the content and narrative line-up of basically just Zelda and Mario & friends right now.
squatingyeti
non-sanctioned troll
Ignatz Mouse said:
Why did you bring HD-DVD addons in to this? HD-DVD is not involved at all with my GAMING experience. I could care less about either HD-DVD or BD. I only want to know which, if either, format is going to be taking over my DVD collection. At that point 5+years from now, I'll care. By the way, what's the HDTV percentage in Europe? It costs more than the advertised price to watch a movie in HD on the PS3. In fact, if your TV isn't right, you're not watching them in HD anyway. It costs more than free to be able to have voice communication on PSN. Let's start bringing in all kinds of retarded prices in lol.
It doesn't matter, the hardcore will not drive your system to great success. The casuals will. They care about games, and price. BOTH make a difference.
theBishop said:
13%-14% more bandwidth, hardly 3x more. However, Xenon shares it with Xenos. So for your benefit lets say the XDR has 2x more bandwidth, most likely a best case (peak rate) for CEL/XDR in real world applications (games). I am trying to simplify it here and not count in the EDRAM on Xenos at all as it will make things complicated. still not 3x more bandiwidth
Projectjustice
Banned
D.Cowboys said:
Hmm no.
InterMoniker
Member
What?!?!? Tell me what you know then that proves the 360's GPU is so far superior.D.Cowboys said:
Can someone tell me how to +rep, since I'm new hereM3Freak said:
Sho_Nuff82
Member
tanod said:
I was referring to this:
Because it's utter horse****. He's trying to marginalize the success of the 360 and Wii by claiming that MS only caters to the 17+ demographic, and Nintendo only caters to kids, while Sony manages to cater to everyone.
Looking at the 360/PS3/Wii right now (yes, that's right, it means ignoring the Xbox/PS2/GCN because they don't have crap to do with how the current consoles are selling), and across announced games for 2007, the 360 has a more diverse software library than either the Wii or the PS3, across every genre sans platformers.
Guitar Hero II will be a hit on 360, just as it was on PS2 (though I doubt it will sell 1:1 given the difference in price and availability over the holiday season for Sony's version), just as the other quality E-T rated software I listed above has been able to sell on MS' box alongside the strong-selling M rated software.
He made a terrible point, and I used an obvious example to tear it down.
Eteric Rice
Member
It's like the fanboys have come out in full force. D:
Ignatz Mouse
Banned
squatingyeti said:
Read what I wrote. I said that the price gap between the two (if you are using XBL) is less than it appears-- and then went on to ask if any of the GAFfers who *do* care about HD and bought an HD-DVD think that they spent less than a PS3.
For those who *do* care about HD and online, the PS3 is substantially cheaper than the 360.
And as I said in my post, if the market thinks otherwise, it won't matter what is true.
InterMoniker
Member
Well the original article brought up legit points, I think people are more standing up for whats right.Eteric Rice said:
Segata Sanshiro
Member
InterMoniker said:
shit I didn't know this was a discussion of morality
squatingyeti
non-sanctioned troll
I'm sorry, maybe you didn't read it. Gears of War uses texture streaming, but it works out just fine. I guess we can all just gloss over the fact that his PS2 game size numbers were utter dogsh!t too. We don't really know the real reasons why one game is bigger than the other. We can only believe whatever we're told. I do know Mass Effect is going on 1 Disc, and if someone wants to argue Resistance will be a "bigger" game than ME, forgive me if I laugh.
There people go again claiming it has more room to grow based on the Cell. That is simply using a component of one system that hasn't been taken advantage of, while ignoring another system's component that hasn't been taken advantage of. My idea of bringing up RAM was to point out he ONLY talks about benefits of the PS3. Guess what, the PS3 is lacking available RAM. Even worse, XDR loses any benefit over GDDR3 when it's used for VRAM. RAM is even a bigger issue if (and this is another area that devs have yet to take advantage of on 360 that was ignored) devs start using predicated tiling and take extreme advantage of the eDRAM. The PS3 must use GDDR3 RAM for the framebuffer, thus sucking away more valuable space.
We could go round and round, but I'm simply pointing out how one sided this whole blog was. Completely ignoring things on one side, while overstating things on the other. Cell is no more underutilized than Xenos and the eDRAM. It doesn't matter what people will say, games will always look better with more available RAM. In fact, games can do EVERYTHING better with more available RAM. Once again, if someone doesn't understand this, maybe you should read some more on why this is.
Agent Icebeezy
Welcome beautful toddler, Madison Elizabeth, to the horde!
The circus is back in town.
squatingyeti
non-sanctioned troll
spwolf said:
Guess PS3 has only shooters and racers. After all, that's what's selling on the system. Glad we can base the diversity of the past consoles as surefire answers to what's happening this gen. That worked so well for the N64.
Which benefits?squatingyeti said:
Umh..
Very far from the truth, to fully use edram on Xenos you really don't need to be a rocket scientist, except AA maybe, all the other advantages edram brings to the tables don't need any special 'care' to be fully used. (for example huge fill rate in simple render passes such as shadow maps rendering, z pre passes, particles effects)
spwolf said:
i *did* say first few million...
price and (even more) hdtv adoption rates are going to prevent the ps3 from ramping up as quickly as the ps2. having to compete with microsoft for third parties (with less dev-friendly tools) doesn't help much either. still... is a new generation of consoles in five years going to provide a really compelling reason to upgrade again? (wii excluded, which has a pretty obvious upgrade path in the nearish future). if this is a longer generation than the past few, the ps3 is pretty well positioned.
a lot of what needs to happen now is for game software to catch up with the hardware - all these alleged physics and ai improvements are largely programming problems now, not issues of hardware power.
Sho_Nuff82
Member
spwolf said:
Most of the shooters on the 360 are also on the PS3. Should the 360 be lambasted because they're actually selling better? Or that MS' exclusive shooters are generally better received than Sony's?
Let's not look up at the software charts and glance at the #1 selling PS3 game. Or that nice little bump multiformat COD3 had. :lol
Guitar Hero 2 is on the 360 in a week. It's not on PS3. Neither is DDR. Or UNO. Or Tomb Raider. Or Viva Pinata. Or Geometry Wars. Or Burnout. Or TMNT. Or Castlevania. If I'm a hypothetical 30 year old looking for mature software and something E-rated for my kid and something T-rated for my 15yearold nephew, why is the PS3 a better choice right now? Looking at the release list on Ebgames, why is the PS3 a better choice in 2007?
Seriously, "because the Xbox is a Halo-box" isn't a good answer. The 360 is not the Xbox, the PS3 isn't the PS2, the Wii is not the GCN. The sooner people accept this, the less we'll have these kind of fanatical statements thrown around.
Mockingbird
Member
Having the #1 selling PS3 title shouldn't really cause one to celebrate considering what else is out there and how few systems have sold.
bishoptl said:Well, Mr Hastings certainly seems to have struck a nerve with the usual suspects.
Looks like he struck a nerve with reality. He knew this post would draw a number of criticisms within the gaming community. I believe those said criticisms are a very serious part of the gaming community at hand. A very real debate, that goes on every single day, which in the end the consumer will be left with the final say. Whether or not he acknowledges some of these criticisms is entirely up to him.
OverHeat said:
Naw... something more epic than that...
The guy's on his blog, posting his opinion... He makes PLENTY of valid points... and a lot of these people damning him to hell, I'd love to see a high-profile dev say something along the lines of this blog, would probably say, "Now this is the truth!"...
It's his opinion, with many sound and valid points... He makes a lot of "what if" type of thoughts meaning what he believes is going to happen down the road, which may or may not happen... Though, many of those I can see happening...
Once again, coming across the "Lazy Devs" comments in here about compression and Blu-Ray, :lol... yet those people won't rag on Epic for being too lazy to add more story and a proper ending to Gears, or more than 4v4 and host advantage... Let the games do the talking, we'll see how Blu-Ray plays out in games... And after hearing about how they're using some new techniques in Rachet and it going to need more room, it won't be long until we see how true this is...
He's right with XBL and PSN, XBL being a lil more fleshed out... But, it comes down to playing the games, and dedicated servers without a doubt make up ftw here... I don't know what happened to XBL... Last gen it was rock solid... Now, it's pathetic how much lag and disconnects that go on with it...
I also agree with the cost of XBL looking at it from that route... MS has people there because some don't look ahead to think about it like that... Some people do plan ahead, even if there's 1% difference on interest on a credit card or loan... Some look at the estimated fuel mileage to figure out what's going to cost much more in the future... It goes both ways... The thing that's going to put everything under a microscope more is if Home takes off... It's a free service... just like matchmaking, which a PSN game set the bar for next gen....
And he's absolutely correct on saying WTF to the people trying to spin Home as a bad thing, when it's free to use, and you DON'T even HAVE to use it...
Seriously, it's just this guy saying something he feels... It shouldn't hold no weight other than it's his opinion and take on something... And it's absolutely of no Greater or Less of value than whatever Stinkles, Arne, or Che say on here in their opinions... Argue his points, but no reason to call him a toolbelt, correct?
Al and Brian Hastings are brothers, right? Because, if so, they must be like complete polar opposites. There's a multi-part video interview with Al on gametrailers this week and he keeps wigging me out at how absolutely soft-spoken he is. You alternate between cranking the volume on the parts where he is talking and then scrambling to lower the volume when GT.com intersperses a snippet of a game in between his comments.
Sho_Nuff82 said:
For the "hypothetical 30 year old looking for mature software and something E-rated for my kid and something T-rated for my 15yearold nephew", the PS2 is the best choice. It's cheap and has lots of great software.
But in general, the PS3 line up is a lot more diverse looking than the 360s, and that's in its first year up! As the price of the system comes down, casuals will line up.
Mockingbird said:
Well if Resistance is attaching in Europe close to what it is in NA, they just sold about 300,000 copies, which puts it close to a million. First million seller in 3 months, not bad.
I believe PS2's first million seller was Onimusha (NA or WW, not sure) and that was in May or June after launch.
I will read the rest of this thread, but I think it's important to point out that your statement is completely incorrect. Ted Price is the head of Insomniac and no one here really knows how high this guy is in the company (though he is probably very high becuase his job title alone sounds important and influential).flammie said:
Insomniac can go and develop games for 360 if they want. They have a relationship with Sony, plain and simple. But Sony doesn't control what they can say, I don't think Ted Price would stand there and take it. Insomniac has proven that they can make new IPs so they can make one for 360, but yes they are very sequel happy (who isn't nowadays?). If you want to know why Insomniac develops for Sony then read some Ted Price interviews. He describes their relationship as an "old school" understanding.
Sony must have thrown plenty of money at you during the past decade to tempt you into joining the fold. Why have you remained independent?
Actually, you know it's surprising. That's what everyone assumes, but Sony has never approached us and said: 'Hey, are you guys interested in becoming part of the family or being bought?' I think that's just something they don't do, and I've been very vocal about staying independent, and I think Sony respects that. It makes our relationship work well.
What are the advantages of being independent?
You can really choose your own destiny. When it comes to creating games, we're the ones who come up with the concept, and we decide what the game is. We prefer not to have people telling us what we should or shouldn't be making. And there's also the opportunity to pave your own way. For us it's very rewarding to know that we live or die by our own decisions. It's a little scary sometimes, but when it works, like it has in the last 13 years, it's a great feeling.
spwolf said:
No, he's talking about the upcoming line-up with 'something for everyone'
Well, MS really does have an extremely diverse first party line-up. Games like Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, Forza 2, Banjo Kazooie 3, Too Human, Infinite Undiscovery, Fable 2, Alan Wake, PGR 4, etc... are they all shooters? When you factor in other third party games like Eternal Sonata, Guitar Hero 2, DDR and whatever else Rare must be working on, they 360 line-up is not 'full of shooters'.