Playstation4 and XBox720

Let's discuss and speculate this for fun. Don't hold back on being techi.

First some performance facts for current consoles (feel free to correct me or complement):
Playstation 3: 2006
64-Bit-PowerPC 970 compatible
Cell : 3.2GHz max. 204.8 GFLOPs (or 180 GFLOPs for 7 cores) for single precission
14.63 GLFOPs (or 12.8 GFLOPs) for double precission
graphic: 24 Shader-Pipelines; 22.4 GByte/s DDR3; 275 million polygons/s

XBox 360: 2006
64-Bit-PowerPC 45 GFLOPs (?precission)
graphic: 48 Shader-Pipelines; 256 GByte/s DRAM; 22.4 GByte/s DDR3; 4 Gigapixel/s; 500 million polygons/s

So a PS3 does more calculations for better simulations but is slower in graphic display.
vice versa for XBox360

------------------------------------------
Rumours
PS4:
Power-7 with 6-8 cores and 200 GFLOPs
(new Cell 8i with 102.4 GFLOPS double precission)
graphic: Power-VR

Xbox 760:
??

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Prediction analysis
The consoles are probably not coming out before 2012 because of development needed.
That's two Moore's law generation of doubled transistor density or 2 * 2^2 possible parallel processing power.
Well, for games at current level we may not need more than 2x calculation power for AI, but increases will rather depend on objects and physics. Doubling object density on the ground/area would require 4x calculating power.
Apply this to graphics and 3D TV that would require 8x graphic power, and this does not count realistic (rendering, 10x mapping) increases. PC graphic might outdo this by the time.
So to compete with PC's 8 times increased power are at least needed. But 10+x would secure a reasonable lifetime.

Rumoured PS4 seems to meet pure calculation power requirement in double precission but graphics?

Honestly I've been tired of "moe powa!" discussions in the industry for a very long time.

My reasoning? Simply that we don't need more pixels to have a good game. Case in point
cell phone games and casual/XBL arcade games have become huge in the last couple years.

Lets say hypothetically that we had a holodeck, but it's graphics ran at PS2 levels of quality.
It'd still could produce fun, interesting, and immersive games.

Part of the problem with the industry stagnating, besides corporate getting their hands in the creative process more than they should... is now the focus on how pretty or at what stupid huge resolutions they need the game to run at. There is little innovation in terms of actual gameplay design, "what else can we do that hasn't been played into the ground since 1990" is what I'd imagine goes through many a development meeting.

The problem is that you're dealing with game developers, that are in themselves game players. They grew up with Atari, or data cards, monochrome.... IE they started with nothing. For the innovators that led the industry then, the hardware restricted them so they were forced to innovate.

Now we live in a world where the average developer is dropped into a sandbox environment... great, but what can I do here? So they end up falling back on pre-established concepts, the FPS, the platformer, the racer, the sports game... adding maybe a "feature/gimmick" that they've seen elseware... rinse and repeat X5 versions... and that sums up a lot of what folks are calling shovelware.

Now my point? The motion controls that are coming out... while I'm not a fan of how they are implementing the systems... the concept of forcing the industry to innovate to utilize something new... has been needed for years. Now dev teams are being handed a Natal or a Move, (and previously a Wii) and having to "think" new thoughts on what can it be used for.

The reason I think we're seeing so much dull, preexisting games in the starting lineups for these devices is exactly what I mentioned above. Developers have been doing the same type of games so long, that they can't really break out of their own indoctrination. Thus, what we're seeing is an extension - essentially ports of existing games for motion control support.

What I predict will happen though, if things go well... is it won't be in the first volley of games but maybe in the 2nd or 3rd wave, that new dev teams much like group behind Scribblenaughts, will rise with new interesting ideas about how to fully tap the motion potential.

Case in point, no one really thought the Nintendo DS was a smart move with two screens and a high price tag. But eventually good games that made intelligent use of the dual screens came out.

So what I'm looking for isn't Call of Duty 37, or Crysis 12... the graphics could revert back to PS2 and Xbox levels and I'd still be a satisfied gamer. But I want to see people start innovating again, and this will help towards that goal.

Ultimately, the current gen interests me less and less (due to the abundance of shovelware)... but what I realize is that all this is the "growing pains" before we see a true holodeck or immersive 3D experience.... and that I'm willing to wait for.

JGZinv wrote:Honestly I've been tired of "moe powa!" discussions in the industry for a very long time.

"fighting powa!"

Part of the problem with the industry stagnating, besides corporate getting their hands in the creative process more than they should... is now the focus on how pretty or at what stupid huge resolutions they need the game to run at.

IMHO that's because it's easy to do and easy to see results, as well as cheaper than developing new game design code.
If you ask me there's a lot that could be done, but no one wants to invest time and money into systems that allow eg full game world freedom.

Spoiler:

Also western game lack object functionality that's why metal gear go so much attention.
In recent years(5+) I saw games trying to make the environment changeable, but seems not that popular with developers yet.

There is little innovation in terms of actual gameplay design, "what else can we do that hasn't been played into the ground since 1990" is what I'd imagine goes through many a development meeting.
Thus, what we're seeing is an extension - essentially ports of existing games for motion control support.
But I want to see people start innovating again, and this will help towards that goal.

Control gloves, available for at least two decades but still not there yet.
And essential the same tech used for recording human motions.

Ultimately, the current gen interests me less and less (due to the abundance of shovelware)... but what I realize is that all this is the "growing pains" before we see a true holodeck or immersive 3D experience.... and that I'm willing to wait for.

Agreed on the dullness.
True 3D that may be some time, but when you see the xxx industry has it.

Well even another example... I recently bought the whole Crysis kit (individually not maximum ed).
Sure the game has the most realistic detailed foliage around.. but the main "draw" for the game was supposed to be you as a super soldier with the suit.

The suit gets annoying, the gameplay is repetitive, and the story has been done before.
The main character isn't "awesome" either, because the suit really never, ever lives up to how it's
depicted in the ads. It's more like a alpha version of the spartan armor from Halo.

My point - graphics don't equal good game. Great graphics without gameplay used to be called "tech demos" - and thus they should have stayed.

But anyway, the "NeXbox".... I'm not real sure what path they'll take.
A great many things will depend on how well this generation fares, and I think that's why they
are doing this as an in between "upgrade" because M$ and Sony don't know what direction to go in themselves.

Wow... this sounds familiar.

http://www.joystiq.com/2010/03/12/molyneux-motion-gaming-is-making-devs-sweat/

My reasoning? Simply that we don't need more pixels to have a good game.
Case in point
cell phone games and casual/XBL arcade games have
become huge in the last couple years.

Certainly can't agree with this and i actualy hope next generation consoles will have as much power as possible cuz their lifespan is long and about half of the time they become bottleneck of the industry just like now.
It's not only about graphics and pixels - grapics is directly related to how complex a world can be, it affect both the looks and interaction, gameplay.
An example- one of the main requirements of MMO gamers is "no instancing", which mean there should be no "copies" of the same location for different people (each 300 players fight in their own small copy of the location). Reason? Usualy Lack of graphics/processing power for smooth FPS. But once there's no instancing they only make crap graphics like in WOW and about every other MMO out there except few (the only ones i played).
Graphics is important for immersion. Most people seek it just as much as gameplay, the key to popularity of about every major title out there even though their gameplay is much like in other games. The same reason high-budged movies get the audience - can't make Matrix chep, right?

Anyway - the sooner new concoles come out the better, they became a pain for the gaming world - already their specs are not enough limiting developers potential so they delay their best projects until the next consoles. Even PC depend on consoles directly because console versions make most of the game sales (due to difficult cracking of the consoles ).

The suit gets annoying, the gameplay is repetitive, and the story has
been done before.

It's all very subjective, i wasn't annoyed by suite and besides - isn't it how YOU play it? It greatly depend on the player - if you play it like old FPS so it will be. Plust if you play on easy difficulty you don't need to use all the abilities/terrain and stuff and so it gets boring too.
For me crysis was one of the most innovative gameplays of FPS, perharps you can name some titles with greater tactical freedom (haven't played halos past 2 and never found em to be anything special)? And "story been done before" - examples please?

My point - graphics don't equal good game. Great graphics without gameplay used to be called "tech demos" - and thus they should have stayed.

Crysis was a pioneer, it's graphics and physics allowed greater immersion and freedom like no other 1st person shooter out there. It did exactly what i mentioned above - it allowed freedom and immersion. Who cares about suite? Destructable stuctures/vehicles, stealth element, pretty smart AI, realistic weapon and explosion physics. The freedom of movement, freedom of tactics - this is what important about gameplay. After it in every FPS i played i felt like i'm siting in a box with limited choices and only 1 path to go. So yes - even if Crysis have not fully revealed it's potential in gameplay - it did set the level for freedom, realism and immersion.

http://www.joystiq.com/2010/03/12/molyneux-motion-gaming-is-making-devs-sweat/

It's about those motion controllers again? Never found it too interesting, only good for casual games. There are cooler things like that thing that affect your nerves and make you feel motion (falling/moving/jumping) and all these "human interfaces" are useless without some virtual display glasses...

Almael on Sat Mar 13, 2010 11:30 am wrote:Although, I do prefer gameplay/story, I have to agree that more power creates opportunities for more possibilities.

In crysis I had fun roaming around, and playing with the equipment and environment. I didn't use the suit feature much as you can imagine why. I mostly used stealth and jumping power. The dissappointing thing was that I couldn't hitch hike on an enemy helicopter.

Spoiler:

Necessary development cost for more power can't be ignored nor can be the never ending increase needed. Sooner or later some kind of modularity will be needed.

Well, I think equipment that allow to manipulate your nerves are bad. I bet a bunch of people will get sick and disoriented. Then again full virtual gear or like this cost a lot.

Now let's look at the latest generation of graphic cards

AMD/ATI RV870
40 nm 2.15 billion transistors
400+ mm^2; dual 42-296 W
20 SIMD units in groups of 5 with a total of
1600 shader units 725 MHz for dual 4.64 TFLOPs single precision 1.088 TFLOPs double precision
40 texturing units (anandtech got this wrong? with 80)
32 ROPs
2GB 256 bit data bus 2000 MHz 256 GByte/s
1GB of 1200MHz GDDR5 delivering 153.6 GB/s of memory bandwidth and 4.8Gbps memory data rate
850 MHz core 68.0 GTexel/s texture fillrate; 108.8 GSamples/s Z/Stencil; 27.2 GPixel/S Pixel fillrate.
-------------------------------------------
NVIDIA GF100
40 nm 3 billion transistors
500 mm^2; dual 50+ W-267 W
16 Streaming units 512 SP/core part organized in a 4x16x32 fashion; 1401 MHz
60 Texturing units und 48 ROPs 700 MHz
1536 MB GDDR5 1848 MHz 384 bit data bus 177.4 GByte/s
(performance disputable!)
1.49 Tflops; 46.4 Gtexels/s; 34.8 Gpixels/s
-----------------

Hmm, ATI seems still faster on paper although slower in display...but NVIDIA is a tad more efficient.
These are already 6-9 times faster in rendering and 6 times faster in pure calculation than PS3 or XBox360. It seems a next gen console may need to be faster than predicted above.

Prediction:
around 2012/3
Chips will be likely produced in 28 nm or 22 nm depending on availability of the fabs.
Speed should be around 4x faster. Well, although I think we hit saturation in normal rendering by now, with 3D TV and eventual 'new' features for it they got themselves new work for some time and a reason to increase those new powers.

latest news:
http://www.inquisitr.com/179802/playstation-4-not-coming-out-until-2015-or-later-despite-rumors/
John Koller, VP of Marketing Sony, confirmed that the PS3 will be supported until 2015. This is the first clear official indication of a console change.

http://www.scei.co.jp/corporate/release/pdf/130221a_e.pdf
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/02/inside-the-playstation-4-a-balanced-approach-to-building-a-game-console/


Excluding checking the original post at AN, and another three years later none of our arguments were off.
This officially makes us nerds or tech prophets.

Now to the facts and predictions:

prediction:
I said it needed at least 2-4x increased CPU power and 8-10x graphics power;
reality:
It got 8 Jaguar CPU cores (by AMD). However, these are on the low side of today's CPUs. Still probably better than predicted. But it can mean the life cycle of the console will be short compared to PC's. Then again the days of the PC are counted.
GPU with 1.84 TFLOPS raw power (single precision?). This is 10x as much as the regular PS3 with the Cell processor with 7 activated cores.
GDDR5 8GB

All in all, on the tech side Sony exactly meets the current technology level. Whether it will be enough for the masses of gamers is to be seen and mostly depends on games.
Graphic crazy guys won't be satisfied for long, though. My nephews certainly are among the graphic spoiled.

situation & prediction:

JGZinv wrote:cell phone games and casual/XBL arcade games have become huge in the last couple years.
dull games
that new dev teams much like group behind Scribblenaughts, will rise with new interesting ideas about how to fully tap the motion potential.

reality:
The change to cell phones is still in progress. Still no change for professional created games. In response to the industry situation Indy games have become the center of attention recently. It's to be seen how long this will go on.

Imho, tablets will replace laptop and consoles in the near term, with cell phone/portable sized devices ultimately taking on these roles.
But that is probably still 5-10 years in the future.

Can't wait till PS4 and new Xbox are out. Gaming industry might finally start evolving...

As for tablets - they will not replace laptops, they'll just become them as well (on top of being tablets). The only thing that differ laptop from tablet is keyboard and slight form factor differences which are not really essential.. It's almost as if they want us to think it's "tablets vs laptops", while in reality it's not about hardware and more about platform (software), like android vs windows. Microsoft was smart to make windows 8 also "tablet" OS so that it's no longer associated with laptops only.

If you consider the Microsoft Surface (Pro) keyboard as part of future tablets I think the tablets will become a serious replacement for laptops. Tablets are "in" of course the industry wants to hype things up. Imho, people are getting saturated by tablets so the next tablet evolution (probably foldable displays) will come soon.

Although, I hope consoles don't die out, but as a PC user I also like to have them both merged into one system. I will predict the next console generation will have 4k TV playable games. The generation after will have real-time raytracing games. And a generation later we may perhaps see some holographic games.

New details to PS4!
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/191007/inside_the_playstation_4_with_mark_.php

I really hope they gonna implement better graphics this time. These damn consoles will define quality of games we get at PCs...

No, I don't really think graphics are going to be better because the hardware is pretty much the same, only tweaked to be faster.
But this depends on the game making companies not Sony. Sony only provides the tools and "programming" options to use.

It can't be, otherwise it's dead already. They'll use something of today's graphics level i'm sure, but i hope they'll pick something more powerful this time - back in days when PS3 was still new it had really weak graphics subsystem which quickly became it's main bottleneck.
I remember how horrible Assasin's creed PS3 version looked compared to Xbox 360 next to it in a shop. Most other games on PS3 had their graphics dumbed down more or less because of limited video and system memory. By the times developers cried for more hardware in Xbox - they long-abandoned all hope with PS3.

At least Xbox Next is getting very strong graphics so the console that define most of the market i'll be depending on as PC user looks promising. All somewhat worthy PS4 games will be exclusives anyway so for me PS4 won't matter much i guess

That's what I have been saying elsewhere, too.
The console is on the verge of dying.
It's now down to defend its real point for existing: being relyable and running games smoothly. Otherwise the web (and tablet) are going to take its place. This may very well be the last consoles (until holographic games come out).

The PS3 was very powerful, it's just that people were no good at programming the cell processors. Remember it was export limited by the US since it can be used for military purposes. The same happened recently with some russian company btw.
The PS4 had better theoretical performance (2x) some months ago compared to the XBox 720/infinity. But since MS held back infos and was spending lots of money to redesign, I guess they could still catch up.

With the AMD radeon hd 7990 out that can do 4k TV the PS4 & XBox 720/Infinity are already 3 years outdated. So if you got the money to spend on a game enthusiast PC then you don't need any consoles.
It's a sad but this is how it will be sooner or later.

Then again, Abhs can play holograhic games on their wrist computers.

Consoles are easy to use gaming platform and guarantee intended performance - they are quite good in it's class of devices and i doubt they'll go away any time soon - some lazy people just want to plug the game in and play while laying on the coach. They're also much cheaper than PCs of good\same specs

But they say a true reason for popularity of the consoles is lack of piracy, or at least lack of it in western parts. Developers make many times more on consoles compared to PCs and it's the main reason games ported to PC after at least half a year.
In post-ussr region Xbox 360 was always sucessfully cracked since beginning and that's the reason Xbox sales outnumber Playstation about 10 to 1 in post-USSR region. Prices on Playstation 3 games didn't help it too - they are rediculous for people who make 300-400$ monthly...

As for 720 hardware - i wouldn't be so sure. From what i read - it's packed with dual chips equal to today's top of the line graphics cards, that's a lot considering what ancient relic Xbox 360 lived with and still did well..

Yes, convenience is one point. The tablet offers the same convenience. Today everyone's dependent on cellphones, email and the web. That's why I think the tablet is a strong case in replacing the console.
But I think it also depends on the normal & 3D controllers.
I think 3D kinetic-like & the controllers might be a very vital point.

Well, I think being difficult to pirate is only one reason. The other not so apparent might be that people view it as a status object.
And once you start playing with it you are also kind of "addicted" and want more and other games.

According to information available some months ago the XBox720 had 4 vs. 8 cores in the PS4. But as I said MS has long started to re-design so they will probably have 8 cores, too. Even if PS4 hardware is more efficient it will depend on how efficient the game makers are in programming the games. My guess is you won't see much of a difference unless the maker are down right bad.

I guess you're right - from market point of view at least. I usualy just do not consider tablet games to be a real games i think, because for me it's like watching movies on tablets vs home theater - it ruins the experience, hence the reason why tablet games are 99% casual and i'm usualy not very interested in those..i think thins is where market will separate

Cores above 4 doesn't really matter not now not in near future, especially for consoles... There's only a few (like 2-4) games on PC which took advantage of 4 cores somewhat and next to none that showed any increase on 8 despite developers efforts. Individual core power is more important once you have at least 3 cores.
A good idea mignt be to have something like intel processor with modern hyper-treating - it takes care of core number without complicating the CPU. What matters is power of each of those cores. I hope it's on level with I5 processors which is probably overkill for consoles anyway.
GPU will always remain most important part of any gaming console - 90% of it's capabilities...with memory and video memory following next. I really think if Xbox 360 had a modern powerful graphics plugged into it it would be a great console for 5-7 more years as it's CPU is still decent so i'm only interested in what graphics both will have as it will also mean what kind of new limit for visuals we'll have on PCs for next 5-7 years.

You are right with current tablets. I guess the thing that prevents them from replacing consoles now is basically the display. If it becomes a projector-handheld-controller or have a fold-able large screen it will probably change. There's a reason I have been interested in those display technology for a long long time.

We have been programming for singles cores for a long time and many of our thinking/algorithm reflect that. I think that's the reason for single cores working better. But if I think of in-game objects or AI acting independently and transfer that to many cores maybe many-cores will become an advantage in the "near future". *shrugs*

Yes, graphic power is still important. But I have come to think that it won't be going like that forever. Take the soundboard as an example.
In the beginning we got 8 bit, then moved to 16 bit, 32 bit, 64 bit, 128 bit. Now there are virtually no more soundboards. Why? because
1. higher bits and Hz won't make a difference to our heasring
2. with new tech they got smaller and are now integrated into standard chipsets
I believe sooner or later graphics will also hit their wall of innovations and practicality. At some point GPU displaying technology will be so good improvements won't make much of a difference.
But I think "speed increase" will still be important for a longer time.
Right now we still need more details e.g. bitmap-layers & object-details. We still need more physics, then there's still realtime raytracing, and then holographic display. GPU power will probably need to increase for at least another 20-30 years before hitting the wall.
Although, there are some who don't think graphics are important for games it will go on improving and being a selling point.

More likely it's CPUs who will be consumed by GPUs and not the vise versa. CPU itself in it's curret X86 form becoming obsolete and GPUs capable of doing it all on their own, after all there's reasons all those supercomputers made with tons of Nvidia CUDA cards...
After all - what is the most calculations demanding stuff? Graphics and physics, both handled by GPU the best due to nature of these highly parallel calculations/architecture...most serious AI jobs are better handled by GPU as well.

Sound is not very good example.We're actually still in 16-bit era and very rarely 24.. Even 16 vs 24bit is a huge difference everyone hears on a good equipment, althought bits is important for PCM signal only (and there's no reason to have more than 24, 32 tops at all). More advanced DSD format (Sony SACD) was 1bit with very high sampling frequency (and hence jitter\deviation prone) dided recently. Maybe if BlueRay audio will become more popular...
Otherwise audio industry actually been degrading during past 10 years in both - tech and quality. The reason was mostly the economy and ability to make "good enough\slight worse for much less". There's not a single sound codec integrated into motherboard which can compete with sound the ancient Creative 'Sound Blasters " produced 10 years ago.

Uhm, CPU and GPU logic are completely different. They can't become a unified logic. I don't think the GPU will consume the CPU or vise versa.

there's reasons all those supercomputers made with tons of Nvidia CUDA cards...

That's a misleading impression. Yes, there's lot of GPU but the CPUs are still needed to control, organize, and coordinate the work.
Without the CPU brains the GPUs are useless. Although, admitedly the CPU become more like communication units (node control & router) in e.g. x-dimensional network topology. Well, it's too complicated so I will skip the details.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_computer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torus_interconnect
http://assets.hardwarezone.com/img/2012/10/Cray_Nodes_M.jpg
http://www.madboxpc.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/cray_xk7_titan_supercomputer_CPU_GPU_Config.jpg
In any case, it's not gonna happen for us mortals. It's more likely that the GPU goes the way of the co-processors.

Now, if we talk about quantum (or light) computer then it's possible to unify the circuit similar to programmable FPGA (on the fly).
Well, that's how I would designed it.

I'm not sure about AI running on GPU. Sure, you can simplify AI to something like a matrix and run something like a genetic algorithm.
But it's a simple AI.

From reading what is availible on the net i must say i'm disappointed by new consoles performance/hardware wise - they are not very impressive. Most information says the graphics will be around 7850/7770 level of AMD graphic cards, that's about ok for dumbed down current titles, but certainly doesn't leave much room for quality improvement for next 5 years. With such graphics in mind - CPU performanc is totaly unimportant as any decent solution will do and better won't matter.

The only hope is that since consoles will run in restricted "30fps" mode for 1080 mean GPUs can still render a lot of graphics sacrificing FPS and one doesn't really need more with those crappy lagging controllers anyway.

Also changes in architecture/code writing for consoles are substential and developers model might change so that games are made for PC and then ported to consoles, which is been done already with latest Battlefield. Also both console graphics will be DirectX11 and it simplifies porting even further while adopting more advanced and flexible api..And finally - both consoles are X86 now

I'm not so sure about having frame rate control resulting in faster/smoother gaming.
http://www.radeonpro.info/features/dynamic-frame-rate-control/

Until now some scenes have up to 100 frames/s while others only some 10 framss/s. You may thing that distributing only needed power would give the complexer scene 90% more time but this all depends on the gamer's interaction. You cannot predict all actions or pre-calculate them.
Of course it would work well with pre-scripted scenes where gamer interaction is limited, but this would need more memory to save the early finished work. I think it saves more energy than making a game run smoother.

Most good games don't necessary need lots of GPU power.
The games that need were mostly First person shooter & the-like and simulator games. Simulation games are near dead these days. :/
And yeah the next MEtal Gear 5, Final Fantasy, hmmm...

x86 just means I don't need much of an emulator.

It does not result in faster/smoother gaming - it just allows weaker graphics to render more complex picture compared to if it had to do it with 60 frames per second as target framerate. It allows for a lot of headroom, sacrificing quality of course, but it's not noticeable on consoles due to the game controller. The point was - it's good for PC users, meaning less graphis will be sacrificed

Interaction of gamer has little to do with graphics load - only complexity of geometry/textures/effects at that given moment...From what i know - every game is tested so that it won't drop below 30fps in any moment, that's why they often remove some waterfalls, some extra trees, effects etc. Also from what i know - there's a large frame buffer that kinda prevent instant FPS drops. Of course entire game feels "delayed" but again game controller smoothes it a little