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While Microsoft and Sony have been childishly playing this flops-war, comparing the 1 TFLOPs processing power of the Xenon CPU to the 2 TFLOPs processing power of the Cell, the real-world performance war has already been lost.

Right now, from what we’ve heard, the real-world performance of the Xenon CPU is about twice that of the 733MHz processor in the first Xbox.  Considering that this CPU is supposed to power the Xbox 360 for the next 4 - 5 years, it’s nothing short of disappointing.  To put it in perspective, floating point multiplies are apparently 1/3 as fast on Xenon as on a Pentium 4.

The reason for the poor performance?  The very narrow 2-issue in-order core also happens to be very deeply pipelined, apparently with a branch predictor that’s not the best in the business.  In the end, you get what you pay for, and with such a small core, it’s no surprise that performance isn’t anywhere near the Athlon 64 or Pentium 4 class.

The Cell processor doesn’t get off the hook just because it only uses a single one of these horribly slow cores; the SPE array ends up being fairly useless in the majority of situations, making it little more than a waste of die space.

We mentioned before that collision detection is able to be accelerated on the SPEs of Cell, despite being fairly branch heavy.  The lack of a branch predictor in the SPEs apparently isn’t that big of a deal, since most collision detection branches are basically random and can’t be predicted even with the best branch predictor.  So not having a branch predictor doesn’t hurt, what does hurt however is the very small amount of local memory available to each SPE.  In order to access main memory, the SPE places a DMA request on the bus (or the PPE can initiate the DMA request) and waits for it to be fulfilled.  From those that have had experience with the PS3 development kits, this access takes far too long to be used in many real world scenarios.  It is the small amount of local memory that each SPE has access to that limits the SPEs from being able to work on more than a handful of tasks.  While physics acceleration is an important one, there are many more tasks that can’t be accelerated by the SPEs because of the memory limitation.

We of course asked the obvious question: would game developers rather have 3 slow general purpose cores, or one of those cores paired with an array of specialized SPEs?  The response was unanimous, everyone we have spoken to would rather take the general purpose core approach.

Citing everything from ease of programming to the limitations of the SPEs we mentioned previously, the Xbox 360 appears to be the more developer-friendly of the two platforms according to the cross-platform developers we've spoken to.  Despite being more developer-friendly, the Xenon CPU is still not what developers wanted.

The most ironic bit of it all is that according to developers, if either manufacturer had decided to use an Athlon 64 or a Pentium D in their next-gen console, they would be significantly ahead of the competition in terms of CPU performance.

The most ironic bit of it all is that according to developers, if either manufacturer had decided to use an Athlon 64 or a Pentium D in their next-gen console, they would be significantly ahead of the competition in terms of CPU performance.

This statement is funny. "Who" exactly is the competition?

If Microsoft or Sony had opted for a P4 or Athlon, they would have been head and shoulders above the other in performance.

Yes, but who the fuck is going to buy a $600 box to play games on.

Presumably the same people who are going to buy a $600 HDTV in order to get the full measure from their PS3 or 360.

I bought a $600 HDTV, and I can say that it was the best purchase I've ever made.

Save us Revolution, you're our only hope.

You do realize that the Revolution is suppose to be the most developer unfriendly device ever created, right?

Yes, but who the fuck is going to buy a $600 box to play games on.

Yes, but who the fuck is going to buy a $600 box to play games on.

I'm still betting on $299. If they do bring it out at $350, they'll drop the price to $300 when the PS3 is released.

Merrill Lynch Japan has conducted research that indicates that the PlayStation 3 will retail for $399. According to Gamespot's coverage of the paper, the unit will cost $494 to manufacture. Sony will thus be taking an almost $1 Billion loss in the first year of the PS3's lifespan. From the article: "It is normal for game companies to take a loss on hardware whenever a new console launches, since they typically focus on acquiring market share rather than generating a profit during the first year. During the second year and afterward, they can recover the losses with the savings that come from mass production and with licensing fees from publishers." Meanwhile, Press the Buttons is reporting on a Pro-G article in which SCEE Chief David Reeves states that "I feel proud that E3 went well from the presentations that they did...I feel very happy about that, but I told the troops: OK now we go underground. The PS3 goes underground until it comes out next year."

Wow, too bad it'll still be much more profitable to develop for a console than a PC, meaning you're going to see LESS AND LESS purely PC games. Enjoy it while it lasted. Don't believe me? Look at your local EB's PC section, as compared to how much of the rest of the store is devoted to some form of console.

Embrace the niche, bitches.

Embrace the niche, bitches.

Ahhhh, the frosty chill of a geek's death grip. 

Embrace the niche, bitches.

I don't know about that. Maybe it's different overthere but in the shops I frequent the PC department is still almost as big as the console department.

Also looking closer on those hyped "much higher console sales" it actually seems that most of the gap is due to the omnipresent Playstation 2. XBOX and GC don't dominate PC that much in terms of sales and I believe profit marges on PC games are bigger then on console games.

Profit margins are better per unit on console games than on PC games, according to Warren Spector on the decision to develop Deus Ex 2 and Thief 3 for the X-Box as well as the PC. It was apparently such a difference, even on a mediocre-selling game like the both of them, that the games made a profit despite really lackluster sales.

Profit margins are better per unit on console games than on PC games, according to Warren Spector on the decision to develop Deus Ex 2 and Thief 3 for the X-Box as well as the PC.

Which means fuckall to the DEVELOPER, who is making money on the deal and thus can make more good new games. Whereas there is no such guarantee on the PC, thus you see many traditionally PC dev companies making X-Box games, either exclusively or in conjunction with a PC version. Jade Empire is a good example.

You only seem to talk about the X-Box though, whose sales revenues are not much bigger then the PC even with all the money M$ is throwing at it.

Shit, I'd throw it all away for good sprite-based SNES gaming. I dislike photorealism and polygons. Half-Life 2 can suck me; Super Punch-Out was more fun and didn't cost me $300 to play (thanks, Nvidia!).

Its so crazy to see scientist types be barely able to articulate their thoughts due to the excitement of events like this.

"The pwnage of comet Tempel 1 represents an enormous and important milestone in our efforts to understand -- and ultimately to completely cream -- the known universe," JPL Director Charles "sl@md@ddy" Elachi explained in a press conference immediately after the impact. "Lollerz!!!!!" he added.