Schildstyle News Roundup // 7.13.2006

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Schildstyle News Roundup // 7.13.2006

I don't even know what Schildstyle means, but since I'm waiting for a demo to finish downloading on my X360 (Zegapain XOR!!! Huh?) so I can enjoy some sweet flying mech mayhem since Chrome has no flying at all, I figured I'd clue you in on this week in gaming.

Some of you may have seen that Xbox Live has this sort of retro thing going on with some new releases. Street Fighter is due out in a couple weeks, but this weeks release was Frogger. George Costanza would be proud.

New releases this week included Chromehounds (review forthcoming) and Prey. At this moment, I'm enjoying Prey more than Chromehounds. But I haven't gotten a chance to really dig deep into the insane mech customization and persistant online gameplay. I'll pass some sort of judgement on these two completely different games by the end of this weekend I'm sure.

ATI has been chosen to provide the decoder for the X360 HD-DVD player. H.264 or sommat. I don't see how that's news. But there it is, ATI wins again.

Joystiq is running a story about a keynote given by the VP of epic. I'd say his name, but that would make him a rockstar, and I just can't do that. Anyway, he gave a speech about how Intel is killing PC gaming. If by Intel he means consoles and the ever increasing price of maintaining a modern PC to play 80% of the same shit you can get on consoles. I suppose this magical "Intel" is killing PC Gaming. But since he's already been criticized for this particular keynote, I'll move on.

The yields on Blu-Ray and the Cell processor are shit. Sony is screwed even more.

Two last bits: Monster Hunter 2 PSP has infrastructure (wifi) play. The Wii is officially getting an exclusive Resident Evil game. Apparently it has Leon in it. I'd buy a console for Resident Evil 4.5.

[Sky]

If by Intel he means consoles and the ever increasing price of maintaining a modern PC to play 80% of the same shit you can get on consoles

You're a unique and special snowflake flower 

[schild]

If by Intel he means consoles and the ever increasing price of maintaining a modern PC to play 80% of the same shit you can get on consoles

You're a fucking moron.

SUBSTANTIATE THAT.

Intel isn't killing the gaming industry. Discuss.

[Sky]

Console games cost $50-60. My modern PC was built three and a half years ago and plays Oblivion beautifully on my hdtv. Even games that are multiplatform are better on the pc. High-powered pc parts are cheaply available and can outperform consoles.

I have no idea why intel would be considered to be killing the gaming industry, I agree with your main premise. That's why I quoted the part I did.

And I apologize for being harsh (lolinternet), everyone is entitled to their opinion based on their personal experience. At this point we both know where the other stands :)

On the Cell: http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=3295

Looks like not only yield is shit, but more ominiously, some cores could fail during normal operation. I was seriously considering a PS3, but I think I'll hold off for at least second-gen (which is probably a good idea with Sony hardware anyway, nothing new there).

[schild]

Yea, the blu-ray yield bit is why I posted it.

On that note, you can argue it all you want, but console games are getting so so so so close to surpassing PC games in general quality (though they always have on the QA/bugginess level. And they're far beyond PC games (with the X360) in terms of online play. PCs are a keyboard and mouse away from losing the hardcore segment. Game makers (at least the ones I know) would fucking kill, KILL, to have a standardized platform. If anyone is hurting PC gaming, it's NVidia and ATI. Even then, I'd argue that the anemic retail space representation does the most damage.

[Sky]

Except for that whole online buying, which is how a lot pf pc gamers buy their games. We've done this before.

[Chenghiz]

Except for that whole online buying, which is how a lot pf pc gamers buy their games. We've done this before.

And mods.

[MrHat]

I think what he meant is that at the retail level, no computers come with graphics cards supporting some of the new shader models.  So you get bubble-fuck Joe and his wife in asking you why the new game they just got their son/daughter isn't working on their $600 home PC.  It's because it needs a $100 graphics card in it at least to even get the thing started.  They they're like "but it says it has a graphics card".

Although, 9/10 @ Best Buy we just sell them the gfx card.

[Engels]

Aside from this new Cell technology for the failing sony product, are console technologies anything other than a standardized PC platform?  There's no point in hailing the doom of the PC game market if all you have under the hood of a console is a dumd down PC.

[Hokers]

Since the machine is much more focused (play games) the processor and graphics chips are much more optimized.  The Cell chip seems to be optimized for failure.

Edit:
I am really enjoying Chromehounds but I cant decide if the changing zoom view, depending on which weapon is armed, is innovative or a copout.  Compared to Mechwarrior I like the movement less, but the gunnery more in Chromehounds.  Opinions are likely to change as I get to try wheeled mechs and have more experence with zoom cam.

[Yoru]

Except for that whole online buying, which is how a lot pf pc gamers buy their games. We've done this before.

And mods.

And independent games. (Get this: A PC devkit can cost as little as zero dollars. Match that, console vendors!) Closest I've heard of in the console world is the XBox Live Marketplace and the PSP hacking stuff.

PCs are a keyboard and mouse away from losing the hardcore segment.

Doubtful; you can squeeze better performance out of a top-end optimized PC and you can get a wider variety of games. Your theatrics are silly; neither 'side' is going to 'win'. PCs aren't going anywhere since we're going to have them around for at least another 10 years for doing regular work, and as long as you have a general-purpose computing machine, you'll have some guy who makes games for it. Consoles bring games to the mainstream more affordably; PCs bring niche stuff to market more affordably. Depending on the quality and availablility of games for consoles/PCs, the marketshare will shift back and forth, but usability concerns and overall TCO will probably keep consoles ahead of PCs in terms of moneyhats generated.

[schild]

Edit:
I am really enjoying Chromehounds but I cant decide if the changing zoom view, depending on which weapon is armed, is innovative or a copout.  Compared to Mechwarrior I like the movement less, but the gunnery more in Chromehounds.  Opinions are likely to change as I get to try wheeled mechs and have more experence with zoom cam.

Hokers! Are you in an online squad? I made one but don't have any friends. Well, I have friends, but I don't have any with Chromehounds. I need to try that multiplayer stuff.

Also, wheeled movement is some good stuff and you get used to the zoom cam pretty fast later on.

[Engels]

Since the machine is much more focused (play games) the processor and graphics chips are much more optimized. 

Can you tell me how an X-Box is somehow more optimised for gaming than my gaming PC is? I mean, ok, so I browse the web on it too, so it has Norton AV running in the background while I play some game, but the performance hit is minimal. Are you saying that somehow these consoles are hard-coded differently than a PC, at either software or hardware level, to such an extent that they really out-perform a PC of identical cpu and gpu specs? It may very well be true, but I have not heard any evidence of it yet.

[Yoru]

Consoles use processors optimized for lots of sequential operations, e.g. long pipelines. Sequential operations being things like physics processing and graphics processing, where you're mostly 'crunching numbers' as opposed to hitting branch operations which slow heavily-pipelined CPUs down.

Modern consoles also have multiple dedicated processors for things like graphics, whereas PC games need to support legacy hardware and cannot rely on having (e.g. vs. the PS3) 8 independent ALUs cranking away at once to let you see sweat beads.

Consoles tend not to have to deal with the range of peripherals; in theory, a standard peripheral interface would mean you can plug any joystick in, right? In practice, every different card and peripheral you plug in probably has some niggling little differences between it and the 'correct' way, either tolerated by the OS or corrected by drivers or compensated for by the games themselves. Consoles only work with approved, locked-in hardware, so you don't need to do quite so much error control when dealing with, e.g. the controller, the graphics card, etc.

You don't need to support multiple graphics modes (or, more recently, more than a handful of predefined ones, 480i, 720p, etc.) on a console and always have the same shaders available.

If you've ever written software, you know how much easier it is to write something with a focused design on a single platform that will never, ever change. You can take full advantage of any non-standard features of your hardware; PC games are still mostly compiled to old x86 bytecode, not even x86_64 except in a few hardcore cases (e.g. Far Cry), let alone shipping ia64, x86, and amd64/x86_64 binaries.

Not having to run on a preemptible OS also helps, as does being able to optimize for a specific version of the libraries you'll be using, instead of having to support 9x, NT, 2k, XP, XPSP2 and Vista, possibly along with a Mac version.

[Engels]

Cool to know that Yoru. I guess I'm then surprised that consoles aren't all that much more awsome than PC games. By all rights it sounds like they should be.

[Strazos]

They would be more awesome if the consoles were like, $800...diminishing returns, and such.

[Yoru]

Cool to know that Yoru. I guess I'm then surprised that consoles aren't all that much more awsome than PC games. By all rights it sounds like they should be.

At the higher end, in terms of graphics? They are, for the price you pay. Compare a $350 360 vs. the $1200+ box you'll need to get a comparable picture out of Oblivion.

Of course, if you go all-out and buy a $4000 PC, you blow away pretty much any console on the market. You're also either crazy, rich or both.

Being awesome at sequential processing doesn't immediately equate into awesome gameplay, and the barrier to entry on the console market is higher (since dev houses have to buy dev kits, which - last I checked - were non-trivially expensive) - that's why I said consoles generally dominate the mainstream in terms of ROI (higher market penetration/install base due to lower cost of entry) whereas PCs dominate the indie scene (essentially no cost of entry for new developers).

[Hokers]

[

Hokers! Are you in an online squad? I made one but don't have any friends. Well, I have friends, but I don't have any with Chromehounds. I need to try that multiplayer stuff.

Also, wheeled movement is some good stuff and you get used to the zoom cam pretty fast later on.

I have not joined a squad yet as I have been purposly holding myself back so I don't have to choose a country.  I want to make sure that I choose the same one as my friend.  Which of the 3 is your squad?

[schild]

Uh. There was one country that already lost. At 0% of ownership. I chose the underdog at 45%. I forgot which. I'll look it up tonight when I play.

[Trippy]

Consoles use processors optimized for lots of sequential operations, e.g. long pipelines. Sequential operations being things like physics processing and graphics processing, where you're mostly 'crunching numbers' as opposed to hitting branch operations which slow heavily-pipelined CPUs down.

Sort of. The Prescott P4 is the king of pipelined CPUs in the non-specialized CPU marketplace with a whopping 31 stages and I don't see the P4 being used by any of the big three console makers. The Cell and the Xenon (Xbox 360's CPU) are both around 20 stages which is deep but obviously not nearly the size of the P4.

Modern consoles also have multiple dedicated processors for things like graphics, whereas PC games need to support legacy hardware and cannot rely on having (e.g. vs. the PS3) 8 independent ALUs cranking away at once to let you see sweat beads.

Eh? You are making it sound like the consoles have multiple GPUs which is not the case in the latest gen products and is still something reserved for high-end gaming rigs (i.e. SLI and CrossFire). It is true that the Xenon and the Cell both have multiple processing units but those aren't being used as part of the rendering process since that's handled by the GPUs. The extra processing units can be used to add extra "details" to a scene like more realistic physics effects but if you try to cram too much stuff into the scene cause you have all the extra processing units you still are going to overwhelm the GPU with too many polygons and rendering calculations.

[Yoru]

Sort of. The Prescott P4 is the king of pipelined CPUs in the non-specialized CPU marketplace with a whopping 31 stages and I don't see the P4 being used by any of the big three console makers. The Cell and the Xenon (Xbox 360's CPU) are both around 20 stages which is deep but obviously not nearly the size of the P4.

Which falls down to the next bracket: optimized binaries for the heavily-pipelined P4 wouldn't operate as efficiently as on less-pipelined general purpose CPUs. Run a performance comparison with gcc using -march vs. -mcpu vs. no architectural optimization.

Eh? You are making it sound like the consoles have multiple GPUs which is not the case in the latest gen products and is still something reserved for high-end gaming rigs (i.e. SLI and CrossFire). It is true that the Xenon and the Cell both have multiple processing units but those aren't being used as part of the rendering process since that's handled by the GPUs. The extra processing units can be used to add extra "details" to a scene like more realistic physics effects but if you try to cram too much stuff into the scene cause you have all the extra processing units you still are going to overwhelm the GPU with too many polygons and rendering calculations.

Yeah, I probably should've clarified. I know their CPU sort-of has a multi-core architecture (at least to the level of having multiple ALUs with their own mini-cache) and I was under the impression their graphics chips would also try to exploit internal parallelism in a similar manner. If they're just using the standard giant-pipeline GPU chips from NVidia/ATi, then mea culpa.

Either way, being able to count on a given level of parallelism on your target platform helps you break out parallelizable tasks.

[Cyrrex]

At the risk of dumbing down this otherwise very techy thread, I don't think the specs of the respective machines means a whole lot.  In any case, when a console hits the market the technology inside it is what?  Couple of years old?  That feels about right.  My 2.5 year-old PC is somewhat faster than my 360.  My PC also achieves higher resolutions.  My PC can also do a whole lot more than my 360.   No contest, not even close.

My 360 is extremely convenient for playing games and...playing games.  I guess it does other stuff, with music, pictures and other media stuff, but my PC does those things, too, and far better.  I can also use my PC for banking.   I can use it for free porn (shoot, I could pay, but that seems rather stupid).  I can google all manner of shit to make myself look like a genius.  I can be part of a guild and manage a website.  I can afk-bot my way through an MMO.  I can use email.  I can post random nonsense on forums.  Real-time chatting.  Find a date.  I can buy all manner of stuff.  I can find old friends.  I can do my job.  I can play most of the same games, and in many cases the experience is better, though there are exceptions.  I can install other software applications.  I can improve the performance of my PC drastically.  I can help Nigerian exiles access their family fortunes.

Consoles and PCs are apples and oranges, at least in terms of the experiences they offer.   Ignoring pricing between the two, the only thing I can think of that a console does better is that it gets you into a game with no hassle whatsoever.  Any idiot can use a console**.  Until the console can do all of the things above (and the many other things not mentioned), then the PC is in no danger of becoming obsolete.  The irony here is that the console would practically have to become a PC, and in doing so, give up the one or two major advantages it has.

**Note:  with the relatively complexity of the 360 versus prior generation consoles, this is no longer completely true.  Visit any dedicated xbox 360 forum for details.

[Trippy]

Sort of. The Prescott P4 is the king of pipelined CPUs in the non-specialized CPU marketplace with a whopping 31 stages and I don't see the P4 being used by any of the big three console makers. The Cell and the Xenon (Xbox 360's CPU) are both around 20 stages which is deep but obviously not nearly the size of the P4.

Which falls down to the next bracket: optimized binaries for the heavily-pipelined P4 wouldn't operate as efficiently as on less-pipelined general purpose CPUs. Run a performance comparison with gcc using -march vs. -mcpu vs. no architectural optimization.

That still doesn't prove your original point. You were implying that console CPUs were somehow specially "optimized" for long sequential operations compared to "non console CPUs" when in fact deep pipelines is the norm for desktop CPU architectures: the Athlon 64 has 17, the G5 has 21, and the P4 has 31.

[Yoru]

That still doesn't prove your original point. You were implying that console CPUs were somehow specially "optimized" for long sequential operations compared to "non console CPUs" when in fact deep pipelines is the norm for desktop CPU architectures: the Athlon 64 has 17, the G5 has 21, and the P4 has 31.

Correct, the Athlon 64, G5 and P4 all have pipelines that are close to or deeper than current console CPUs. However, because PC games have to be compiled to also support CPUs without 31-stage pipelines, they cannot leverage features that take advantage of the processor as well, particularly in the realm of SIMD processing, which architectures like the Cell and your average GPU excel at.

So my original point wasn't precisely spot on; I was trying not to get into the technical bits like using the black magic of SIMD for vector-like processing, which games do a lot of. When you can count on a given CPU architecture, you can optimize the living shit out of your compiler, and console CPUs are built with that sort of vector/sequential processing in mind.

[Strazos]

Oh Snap! Thems sound like fightin' words where I come from....

Well, they would, if I came from MIT or something. :-D