[PS3 Centraal] Deel 17 - Wachtend op de FEITEN!

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Cory Barlog was the Director of Animation for God of War, a game for the PlayStation 2 that has received extremely positive reviews.

In his latest blog entry, he specifically refers to an event taking place very soon:

"We got the word from on high that we need to present our game to Sony worldwide reps at this big conference next month..."

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Op maandag 23 januari 2006 08:47 schreef SocialDisorder het volgende:
bron: PS3Land.com
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interesting....

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And as for the PS2 vs PS3 development question. I was chatting to Michiel and he was telling me how crazy-easy it was compared to the PS2 and how much quicker things have been going for them. I will take his word on that.

Seb Downie - Lead Tester - Guerrilla Games

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Taking advantage of Cell's special powers isn't easy right now, though. "Instead of one potential problem, now you have seven," says Andy Sites, a producer for Sony Online Entertainment in San Diego who is working on a yet-to-be-announced PlayStation 3 project

While he states his game will take advantage of the chip's multiple processors, he admits it isn't easy. "It's very much a lot of fumbling around at this point," and a lot of "trial and error," to get something to work on the PS 3, says James Kosta, chief architect for BattleBorne Entertainment, a studio developing a game for both the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360. "It could take three or four generations of games (i.e., years) before we see anything taking advantage of the Cell's real potential."

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Mixed opinions from devs on Cell programming

Different developers are expressing opposing opinions on developing for the Cell processor.

Punch Jump is reporting that several developers believe it will be "three to four generations of games before the processor can be taken advantage of."

Microsoft's Xbox 360 launched in October 2005, and so developers will have had much more time to adjust to the new hardware. Sony could face problems trying to catch up if developers are struggling to utilise the Cell processor effectively.

"Instead of one potential problem, now you have seven," said Andy Sites, Sony Online Entertainment producer.

However, Seb Downie, Lead Tester for Guerrilla Games, has said quite the opposite. After many people asked about the differences in developing for PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3, Downie referred to a fellow developer:

"I was chatting to Michiel and he was telling me how crazy-easy it was compared to the PS2 and how much quicker things have been going for them."

In addition, Sony have put a lot of effort into providing middleware tools to make development easier. It's believed this is part of the reason Sony included the NVIDIA "RSX" graphics card. The Cell is said to be capable of handling graphics as well, but a GPU would be a lot more familiar to developers.

The Cell chip is a state-of-the-art processor built from ground-up by Sony, IBM and Toshiba. It features one main PowerPC core, and eight Synergistic Processing Elements, or mini-cores. The chip will form a major part of the PlayStation 3 hardware, but only seven SPEs will be active, in order to improve chip yield.

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Op dinsdag 24 januari 2006 14:27 schreef SocialDisorder het volgende:
maar hoe zit het nou met m'n fanboy-status? Staat die nog steeds?

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Op dinsdag 24 januari 2006 15:02 schreef peristilius het volgende:
Met 1 game kan je dat moeilijk representatief testen volgens mij.

Als ze de games nou 25% goedkoper maken kan ik 25% meer games kopen.

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Op dinsdag 24 januari 2006 15:02 schreef peristilius het volgende:
Met 1 game kan je dat moeilijk representatief testen volgens mij.

Als ze de games nou 25% goedkoper maken kan ik 25% meer games kopen.

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Op dinsdag 24 januari 2006 15:25 schreef H.Flick het volgende:
Het probleem als je enkele games goedkoper maakt is dat de consument die lagere prijs ook zal associëren met een lagere kwaliteit.

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Cell's New Military App: the power of 45 Intel Pentium 4 processors

"Mercury Computer Systems has revealed another platform based on Cell processor technology, which will be used in military vehicles for the transmission of 3D battlefield data.

ImageThe PowerBlock 200 (pictured) is a rugged server that delivers 200 GFLOPs to accommodate the real-life advanced warfighter.

"The Cell BE processor was originally designed for the volume home entertainment market, but its architecture of nine heterogeneous on-chip cores is well-suited to the type of distributed, real-time processing that will power tomorrow's digital battlefield," said Mercury CTO Craig Lund.

Mercury claims that the PowerBlock contains the power of 45 Intel Pentium 4 processors, and is about the size of a toaster.

Mercury has previously revealed two Cell-based servers. The processor is also the heart of the PlayStation 3.

Source: The Register.

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Now I know I don’t talk a lot about what PS3 has coming out (mostly because they don’t have a lot of games that are good in development). And I don’t like Sony as a company at all. As I’ve said before the fun visiting other development studios is to get fresher ideas and see the game as its complete vision. Before its diluted and things are cut and then it hit’s the shelves. We were invited to Santa Monica Studios. So we flew out to Cali. and meet David Jaffe. He really is one of the only people I get along with who works with Sony. Right now, God of War 2 as it being code-named now. Looks absolutely amazing, and does truly show what that Cell processor and RSX GPU can really do. He did say though that there were some layoffs, although they were very few. Because of the need for other programmer/engineers/coders who could work on a deadline and have experience in asymmetrical SPE. If any studio has stood by Sony’s side after nearly everyone jumped ship the 360 or Revolution, its Factor 5 and Santa Monica Studios. David Jaffe said “it was extremely hard to really dig into the dev. kit with poor documentation”. “But we have done our best to push everything from the original God of War forward a great deal”. “We know that we still aren’t even one quarter way through harnessing all of this things power, and probably won’t before the game is finished“. “But every cutscene you saw in God of War will be completely on-par with how the gameplay should look in-game and then some“. I mean that’s not word for word what he said but you get the basic idea.

The sequel revolves around Kratos’s brother Jheous who is now a full-fledged master demon in the underworld. Who wants to take revenge on Kratos for letting him be sent to the mountains to die when they were boys. But Jaffe said that just like in the original God of War he wants to make this entry have a multi-tied story. In God of War, you really learned about Kratos’s past and why he needs to kill Ares. But in God of War 2 he wants to really dig deeper into Greek mythology and have backdrops and environments inspired by that. What I got out of him was that a small few of the other gods were in support of having Kratos kill Ares, only supported killing the minions of Ares. The only gods that supported Kratos to the end were Athena, Zeus and Artemis. This has driven a wedge between the gods. Now as the god of war, Kratos (who is still a mortal) must prove that he is indeed worthy of that status. In the demo we played Kratos said “What more must I do, I have already slain Ares”. But once again Zeus, Artemis, and Athena are the only gods Kratos has backing him this go around. The gods who are angered by the death of Ares are Hades, Poseidon, Apollo, Cupid, Hera, and Aphrodite. Hades will be the one to announce that his new son Jheous (he is also Kratos’s brother) should rightfully be declared god of war. This of course has caused an uprising of all gods and nearing war on Mt. Olympus. Zeus decides that to save Olympus and not go to war by giving Kratos a series of trials that he will have to complete in this quest to truly prove he is the rightful heir to the throne of God Of War. These trials will be much more rooted in Greek mythology and be just as expansive with great scale and production values as the original but much more so.

A big part of the story is finding out just who that old man was, who was digging the grave to Hades for Kratos. He will be someone you would have never expected. As well as part of the “Architect’s” tomb that fell off Kronos’ back, with the help of Zeus’s thunderbolt taking the Phoenix that was guarding Pandora‘s Box with it. Kratos in the demo we played. Had little to no remembrance of Jheous when they were boys. Kratos at this time is more concerned that a master demon from the underworld is about to rob him of his throne and be declared God of War. Whereas in Athena, Zeus, and Artemis’ eyes, Kratos earned the heir to the throne by killing Ares. He doesn’t know Jheous is his brother yet. Whereas every other God was not in favor of Ares being killed by some mortal and never agreed for Ares to be killed, only his evil minions and abominations. All other gods still very much mourn Aries, and believe that his death could have been prevented if all gods had known what Zeus, Athena, and Artemis had planned.

In God Of War 2 once you beat the game on Spartan, it will unlock a 15 hr. side quest where you play as Jheous.

So anyway, Kratos has been sent to the earth under Mt. Olympus to go through a series of trials, and prove that he is the rightful heir to be the God of War. To do these trials on earth he must prove himself to be an indomitable warrior. Certain trials will be that he must journey through places told in Greek mythology. But also show his real prowess against the best of what Earth and the gods have to offer. He must take down many foes in his trials including Hercules, Achilles, a true Cyclops, and many more mythical warriors. On top of this there will be many more story twists including how Hades will attempt to throw down Zeus over the course of the game. But also how Hades is taking advantage of Zeus’ unpopularity with the other gods, and uses that Zeus is Kratos’s father which is the reason he wants him to be god of war.

Now Santa Monica said that Kratos’ standard slashes and swings will be more expanded and have a deep more technical execution to them. Since they had heard complaints that the original was a little-too “button mashy”. Kratos will have all other armaments and magic attacks he had in the first game. But he will also have many more of these attacks to go around.

At some point in the story, Hades devises a plan to unbound or resurrect all of the titans to take control of Olympus for himself. Like the titan Prometheus, after betraying the secret of fire to the mortals. Was shackled to a mountain so an eagle could chew at his ever-regenerating innards, until the end of time. He will be unbound. Kronos who was ruler and thought to be the last of the mighty titans, will have Pandora’s Temple unchained from his back. He will be unbound also, and all of the other titans will be either unbound or resurrected to help Hades take control of Olympus. Needless to say, somewhere in Kratos's adventure he will have to battle one or all of these titans. It did show a very brief clip of Kratos battling an enormous fat titan. So I would expect these battles to be very epic and awe-inspiring.

Jaffe hinted to my college that Jheous who will be the final boss at the end. Will be as powerful if not more powerful than Zeus himself. But aside from the story, the graphics are outstanding for this game. It really does reiterate what Jaffe said about it looking identical to the in-game movies from the first game, if not even better and more artistic.

Although Kratos doesn't use the Blades of Chaos in this game, he will use Athena’s Blades from the start of the game. Which we were told would be upgradeable just like the Blades of Chaos. Kratos will also be able to use the environments to aggressively violate his opponents. The timed button-presses are back that unleash those awesome mini-game sequences. They are just as well done and somewhat better. Kratos is as brutal as ever during combat and so on, which is even more heightened now due to the much better graphical fidelity. That’s really all I got to see and learn about this game though. But it was nice to see that a studio has really taken the PS3 hardware and is making an awesome experience with it. It also goes to show that the PS3 will indeed be able to render games in the quality of CGI “Pixar” films. Its not always about getting the most “graphical punch” out of a specific hardware. Its more about making everything complement everything else into a solid, well-executed, tight experience. So of course the PS3 will have much better graphically superior games that really push the hardware to its absolute max. That is if you can find enough programmers and coders that are able to write code on an asymmetrical processor and figure out how to push the system without good documentation.

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Due to the nature of its applications, Cell is optimized towards single precision floating point computation. The SPEs are capable of performing double precision calculations, albeit with an order of magnitude performance penalty.

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Op woensdag 25 januari 2006 08:04 schreef Edenoniphobic het volgende:
Hij zou het werk kunnen doen van een GPU als men zou willen.

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Op zondag 22 januari 2006 18:23 schreef P-Style het volgende:

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Ik bedoelde eigenlijk: "Wat de hel doet die link hier?"
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Ah kijk, nog een geruchten-gelover.
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Flauwekul. Ontwikkelingskosten zijn zo hoog als je ze zelf maakt. De Ps3 is nou eenmaal tot veel in staat, dus als je een spel wilt maken waarbij de PS3 een beetje tot z'n recht komt, dan gaat daar dus veel tijd en dus geld in zitten. Maar de xbox 360 is net zo goed tot heel veel in staat. Dus ik zie niet waarom een PS3-spel produceren zoveel duurder zou moeten zijn dan een xbox 360 spel produceren.
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Later? Later dan wat?
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Ik heb geen énkele indicatie van Sony gelezen waarin naar voren komt dat ze zware problemen met Cell hebben, of dat de productie achter ligt. En dat uitschakelen van die ene SPE was al vanaf het begin de bedoeling. Zelfs in de officiële specs die al bekend waren op de E3 van 2005 stond dat er maar 7 van de 8 SPE's gebruikt gaan worden.
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Als Sony "de boot mist" met de PS3 dan eet ik persoonlijk m'n Playstation, Playstation2 èn PSP op! En mensen die zo bezorgt zijn om het feit dat ze niks horen van Sony die kennen Sony en z'n marketingtechnieken gewoon niet! Waarschijnlijk hebben die de lancering van de PS2 niet (bewust) meegemaakt ofzo. Zo werkt Sony nou eenmaal. Waarom zouden ze info naar buitern brengen als ze er zelf niet aan toe zijn? Om ongeruste, a-stabiele fans tevreden te houden?

Wees maar niet bang. Die info komt er gewoon in Februari. Zoals al sinds juni in de planning staat.
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Ik hou je niet tegen! Veel plezier met je xbox 360!

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Op woensdag 25 januari 2006 08:53 schreef Retuobak het volgende:

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En laten PC CPU's nu alles double precision doen . Ook die benchmarks van jou zijn trouwens gedaan met single precision. Met double precision berekeningen is de Cell helaas nergens meer, daar is het ding gewoon niet voor ontworpen, hence mijn eerdere uitspraken .

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Heb je ook bron trouwens van dat verhaal over GoW2?

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Bestudeer de link nog maar eens goed

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Op woensdag 25 januari 2006 10:10 schreef Retuobak het volgende:

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Als je nou eens specifiek zou zeggen wat ik moet lezen, want met zo'n opmerking kan ik niks. Dit komt meer op mij over van 'Ik weet het niet, maar ik geloof marketinguitspraken van de fabrikant van de Cell'.

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Op woensdag 25 januari 2006 10:18 schreef Edenoniphobic het volgende:

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Er staat juist heel precies gebenchmarked hoe alles in elkaar steekt m.b.t. berekeningen in SP en DP, met tabellen en uitleg, inclusief hoe het zich verhoudt tot current gen CPU's. Aangezien je zo slim bent, zal je vast wel eruit komen en dat bespaart mij weer allerlei vertalingen van die site.

Jouw statement dat de Cell in DP nergens blijft slaat in ieder nergens op. De vraag is dus eerder of je wel goed gelezen hebt cq snapt wat je zelf claimt.

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Op woensdag 25 januari 2006 10:44 schreef Tain het volgende:

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Tja jammer dat ze een Intel P4 32-bit proc single core hebben gebruikt ipv een AMD64 X2 wat eigenlijk echt een current gen cpu is

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Op woensdag 25 januari 2006 10:19 schreef SocialDisorder het volgende:

Hoe Sony het nu aanpakt, is zeker wel slim. MS presenteerde met veel bombarie "de toekomst van gaming", bouwde daarmee een hoop momentum op, en liet vervolgens maanden niets zien. Bij de presentatie van de console werd zelfs geen enkel beeld van gameplay of zelfs maar game-titels getoond.
Het momentum wat ze hadden opbouwd bij de presentatie ging verloren. Toen ze aankondigden op de E3 games te laten zien, was de pers gematigd enthousiast, omdat de presentatie van de console geen goede herinneringen opriep. Sony maakte van dat moment gebruik door "out-of-the-blue" posters rond het LA conference center (waar de E3 gehouden wordt) op te hangen met de PS-tekens en de tekst Welcom3 Chang3.

Meteen barstten de speculaties rond de PS3 los, en was de X360 even vergeten. Ook de filmpjes van Killzone en Motorstorm (ingame of niet) waren goed voor meer buzz op internet dan de games die Microsoft presenteerde.

Sony wist van te voren dat MS de eerste launch zou halen. Het is dan zinloos om je PS3-console te gaan promoten, terwijl de directe concurrentie al in de winkels ligt. Sony past gewoon weer dezelde tactiek als bij de lancering van de PS2 toe; even teasen, maanden niets concreets laten zien, definitief presenteren, 2 maanden later in de winkel.
Het heeft eerder gewerkt. Waarom zou het nu niet werken? Zeker met established devs achter je als Square Enix, Rockstar, Capcom en Namco.

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Op woensdag 25 januari 2006 11:36 schreef Dr.Daggla het volgende:
Ik weet wel zeker dat de games op de X360 er dan beter uit zullen zien dan de meeste launchgames van de ps3. .

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Op woensdag 25 januari 2006 11:37 schreef Notorious_Roy het volgende:

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Ik weet wel zeker van niet.

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Op woensdag 25 januari 2006 11:57 schreef Notorious_Roy het volgende:
Beter dan de 3e generatie zelfs.

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Op woensdag 25 januari 2006 11:58 schreef Dr.Daggla het volgende:

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Als ik nu GoW zie en kijk naar wat er aan komt lijkt me dat zeer onwaarschijnlijk. Maar goed, we zullen zien. .

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Op woensdag 25 januari 2006 12:00 schreef Notorious_Roy het volgende:

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[afbeelding]

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Op woensdag 25 januari 2006 12:00 schreef Notorious_Roy het volgende:

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[afbeelding]

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Op woensdag 25 januari 2006 12:00 schreef Notorious_Roy het volgende:

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[afbeelding]