[PS3 Centraal] #23: Terug uit Cloud Cuckoo Land.

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Op zondag 12 maart 2006 15:55 schreef Retuobak het volgende:
Als het onmogelijke gebeurt en Sony pas in 2007 met de PS3 verschijnt in Japan dan kan Ken maar beter Satoru een kerstkaartje sturen waarin hij Nintendo feliciteert met de overwinning op de Japanse consolemarkt .

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Op zondag 12 maart 2006 16:36 schreef Xrenity het volgende:
Heavenly Sword developer niet blij met next-gen development

Interessant stukje tekst. Ik durf het bijna niet te zeggen; maar dan had Nintendo gelijk. De grafische top is zo'n beetje bereikt. Niet qua systeem power, maar qua wat de developers neer kunnen zetten

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Op zondag 12 maart 2006 16:49 schreef Retuobak het volgende:

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Wat mij betreft onzin, games als Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter bewijzen nu al dat next-gen gewoon weer een grote stap voorwaards is. En over een paar jaar weet niemand meer beter en kijkt iedereen weer rijkhalzend uit naar de volgende grote stap op technologisch vlak.

Nintendo's aanpak is een gedurfde, maar imho is er geen 'gelijk'. Je gaat of voor goedkoop gamen met mindere graphics of duur gamen met beeldschone graphics. Zo simpel is het.

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PS3 Announcement Due; Ides of March Cited
By Colin Campbell Print | Send to a friend | Email the editor
Sources close to Sony say the company will be making "very big" PlayStation 3 announcements within the next two weeks. The company wants to get a message out before the end of its financial year (March 31). Speculation is suggesting March 15.
Image We understand Sony will not use Phil Harrison's GDC speech (March 22) to make its announcements, but that the firm may be looking to get its announcement out next week, if possible.

The company has scheduled a gathering of Japanese third party publishers on March 15th (Wednesday), and it's possible that a release will go out that day. Koei president Kiyoshi Komatsu says that he expects an announcement to be made.

However, Sony's silence on the timing of its announcement is certainly down to uncertainty over when it will be able to deliver PS3. The company is known to be aiming for a September launch, but this may still be an unrealistic goal.

The firm has stated that it must be sure of games support, Blu-ray viability, manufacturing capacity and its online service before it proceeds. Any or all of these could be up in the air. It may be that the March announcement outlines some of these areas in more detail (probably the online service, known internally as 'Hub') while gesturing to a vague release date towards the end of this year.

The market is becoming impatient with Sony, which has still not officially moved from its 'spring' launch schedule, despite the season's arrival.

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Sony: PS3 'On Track'
By Colin Campbell Print | Send to a friend | Email the editor
David Reeves, head of Sony's European PlayStation operation, has this week insisted that production of PlayStation 3 is "on track". He also appears to suggest that the machine's European and U.S launches could be closer to one another than many observers have hitherto predicted.

Image Speaking to European trade newspaper MCV, Reeves said, "There are so many rumors out there but no-one really knows the facts. I know what's going to happen and I am honestly very, very confident about it."

He spoke about the timing of PS3's European launch. "It is my job to match day and date with the U.S launch," he said. "I am doing my very best to make that happen." This is interesting in that most observers believe the European launch will come some time after the U.S. launch. Sony has traditionally waited on Europe, and Microsoft's recent experience won't have persuaded the firm of the merits of simultaneous roll-out.

However, it's thought unlikely that Sony plans a simultaneous trans-Atlantic launch, and Reeves is probably suggesting that he is working towards as small a gap between launches as possible.

Reeves also talked about the fight with Xbox 360. "Most of the first million people who buy an Xbox 360 in PAL territories will also buy a PS3," he predicted.

Despite this positive outlook from Reeves, it's still highly unlikely that PS3 will launch any time soon. Our best guess is that an announcement will be made in the near future outlining the company's overall strategy in detail - games, Blu-ray, online, manufacturing - with a promise to deliver a launch some time this year. It may be that there are still too many unknowns for Sony to give a firm release date or detailed territory-by-territory plans.

Reports are suggesting that Sony's suppliers, such as Compeq in Taiwan, have scheduled component manufacturing plans for June, which would suggest a late 2006 launch. But a hardware launch, especially one this complicated, hinges on more than having a few components ready and waiting in a bucket.

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Op zondag 12 maart 2006 16:49 schreef Retuobak het volgende:

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Wat mij betreft onzin, games als Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter bewijzen nu al dat next-gen gewoon weer een grote stap voorwaards is. En over een paar jaar weet niemand meer beter en kijkt iedereen weer rijkhalzend uit naar de volgende grote stap op technologisch vlak.

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I think everyone who is level-headed has been saying this forever. I always say this when people bring up stuff like PGR3 which despite like 4 years of development time only had 4 cities that weren't even very large.

If people want an entire rpg that looks like that FFVII tech demo...it'll take 5-10 years to make and no developer/publisher will risk that. If people want a racing game with ultra detail like PGR3 and beyond...you're not going to get many tracks or varied locations because to do something like Rallisport 2's number of varied locales in PGR3 detail it'd take 5-10 years. Look at games like GRAW, which by all accounts is only about 6 hours long for single player. If you want every level to be super detailed with awesome textures...get used to 4-8 hour games or 5-10 year development cycles...and guess which of the two the publisher will be picking.

As graphics get more detailed, games will become shorter with less locations/more recycling. If a team spends a week making an ultra detailed room the player will run through in 5-10 secs...what's the point?

Adding budget and bigger team sizes will help slightly, but the scope of the upgrade in work is not going to be met by the scope of the upgrade in most development teams.

For longer games like rpgs, expect A LOT of Xbox 1.5 looking games on PS3/X360 because the only way these small teams are gonna be able to make 40-60 hour epic next-games is by keeping the environments at current gen level, throwing in some shaders and HDR, and then making the main character models ultra-detailed.

It's kinda depressing that we're nearing the end of the giant long games, but it's just what will happen and you deal with it. Renderware and Middleware engines aren't the solution because you still have to draw every texture painstakingly yourself. Middleware doesn't auto-create art, that's the job of people.

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FFXI fan festival It was a weekend of contests, tournaments, and developer panels at the Final Fantasy XI Fan Festival in Santa Monica. RPGamer has summarized what the Square Enix team had to say regarding the Xbox 360 beta test, localization issues, and the latest expansion pack, Treasures of Aht Urghan. The developers also responded to inquiries on the PS3 version of FFXI: "Right now, we still don't know what type of machine the PS3 is, so we are waiting on Sony to finalize the hardware before we can make that decision." An end of the year launch for Sony's next console is looking more and more likely.

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Op maandag 13 maart 2006 12:54 schreef Xrenity het volgende:

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Beetje kort door de bocht. Natuurlijk is GRAW een mooie game, maar daar tegenover staat dat de game een stuk korter is. Lees dit bijvoorbeeld:
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Overigens, Square Enix over PS3:
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Op maandag 13 maart 2006 13:24 schreef Retuobak het volgende:
GR:AW SP is volgens de pers 11-12 uur lang? Wat heel normaal is deze gen al?
PGR3 heeft plenty tracks?
TES4: Oblivion heeft 100 uur gameplay en ziet er beeldschoon uit?

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Op maandag 13 maart 2006 15:01 schreef Xrenity het volgende:

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Heb de games zelf niet, maar je hoeft geen geleerde te zijn om dit eruit te halen. Mooiere/grotere games = hogere kosten + meer tijd.
Oblivion kent niet echt levels, veel textures kunnen worden herhaald op landschappen, enz. Daarbij hebben ze veel tijd en geld

Anyway, nog een geinig 1up.com artikeltje:
Does Sony's PS3 strategy reek of confidence... or madness?

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Op maandag 13 maart 2006 15:04 schreef SocialDisorder het volgende:
Ik denk dat ontwikkelaars die weinig geld hebben nu eens gewoon op gameplay moeten mikken ipv de meest mooie graphics.

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Mooiere/grotere games = hogere kosten + meer tijd.

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Op maandag 13 maart 2006 15:08 schreef Retuobak het volgende:
Die ontwikkeling is niet nieuw, en het heeft in het verleden duidelijk geen impact gehad op de aantallen goede games die uitkomen. Dus ik maak me nergens druk om.

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Op maandag 13 maart 2006 15:47 schreef Xrenity het volgende:

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Tuurlijk wel.
De ontwikkeling is niet nieuw inderdaad, maar de schaal ervan wel.

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Op maandag 13 maart 2006 15:51 schreef SocialDisorder het volgende:

Ik waag het te betwijfelen. De "gigantische impact" zal reuze meevallen IMHO. Je kan het als ontwikkelaar zo gek maken als je zelf wilt. En als je een budget van 1 miljoen dollar hebt voor een game, zul je daarbinnen een game moeten ontwikkelen. Dat er bedrijven zijn die een ruimer budget hebben, wil niet zeggen dat zij automatisch betere games maken.

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Op maandag 13 maart 2006 15:57 schreef Xrenity het volgende:

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Kleinere developers moeten echter wel mee komen met de grafische kwaliteiten, aangezien die games anders sowieso al hopeloos zijn voor de mainstream. Voor games die er niet geweldig uit zien is er geen PS3 nodig, die kunnen nog wel verder met de PS2.

Hopelijk laat Sony de PS2 dan ook niet zo hard vallen als Microsoft deed.

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Kleinere developers moeten echter wel mee komen met de grafische kwaliteiten, aangezien die games anders sowieso al hopeloos zijn voor de mainstream

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Op maandag 13 maart 2006 16:07 schreef Retuobak het volgende:

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Ja, dat verklaart het feit dat publishers als CDV nog steeds nette resultaten neerzetten ondanks dat geen een titel van hen echt goede graphics heeft. De mainstream accepteert mindere graphics gewoon. Waarom gamen anders miljoenen mensen nog op de PS2? . En waarom spelen miljoenen mensen nog CS als ze ook F.E.A.R. zouden kunnen spelen? En waarom spelen mensen nog WoW wanneer EQ2 ed. er beter uit zien?

Bullshit imho, succes met kutgraphics kan prima. Zelfs op een platform met titels met topgraphics.

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Op maandag 13 maart 2006 16:07 schreef Retuobak het volgende:

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Ja, dat verklaart het feit dat publishers als CDV nog steeds nette resultaten neerzetten ondanks dat geen een titel van hen echt goede graphics heeft. De mainstream accepteert mindere graphics gewoon. Waarom gamen anders miljoenen mensen nog op de PS2? . En waarom spelen miljoenen mensen nog CS als ze ook F.E.A.R. zouden kunnen spelen? En waarom spelen mensen nog WoW wanneer EQ2 ed. er beter uit zien?

Bullshit imho, succes met kutgraphics kan prima. Zelfs op een platform met titels met topgraphics.

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Op maandag 13 maart 2006 16:00 schreef pkwarts het volgende:
Bovendien worden veel klussen developers steeds meer uit handen genomen, dingen die men vroeger van de grond af aan moest opbouwen. Denk aan simpele tools voor gezichten, bomen, water etc.

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Op maandag 13 maart 2006 16:46 schreef peristilius het volgende:

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Bingo, alles gaat met de tijd mee, zodra de PS3 een beetje bekend terrein is kunnen developers waarschijnlijk weer gewoon een spel per jaar gaan uitpoepen. En ook al kost het meer tijd en moeite om een game te maken dan maakt dat nog niet veel uit, omdat de markt ook steeds groter wordt.

Ik maak me echt niet druk om het gezeur van een paar developers die geen tijd en moeite in een game durven te investeren, omdat ik weet dat er genoeg goede developers zijn die dat wel willen doen.

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Op maandag 13 maart 2006 16:23 schreef Xrenity het volgende:
Maar nogmaals; voor zulke games heb je geen PlayStation 3 of Xbox 360 nodig.

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The Most Dangerous Game
Does Sony's PS3 strategy reek of confidence... or madness?
by Jeremy Parish 3.11.2006

The PlayStation 3 is shaping up to be one of the greatest mysteries of our times. Forget the Colonel's secret blend of eleven herbs and spices, how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, or who put the bop in the bop-shoo-wop-shoo-wop. The question keeping the world awake at night is, "What the hell is Sony playing at?"

The veil of mystery surrounding the PS3 is downright maddening, and a little worrying. Consider that by March 2000, the company had already set the PlayStation 2's October 26th release date in stone. Yet here in March 2006, Sony has only been willing to commit to a "spring 2006" launch for its latest console. Less than ten days from winter's end and gamers are left scraping together scraps of conflicting information trickling from the company's various divisions to try and get a sense of the bigger picture. Sure, it's worth the proverbial 1000 words, but they tend to be ones like "unclear," "uncertain," "vague," "contradictory," and "unlikely."

That's hardly the sort of thing to instill consumer confidence in a system that could retail for as much as $500 (or more?). Sony's computer entertainment division has been its strongest asset for years, and it would be no overstatement to say the company's future rests on the success of the PS3. So why the secrecy?

Skeptics are quick to suggest that it's borne of desperation. The PS3, they suggest, is hardly any more powerful than the Xbox 360, Kojima Productions' geriatric mullet-head notwithstanding. Maybe, they insinuate, Sony is having trouble finalizing the hardware, streamlining the manufacturing process, ensuring acceptable quality assurance results. Maybe the PS3 is doomed, they cackle.

Maybe. But far more likely is the possibility that Sony is simply incredibly confident in the PS3's infallibility. The PlayStation was a surprise success, and the PlayStation 2 steamrolled three impressive competitors. The home console industry practically belongs to Sony, and the company seems happy to let the power of the PlayStation brand name do its own marketing work. Why drop cash on a high-dollar ad blitz when eager fans are willing to build hype for PS3 with word of mouth, anticipation and rumors? Talk is cheap, but fanaticism is free.

On the surface, it would seem to be a sound strategy. After all, that's largely how PS2 trounced Dreamcast: gamers were so convinced that the PS2 would be a generational leap over Sega's early offering that they were willing to wait a year for the more expensive console. But if Sony's really hoping to make Dreamcast 2.0 a reality, now would be a very good time to change tactics. Relying on obfuscation and hype is only likely to work once, especially for gamers who believed tall promises about the PS2 Emotion Engine's ability to present the most impressive game worlds imaginable but actually received a system only moderately more powerful than the Dreamcast.

Not to mention the fact that for all of the 360's sometimes eerie similarities to Dreamcast, Microsoft today is in a vastly stronger position than Sega was six years ago. Where Dreamcast was the last gasp of a foundering hardware maker, 360 is the second generation of a carefully-planned effort by one of the world's most successful technology corporations. The original Xbox established itself as a strong brand, giving its successor an eager fanbase to build on -- a far cry from Sega's desperate drive to win back gamers alienated by the horribly mishandled 32X and Saturn.

Some gamers are holding out hope that Sony has the PS3 prepped and ready for an immediate launch as an E3 surprise. Which is a terrible idea. The Saturn's stealth release in 1995 played a major role in Sega's crushing defeat in the 32-bit race, and Sony surely has enough sense to realize that dropping such an expensive and complicated machine into the marketplace with no day-one third-party support would be disastrous. And at this point, key publishers appear to be just as in the dark as gamers, which is hardly a good sign.


The Internet has a term for Sony's Spring 2006 vow: "LOL."

So, is it desperation or arrogance that's keeping Sony quiet and gamers in the dark? Either way, it's hard to disregard a nagging sensation that Sony is putting itself in a situation awfully similar to where Nintendo was ten years ago. Once upon a time it was Nintendo who was reviled by publishers for its draconian third-party policies, who was criticized by its customers for over-promising and under-delivering on its hardware, who cockily stood atop the industry and expected its brand name to do its hard work for it. And ten years ago, Sony knocked Nintendo's standing in the console race from a strong first to a distant third.

Now Sony seems to be setting itself up for a similar fall. PS3's hardware is rumored to be too complicated for many developers to utilize to the fullest. Worse, the console exclusives that set PS1 and PS2 apart are slowly vanishing as publishers hope to maximize their returns on the rising cost of game creation by releasing key titles on multiple platforms. There's a very real danger that the PS3 could become Sony's N64 -- an impressive, but flawed machine plagued by eroding developer confidence and expensive proprietary media (in this case, BluRay). Even the PS3 unveiling campaign from last year's E3, "Welcome Change," smacks of Nintendo's "Change the System" ads from 1996. * XD

Maybe the company's March 15th press event will have some connection to PS3. Failing that, maybe the PS3 master plan will finally be explained the following week at Game Developers Conference. But Sony needs to act soon. Time is slipping away, and with it any hope of fulfilling lofty PS3 launch promises.

Sony would be wise to study history; the console industry experiences a sea of change every decade. Atari more or less created the industry in the mid-70s, only to see its marketshare erode and give way to Nintendo in the mid-80s, who in turn fell behind Sony in the mid-90s. It's been a decade since then, and Microsoft seems a lot hungrier for victory than Sony these days. The 360 is proving to do just about everything right while Sony has offered nothing but cryptic promises.

PS3 may be about welcoming change, but at this rate there's a very real chance that the biggest change of all will involve who comes out ahead when the next-gen dust settles.

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Op maandag 13 maart 2006 16:50 schreef Retuobak het volgende:

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Je weet dat je hardware kracht kunt gebruiken voor meer dan alleen mooie textures he?

Oh en WoW heeft duizenden mensen die verder niet of nauwelijks games speelden toch richting het gamen weten te krijgen. WoW is gewoon een van de eerste MMO's die echt aanslaat bij de massa, en dat is ook wel te merken aan de verkopen die toch duidelijk aangeven dat de game allang de mainstream is ingedoken.

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Op maandag 13 maart 2006 18:25 schreef Retuobak het volgende:
Dat het een PC game is maakt niks uit. En nee, meer tijd hoeft niet noodzakelijk, applicaties als speedtree zorgen er voor dat je op een goedkope manier in korte tijd grote werelden kunt creeeren. En om die weer te geven heb je wel een krachtig apparaat nodig.

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PlayStation 3 may sport download service for selected PSone, PS2 titles

Reports from development sources close to Sony Computer Entertainment are indicating that the firm is planning a major digital distribution service for game content, which could be a key element of PlayStation 3 - or even of a relaunched PS2.

Several senior developers have confirmed to GamesIndustry.biz that they have spoken informally with Sony about the question of digital distribution on consoles, although these discussions were described as being "purely about technology, not business models" by one source.

However, even the technology discussed could be very revealing regarding the Japanese giant's plans for the coming years - with one source from the development arm of a major third-party publisher claiming that Sony has been discussing the technical feasibility of providing PSone and PS2 titles over digital distribution with them.

This could indicate that Sony is hoping to provide a service for the PS3 similar to Nintendo's Revolution digital download system, which will allow users to access a back catalogue of Nintendo titles through the next-generation console.

In Sony's case the challenges may be significantly more difficult, since PlayStation titles were customarily several hundred megabytes in size, and PS2 titles spanned multiple gigabytes - compared to just a few megabytes or less for NES, SNES and N64 titles in the Nintendo back-catalogue.

However, as Internet connections speed up downloads of this size will be far more reasonable - already, several Xbox Live demos for the Xbox 360 are over 600Mb in size - and our sources indicated that Sony may also be investigating the possibility of remastering certain PS2 titles to allow them to stream later content over the network while the player is already playing early parts of the game.

The move would not be surprising, given that both other next-generation consoles will offer downloadable game content - Xbox Live Arcade and game demos in the case of Xbox 360, and the back catalogue download service on Revolution - which makes it highly unlikely that Sony will miss out on this opportunity.

The information from our development sources comes only days after Electronic Arts' European vice president of sales, Dr Jens Uwe Intat, confirmed to GamesIndustry.biz that the leading publisher is already in discussions with platform holders over digital distribution - telling us that "we as a total industry, software publishers and hardware manufacturers, are already sitting together and working on business models."

One of the key requirements of digital distribution on this scale, however, is a large storage system - such as a hard drive, a component with which Sony has had a patchy history. Although the PlayStation 2 hardware can support a hard drive, the peripheral was unsuccessful and was only ever used to any great degree by Square Enix' massively multiplayer title Final Fantasy XI. The PlayStation 3 hardware will also support a hard drive unit but is set to ship without one pre-installed in the basic configuration.

Sony is expected to announce new information about its plans for PlayStation 3 in Tokyo on Wednesday, ahead of a keynote address from the firm's worldwide studios boss Phil Harrison at the Game Developers' Conference in San Jose next week.

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Op maandag 13 maart 2006 22:05 schreef mikando18 het volgende:

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Downloadbare ps1 en ps2 games voor de ps3 dus.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=15294

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Op maandag 13 maart 2006 23:59 schreef Notorious_Roy het volgende:
Tja, heel gek is het niet dat deze geruchten komen. Xbox Live Arcade heeft al bewezen dat het een goed idee is en Nintendo knalt daar overheen met hun downloadservice (qua bekende namen wat betreft games, qua techniek weten we nog niets).

Sony moet haast wel zou je denken

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Op maandag 13 maart 2006 23:55 schreef piet_pelle het volgende:
Dat wordt een hele dure HDD die je erbij aan moet schaffen dan.

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Op dinsdag 14 maart 2006 01:24 schreef P-Style het volgende:

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Precies. Ik neem het maar weer met een flinke korrel zout. Ik verwacht dat je PS1 & PS2 games kunt spelen op de PS3 en ik verwacht ook dat er downloadbare games komen a la Xbox Live Arcade, maar downloadbare PS1 & PS2 games gaat me wat ver. Al is het maar omdat je een HDD dan in no time vol hebt staan.

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Op dinsdag 14 maart 2006 08:41 schreef Dr.Daggla het volgende:

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Welcome Change Piracy? .

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Op dinsdag 14 maart 2006 08:52 schreef Dr.Daggla het volgende:

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Ja, die kunnen niet gecrackt worden. .

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Op dinsdag 14 maart 2006 08:55 schreef Tain het volgende:
En dan heb je een console en dan zou je nog steeds license keys moeten invullen

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Op dinsdag 14 maart 2006 09:04 schreef SocialDisorder het volgende:

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Huh? Nog nooit gehoord van Public/Private Keys? Encryptie? Digital Certificates?

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Op dinsdag 14 maart 2006 09:06 schreef Tain het volgende:

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Ja van gehoord, maar bij License Keys denk ik altijd aan codes die je zelf moet invullen. Op bijna elk stukje software voor een console zit wel iets om te controleren of je te maken hebt met een legaal spel, dus daar veranderd niks aan

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Op dinsdag 14 maart 2006 09:22 schreef SocialDisorder het volgende:

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Maar niet op het niveau van controle wat je kan uitoefenen op software dat gebrand wordt door je eigen apparatuur.
Sony kan een certificaat meebranden in de DVD, waardoor het spel alleen in die specifieke console gespeeld kan worden.

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Op dinsdag 14 maart 2006 09:57 schreef Dr.Daggla het volgende:

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Maar als dat omzeild wordt ben je meteen wel heel erg ver van huis .