I nearly started a flame war with this a few weeks ago but..

slinga

Established Member
Seriously, I'm curious. Last time we all (ok MOST of us) established that PS2 had a huge lead over the competition in terms of units sold world wide. I'm sure there still #1, but how are the two doing? Not that they have all been released globally (to my knowledge) the console wars should really be heating up aye? Oh well thanks.
 
go slinga go. just cause i dun want more ms stuff than possible. i like cube and i think that since they are bringing out some good adult type games it will do mucho better. and it even has a canadian made gfx chip so its better than xbox's nvidia chip like always.
 
I think PS2 may start hitting market saturation soon, assuming it hasn't already. If Sony's smart, they've already accounted for this and made the proper preparations and adjustments to manufacturing so that they'll be ready with a price drop, an ad blitz, and a PS2 equivalent of "Greatest Hits" when they run into hard times. Really, with the kind of installed base that PS2 has, developers aren't likely to ignore it, and I don't really see much appeal from XBox except the promise that it will be relatively easy to develop for. I dare say that doesn't mean a whole lot when its primary competitor's installed base has it beat by millions. Furthermore, PS2's international success is beating XBox's severely - PS2 is fairly popular worldwide, while XBox is struggling in Japan and lagging behind MS's expectations in Europe. It may seem unfair to talk about installed base in terms of absolute numbers when the launches are so separated, but the fact is that PS2 is where it is, and barring some major increases in XBox sales, it looks like it's going to remain dominant for the forseeable future. Gamecube will almost certainly have a substantial following and will probably make Nintendo no small amount of money, but I don't see it taking over the market (which probably isn't what Nintendo is shooting for in this round anyway).

(Edited by ExCyber at 6:44 pm on April 10, 2002)
 
i agree, i think this round everyone thats trying to dethrone sony is trying to build up a fanbase and then slowly chip away at its mountain. just like my theory about sega they are aquiring a huge fanbase for their games so if/when they release a new system it will have a sizable following.

(Edited by gamefoo21 at 10:12 pm on April 10, 2002)
 
I think that both MS and Nintendo want to move aggressively to take what they can get, but otherwise wait this round out and try to kill PS3 when it comes out.
 
Quote: from gamefoo21 on 12:11 am on April 11, 2002

i agree, i think this round everyone thats trying to dethrone sony is trying to build up a fanbase and then slowly chip away at its mountain. just like my theory about sega they are aquiring a huge fanbase for their games so if/when they release a new system it will have a sizable following.

(Edited by gamefoo21 at 10:12 pm on April 10, 2002)


I believe so Gamefoo! I wish Sega to be in the next console wave (but it's to early *sob, sob*).
 
its an evil strategy to get ppl hooked back on sega. so that they can reveal there next console and pull all game making to only it so it will get all the sweet games.

can someone tell me which one is better in hardware terms. PSX or Saturn???
 
can someone tell me which one is better in hardware terms. PSX or Saturn???

"Better" is an ambiguous term. However, I think it's fair to say that Saturn is more powerful overall if programmed properly, and if you're not going to talk about the system being programmed properly, what's the point?. I've not extensively programmed either system, so what I'm about to say should probably be taken with a grain of salt, as I almost certainly am not familiar with all the strengths and weaknesses of the systems.

- Without splitting hairs about architectural efficiency and multithreading, the two 28MHz SH-2s almost certainly provide more potential computational power than PSX's 33MHz R3000A. Whether or not it can be effectively applied depends on the game and the programmer. The SH-2s probably make more efficient use of memory due to the shorter instruction size, though it's not clear how much of a benefit this really is.

- Saturn has a programmable general-purpose DSP, while PSX's Geometry Transformation Engine is dedicated to 3D-related vector/matrix transforms. I'm not sure which does these faster, but Saturn's can be reprogrammed for other operations.

- Looking at some of the more advanced games on each system, I don't get the sense that

Saturn's VDP1 is struggling to keep up with PSX's GPU, but the official numbers suggest that PSX can push somewhere around two to three times as many polygons as Saturn.

- Saturn's sound subsystem has its own 68000 CPU. PSX's sound processor must be managed directly by the main CPU. Beyond that, their capabilities seem pretty similar (there's only so much really useful stuff that can be done to sound, after all).

- Saturn's CD-ROM subsystem seems to beat the crap out of PSX's. Saturn has a dedicated 512KB cache for the CD controller, and the CD controller has a dedicated processor that manages the CD reading process. PSX also has one, but it's apparently not as flexible or powerful. PSX's CD-ROM read cache is 32KB.

- Saturn's VDP2 manages backgrounds and has scaling, rotation, and rowscrolling functions. It's also capable of using a direct bitmapped mode for additional flexibility. PSX has nothing of the sort; backgrounds have to be done with the GPU.

- PSX has a dedicated FMV decoding chip capable of producing high-quality output. Saturn relies on software to do this (unless you have a MPEG/VCD card, which not many games take advantage of AFAIK). This is more flexible, but in general the quality tends to be a bit worse.
 
ExCyber: . If Sony's smart, they've already accounted for this and made the proper preparations and adjustments to manufacturing so that they'll be ready with a price drop, an ad blitz, and a PS2 equivalent of "Greatest Hits" when they run into hard times.

Me: I thought you might want to know that they have already realeased PS2 greatest hits. I saw some the other day at wallmart, the only one of which caught my eye was Twisted Metal Black.
 
Twisted Metal Black???

Is this going to be known as a "Greatest Hit" game???

It's a pathetic sequel with nothing serious to add. If this is one of the besf PS2 can do... then I don't wanna see the worst.

Aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh. Sega....... Where are you????????
 
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