Sony Talks PS3 E-Distribution Initiative 148
simoniker writes "Talking about its PlayStation 3 E-Distribution Initiative, the company's intended Xbox Live Arcade 'killer', SCEA's John Hight has laid down a challenge to Microsoft, commenting that: 'Some of our [digitally distributed first-party] games, by virtue of their design and hardware demands, simply couldn't work on Xbox 360.'" More from the article: "The PlayStation Beyond submission site has been online since GDC 2006, when Sony's Phil Harrison announced its presence, and explains further of the concept: 'The E-Distribution Initiative (EDI) will provide an alternative publishing opportunity for the direct download of games and other content to the user. The EDI will be managed by Sony Computer Entertainment's development and studio organizations in North America, Europe, Japan and Asia (collectively known as SCE Worldwide Studios).'"
Sony's Second Mistake (Score:1, Interesting)
The Playstation 3 will retail for 599 USD...
Cause of the Hardware Demands? (Score:4, Interesting)
And why are the hardware demands so high? Is it because the games are that much cooler? Or because the programmers suck? Reminds me of the reason why Windows Vista's Hardware requirements are so bloated.
What about the children? (Score:3, Interesting)
Wooo (Score:3, Interesting)
E-Distrobution and Console Generation Trends (Score:5, Interesting)
About the time of the 32-bit battles, an old trend began resurfacing in a new form; Forced Competition Development Denial (FCDD.) FCDD was easiest illustrated by Nintendo's NES. They choked off development for other consoles (namely the Sega Master System) by forcing developers to choose; in this case by having them sign contracts preventing them. That was killed in the courts and for the 16-bit console wars, FCDD didn't happen; the only denial of competition was from sales, loyalty, and popularity (oh, and who bring the $$.) From that, you had relativly similar cross platform offering and much less exclusivity.
In the lastest Generations, however, FCDD has resurfaced in a more diabolical, more legal form. By creating hardware and formats incompatible with their competition (as in Sega Saturns multiprocessor setup, 64's cartrige format) forcing developers to strech their resources to support them all. It is in the developer's best (buisness) interest to develope a game for as many platforms as its resources will allow without impacting the game's quality in a way that it will hurt overall sales. As new competition enters the console game, the developers are already becoming streched naturally. The FCDD tactic takes this further by increasing the resources the developer must devote to developing for a particular system; stealing those resources from other consoles and hopefully costing the developer to drop support for a competitor. In this generation FCDD is hitting a high mark, especially between Sony and Nintendo (Microsoft is guilty too, they just hide it well.) Nintendo's controller will require a different devotion of resources, namely creative input, to 'port' games successfully without disappointing. Sony has an unholy FCDD armament in the form of their Cell processor. This octopus of a processor is built in such a devious way that multi-threading in their programming is almost impossible to avoid; complicating the development process.
E-Distro is a huge next step. Not only is it on their format tailored for their hardware, Sony manages to monopolize the entire game development by forcing the developer to integrate Sony into every level of the game; it would become a nightmare for developers to to go cross platform (especially if they are targeting indy and small time developers, who have notoriously small budgets.) Don't expect games released by E-distro on Sony, Nintendo, or Microsoft to be appearing on any where else. And that, unfortunatly, is the point.
On another note, FCDD is a risky tactic for any developer. Increasing resource costs can also force developers to reconsider developing for the FCDD console itself. FCDD practictioners need to put more reliance on brand popularity (which Sony seems to rely a lot on) and really sell the FCDD hardware as "superior choices" if it's going to really win those ever important developer games. Jaguar and Saturn are two good examples of consoles that (inpart) failed because of a backfire of their FCDD tactic. Don't let Sony's focus on 'first party games' in the article fool you, this is all about the 3rd party developers; lower distribution costs for their own titles is just a happy bonus.
Re:Wooo (Score:3, Interesting)
Except for, you know, Halo 2. Players host on that game.
Re:Is the PS3 vapor, still? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Is the PS3 vapor, still? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Cause of the Hardware Demands? (Score:4, Interesting)
And why are the hardware demands so high? Is it because the games are that much cooler? Or because the programmers suck? Reminds me of the reason why Windows Vista's Hardware requirements are so bloated.
It makes me pine for the good old days of DOS gaming when developers squeezed the hardware for every last ounce of performance they could get, which required good design, clever/efficient algorithms, and even bits of human-optimized assembler. We pushed the machines until they wouldn't go any further.
I'm not a Nintendo fanboy, but I'm afraid that I'm about to become one; I've noticed that Nintendo tends to go this design route more often than the competition (ie attempting to fully utilize meager hardware). In fact, if you inspect their current and next gen offerings, you'll discover that the machines have a bit fewer resources than the competition. For example, compare the DS and Sony PSP. Sony's device is overpowering by far in terms of hardware resources, but I read lots of complaints that the games are bloated and slow. :(
Re:The PS3 is not Vapor, and yes I plan to buy one (Score:3, Interesting)
So you've just replaced your $100 PS2 with a $600 PS3? Genius!!
Vaporware: As far a vaporware, there were working PS3's casing and all, not dev kits, at E3 this year. They were in those back rooms that are reserved for industry insiders
Interesting - I didn't see any. Sega didn't have any. They were just in the Sony booth? So they had what - 4 or 5 units? That's just an engineer spending a couple of days cramming a dev kit in a plastic box.
IMO the PS3 looks cleaner and has more detail. That may sound like there is not big difference but when you consider that the 360 is on 2nd gen titles while the PS3 is running unfinished ones, I would say at the end of the day the gap is going to be very wide and very noticeable.
The 360 wasn't really on 2nd gen games at E3, there was a big drought in new releases after Christmas. Given also that the PS3 demos were just that, demos, not full games (ask a Forza developer what they think of the GT-HD "demo" if you want a laugh).
I'll wait and see what Sony can come up with, but so far I'm unimpressed.
I own a HDTV and I have the means to afford it
Me too. Isn't it great? Any particular reason you haven't spent the last 6 months playing HD games then? If you're so rich why not buy all 3 consoles?
Re:Time to Get Over The Price Point (Score:1, Interesting)
I may be completely out to lunch, but I suspect that the PS3 will underperform because most consumers purchase their systems at the sub $200 price mark; if you assume it will take 2 price cuts 18 months apart (for $150-$200 per price cut), then it will be november of 2009 before most people are willing to buy their system. By 2009 the console war will be decided.
It's more than obvious... (Score:2, Interesting)
The games industry has seen major changes since they started developing their new baby, and most of those changes do not help Sony at all, so they're in risky territory. So much so, that they've pretty much had to bundle two major products (their latest games console and their play for the future of HD home cinema) into one and hedge their bets, pooling the marketing cash and hoping that the success of one will bring success for the other. It is however as likely that the failure of one will take the other down with it, or certainly hurt it bad.
Right now, they're battling to convince us that the future of gaming is a piece of hardware which is insanely expensive to produce (their initial losses at launch, and for at least the first twelve months will be by far the highest ever for a games console), extremely expensive and troublesome to develop for (leading to higher cost games, just you wait and see) and has some rather risky choices in terms of the hardware - Cell and Blu-Ray - the latter of which could simply fail miserably within a short period of time in the same way as UMD did. I don't think anyone is genuinely convinced by what they're saying though.
I personally don't think the console is anywhere near ready to ship, but Sony are at that shit-or-bust stage, where if they don't release something *very* soon, no matter how buggy the hardware is, or how few titles are available at launch, then they'll not only lose this round of the games console war, but their Blu-Ray format will also be dead on its arse. Rememeber, they need to get the thing out there and in the homes of early adopters right now for Blu-Ray to even have a 50-50 chance of coming out on top of HD-DVD.
The number of confirmed reports of serious perfomance bottlenecks with the hardware, developers tearing their hair out to get the current development kits working properly, and the last minute changes Sony are still making (e.g. adding motion sensing in the controller) all smack of a system roughly a year or more away from release. They're pretty much screwed, and they know it, but there's just no way they can say it.
Their marketing budget is no smaller as a result of all these problems though, and they're doing all they can to convince you that what they have in the PS3, is the future of gaming. Give it a month or so and there'll be glowing, raving previews of the hardware and first batch of games in the lads-mags and newspapers, these will all be paid for of course, and based upon press releases and canned footage rather than the actual console and games. Right now, you can believe the Sony marketing machine or not, but all the indications so far, are that this is looking like it'll be their biggest flop (and they have quite a history of such things) to date. With every Sony press release, the picture gets bleaker, and if they had even the smallest piece of good news right now, you can bet they'd be shouting it from the rooftops.
You may point to the games developers and their respective companies who are being very positive about the new console and its potential, and claim that surely they are in the best position to know what it's all about, but that's only because like Sony, they've invested a lot of time and money into the console and they desperately need it to succeed or face millions in losses. However, at the same time they're hailing it the best thing ever, they themselves are very worried and fearing the worst. And I know that for a fact.
Re:Wooo (Score:2, Interesting)
I will second this.
Tomb Raider legend on the 360 surprised me. Finally the game doesn't play like Lara Croft is walking (slowly) on some unseen grid. The controls are actually pretty good this time around. Crystal Dynamics has done well and to be honest this is the first Tomb Raider game I've ever liked. I bought the first one, and I tried many of the others, but since every complaint I had about the original continued to come back time and time again I had long since written the series off as trash.
One thing I will say, though, is that having played by the original XBox version and the 360 version I'm shocked at the difference. Viewing the 360 version alone you think to yourself "This really isn't THAT much better than what is possible on the PS2/GC/XBox" but then going back and playing the XBox version you can't help but believe that they intentionally cut back on quality to make the XBox 360 version look that much better. And it's not just because the 360 version looks that great, since there are PS2 games that easily look almost as good (God of War/Shadow of the Collosus, etc). I believe it's simply a matter of Crystal Dynamics spending more time on the 360 version than ther others.
Either way, if you have a 360 and like platformer/adventure types then skip TR:L on the PS2/XBox and get it for the 360. The difference in quality is substantial even though there isn't a good reason for it (except maybe convincing people to pay the higher price).
Re:Wooo (Score:3, Interesting)
Xbox Live is a matching service. (At least, for 90% of games; there are some games that don't work that way, like Final Fantasy XI for instance.) Of course one of the player's machines is hosting the game; but that doesn't address the grandparent's point in any way... the Xbox Live quality control mechanisms still apply regardless of who's hosting. You can complain about an asshole player as easily in Halo 2 as you can in Crimson Skies, or any other Xbox Live game.
Now, Halo 2 does have a problem with assholes pulling the cord as their team is losing and causing the game to spend 30 seconds finding a new host, but there's not a lot Microsoft can do about that. And you can always report the cord-puller with the feedback system.
If you're going to attempt to refute a point, you might want to actually come up with something that... you know... refutes the point.
Re:The PS3 is not Vapor, and yes I plan to buy one (Score:3, Interesting)
If you have the means to buy a HDTV and all the equipment needed to hook your PS3 into the system (HDMI connector? Mine 2-year old HDTV doesn't have one; so Sony would be making me buy a new TV-- screw that!)... why don't you just buy a Xbox 360 right now and enjoy all the benefits and features that Sony's giving you right now this instant? The only thing the 360 doesn't have that the PS3 does is a tilt-sensor controller-- but it *does* have rumble pack controllers, so it all evens out, right?
The 360 has the HDTV support of the PS3, but right now this instant, not a year from now. It has Xbox Live Arcade, which Sony is furiously trying to rip-off. It has the HD, it has the online play, it has the next-gen games. It doesn't require an HDMI connector, so maybe you could save major scratch not upgrading your TV for awhile.
Re:Buying One? (Score:2, Interesting)
It needs to sell 10s of millions to do well(on it's own) and at least 100 million(and counting) to not be a "failure" compared to the PS2. At the pricepoint it's at, it's simply not going to do that. Even the fanbases of the two anticipated titles it has coming out: FFXIII and MGS4 won't get it above 20 million or so(providing there's no overlap between the bases, every last fan of each series buys a PS3, and they actually stay exclusive[since they're third party]).
Name the titles you want(must be exclusive). Name the month and year of their release dates. Come on.