Nvidia CEO Talks Next-Gen Consoles 173
kukyfrope writes "Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO of Nvidia recently shared his thoughts with the San Jose Mercury News about next-gen consoles, claiming that developing a chip for the 360 was too expensive and that the inclusion of a Blu-ray player will help the console last for 10 years. Huang also predicts that the 360 cannot afford to be a DVD-only system by Christmas 2007, likening the 360-DVD vs PS3-Blu-ray battle to the Dreamcast-CD vs PS2-DVD battle. 'The first PlayStation had a CD-ROM drive. The PlayStation 2 had DVD. It makes no sense for the PlayStation 3 to use DVDs. To postpone it by a few months so they could include Blu-ray was a master stroke. When that comes out, it's going to look so much more advanced than last-generation game consoles,' Huang said."
Re:Blue-ray (Score:3, Informative)
You can still buy the console let alone games for it.
Re:Blue-ray (Score:4, Informative)
Re:"Advanced" for the sake of it... (Score:2, Informative)
Just to set things right cosmically...
Nvidia developed the "RSX" GPU for the PS3.
Nvidia RSX @550MHz
* 1.8 TFLOPS floating point performance
* Full HD (up to 1080p) x 2 channels
* Multi-way programmable parallel floating point shader pipelines
Re:Blue-ray (Score:3, Informative)
The Intellivision should also be showing a 10+ year lifespan, but someone screwed up by the numbers. The charts list the Intellivision as ending in 1984. This was the date that Mattel Electronics closed down, however, not the date that the Intellivision stopped being supported. A former VP of Mattel purchased the Intellivision properties and formed INTV Corp. Not only did they release new games, but the old system was re-released as the "Super Pro System" and later the "Intellivision System III".
Re:Blue-ray (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, there were quite a number of Prince of Persia games that came before, and Jordan Mechner was involved with Sands of Time. However, from the point of view of the publisher it was treated as new IP for a few reasons, the main one being the spotty release history of the series and the low brand awareness in the target market. The previous version, Prince of Persia 3D, came out for Windows and Dreamcast in 1999 and didn't get a very wide release for a number of reasons not directly related to the game itself. Before that the last game was in 1994.
Even though Sands of Time didn't do the business it deserved, Ubi tried to treat it like a franchise after that title and you can see the difference in the release schedule. Previously to Sands of Time a game came out every 5 years, 1989, 1994, 1999. Then here's the release schedule including and following Sands of Time: 2003, 2004, 2005 x 3.
I'm sorry I didn't use a better example of good "new" IP that failed to become a franchise late in a console lifecycle, but Prince of Persia is what everyone was talking about when I heard that theory.
A counter example to the trend is is Katamari Damacy, but you'll note that it wasn't launched as a AAA title - it was an experiment that did better than anyone expected.
I should note that the theory of a new IP launch window has been playing out on the handhelds. Look at the numbers, the launch dates for new vs old IP and draw your own conclusions if you're really interested. Some games were definitly scheduled with these thoughts in mind, but in my opinion the awareness didn't have a real impact on the success of the games - being a fun game is still the most important consideration.
Not DOS, Not Mac (Score:3, Informative)