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I'm not a big gamer, but at this point it seems like Microsoft and Sony are just selling the same hardware. There are very minor differences, but I remember wh

• mafuyu 7y ago
  Yeah, Xbox and PlayStation are basically differentiating on services and exclusive IP at this point. Things like ability to cross play, online services, etc. Xbox Live used to be huge, and then Sony caught up. Microsoft tried to shift the Xbox One into a home entertainment center and that failed miserably. Sony has stuff like the PSVR. Nintendo's really the only one really trying to do something different and not just go for the latest and greatest hardware. They have the benefit of having a lot of beloved IP and ability to make great games around them, so raw computing power is less of a focus.
  • klodolph 7y ago
    > Nintendo's really the only one really trying to do something different and not just go for the latest and greatest hardware. At this point, that version of “different” is basically “sell a mid-range phone with a gamepad attached to it”. Don’t get me wrong, the Switch is great, but it’s very boring on the inside.
    • mcphage 7y ago
      > Don’t get me wrong, the Switch is great, but it’s very boring on the inside. That's been their strategy almost every console generation since the NES—that was a 8-bit console when 16-bit processors were common. I think maybe the N64 had some exciting hardware on the inside (at the time), but that's pretty much it. They look for excitement in the controller.
      • klodolph 7y ago
        No, that wasn’t really true during the third and fourth generations (NES, SNES). Other consoles contemporary to the NES also used 8-bit processors. The definition of 8-bit depends on how you look at it, but I think we can agree that the Z80 is pretty similar to a 6502. The SNES and Genesis continued the trend. You took a decent but cheap processor (65C816 or 68000), made a custom chip to draw sprites on the screen, and paired the whole thing with a dedicated processor to handle audio. You might call the 68000 a “32-bit processor” but however you label it, it’s not so different from a 65C816 which both have 16-bit ALUs and 24-bit address busses. It wasn’t until later that we got people adding MORE CHIPS to make it go MORE FAST, and Nintendo stepping back from the race. I did a homebrew project for the NES and before I started, I spent a long time sitting down analyzing how these consoles worked so I could choose the console I liked. The 6502 and Z80, despite their design differences and different clock speeds, end up being fairly similar in terms of performance (although I think the SMS is slightly faster).
      • tenebrisalietum 7y ago
        You're right about the controller, but I don't know ... IMHO N64 is where they started to get less exciting as far as their internal hardware, but capabilities were getting more exciting overall. The NES's CPU was a 6502 without decimal mode and certainly not exciting, but it's PPU wasn't too usual. 64 sprites, 56 colors, and a 2x2 screen virtual tilemap. I don't think any system had a big virtual tilemap quite like that at the time SNES is definitely unique. Rotation and other transforms on a huge tilemap in hardware. No programmable sub-CPU or DSP is pushing pixels at all, you literally program 8 registers on the video chip to set the scaleX, scaleY and other parameters and the graphics chip outputs transformed pixels. 32x brought similar capability to the Genesis but it had some SH-1's performing transforms on textures I think, it was more similar to SuperFX than the SNES. IIRC N64 was pretty much an upgraded PS1 polygon engine (hardware was SGI dervied like the PS1): one with a higher clock rate and a separate DSP for calculations instead of the GTE, but hamstrung by cramped cartridge ROM instead of a CD and really low texture cache. After that Nintendo started using ATI for graphics hardware and adopted an IBM-designed PowerPC-arch CPU (as did Xbox 360) that lasted until the Will U.
  • VHRanger 7y ago
    What Nintendo is doing is different, but not that much anymore. They're using a ARMv8 cpu and a Nvidia Tegra GPU. They're pretty close to what you'd find on a top tier smartphone really
    • slantyyz 7y ago
      >> They're pretty close to what you'd find on a top tier smartphone really A top tier smartphone from a few years ago, maybe. My not-so-top-tier phone has better specs than my Switch. I held off from getting a Switch until this past November, and it was a weird product called Ring Fit Adventure that ultimately made me pull the trigger.
      • lozaning 7y ago
        How have you found that? I've been debating the same purchase.
        • p1necone 7y ago
          You have to commit to it and have a bit of self discipline like any other exercise regime. But if you can do that it's a lot more fun than just running on a treadmill and lifting weights. The game inside is actually pretty good, and has some depth (but that depth kinda slowly unlocks as you play).
          • lozaning 7y ago
            I run ~3 miles every day on the treadmill and dislike just about every minute of it. If i can get a fun gamified workout in the same amount of time that sounds way better.
        • slantyyz 7y ago
          I like it a lot. I mix it with Just Dance and Fitness Boxing. I only have fitness based software on my Switch.
          • 7y ago
  • philjohn 7y ago
    And with MS saying that exclusives would be for XBox and PC it makes more sense now to have a gaming PC and a PlayStation.
    • hi5eyes 7y ago
      yeah anyone serious about gaming has a pc and will go with ps5 this gen with microsoft and sony getting into game streaming even someone without a good pc will be able to play xbox games, xbox exclusives are worthless and the library doesnt have any real competitive ip xbox console is essentially doa
• klodolph 7y ago
  Just to inject a bit of history. The previous eras of consoles had a design complexity that made it hard for developers to get anything done or tap the potential of the hardware. This mostly includes the fifth through seventh generation of video game consoles, so PS1-PS3 era, roughly 1993-2010. The “radically different” architectures are sure a bit more exciting, but as a developer it’s gonna take a few years to really figure out how to use these different architectures to a reasonable semblance of their full potential. The Atari Jaguar had this crazy bus with a 68000 plus two custom CPUs on it, and to unlock the full potential you have to reduce bus contention which means paying attention to what data is local to the SRAM available to each processor. Maybe you need to rearchitect your game to really unlock the potential of the Jaguar. Fast-forward to 2006 and the PlayStation 3 has this fancy new Cell processor where… guess what… you need to pay attention to what data is on the local SRAM for each core and it was a nightmare to figure out how to really use that. Honestly, I think that console manufacturers were in danger of getting strangled by game developers if they kept up these radical architectures. Exclusivity, on the other hand, is a key tool in Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo’s arsenal. Good luck prying that away from them.
  • mdasen 7y ago
    I definitely concur that the radically different architectures weren't good for developer productivity. There was a lot of crazy going on. I guess it just seems like we're now wasting money on duplicate consoles. It feels like it would be better if Sony and Microsoft created a "standard" for manufacturers to build to. Zen 2 3.5GHz with a specified level of Radeon graphics and 16GB of RAM (with a bit more specifics). You could still have exclusives to your platform - Microsoft has DirectX, Xbox Live, and other exclusive software features. Developers would still want access to a platform for their games. Don't they usually lose money on the actual hardware? Nintendo is doing a slightly different thing with the Switch, but the PS4/XBONE and PS5/XBX it seems like they're just making people pay twice for the same hardware just because they've locked up some exclusives. What's the business model there? 1) Lose lots of money selling a console; 2) We'll pay to develop first-party games that we'll sell to fewer people because they're exclusive; 3) We'll pay third-parties to make their games exclusive to our platform (as compensation for the lost sales due to exclusivity); 4) charge huge licensing fees for access to the platform for non-exclusive developers. It just seems like there are a lot of money-losing (and consumer-happiness-losing) steps to get to #4. That's a lot of loss to society just to get to #4. I guess the reason why they can charge such high prices for licensing is that developers know that consumers will likely only purchase one system. If people had access to both systems on a single box, then developers could negotiate them against each other. Now, developers can't negotiate them against each other unless they want to lose out on a lot of potential customers.
• agumonkey 7y ago
  it's true the older you go back the deeper they were in a way, there's a book about Nintendo with a chapter on how Nintendo hardware team managed to add (or free) a kilobyte of ROM then told the software team. Everybody stopped because that kilobyte meant making a whole new level. Today even with 2x the TFLOPS I don't think it will make a difference
• mntmoss 7y ago
  For the developers and third-party publishers, it's a really big deal to have a standard of some kind. It means that they don't have to spend their time making the market: the console makers do that, and then they just sell into it. There is always grumbling about the various overheads of consoles, but as long as it results in unique experiences that people pay for, this state of affairs probably isn't going away either. And the differentiation of special case acceleration like what we're seeing on these architectures is less exciting on its surface than strapping a high nominal spec to some wild programming model, but it's also a more sane way of achieving next-gen performance. Cerny's PS5 talk put it this way: The PS1's "time to triangle" (i.e. the basics of the asset pipeline are proven and real development can commence) took 1-2 months, the PS2 doubled that, the PS3 doubled that again, and everyone protested so much that they got it back down to 1-2 months for PS4, and with PS5 they are aiming for under a month, which is actually really ambitious for any development platform! Also, I sense that the special-case approach also has neat goodies in store down the line because console devs always end up abusing hardware features to get results beyond the original requirements. There's stuff in the PS5 arch intended for DSP code, for raytracing, for decompression, and probably other things too, but most of these things are a little bit more open than just being an accelerated single-task function. I haven't seen what they're doing on the XBox end yet but I wouldn't be surprised if it has some good details to geek out over too. These functions are uniformly win-wins since they give an immediate result that accelerates something common, and then we find out what else they're good for later. Sometimes they aren't, but it's common that they surprise.
• bane 7y ago
  If they keep going this way, it's probably only a matter of time before a common "gaming box" standard is set and these companies just become manufacturers against this standard. It's happened before to various levels of success.
  • Narishma 7y ago
    It was tried at least a couple of times (3DO and Steam machines) but it failed for various reasons, I think mostly because the result wasn't very cost-competitive with proprietary consoles.
    • bane 7y ago
      Yeah, and others: MSX, Nuon, and the modern PC compatible systems. However, outside of gaming (and even computing), it becomes very common once it's no longer a differentiator to build your own version of a thing. Consider VHS, DVD, shipping containers, standardized faucet fixtures and so on.
  • reggieband 7y ago
    Already tried by Steam with SteamOS and Steam machines [1]. They even developed a custom controller. I haven't heard much about it since its launch roughly 5 years ago, however I would assume it is all but dead now. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Machine_(hardware_platform) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Machine_(hardware_platfo...
• Ntrails 7y ago
  > Am I missing something about the consoles They are just PCs with shitty OS and lockins now
  • jayd16 7y ago
    I don't think its fair to say its a shitty OS. They're single purpose PCs with an OS tuned for single app performance. One is NT based and the other will probably be BSD based. I believe the Switch is a fork of Android.
    • saagarjha 7y ago
      Apparently there's a bunch of FreeBSD code in it as well.
    • pjmlp 7y ago
      Switch uses a micro kernel OS, it has nothing to do with Android.
• chrisseaton 7y ago
  Aren’t most games available for both major consoles?
  • daveFNbuck 7y ago
    Most games are, but the exclusives tend to be very good.
  • ksec 7y ago
    Most, but I will be buying a Playstation just because of FFVII. I so wish they have made it an PS5 title launch I would have brought both together.
• wnevets 7y ago
  you just described a PC
  • Koshkin 7y ago
    If you can’t install Linux on it, it’s not a PC.
    • wnevets 7y ago
      so the ps3 was a PC?
• 0xabe 7y ago
  I agree with you, and am having a hard time talking myself into a new console purchase. I have a gaming PC, which is what these consoles have become with the added insult of paying subscription fees for online play.
• m3kw9 7y ago
  To the gamer, all that shouldn’t matter besides the game experience that are possible, the controls allowed and the exclusives. If the developers cannot utilize he API to properly handle the power nothing matters. The only spec you can care about is the SSD speed, that most can relate to.
• paulmd 7y ago
  Anyone who writes for a platform other than x86 is going to significantly complicate cross-platform ports for their platform. The other competitor would retain commonality with PC. So the days of POWER or Cell or whatever are done. Once you accept x86 as a given, there’s only two companies of any significance on the market. You could hypothetically do an Intel CPU and an NVIDIA or AMD discrete GPU but then you don’t have an SOC and that increases system integration costs. You’d have to talk two competitors into licensing you their IP for integration and it’s just not really either easy or something those companies really do lightly or often. AMD is basically the only game in town for a fast CPU core integrated with a fast GPU on a single package, at least for now. After Intel starts getting serious about XE you could hypothetically see a high performance SOC. As in many areas, the world would be drastically different if patent law didn’t protect a processor’s “API” and x86 could be freely implemented by many companies. For some reason it’s (probably) legal with a software API but not a hardware one, despite the “magic” all being in the actual implementation and the instructions just being “function calls”.
  • keenmaster 7y ago
    Non-technical people can't begin to appreciate this problem, much less bother to solve it or even know how. Engineers need to lobby. Have you considered meeting your senator and creating a powerful coalition of interested parties to bring about legislative change? You can even recruit an economist to estimate the annual loss in economic surplus due to hardware API lock-in. Politicians often cave to narrowly interested groups that complain about a very tangible grievance (e.g. a NIMBY screaming "that building would block my view and increase traffic!") or very large corporations with a lot of resources. It doesn't have to be that way.
    • mjevans 7y ago
      You might be able to get the average person on board if approached from a repair specifications angle. What a given part does, what size it does it within, where it links up to other parts (with what sort of links), and how well it does the thing are all facts. After knowing those facts a 'cleanroom' implementation of a generic part shouldn't infringe on anything. Convince the average person of that, and then extrapolate that to making a machine that responds the same exact way to a 3rd party's recipe. Often, given physics and current or near possible tech, there's only a small number of possible answers, and for a given set of criteria one is going to be 'the best' answer. Physics and Math are tools that express how nature works.
• evo_9 7y ago
  I disagree, each company has a different take on a similar set of hardware, but the results are quite divergent. In particular Sony is pursuing some interesting, unique angles such as the new 3D Audio stuff, and the high performance SSD. I found this comparison quite interesting, it goes into more detail about each platforms differences: https://kotaku.com/playstation-5-versus-xbox-series-x-the-tech-specs-1842401536 https://kotaku.com/playstation-5-versus-xbox-series-x-the-te...
• fmakunbound 7y ago
  Yeah I think you're right, but the main way to differentiate is probably the exclusives. Halo -> Xbox, Resident Evil etc. -> PlayStation.
• Wowfunhappy 7y ago
  From a systemic perspective, it never really made sense for lots of consumers to be buying multiple consoles. Sure, the N64 and PS1 were good at different things, but you could have built a super-console with most of the advantages of both for less than the combined cost of an N64 and PS1. And then games could use both N64 and Playstation features simultaneously. The reason for owning multiple consoles, then and now, is to play exclusives. And yes, it totally creates e-waste, but what are you going to do about it? Exclusives have always been anti-consumer.
• tibbon 7y ago
  That's been the case forever though. How many systems used the 6502 chips? Vic-20, C64, NES, 2600, Apple IIe? It was often the same chip, with slightly different (rarely significantly higher powered, just different) memory and i/o around it.
  • flohofwoe 7y ago
    Despite only having 2 (ok 3) popular CPUs (Z80, 6502 and the 6809), 8-bit home computers had massively different hardware. The CPU only played a very minor role in those machines and mainly was used as a controller for the video and audio custom chips which did the actual hard work.
• EpicEng 7y ago
  >There are very minor differences, but I remember when N64 was such a vastly different experience from the PlayStation. Even the original Xbox was differentiated Did it ever matter though? I played a lot of video games and owned nearly every system. I played the systems that had the games I liked, and I don't recall anyone I knew doing differently. Games sell consoles, not specs. That said, I can think of one counter example: Sega Genesis and their "Nintendon't" campain, as well as the subsequent "blast processing" marketing push. I remember kids talking about "blast processing" during our console holy wars at lunch. The genesis was also initially targeted at the NES.
  • pjmlp 7y ago
    And specs make games, specially in what concerns game design.
    • EpicEng 7y ago
      No they don't. Gameplay, story, character development... these things make games. Specs can enhance the experience, but a good looking piece of crap is still a piece of crap. The XBOne is more powerful than the PS4, but it got murdered last generation. The 3DO and Jaguar both had specs that topped the competition at the time, but they didn't have the games and they failed.
      • pjmlp 7y ago
        Specs isn't about teraflops or triangles per second, rather what experiences the hardware allows to deliver, or what constraints it imposes on game design that have to be worked around to deliver a good experience. Most are discussing this here from the point of view from gamers, I rather see it from game development point of view.
        • EpicEng 7y ago
          Sure, but ultimately there are things more important than visuals and load times. Look at the switch right now; it's basically a high end phone, but there are some amazing games being developed for it. If I were making video games I know I'd get excited about developing for a platform which lets me do more than I could before, so I get it, but I don't recall any console in history winning their generation because of specs.
• pjmlp 7y ago
  It is definitely not the same hardware, just because it has a couple of AMD CPU/GPUs on them doesn't mean programming is anything like a PC. You are missing the way the CPUs, GPU, audio controllers and DMA channels are actually layed out, the low level programming aspect (console OSes are pretty much like bare metal programming), and how their GPUs offer capabilities and shading languages differ from mainstream hardware and hardware agnostic 3D APIs.
  • ncr100 7y ago
    Agreed - I anticipate the experiences made possible these technological choices will be novel: - Instant feeling gameplay: startup, load next, and world density, speed not seen since the Vectrex-era (1980's). - Uhhh, hopefully more than just that.
• flohofwoe 7y ago
  It makes a bit more (business-)sense thinking of those consoles as hardware-dongles to play certain exclusive games, the same way coffee-machines have become hardware dongles for certain types of coffee capsules, etc... Thankfully the PC as a gaming platform has survived despite being declared dead for the last 20 years, and more and more console games are making the jump and are also available on PC (there's also exclusivity deals on PC, see the Epic Store, but those are usually limited to a few months). The whole situation sucks for users, but unfortunately it's the business model everybody is following today.
• bart_spoon 7y ago
  > In a lot of ways, it feels like I should be able to buy one and then just buy a license to play games designed for the other system This is slowly becoming the state of reality for Xbox, at least in regards to PCs. They've dropped exclusivity for all of their titles, meaning every game Microsoft produces will be also released for PC. And for many of those, if you buy the game, you get it for both the Xbox and PC. It remains to be seen if the trend continues to grow outside Microsoft though, and it seems unlikely that it would occur between Xbox and Playstation.