8 ms·

Yeah, Xbox and PlayStation are basically differentiating on services and exclusive IP at this point. Things like ability to cross play, online services, etc. Xb

by 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.
    - mntmoss 7y ago
      The N64's RSP was quite exciting for the era because of the high degree of programmability. As it turned out, though, almost nobody did anything to program it. They used the microcode that shipped with the devkit. And since the N64 was the odd one out of the pack in other respects, it never really took off in terms of developer support. So Nintendo's biggest lesson from the N64 was, in fact, that they needed to make boring hardware, because weird stuff wasn't going to be adopted anymore. Sony learned the same thing almost a decade later with the PS3.
      - taeric 7y ago
        Education is funny. Sony should have learned that they had a killer feature with the PS2 if not ballooning price. And hanging the value add that old games would still work! Just amazing.
    - bane 7y ago
      I dunno, the NES was pretty unique due to CPU selection, but generally in line with other 8-bit computers and systems of the era. Key developers even ported lots of games almost 1:1 from some home computers like the MSX. The SNES was basically a mid-range Apple II with some slightly different hardware. The scaling and rotation hardware was getting to be pretty common in arcades and had been around for quite a while in Sega and Taito games. Nintendo focused on tilemaps instead of sprites, and later games quickly added more hardware in the carts to overcome the limitations beyond what F-Zero and Pilotwings could do. I agree with you on the N64. Sega had a completely different philosophy, theoretic backwards compatibility all the way back to the beginning. The SG-1000 was a spec revision of the Coleco and MSX specs, the Mark III was a rev of the SG-1000. The Genesis/Mega-drive had the same hardware, but then added an entire other console's hardware around it (IIR Master system compatibility was just a pin adapter). The Sega-CD was a console wrapped around the Genesis. The 32X was a console plugged into that. The Saturn dropped the 8-bit stuff, but kept theoretic compatibility with the Mega Drive (it had a 68000 in it and a cartridge slot and was rumored to be geared up to be fully compatible at one point IIR). Sony more or less followed suit for a while as well. The PS2 basically contained a PS1 in it.
- bitwize 7y ago
  "Lateral thinking with withered technology", mate. It's a long-standing Nintendo philosophy.
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

by mafuyu 7y ago

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.
  - mntmoss 7y ago
    The N64's RSP was quite exciting for the era because of the high degree of programmability. As it turned out, though, almost nobody did anything to program it. They used the microcode that shipped with the devkit. And since the N64 was the odd one out of the pack in other respects, it never really took off in terms of developer support. So Nintendo's biggest lesson from the N64 was, in fact, that they needed to make boring hardware, because weird stuff wasn't going to be adopted anymore. Sony learned the same thing almost a decade later with the PS3.
    - taeric 7y ago
      Education is funny. Sony should have learned that they had a killer feature with the PS2 if not ballooning price. And hanging the value add that old games would still work! Just amazing.
  - bane 7y ago
    I dunno, the NES was pretty unique due to CPU selection, but generally in line with other 8-bit computers and systems of the era. Key developers even ported lots of games almost 1:1 from some home computers like the MSX. The SNES was basically a mid-range Apple II with some slightly different hardware. The scaling and rotation hardware was getting to be pretty common in arcades and had been around for quite a while in Sega and Taito games. Nintendo focused on tilemaps instead of sprites, and later games quickly added more hardware in the carts to overcome the limitations beyond what F-Zero and Pilotwings could do. I agree with you on the N64. Sega had a completely different philosophy, theoretic backwards compatibility all the way back to the beginning. The SG-1000 was a spec revision of the Coleco and MSX specs, the Mark III was a rev of the SG-1000. The Genesis/Mega-drive had the same hardware, but then added an entire other console's hardware around it (IIR Master system compatibility was just a pin adapter). The Sega-CD was a console wrapped around the Genesis. The 32X was a console plugged into that. The Saturn dropped the 8-bit stuff, but kept theoretic compatibility with the Mega Drive (it had a 68000 in it and a cartridge slot and was rumored to be geared up to be fully compatible at one point IIR). Sony more or less followed suit for a while as well. The PS2 basically contained a PS1 in it.
bitwize 7y ago
"Lateral thinking with withered technology", mate. It's a long-standing Nintendo philosophy.

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