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PS4 is just a PC stuck in one configuration, linked to a popular delivery system. I don't get what the hype is about. Yes, it's a pretty good configuration at

• quanticle 13y ago
  The XBox One is an x86 architecture as well. Pretty much everything that you said about the PS4 also applies to XBox One. Now, there are differences between the consoles, but fundamentally both of the next-gen consoles are x86 CPUs tied to memory architectures that are designed to stream HD content to the screen as fast as possible.
  • ewzimm 13y ago
    What does processor architecture even matter to a consumer? Is the Xbox 360 a pre-Intel Mac because it uses PowerPC archictecture? I don't see why so many people mention this. Consoles have always been about custom software, not unique hardware architecture.
    • lukeman 13y ago
      The boring nature of the architecture is notable as it puts the focus back on software, which is what people care about. That devs this generation can just make shit without discovering the complexities of custom hardware is a good thing.
      • ewzimm 13y ago
        That's probably true for Playstation, but I think developing for Xbox was already pretty much like developing for Windows, even with different hardware architectures. Most game devs don't looking too deeply at the hardware but just use the tools they're given. The ones who want to understand what's going on in hardware will still study the details of the CPU/GPU.
        • Arelius 13y ago
          The endianess of the Xbox 360 made "already pretty much like developing for Windows" not quite accurate. And causes a lot of problems relating to I/O.
          • wmf 13y ago
            Doesn't the 360 run little-endian?
            • ewzimm 13y ago
              It does both.
              • wmf 13y ago
                What, does MS let game developers choose?
                • ewzimm 13y ago
                  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC#Endian_modes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC#Endian_modes
                • Arelius 13y ago
                  No, the machine always runs big-endian.
                  • ewzimm 13y ago
    • voltagex_ 13y ago
      It does matter this time around because there's no direct backwards compatibility for older games.
      • ewzimm 13y ago
        Sony will start streaming eventually. It would be fantastic if they implemented a disc matching policy, allowing you to stream a game with the disc in the drive. Perfect backward compatibility with no software support necessary.
        • voltagex_ 13y ago
          This is not going to work anywhere except the continental US due to latency, unless they manage to provision servers everywhere (to the cloud!)
          • ewzimm 13y ago
            US speeds are not great compared to some places. But let's see where things are in 5 years. Could be much better. Doesn't matter for me. I stopped buying anything from Sony when they removed OtherOS.
    • quanticle 13y ago
      It absolutely doesn't matter to the consumer of {XBox One | PS4} games. However, as a PC gamer, I'm excited by the fact that the consoles have x86 architectures, because this removes one of the obstacles preventing PCs from getting console titles.
    • Mikeb85 13y ago
      It matters to developers, and in turn to the customer in that it affects the amount and type of games released on the console.
• toki5 13y ago
  >I don't get what the hype is about. It's a video game console. Genuine question: what's confusing here?
• dntrkv 13y ago
  Why would I get a mac, when I could get a PC for much cheaper and it will be faster and I'll have more control over the hardware. Why would I get a iPhone, I can get a cheaper Android and have more control over how I use it. Why would I buy Windows when I can get Linux which is more powerful, customizable, and free. Not everything can be reduced down to specs and numbers. Everyone has different use-cases.
  • Ralz 13y ago
    This is beautiful.
  • voidlogic 13y ago
    Funny, this is why I use a PC running Linux and an Android phone... and wait- so does my Grandma... And we have very different use cases.
    • jmduke 13y ago
      Your Grandma uses a Linux PC? I'd love to hear about her experience with it.
      • voidlogic 13y ago
        For both her, my mother, my mother-in-law and my my step-mother-in-law it is great. From their perspective they click on Firefox, thunderbird/gmail link, OpenOffice, Skype , etc they get what they expect. Only unlike when they were running Windows they don't have to call me over every 6 months to de-worm their sick machines. They all use Ubuntu in gnome-fallback mode (so it looks like gnome 2.x). Now days I only have to deal with rare hardware issues from my family's machines (and PC desktop are easy as hell to service). P.S. Reflecting I think Linux is actually ideal for very technical users (programmers/sysadmins/etc) and very basic users (icon clickers). I think "power users" are actually the people who have the hardest time. They have a use case that requires more leaning than the basic users one, and can't just figure it out intuitively like the technical because they don't understand how everything actually works like the technical users do.
• tadfisher 13y ago
  > PS4 is just a PC stuck in one configuration, linked to a popular delivery system. You've belied the true strength of video game consoles. A single configuration means less testing work and a streamlined experience for consumers. Not everyone is willing to deal with graphics drivers and endless installers.
  • WhaleBiologist 13y ago
    >Not everyone is willing to deal with graphics drivers and endless installers. To be fair this is much simpler now than it was 5-6 years ago.
  • chucknelson 13y ago
    Which also leads to crazy optimization against the stable hardware. Just look at what PS3 and Xbox 360 are pushing out with ~512 MB RAM and 7+ year old hardware. It's pretty incredible.
• Arelius 13y ago
  Well you get a few benefits. > stuck in one configuration This is a massive benefit to development everywhere. Additionally to really being able to push the hardware to the limit. It's a lot easier to learn how to properly "abuse" a single configuration then thousands of different pieces of hardware in millions of different configurations. And just in reliability and testing. You can be sure that your exact hardware, with a nearly identical software load has been tested countless times. This is why you can often find games run much smoother on a 5 year old machine, to a modern PC. Additionally API's are significant the fact that I can allocate memory directly on the PS4, and know that it won't ever be paged to disk is pretty significant. Additionally, Sony's rendering API's are much closer to the actual hardware, which give you much more flexibility in usage. Then there are a few differences in the particular set of hardware that give it a good advantages to current PCs notably all 8 gbs of memory is GDDR5, which is very fast. And additionally, it's all shared, and cache-coherent between the GPU and the CPU which is really quite significant.
  • mkr-hn 13y ago
    > This is a massive benefit to development everywhere. Additionally to really being able to push the hardware to the limit. It's a lot easier to learn how to properly "abuse" a single configuration then thousands of different pieces of hardware in millions of different configurations. This is most obvious near the end of a console's life after developers master the hardware. Compare launch games and final releases for any console.
    • Arelius 13y ago
      Indeed, you rarely see the same improvements on the same hardware for PCs.
• Impossible 13y ago
  Huh, Xbox One and PS4 are very close architecturally, beyond both being x86 based. Xbox One is closer to a Windows 8 PC on the software side, assuming you have a DX11 based game that runs on WinRT, which could make lazy ports easier. In practice anyone that would benefit from a lazy port is probably an indie developer, and is using Unity, Monogame or another higher level framework (or OpenGL and C++ for a weird minority) and AAA developers can't do lazy ports because the performance just won't be competitive. PS4 isn't really close to an existing set of APIs, although it's possible that Mantle (AMD's low level graphics API) is the same or very close to the PS4 graphics API. There are low level specifics like unified memory, asynchronous compute, and Xbox One ESRAM that make neither system look like current PCs, although future PCs might adopt them through new API specs or hardware configurations. Steam Machine fits your description more accurately, but even it's a little weird in that a lot of games don't support Linux.
• jokoon 13y ago
  The hype is that games will be much easier to program, so that's why it's much closer to PC programming. the CELL processor was very hard to use, and that was a big drag because it slows down developers considerably. The good thing is that games will be made faster and with less difficulty. That will obviously improve game quality since it will reduce game making costs, I guess it will take much less time to make an engine and maintain it. As for your comparison with a PC, you should not compare those, because all console are the same, which allows programmers to target a single configuration and optimize as much as possible, while on PC, programmers have to adapt their code for different configurations and drivers, but also require to offer multiple options to adapt to each configuration because PCs never perform the same. To sum it up, there are no "minimum configuration" when releasing a game on console. Console have a better performance/price ratio. The PS4 would really make an interesting platform now that's easier to make a game on it, especially if it's dedicated to games, not like PC where the OS can suck a lot of resources you might want to allocate on your game.
• ferparra 13y ago
  Why yes... it is the same old x86 we run on our PC configurations, but that's just the instruction set we're talking about. Just look at the hardware and chip configuration, it's not a regular PC setup, they have some serious innovation going on there. You've got 8GB of GDDR5 memory, plus a very modern, custom designed GPU embedded in the same CPU dye. Sony has always launched systems that resist time, and I wouldn't be surprised if the PS4 stayed around for the next 4/5 years to come.
• ekianjo 13y ago
  > Yes, it's a pretty good configuration at a reasonable price Not even. Actually for a repackaged PC (which is more or less what it is), I find the launch price relatively expensive. I have also heard that both Sony and Microsoft took the strategy for this generation to make money on the hardware itself from day 1, so they are not selling anything at loss, apparently.
• benched 13y ago
  Over twenty years of this, the only reason I have ever bought any console is for exclusive games.
• pandaman 13y ago
  PC's GPU is hidden behind layers of APIs. It does not matter when you compare different hardware on PC as any hardware there is boggled by the same APIs but it makes no sense to compare the same hardware on PC to a game console that exposes GPU directly. It's like comparing JavaScript to native apps. Yes, sometimes JS can be pretty close and JS on powerful hardware can even beat native code on a weaker platform on some tests. Yet it would be very naive to think that JS nowadays runs faster than any native code on 10 y.o. hardware. Similarly, it will be a long while till DirectX/OpenGL apps will be unquestionably faster than native GPU code.
• Mikeb85 13y ago
  > I don't get what the hype is about. Video game consoles are entirely about experience. PC gaming and console gaming are entirely different. It's not just about graphics, it's about the controller, the immersive experience of playing on a TV screen in your living room (I know PCs can do that too, but for the average person it can be a hassle to set everything up). For developers it's a single target that never moves. Peoples' love for consoles is shown by the fact that many people still play on consoles that are 10-25 years old. I still play games on a PS1 occasionally.