In November this year, Sony will launch the PlayStation 3. Apparantly, Sony has high expectations for the Linux-powered device, and Sony even claims it will render the PC useless. “We believe that the PS3 will be the place where our users play games, watch films, browse the Web, and use other [home] computer functions,” said Sony exec Phil Harrison. “The PlayStation 3 is a computer. We do not need the PC.” Let’s see how Sony’s Vaio devision feels about this.
Perhaps because the PS3 (and the Xbox) *IS* almost the same hardware than a PC now …
So I should say, ‘We do not need the PS3’.
When did we find tri-core PPCs and multi-SPE Cell processors in our cabinets?
I attended a meeting a few months where Grid Computing was presented and discussed.
In a talk with the professor afterwards (while eating and drinking as is the norm) he told me he considered the PS3 the new PC. Simply because the processor is so powerful you can unite the Home PC, the Media Center and the Game Console in one unit.
I believe he’s got a strong point.
That all depends, right now the PS2 can only do one thing at a time, so if you want to do something other then play a game, or just change games, you need to basically reboot the system. If the PS3 made it possible to switch between apps on the fly, like a desktop with apps, games, movies etc then I think you could think of it as a PC. You would also need enough for people to actually create distros for it (or if sony sold them stock with one that would be powerful, web browsing etc built right in that works when you plugin the ethernet cable). A cool idea, but is Sony really that smart?
Probably not (at least not yet), but I believe the FLOSS-community is.
“Simply because the processor is so powerful you can unite the Home PC, the Media Center and the Game Console in one unit.”
And what’s the difference with an actual PC ? I can use it as a Home PC (!), as a media center and play on it (as a game console) …
Anyway, it is funny to heard that, as nobody as already tested the CELL …
Last time I heard something about the CELL it was about problems of IBM to produce it.
And what’s the difference with an actual PC ? I can use it as a Home PC (!), as a media center and play on it (as a game console) …
There is no difference. That’s the point.
Which brings to question; whats the purpose of XBox then? an attempt by Microsoft to make their own line of computers and appliances?
I think it’s an attempt to gain market share in a new market.
Expansion expansion expansion. That’s the main concept behind the XBox.
The purpose is to extend the Windows platform everywhere where computing is performed. As the complexity and power of the device grows (connectivity, multimedia, file formats, device integration, etc) the value of Windows interoperability grows.
Sony is falling into the trap of competing in the general computing space, where Windows dominates. It will be utterly destroyed IMO. Nintendo, on the other hand, understands that their device must be single-purpose, cheap; that is, it must remain an appliance.
Sony is falling into the trap of competing in the general computing space, where Windows dominates. It will be utterly destroyed IMO. Nintendo, on the other hand, understands that their device must be single-purpose, cheap; that is, it must remain an appliance.
Which probably explains as to why Microsoft is willing to work with Nintendo and its Wii – as Microsoft and Nintendo are aiming for different market segments.
It’ll be interesting to see how many people are willing to spend $600 on a games console (PS3) – like I said on a previous Arstechnica post; what is teh advantage of BluRay and DVD-HD? I mean, right now, people people only have standard television sets, the current quality of DVD’s are pretty damn good, so whats the advantage of that extra space? if they need the extra space for better quality, longer movies, then why not use a better compression algorithm (H264) for DVD’s?
With each release of technology, there seems to be less and less compelling reasons to ‘upgrade’; people now simply ‘upgrade’ because they’re forced to via ‘we’re no longer supporting it’ rather than it being an issue of ‘majority of customers have moved because they see the technological improvements over the previous generation’ which is how technology adoption should be conducted.
Come on, this is marketing, I can’t believe you took this seriously.
Perhaps because the PS3 (and the Xbox) *IS* almost the same hardware than a PC now …
The XBox perhaps, but the PS3 IS NOT at all the same architecture and hardware as a PC.
So I should say, ‘We do not need the PS3’
Of course, nobody “need” a game console, nobody need a PC either for that matter.
Since Sony and MS have went into this console thing, it goes way too fast.
Looking at the japanese market, Sony is still selling 20 times more PS2 than MS is selling XBox 360 there !!
what realy is a pc these days?
is it that x86 compatible cpu that makes it a pc?
the cell is basicly a power (a close relative to the powerpc cpu that apple used not so long ago) based cpu with 8 vector units on the same chip. linux can allready run on it, and ibm is planing on offering it in blade-server packages (basicly a desktop pc without the box).
so in many ways its a pc as long as you can do your spreadsheets, your word prosessing, your gaming and your internet tasks on it.
in many ways we should stop thinking pc vs non-pc and rather think about the computing tasks we want to have done.
If we are talking about a computer that can play commercial media (purchased music/movies/etc), play networked video games, and interoperate with devices, we are probably talking about a Windows-based device. By these measures, the Vaio has a better chance of beating the 360 than the PS3 does.
nah, it dont have to be a windows device. it just need to have some way of loading drivers for unknown hardware, and maybe codecs for unknown software.
linux anyone?
so maybe thats what seperate a console from a pc. the pc have a extendable os. but in theory you can allso put that into a console in diffrent ways…
No way with the cell proccessr
Neal Saferstein
I don’t need the PS3. Everything the PS3 does, I can do now with my PC. Except watch BluRay movies, but then that holds absolutely no value for me.
Blu-Ray players are out in August! You just need $1000 bucks and it’s yours
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=7763823&type=product&…
And then what will you play on it? Charlies Angels 2? At what price? Bluray can go suck an egg.
Hmmm…so. If it’s a PC, and Linux is open-source (they probably have a lot of close-source integrated), who will be the first to make the games run on a Dell?
Hmmm…so. If it’s a PC, and Linux is open-source (they probably have a lot of close-source integrated), who will be the first to make the games run on a Dell?
Go ahead and try to make a decent performance Cell-emulator on today’s hardware. Best of luck.
Two points in response to that:
1) The platform is open source, but the games aren’t.
2) The PS3 uses the Cell processor, and I suspect that many of the titles (either due to pressure from Sony, or just the need to use the Cell SPUs) will be highly dependent on the architecture, and would be difficult to port, even if you did have source code. Additionally, the fact that the PS3 is a homogenous platform lets the programmers make assumptions about hardware that wouldn’t be true on a PC, which would make the game even more PS3 dependent.
Of course, the games that are designed to run on both PS3 and XBox (and thus were designed portably) will probably have the games released for PC as well
Just a presision, is linux in the PS3 is the firmware (UClinux) or is it the real kernel tree (2.6.x)? And do this linux will have possibility to use KDE or gnome? or is it only the ps3 interface. I know that linux is open source and it will be possible anyway to use them but will sony ship a desktop environement with the PS3?
According to Sony itself (See http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=32171 for more information ), the CPU Local Memory Read Speed is 16 mb/s which is WAY much slower than my old PC.
Why would I replace my high-quality PC for a slow and broken PS3?
That read speed is when reading the *Video RAM* from the Cell. It’s not when using system ram (which is much, much faster). By the way, reading the video ram from the CPU doesn’t really happen much.
Also, since when did the PS3 become “linux-powered”, AFAIK ps3 games, and it’s OSD (“bios”) will not be using linux or running under linux.
You are correct that Sony has not specifically stated that PS3 games will be built ontop of linux, or that whatever basic OS they create will be built ontop of linux either.
They have, however, stated that PS3 harddrives will ship with linux pre-installed on them (http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS2370343858.html). Maybe the regular computing facilities like web browsing etc. will only be available if you boot into linux rather than the video games, but I personally doubt that. It just doesn’t make much sense of them to give that kind of functionality, then make sure that you can’t integrate it with the game and network side of things, as well as not take advantage of the development environment that linux has built up over the years.
Also, to one of the parent post’s peers, IBM has ported 2.6.something kernel to Cell, so I assume that the linux installed is not the firmware version.
I would certainly not assume that games/OSD/etc run ontop of linux for the reasons you give. Running outside of linux gives developers alot more freedom and predictability. (And if games are running ontop of linux, you can be sure we would have heard about it by now, one way or another).
BUT! We know that the Cell has nice things like hypervisor, so even though games themselves might not run ontop of linux, it may still be possible to run both at the same time, giving the advantages you mention.
This is all speculation, of course.
But the thing is; not the support, by the level of support; the processor is supported, but will we see the bluray supported? the video card? the ability to be able to upgrade the kernel? will the specifications of the machine be open enough as to allow alternative operating systems like OpenSolaris, *BSD and numerous others to be ported to the platform?
Its all very nice for Sony to release hardware, and Linux, but we all remember the shithouse effort they put behind PS2 and the lack of disclosure when it came to hardware specifications as to allow DVD playback, and hardware acceleration of 3D within X Windows, not to mention the inability to upgrade the memory.
@jBit
>By the way, reading the video ram from the CPU >doesn’t really happen much
Refer to Page 6 from
http://www.ati.com/technology/pciexpress/PCIEWP.pdf
> Refer to Page 6 from http://www.ati.com/technology/pciexpress/PCIEWP.pdf
What about it? I’m refering to video-ram -> CPU transfers, and especially for games. That document is really talking about bus issues.
If you need textures or graphics buffers that the CPU can read (and write) easily (for whatever reason) you put said textures in system ram.
The RSX on the PS3 has a huge ammount of bandwidth availible for accessing Cell RAM. The “16MByte/sec” is ONLY when the Cell is reading VRAM, Not when the RSX is reading/writing Cell RAM.
I see the dumbass author hasn’t published a retraction for that piece of crap journalism.
The “local memory” in that chart refers to the RSX’s local memory. It shows that the CPU reads from RSX memory slowly.
Slow CPU reads from the framebuffer is not news, it’s a fact of life even on the PC.
@rayiner
>Slow CPU reads from the framebuffer is not news,
>it’s a fact of life even on the PC.
Actually about 8X reduction. Geforce 6800GT has about 32GB/s of VRAM bandwidth.
GeForce6800GT, PCI-Express, 256MB
Driver: 71.74_x86
“Real World” Readback: ~3.9Gbyte/sec (limited by 16X PCI-E)
Synthetic Readback : ~5.09Gbyte/sec
Refer to
http://wiki.vislab.usyd.edu.au/moinwiki/GraphicsHardware
I’ve been voted down… It seem ignorance is sin around here… On another note:
The PS3 will be a Jack of all trades… Able to do everything but nothing incredibly good. I look forward to the Wii for gaming, and I will keep my PC for everything else!
You probably got modded down, because you handled information in a pretty ignorant way.
Just a guess, but I believe that would be the explanation.
I don’t think he handled the information in an ignorant way at all. He simply reiterated what the article said. It was the article that was faulty — people writing tech news really should understand the subject they are talking about.
Of course, this begs for a “misinformative” option in the moderation options.
The problem with the guardian article was that the info as is was half correct and has been debunked numerous times, but yet the info keeps up crawling again and again.
Sony did many mistakes, but the architecture per se is not one of them.
Ofcourse you are beeing modded down – claiming the PS3 is slow because reading Video RAM from the main CPU is slow.
It is equally slow on your off-the-self nVidia card – does that mean the PC itself is slow – or reads slowly from normal RAM ?
(as a sidenote, the PS2 didn’t let you read from the video ram at all from the main CPU).
>> “(as a sidenote, the PS2 didn’t let you read from the video ram at all from the main CPU).”
Hopefully not bringing the comments too off topicm but while the EE couldn’t directly read VRAM, you could bounce off VIF1 to read GS vram into EE memory.
No, you were voted down because of the tone of your post; it screamed nothing more than flame bait; if you wished to bring up the issue, the more polite and respective way would have been:
“Pardon my ignorance, but according to [TheInquirer link], the memory read speed is 16MB/s, however, that doesn’t seem quite right, is there anyone here who can explain the issues behind the technology used in the P3?”
That would have been a lot more respectful way of bringing forward this issue instead of the provocative way in which you did in your original post.
Edited 2006-06-12 22:38
I’m no PS3 fan, not by a longshot, but that article is full of shit and many top developers have said so.
Of course we need PCs. We need them so we don’t have to buy them from Sony. We still haven’t forgotten about the rootkit issue, you know?
We know how well the all-in-one box worked out for 3DO. Or how fun webtv made viewing zoomed in webpages on a television screen. (Painful!)
Those who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it . . . .. . .
This project is entirely different.
It’ basically a PC used as a Gaming Console. Certain people are getting wet by the sheer thought of using the PS3 as the PC it actually is.
Considering how much easier it is for people to use consoles, and how complex operations they are capable of performing using a console (operations they cannot handle on an ordinary PC), it just might be the right way for them to handle technology.
but now we have 50″+ tv screens that can do just as good a display of said web-pages that your computer screen can.
most lcd and plasma tv’s today come with a vga or dvi connection, so…
You’re supposed to buy a 56″ Sony WEGA so you can read the web pages adequately
One word…. Opera.
Just about the best choice for the job. Nintendo has already chosen them to be the browser of choice for limited screen space and resolution. Wii (still shuddering about the name…) and the DS are using it.
And I have used it on mobile devices and it works extremely well. Compared to the others, it seems to be the only browser that has been aimed towards this type of display. And it does it well.
(edit) Not that they DON’T want you to buy their new WEGA…. I recognize the sarcasm… using it often myself…
JRM7
Edited 2006-06-12 16:08
IMHO
In MY opinion, I believe that this is part of a bigger plan for subscription based software. The X-Box is and always will be the trojan to get a MS based appliance into your abobe… they’re testing extensively online applications (games etc.) They’re selling below cost for a reason… Soon we’ll have an Office suite… Internet browsing… etc.
with all this, Apple pushing another way, possibly in the same direction but differently. MS and Sony push the gaming PC while Apple’s pushing the media/HDV route trying to step us in the direction they wantt us to go.
All, IMHO, of course
Jb
Sony and Microsoft are trying to unite two unrelated markets – the hard core power hungry gamers, and the casual entertainment crowd – who might play games, but are ok if they are less glitzy (cell phones, flash games, etc.)
The best positioned for success IMHO are Nintendo and Apple (and no there will not be a merger). Their product lines compliment each other nicely, and don’t require you to purchase the portions that you will not use. You can buy a Wii for the gaming, and a mac for pc stuff – and wait for HDTVs and BR/HDDVD to come down in price. The accompanying Mac Media center (will be called something way cooler), which I’m sure will come eventually, probably when HDTVs reach a much higher market saturation point. Neither company has a whole lot to gain by pushing HDTV atm, sine they aren’t in that business, though I’m sure they will be able to take advantage of Sony’s hard work to install those TVs.
As much as I like the graphics of the new XBox 360, and the Playstation 3 (from what I’ve seen online anyway) I learned my lesson from the Playstation 2, and will wait until I have the some good reason to purchase the PS3 (like a new FF game or something), and might even wait until after I upgrade my TV. Until then, I’ll be playing my Nintendo Wii.
Until then, I’ll be playing my Nintendo Wii.
Which is fine for those who look forward to the newest Mario reincarnation, but no doubt Nintendo will once again focus on the younger market. Their bread and butter.
Actually there were some really fun games for the Nintendo, for example the 007 games, The Legend Of Zelda series, Need for Speed Underground, even Mario and Harvest moon were fun. Just because games are kid safe doesn’t mean they’re not fun, and a handfull of the best games were available for both the Sony and Nintendo systems of their time. Most people just said Nintendo was for kids because Nintendo took a stand and made publishers remove swear words from their games, a decision which made me very happy to be a customer of theirs since I hear enough four letter words at school.
Most people just said Nintendo was for kids because Nintendo took a stand and made publishers remove swear words from their games, a decision which made me very happy to be a customer of theirs since I hear enough four letter words at school.
Note that Nintendo hasn’t done anything of the sort for the last fifteen years — since the advent of content ratings and the ESRB. In any case, even in the 1980s/early 1990s it was only the American branch of Nintendo that promoted such.
Nintendo took a stand and made publishers remove swear words from their games, a decision which made me very happy to be a customer of theirs since I hear enough four letter words at school.
Excuseme, but in terms of ‘kids’, kids will always learn and know swear words, wouldn’t it be better to teach your children that there is a time and a place for everything, and swear words are not acceptable in certain circumstances.
Sure, I swear, but I know there is a time and a place for it, as was told by my parents; a few clips around the ear and a kick up the jaxy, and I quickly realised when not to use that language.
Its like sex education, simply knowing about it, doesn’t give one the licence to bonk everything with two legs, and spread ones wild oats.
Yes, I guess it’s quite likely that one can build an insanely cheap, yet very powerful Linux cluster with the PS3. I believe people have done this already with the PS2 and Xbox.
I wouldn’t necessarily call it “insanely cheap” at $500-600 a pop. Frankly, you’d be better off going with the cell-based blade servers, which are certainly much more suited towards building a very powerful computing cluster.
How about just buying a bunch of cheap 200$ linspire live boxes from sub300 instead? They aren’t that powerful, but at a price like that it wouldn’t be hard to afford several of the things for a commodity home cluster.
The problem with using consoles for clusters is RAM. Any vaugly interesting problem that could benefit from a cluster will require far more RAM than any of these consoles supply. So basically you’ll be swapping like crazy and won’t get any benefit from the powerful CPU. A dual dual-core CPU box with 2-4GB of RAM will beat a cluster of XBOXs or PS3 costing the same every time.
just looking at the game releases expected on the pc for the years 2006 and 2007 i don’t think the pc is going anywhere.
its probably the strongest game line up the pc has seen yet.
a brief 2007 pc game list
http://uk.gamespot.com/forums/show_msgs.php?topic_id=24525221
a brief 2006 pc game list
http://www.gamespot.com/forums/show_msgs.php?topic_id=24145969
Edited 2006-06-12 15:17
These predictions happen every few years and have been happening for the past 20 years. And they’re always wrong.
The bleeding engine is always on the PC and will always be. Of course since the XBox especially, and even the PS models are becoming increasingly PC like, the lines start to blur.
this is an utter nonsens, this is the speed for directly writing and reading the graphics mem, which you almost never do, because you usually go over the graphics processor….
I’ve been voted down… It seem ignorance is sin around here…
In spite of your ignorance, you figured that out pretty quickly I must say.
Ignorance and stupidity are different things — don’t confuse them.
mmh
I think this was the reply to the comment of Microsoft; that you can connect your XBOX 360 with Windows Vista.
And sony said: We don’t need the PC.
You see, sony wanted to say, that when you buy a PS3, you don’t need to have a pc because every thing you need is integrated in the ps3…
Thank you for writing the most relevant (maybe the only relevant) post in this thread.
@SK8T
>You see, sony wanted to say, that when you buy a
>PS3, you don’t need to have a pc because every thing
>you need is integrated in the ps3…
At least XBOX 360 can suitably connect to MCE enabled laptop…
Well, the Cell docs are open source non-commercial under an IBM agreement with Sony. So that’s good as I trust IBM more then Sony. But Sony’s track record is a little worrisome.
I see a big GPL 3 battle here maybe. Or maybe if the ps3 is totally open souce then I will get one.
They are allowing devs to freely develop for the Cell. Docs included. Free cost unless you want a service agreement.
So if they keep it open enough to mod Linux that would be great for free software as you can put free software on PS3 as well.
PS3 uses openGL and it’s primary dev tool is the Unreal Engine which is using the RelaityEngine. Those tools would cost money under their service agreement but you don’t have to use them. Unreal ED supports Linux and is in OpenGL. Obviously I don’t see DX here since they are not using Windows. So MS thought they were cool limiting DX to Windows/XBox but now they are getting slapped for it maybe.
Didn’t they say something along the same lines for eVilla?
I believe what they meant was, “PS3 is alone a better console and PC than an MS Xbox with a Windows PC connected to it.”.
Yeah, osnews at its best. Why link to the interview if you can link to Nintendo Fanboy Central aka kotaku instead?
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,419072,00.html
“SPIEGEL ONLINE: Speaking of online, Microsoft has just announced “Live Anywhere”, an integrated Windows-Xbox-Mobile environment. Is that something you’re worried about because you don’t have the same access to the PC market as Microsoft does? (emphasise mine)
Harrison: No, it doesn’t concern me and I don’t think it concerns the consumer either. Once you adopt a game system as your primary entertainment device, that’s what you want. We think that Playstation 3 is the place where our users will be doing their gaming, their movie watching, their Web browsing and a lot of other computer entertainment functions. That will satisfy them. Playstation 3 is a computer. We don’t need the PC.”
The “we don’t need the PC” is not about Sony wanting to replace the PC (also in this case limited by Phil Harrison to its function as a complement to the Xbox360 as entertainment device, not as general purpose computer) with the PS3. They just don’t think MS’s stranglehold on the PC market combined with Live Anywhere will give MS a big advantage.
A lot about the PS3, Blu-Ray and Sony is really screwed up but the amount of FUD and spin that’s posted lately is stupid . Don’t you think that valid complaints would make more sense than wild accusations that often border on the ridiculous (tomorrow: Kutaragi announces that the PS3 will launch for $299 instead of the previously announced $599, headline on osnews: “Kutaragi: PS3 not worth $600”
Edited 2006-06-14 20:34
I’m interested becuase
-I had a modded x-box running linux and it *IS* great
-I could never afford a PC as fast
-Small form factor (and cheap just as that)
-Linux is not exactly overwelmed with commercial gaming
-HDTV are getting cheaper, large cheap monitors
I’m not interested
-Lost USB on rear of console
-Lost multiple network ports on back of PS3
-Not an awful lot of memory
-No raid
I am getting one to use just as a PC, and would never consider it if I could not use it as a computer.
-Lost USB on rear of console
moved to the front panel
-Lost multiple network ports on back of PS3
useless
-Not an awful lot of memory
XDR is expensive, but this time PS have a fair amount of memory.
-No raid
raid? it is console, not server =]
16MB/sec — this says nothing! Look at the tech demos, previes and so on; of course only the not prerendered stuff; it looks so much better as a pc!
I’m interpreting it more along the lines of “We don’t need Windows!” since we have Linux heavily integrated with our product. This should help slap MS in the face.
ar’kafba
All I can say is that I agree withe the Vaio comment.
Another thing that should be mentioned is that for $600 I REALLY hope that Sony SIGNIFICANTLY increases the build quality of these toys. The PS1 & 2s that I have owned(all made in Japan b4 outsourcing production to China) had LOUSY quality. As a matter of fact, every single Sony item I have ever owned has had poor quality, which is quite an anomaly for a Japanese company, especially one that was so large, and does occassionally make nifty gadgets. (Actually I’ll take back the ALL the Sony products I’ve owned, as their Clie’s were pretty decent quality, and my brother in law’s Vaio notebook seems to be ok… ut their consumer products quality is truly atrocious…)
I really can’t wait to see what sort of MSRP they’re going to be slapping on the games… $100?
As a matter of fact, every single Sony item I have ever owned has had poor quality
Let’s hope Sony’s PlayStation dpt. is as dedicated to delivering quality as is Sony’s MiniDisc dpt.
I agree with you completely on that statement Thom. The MiniDisc players I had with in the past… even one of the earliest MD-Walkmans, can’t remember the model number. But it was rock solid. I jogged with the thing! I fondly recall the format. It is a shame it didn’t get much support…
JRM7
I expect that Sony will duplicate at least one MiniDisc “feature”: no significant Windows compatibility. The MD doesn’t support the Windows Media platform – it doesn’t support Windows Media Player, music stores, podcasting software, etc. With MD you are limited to the +crap+ audio software included with it.
As computing power goes up on a given device, the need for Windows compatibility grows. It is for this reason that I am convinced that PS3 will be destroyed by 360 (at least in North America).
Let’s hope Sony’s PlayStation dpt. is as dedicated to delivering quality as is Sony’s MiniDisc dpt.
Ah, a proprietary media format, with a proprietary CODEC delivered on an over priced, over hyped piece of equipment; almost as pathetic as Sony, PSP and their over priced UMD cd’s, and expecting people to use expensive, slow, unreliable flash media for storage with their PSP.
They should call it what it is. A media center, all they need is throw in PVR technology.
Neal Saferstein
…Microsoft to say ‘We Do Not Need the PC’ first, after all it’s through their shear (intentional?) incompetance that their operating system works so badly.
Perhaps Microsoft see’s no profitable future in the personal computer market. After all it’s not like buisnesses where they extract better profits and enforcement of per seat licensing of their software. So they see Windows combined with Office/Net/Email as one package software for buisnesses and elaborate console machines like the X-Box for personal use.
Sony is seeing the same future, where consumers use a dedicated box, so that’s why the latest statement, and why both MS and Sony are selling these “computer consoles” at nearly no profit. Whoever wins this war of attrition will own the living room.
In this race Apple hasn’t even really gotten started yet, and certaintly isn’t going to take a loss for years on end to accomplish a win.
It will never happen. Tv is made for Multi-User Livingrooms where PCs are for single user things. I doubt a husband/wife/kids will sit idly on the couch while their counterparts check their E-Mail, look up porn, or whatever else the might be doing. The PC will surely remain seperate from the PC as long as this is true.
I’d rather buy a Dell with an LCD monitor for under $500 and put it in my office. If I ever want a console, I’ll just buy an XBox 360 and put it in the living room.
Frankly, you’d be better off going with the cell-based blade servers, which are certainly much more suited towards building a very powerful computing cluster.
So how high is the price per CPU for a cell-based blade server?
“Let’s see how Sony’s Vaio devision feels about this.”
Sony should kill the Vaio division. The Vaio is arguably the most “hip” Windows PC money can buy, and it’s still a nerd with pocket protectors compared to any Apple product.
That sounds a lot like personal bias frankly, especially if you like Apple products better. I’ve often found Apple products look too shiny, more like decorations that something I’d want to be computing on. “The shiny” looks nice and clean against the white background of the Apple web site, but the style doesn’t suit me. Sony has some sleek looking products, the school has a very nice looking Sony LCD monitor and some new Sony boxen which are reserved for the media class while the rest of us are stuck on decade old el-cheapo acer boxes running long since borken copies of Windows 98. Sony has made some good looking hardware, frankly I can’t say that I think Apple hardware looks better. If you preffer one over the other there really does have to be some personal preference involved.
Strangly enough the same statement can be said about the PS3. Why do I need one? A gaming gadget will never replace my computer doing video editing, sound recording engineering, quickbooks accounting, image editing, etc. The PS3 is a glorfied toy. Its a gaming console and thats its function. I guess this is a marketing ploy for them to convince us its worth $599. Nice try. They put the price into that catagory you’ll see alot more Revolutions and X-Box’s in people’s homes.
Except that your claims aren’t true anymore.
The PS3 has the potential to be a gaming console, video editing tool, sound recorder, home computer, webserver, databaseserver, you name it.
PCs today have enough power to work as consoles and consoles have the power to work as PCs.
The PS3 is not merely a gaming console, even though it’s likely that it won’t be used as more than that.
Potential doesn’t equate to actuality. We’ll see it when it happens. Until then, this is vaporous nonsense.
Like Vista, you mean?
Although, it is a gaming gadget that might replace Joe Blow’s computer for doing basic e-mail, web browsing, HTPC functions, etc.
The majority of good games are made for PC IMO. We do not need game consoles unless you want to be limited in choice. Of course YMMV depending on if you really like the volleyball games and such.
Maybe you don’t need gaming consoles, but because of of the way gaming consoles and thier software are designed, you can get much more bang for the buck using a console, as the computer needed to play halo for example is much more expensive than the console needed to play it
More to the point, games on consoles just work. No need for worrying about hardware requirements or patching. That is why there’s a need for console gaming, because PC gaming is still half ass unless you’ve got an expensive rig. Not everybody wants to have to build their own machine.
That’s entirely a matter of personal taste. I personally find the PC’s gaming lineup hasn’t been interesting for around 6 or 7 years now and that consoles come out with much more interesting games these days, but again, YMMV.
Sony saying we do not need PCs is just the same ways as the famous person once saying…not everyone needs a Peronal Computer…with more than 640k of RAM or something like that if I am not mistaken.
Babe, Bill Gates never said that 640K would be enough, look up urban legends; that little bit of bullshit holds no more weight than the old wives tale put out that Gore invented the internet, which was a quotation taken completely out of context, the original context was that Gore was a *BACKER* for the opening up of the internet to civilian uses.
The claims that he didn’t say holds no more water than the claims that he did say it.
Considering how ignorant BG was of the Internet I wouldn’t be surprised if he was equally ignorant of memory needs.
Looking into the future has never been a strong element in BG. Using illegal techniques to catch up – now, that’s something BG knows too well.
Considering how ignorant BG was of the Internet I wouldn’t be surprised if he was equally ignorant of memory needs.
Thats an old story; and they’ve still not caught up with the opensource and openstandards wave; people are demanding openstandards, they’re demanding interoperability – Microsoft is failing to deliver on those customer demands, hence, Linux and its friends are picking up the slack.
The more I read about the PS3, the more appealing Nintendo’s Wii becomes. I just want a dedicated gaming machine. Not a schizophrenic device with acute multiple personality disorder.
We don’t need Sony PC too…
1. Text looks pretty bad on televisions. So, unless the vast number of us are running big-screen HDTVs (which will hardly be the case for years).
2. People aren’t going to throw away their existing software when it works perfectly well on a PC. Most desktop users use MS Office and similar kinds of productivity software. Telling them to convert to StarOffice/OpenOffice is a non-starter for many people.
3. There is no cost/performance advantage for PS3. $600 buys a pretty nice PC nowadays + monitor.
4. Convergence is a least-common-denominator pipe dream. It basically creates products that do a bunch of things poorly.
5. Why would anyone want to trust Sony to be their one-stop-shopping data source after the rootkit debacle?
…has a new job at Sony PR.
Good man, would be a shame to put him to early retirement.
“Boooby Traps… looking like Ballpens.”
So Sony wants to combine the reliability of a PC with the versatility of a console? Web browsing on the Dreamcast was neat back in the day, but downloadable content was the only truly worthwhile thing about it. I’m all for adding networking and small hard drives to game consoles, but higher PC functions just seem so very worthless, and moreso every year as millions of people who never thought they’d want, need, or be able to afford a computer now have at least one. I’d much rather have a way to make my Windows machine behave more like a gaming appliance than to make these appliances act more like Windows. How long now before we have to install several gigs of data on our consoles’ hard drives and then “activate” it before we can play?
Sony: ‘We Do Not Need the PC’
So, how do they program their games?!
hraq,
I do believe that he was referring to the xbox360 requiring MS Windows Media Center for certain capabilities. In that sense, PS3 does NOT require a PC, because all those capabilities are already built-in to the box.
To be even a basic PC, it will have to have connectors, preferrably several of both USB and Firewire ( IEEE 1394 / iLink ). Will it have these?
With these connectors, maybe you can also connect a HD-DVD drive to it too, so no need to worry about just having a Blue-Ray in the standard configuration.
I think if it is flexible enough like this, and the OS can automatically make use of anything plugged into it, then it could be considered a PC.
Looks like I will have to chat on the net with a 14-buttons pad instead of a 107-touch keyboard.
I hope they will allow their developers to have PC to write their games, or it might take a while 🙂
I’m sure glad Sony released the PS1 and the PS2 but the PS3 simply don’t look promising. Sure the specs are impressive in many ways, but instead of wasting time with rootkits, DRM etc etc, can’t they simply invest money in having even more superior HW?
They’re slogun ought to be changed to “End up in hell, buy from us!”.
This whole idea about no need for PC is a Sony managers wet dream, unsubstantial but oh so wet!
Funny that PC stands for Personal Computer. It appears to be a play with the word from Sony executive. Computer is very generic because all consoles are by definition according to this interview. Remember that NES was actually named Famicon (in short of Family Computer from Japanese language) mostly in Europe and Asia. Maybe Plasytation 3 should be named Entecon (entertainment computer).
Seriously, I think someone should retranslate the original interview because software translators are sometime inaccurate.
Edited 2006-06-13 06:34
Put Amiga OS4 on the Sony Hardware, and the PS3 will rocks.
Windows is what Sony doesn’t need, mainly, but some of the PC hardware is obsolete anyway, mainly when Sony pushes the new hardware stuff.
One doesn’t need Windows to program, because one can use Linux in a Lintel, instead of the classical PC combination Wintel. When one mentions the PC, it generally means Windows, and not Linux.
Anyway, I already knew that PS3 would be pollemic with its Linux use. Laptop of $100 + PS3, both using Linux, not bad for Linux adoption by non-technical people.
Alright! Can’t wait to do my Quicken finances in 1080P!! I can adjust my balances via the gyroscope controler. To bad I won’t have dual shock any more for when stocks crash.
Alright! Can’t wait to do my Quicken finances in 1080P!! I can adjust my balances via the gyroscope controler. To bad I won’t have dual shock any more for when stocks crash.
Probably relying on the same myth that Sun is relying on, in their lack of improving the number of ISV’s, that some how, everything will go netbased, and one won’t need locally hosted applications.
Wasn’t it Larry Ellison who said that is ‘NetPC’ would be the future, well, that was a raging success *rolls eyes*
Edited 2006-06-13 17:35
As the Japanese have shown time and time again, as long as you please the customers, the competition is moot.
Sony says we do not need a PC? Is Sony ever wrong? Lets see…Betamax, minidisc, memory stick, Blue ray, root kits. I guess Dell has noting to worry about.
It’s curious how a lot of people is reacting to the PS3 hype in news pages and public forums like OSNews, Slashdot, Ars Technica, The register, etc.
The PS3 personal computer (yes: it has OS and storage and good quality display, it has all the right to be called a personal computer) and is one of the very few new platforms to be widely delivered since… when? the BeBox computer?
It has a good price (for a system with top gfx), it has an small form factor (for a personal computer) and it offers an interesting new architecture designed by some really talented engineers.
Some years ago, all technophiles would cheer the new offering. These days, with the Wintel monopoly crushing any option avalaible, we all should celebrate that a new platform is born, even those who are not interested on it’s first incarnation. Instead, a lot of people just seem to find pleasure underrating the product…We even get false informations from time to time trying to undermine the potential of the machine.
Call me paranoid, but I am starting to think that some people is being paid to spill missinformations and negative opinions about the PS3 in all the important web pages.
I know for sure about persons employed to post positive information in one web page for a big company (this is not strange, printed magazines do it all the time). I wonder is the reverse situation is happening now with Sony.
@jbit
>What about it?
Did you missed the a direct line from card to CPU?
the design looks mostly ok. But the silver paint makes it look cheap. i simply hate silver paint, it’s so cheap looking.
You’ll be all assimilated…