Sony is dropping some hints about the product’s likely lack of shape–it’s looking into installing an OS that could run game programs in various home appliances.
PlayStation 3 Sees a Radical Change
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they should just work on making a good machine for a good price that plays games people will enjoy
doesnt have all the “well thats neat” “ooh ahh” of all this high speed network and distributed processing stuff…
but i can pretty well guarantee itll sell more product
but maybe im just too old fashioned and short sighted ;o)
I guess all we can do is wait and see. The thing is still far from being finished, and the info is very ambiguous.
Anyway, I hope they do something good
Sony / CELL
It was thought that they would use Beos, but now it seems like they built one from the ground up!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/16483.html
“it’s looking into installing an OS that could run game programs in various home appliances.”
Great, so now I guess I’ll be able to play Pac-man on my microwave while the Hot Pockets are cooking? What are these losers smoking? They probably have more than a 6-figure salary and then come up with shit like this, all the while making games that are much less compelling than games in the early 80s that could only produce 16 colors on the screen.
“It was thought that they would use Beos, but now it seems like they built one from the ground up!”
well, BeOS might have been a choice two or three years ago but we all know that BeOS was heavily lacking some decent game support (3D hardware support that is).
if Sony had chosen it, they might have had some decent drivers by now and would be able to use it as base system.
but i think it is more resonable for them now to build a gaming os from what they already got (i.e. PS1/PS2 bases) and extend it to run some apps …
no kidding. i’m sick of this huge move to e-ify everything in your house. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t WANT my microwave to talk to my fridge. I don’t WANT everything in my house to know everything about me. If I want to talk to someone, I’ll call a friend, I don’t need to have a conversation with my fscking lamp. This is absurd. I’m generally very pro-change, but some things in life just need to stay the same.
Why BeOS? I know, I know, it’s the GOD of operating systems (give me a break, so it boots quickly), but is this speculation based on anything other than the hopes that BeOS will be reborn? I see using BeOS as being more trouble than it’s worth. Not that I’m a HUGE windows fan, but Windows 95 with some decent nVidia drivers makes a pretty quick and stable platform, especially if you limit what the user can do with it (ala: a console system). I don’t hate BeOS, I just don’t see WHY sony would want to use it for this application.
“I don’t hate BeOS, I just don’t see WHY sony would want to use it for this application.”
What’s the rant for ??? The guy *JUST* said that BeOS was *ONCE* considered. Never said it was *NOW* …
jezz …
(Darius) “Great, so now I guess I’ll be able to play Pac-man on my microwave while the Hot Pockets are cooking? ”
(Kyle) “Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t WANT my microwave to talk to my fridge. I don’t WANT everything in my house to know everything about me.”
AFAIK, the “Cell” architecture is not about data exchange, or playing games on a fridge, but processing sharing. That mean every single CPU in your house can talk together to do a big task. By example, if you don’t use your Microwave equiped with a Cell CPU, then your Playstation 3 can talk to him and execute threads or some other processing on your microwave. So the more Cell you got in your house, the better every tasks can be executed. So that at some point you can have your fridge, microwave, VCR, DVD player, etc all together processing your game experience.
Maybe I’m totally wrong, but that’s what I understood from a (thin) explanation found somewhere…
distributing processing cycles to play games? so if i want to play the most intensive PS3 games, i’ll need to buy a sony tv, fridge, curling iron, cat, and lampshade?
The OS and the Cell processor are the two big underpinnings of the Metaverse.
To support local computation, Sony is trying to see how to get as many Cell processors into your home without you having to buy a stack of PS3’s.
If you think R300 can render Lord of the Rings at 50fps, think about something more powerful and having 10 of them. All hooked into a giant network.
Kyle, that’s where I see the problem with a e-Home that everyone seems to be pushing so hard. I’m planning to open a company that provides something like this, but not something intrusive or something that thinks for themselves.
The goal of such a thing is to help humans, no make their daily lifes more annoying (for example, while browsing the frigde, your fridge says that your food is done in the microwave – that is annoying).
“AFAIK, the “Cell” architecture is not about data exchange, or playing games on a fridge, but processing
sharing. That mean every single CPU in your house can talk together to do a big task. By example, if you
don’t use your Microwave equiped with a Cell CPU, then your Playstation 3 can talk to him and execute
threads or some other processing on your microwave. So the more Cell you got in your house, the better
every tasks can be executed. So that at some point you can have your fridge, microwave, VCR, DVD
player, etc all together processing your game experience. ”
The problem with this concept is that appliances use low power
embedded processors which are selected for low cost and simplicity.
If you have a reasonably fast CPU in your games machine or computer
(or even PDA), the extra computing power that could be added by even
ten appliances would be negligible.
Improvements to the compiler used to create the game or application
would make more difference.
Instead of having an processors in my fridge, microwave, alarm clock, inflatable doll, etc, I’d rather just have one more CPU in the PS3 …. sounds much simpler, doesn’t it ?
um Cost anybody? putting more chips in already expensive hardware and appliances, just to play Doom 3 at 400fps?
also who wants sony to control your entire house?
“Why BeOS? I know, I know, it’s the GOD of operating systems (give me a break, so it boots quickly),”
Dude, BeOS was built from the ground up for multimedia, must other operating systems are not
“Not that I’m a HUGE windows fan, but Windows 95 with some decent nVidia drivers makes a pretty quick and stable platform, especially if you limit what the user can do with it (ala: a console system).”
This statement totally debunks any credibility you have what so ever. Anyone who has had decent experience with non-mainstream OSs knows that Windows 95 is nearly at the bottom of the bucket for GUI OSs and it is not a “pretty quick and stable platform”.
– Kelly
Dude, BeOS was built from the ground up for multimedia, must other operating systems are not
It was mostly built for video. How is that significant to gaming consoles?
Anyone who has had decent experience with non-mainstream OSs knows that Windows 95 is nearly at the bottom of the bucket for GUI OSs and it is not a “pretty quick and stable platform”.
Dude, he was talking about gaming. You probably won’t see Windows 95 crash because of running a game, provided you use a good driver (incidentally, NVidia provides good drivers). Plus, defragging your HDD once a week, like on a Friday night, just before you go to bed with a girl you picked up at the bar, just turn it on.
I cannot wait for the PS3, I am one with the Sony vision…..
=) I have loved sony since I bought a PSone a LONG time ago, and I have a PS2 and Network Adapter and enjoy them ALOT. once the PS3 comes out I will be tradeing in my PS2 and almost all its games(PS3 should be backwards compat.) I don’t care how much it costs I will buy it and as many games and accessories as possible!!(I am guessing the console will cost around 500-600 $ alone)
The cell processor is a HUGE step in the console and computing worlds.