PS3 to be a "Low-Show" at E3?

If you're expecting to see lots of Sony PlayStation 3 hardware at E3 (the Electronic Entertainment Expo, starting May 10), don't hold your breath. Sony has reportedly held back prototypes from third-party developers to show in their booths, leaving lots of game makers hanging. One source said the PS3 will be on display in what was called "a tightly-restricted environment." Sources predicted a situation similar to Sony's PSP rollout, where there were 5-hour waits just to catch a glimpse of the new devices.

In bussines terms, that means they dont have a final working unit yet...

Source

 

Yea, Sony's not doing so hot right now.The people I know irl that went to DGC and got to see what sony had to offer all had some crazy stories to tell about the PS3, both from play testing some of the proto hardware and talking to other devs. It's just really unstable and overly complex, and it's giving devs a hell of a time trying to get it working correctly (particularly when it comes to memory allocation).

 

Really? that sounds like a Saturn-kind of problem...

 

Indeed. I think Sony is having a hard time and is rushing to put something out to shut people up about their 3rd console. I honestly have lost lots of interest.

 

This may be a strange way to look at it, but...

If Sony is having this much trouble putting it together, this will be one amazing machine. Because, if they truly needed to release something they'd just cut a few corners and produce half-baked units.

All these delays make me think that the technology used is so cutting edge that it's just not feasible to make it work right now.

That, or perhaps they've became so cocky that they just don't give a fuck any more. Because, lets face it, it's even odds that the PS3 will dominate again.

 

it could also mean we get a totally bugged product like with the ps2 where you hope it wont break cause of the rush they had to pust it out of the doors

 

Calm down everyone, you'll get plenty of hands on April 2007. Now wheres my riddlin.

 

From what I've heard the system is done, Sony does this for a reason, just to get people talking, clearly it is working.

 

The ps1 was bugged at launch. Sales and marketting can do wonders. The 360 is a major problem for sony right now, but after ps3 launch it might not be.

smf

 

Sony is only giving devs half-working units months before the system is supposed to lanch to get people talking? Sorry, I don't buy that.

I beg to differ. I believe the only ones the 360 is a problem to atm is microsoft and its customers. I don't know a single person irl anymore with a working unit, The system is failing in Japan (like its predecesor) and those who still have working units are complaining that the games "arn't next-gen enough".

 

If the system was done, sony would be manufacturing the systems as we speak. Simple truth of the matter is that there are many details of the ps3 that are still left up in the air.

 

PA speaks the truth. The dev hardware is not final, though it's better than it was. You can get a running game up on the system.

Final hardware of any sort has yet to hit the production line. This alone makes any predictions of a holiday launch suspect, especially if it is to be a worldwide launch. The numbers that Sony would need to have in the channel to do it are large and the problem of producing the systems, packaging and shipping them is a logistical nightmare. That doesn't even to take into account any technical issues.

-hl718

 

Aren't Developers getting the final dev kits in June?

I thought that was general knowledge.

 

Man I cant start to imagine how much all this delay must cost them in capital, and the investors might be a bit uneasy about the recent complexities too.

 

Let's look at it like this:

In order to have a christmas launch, sony needs the ps3 out there by november. That's 7 months from now.

7 * 30 = 210

They have 210 days to make their production runs. If they started tomorrow, they would need to make 4761 units per day just to reach 1,000,000 units world wide. That would be less than the 360 launch.

1,000,000 / 210 = 4761

So let's say they need at least a million units per reigon in order to have a realistic world wide launch. That would require sony produce 14,000 units per day starting May 1st.

3,000,000 / 210 = 14,286

Let's say sony doesn't get the console finalized until june, gets the production facilities running until July. That gives them just 4 months to reach the 3,000,000 figure. They would need to produce 25,000 consoles per day, every day.

3,000,000 / 120 = 25,000

This all assumes that there are no manufacturing glitches. Remember when sony decided to retool the chip fab facility from .25 micron chips to .18 micron chips right before the ps2 launch? That cut the output of the production facility in half.

While we're throwing numbers around, lets assume Sony does make 3,000,000 units at a $200 dollar loss....

3,000,000 * 200 = 600,000,000

That's a six hundred million dollar loss.... good luck with that

 

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:clap: :nod:

 

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i second that sorry for stealing the arrow

 

as a former programmer, I see a lot of flaws in the ps2 architecture. I was playing Shadow of the Colossus today, and I was thinking about what the game would look like on the other two consoles, and I realized that , to describe simply, it just would NOT be so choppy, and it would NOT have poor controls and collision detection. It's not the fault of the programmers, but the console It's susceptible to choppy framerates and camera problems. Sorry Sony fanboys, but I have yet to find a Nintendo game that is choppy like that. And if there are, they are either crappy ports or some sort of kid game like Ice Age (and I'll gladly retract my statement).
I have to admit that I am upset about this news because I have been pretty hyped about the PS3 release, but I fear the final build will be a coding nightmare. Like I have said before, when I started programming, we had to find inventive ways to allocate small amounts of RAM, shrink our code, and trick the processor to let programs go faster. I have a feeling these skills are lost on this generation of programmers, and that is a shame.

 

I d say that making an application for multiple processors/cores for professional programs is hard enough, but at least you re feeding the beast with a harmonized majority of the code being of the same type.

A game is a mixture of many different types of calculations and it's gonna be hard for the coders to decide what should be kept in-line and what fed to another core, if one is available, or stack it in the queue of the processes pending for each core. But since some of the code is of an unpredictable nature by definition, the same object that has been sent to another core for speedy processing, might end up being three cycles late by the time a result is needed in the main program that it branched off.

It's this kind of problem that would make debugging to see what's more efficient, a hell for any team I believe, and most programmers arent fit to deal with such strategic coding, considering the thousands of lines of game code that has to be taken into account