Has any one else been keeping up with this sterling pile? I'd provide a link, but my phone hates my browser. No second hand use, constant internet as dem, Kinect always connected and on, no backcompat. It is looking more and more like a horrible money grab/1984 attempt.

I'm looking forward to the crimes that get commuted with/due to this system.

This will get moved to general gaming.

Also, first calculations say the PS4 will be about 50% more powerfull.

Don't forget TV.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbWgUO-Rqcw

yeah, PS has a history of being more "powerful" than the others...at least that's what their press releases say

Well, simply due to RAM bandwidth the PS4 has potentially much more pwer.
XBOX3 went with 8 Gigs of DDR3 RAM, the PS4 went with 8 Gigs of GDDR5 RAM.
Which is both much more powerfull and expensive.
Furthermore is the same CPU clocked higher in the PS4 than in the XBOX3 as far as i remember.

Yeah, but can you install Linux on the new PS4? Or run PS3 games on it?

I'll keep my hardware backwards-compatible PS3 until it dies, thank you. (Which it already has, once. Three days left on the warranty.)

no, i don't think it's backwardscompatible.
and the linux on it may be possible, if they think they can do it in a way that does not let people pirate stuff . .

People seem to figure out how to install linux on damn near anything that has chips.




-k

i'm hoping for the other way around actually:
now that they use standard hardware as in normal computers, i hope somebody figures out how to get these OSes working on propper computers so you can have one single device to both work and play everything with . .

Windows 8?





-k

Yes, the New X-Box actually uses a modified Windumb 8 Kernel.
So i wonder if that could not be ported to normal Computers . . .
You could build your own console/HTPC and play legit games on it.
AND have it do more/other stuff with the same hardware by way of
dual booting into a normal windose mode . .

This is the exact reason I will not be getting rid of my Xbox 360 or my (fat) PS3. Furthermore, I don't even think I'll be buying the next gen consoles, outside of the Wii U which I already purchased during the holidays. They don't have the gaming consumer in mind any longer it seems. Couple this with the fact that the new consoles are so close to being PCs that I wouldn't be surprised if many of the games saw PC releases anyway.

*nods*
i won't be buying any of these new consoles either . .
i might buy me a wii next . . or maybe i'll go for the game cube.
i have been
a) always about half a decade behind on these things
and
b) always been a nintendo child, since sega went the way of the dodo

I might be interested in a Ouya, and that's it. My PC should keep me happy.

You mean like on an 8-bit microprocessor?
(Sure it has a 2 hour boot time, but it runs!)

PS3 backward compatibility for PS2 games, on the models that had that options, was terrible and if I recall correctly, the xBox 360 didn't launch with backwards compatibility and required extensive testing of each game that they added to their backwards compatible library via updates.

Backward compatibility is an overrated thing that people seem to fixate on without realizing that all in all it providing an unnecessary device complication and cost increase in the device. It's far better to use reliable long lasting hardware, which Microsoft doesn't have a good track record on so maybe they should go with backwards compatible.

You must be recalling incorrectly. My PS3 plays PS2 games just fine... it does have a minor snag when playing PSX games though, I get about a 0.5 sec input delay (maybe less, but it is noticeable).

Not all PS3s are hardware backwards compatible. Mine is. I think the rest use emulation.

I'm not recalling poorly. A much much larger percentage of the PSX library ran on the PS3, if with glitches. The PS2 library was less than 40% would run and that included some big titles like Final Fantasy X (it looks like it was later compatible but I know it didn't work when I first got my PS3). The emulation for PS2 games on the PS3 was only available in early model PS3. All thin PS3s do not have PS2 compatibility.



They were all emulation chips.

I never had any trouble playing any PS2 games on my PS3, but I had a launch model, so it still had the hardware for it, which is almost entirely what they removed in order to make the "slim" units.

Yep, the FIRST PS3 had actual hardware support for older games.

The PS3's that are backwards compatible use a hardware emulation chip which was removed in later models. They do not have PS2 hardware in them, that's why the library of PSX/2 games doesn't work properly.

The point is that backwards compatibility is not as simple as one might think. There's a huge cost associated with it and consoles already serve as loss leaders. It just doesn't make sense to do especially when the hardware architecture from platform to platform from the same manufacturer doesn't use the same standards (hence requiring a hardware emulation chip). That's what is good about the PS4, I can't comment on the XBox 1 since I haven't looked at the architecture they're using, Sony is going to utilize PC architecture this time around. It's going to be a pain trying to port any PSX/2/3 games to the PS4 but backwards compatibility from the PS4 onward should be rather solid if they keep using PC architecture.

X-Box1 and PS4 are using the same chips.
The Main Difference is that MS went with 8 Gigs of Cheap DDR3 RAM and 32MB of Cache for the 8-Core Jaguar CPU from AMD and Sony went for 8 Gigs of really expensive GDDR5 RAM and no cache but a bit higer clock on the 8 Core Jaguar CPU from AMD.

Er, that's not what I mean. The computer architecture plays a huge part.

For example, if I wrote a program then compiled/assembled it to run on a Cray Supercomputer, I cannot take that executible over to a x64 device and run it without some sort of emulation of the Cray. Without the emulation I would need the source code and the recompile it for the new hardware architecture. Traditionally, the consoles have been inconsistent in their hardware architecture and that has requires hardware emulation chips in new architectures in order to have any chance at backward compatability. The PS3 used a physical emulation chip that had firmware that was updatable. I believe MS did their emulation entirely via firmware updates for the 360. The consoles also used architecture that was different from each other which cause two major hurdles for cross-platform games. The first is that it's a big reason why console ports to PC suck. The second is that it's a huge culprit for bugs that exist since code that may run fine on one architecture has problems in the other architecture. I think this is also a major reason for launch day patches for games that come out. It's much easier to write one set of code that reasonably works on all platforms and document all the bugs and push out the patch to fix them rather than maintaining two code bases through productions once the first platform specific bug crops up.

Ultimately, the disk based medium is what causes the problems since it's compiled for the console architecture. You cannot recompile it and short of the developer taking the source and recompiling it and selling versions that will run on the new hardware architecture there isn't much you can do but run some sort of emulation of the old hardware.

Hopefully, with this newest generation we'll see consoles and PC all using the same hardware architecture (x64) which should increase cross platform compatability and reduce the number of bugs but it also means that backward compatability will be trivial to perform unless as a whole we move beyond x64 as the norm.

While I have no particular qualms about keeping old hardware around (still have my Saturn and Dreamcast ready to go when necessary) the backwards compatability were selling points for me on the last generation. The PS3 in particular because it meant I could mothball 2 systems. Now I'm forced to either keep more old hardware or buy games again that I already own for emulation, and that's assuming that some of them even see a re-release. Unsurprisingly people aren't happy with that idea. Just like they aren't okay with the idea of "owning" a game that they cannot give to a friend when they are done with it or even loan it to them. Now we're going to just be licensing the IP, which sounds incredibly lame. It shouldn't be any different than purchasing a movie or music (although I know I'm a holdout for buying CDs still). When I'm done with it, I should have the ability to do with it as I please because I own it, provided I don't break any laws.

Well the problem is partially of their own doing but partially of necessity. Consoles have used different hardware architectures because it made good sense. The problem with the x86 and x64 architecture is that it's universal. That leads to overhead. By using custom architecture you're actually able to get a better performance out of hardware than you would with equivalent x86/x64 hardware or to make the x86/x64 as good as the custom architecture you would need to significantly increase the performance of the hardware. So we see Nintendo, Sony, Sega, and Microsoft all making platforms with customer architecture and software that is catered to it. So since you need lesser hardware for the solution it helped drag down costs which is a plus for the customer. The downside is that it meant every generation of consoles was pretty much incompatible with each other without some sort of hardware emulation chip.

We hit a point where the generic x64 x86 hardware has become potent/cheap enough that custom architectures really only make sense in niche environments. That's a good thing. While it may be disappointing that backward compatability is unlikely in the new generation it's not really a bad thing. A clean slate is actually in the best interest of the long term health of the gaming industry.

I agree that from a system architecture standpoint it's a good thing, after all, aside from having to emulate DOS I can still run all my old PC games (well, minus the ones that were on 5 1/4"). I didn't miss the point in time where I had six systems set up to my TV either though. As it currently stands if I get either system I'd be looking at 4 or 5 actively hooked up systems. Here's to hoping the hardware change really means most of the games will see PC releases and I skip the new Philips CDi.