Sony CEO: Xbox 360 ‘lacks longetivity’

"You need a word that describes something that lacks longevity"

Heh heh, I thought that was the definition of "Game Console" since NONE of them last, they ALL get replaced with newer/better versions. I guess it just depends on your definition of longevity. While I still have a functional original Atari 2600, I don't really ever use it, but it does still work, is that longevity? Or is it how long the item gets used? I have a pair of 28 year old Bose speakers that still work great, get used daily, and will likley be in use longer than any of today's game consoles. The time frames between major updates to today's consoles just doesn't make me think longevity.

Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai: "And with the Xbox -- again, I can't come up with one word to fit. "

Gee, I don't know...how about profitable?

The PlayStation 1 was in production for 11 years. The PlayStation 2 still is (about 10 years now). The Xbox was only in production 5 years. Maybe that's what he was referrring to.

Nothing new, anyone with a clue knew they created the PS3 hardware to last about 10 years like its predecessor the PS2.

They are using the exact same marketing scheme as PS2..except this time their competitors are fighting evenly.

I kind of agree with him when he says Wii is not in the same competition. PS3 and X360 are targeting mainly gamers while the Wii is targeting children, casuals and even old people.

The Wii is a gadget, mine has been taking dust for 6 months now because of lack of anything interesting coming out on it. Pretty much keeping it because they announced new Zelda and Mario for 2010.

i think that technology goes too fast this days so is more than good 5 years and 10 is just oldfashion which can't longer be.

@Crabbyappleton....totally agree with you there...lol, that one was funny.

I like how this guy can talk and say that his console is leading the industry....hmmm...lets see here, you're leading with a console that has few games that are keepers, keeps losing exclusives, and the same old Sony Mantra of making grand promises, but rarely delivering.

Let's see, for the PS3 not to fail, Home better be way more improved than the garbage right now that is the beta... oh yea, one other little thing (Which I am really excited for), Killzone 2. You are hyping this thing way up, and if it comes out and is a killer, I will applaud Sony for their achievement. But, if it fails, and sucks, then the PS3 will be doomed. Guess you guys will have to look at breaking your 10 year life cycle and come out with a cheaper PS4 quick.

Of course they don't want to say the Wii is in the same category. The Wii is kicking all of their collective asses bigtime and it doesn't have the souped up graphics of the PS3 or XBOX 360. Why is that? Maybe everything isn't about the best graphics. I think it is laughable how they brush off a competitor because it is doing better than they are. While Nintendo is raking in the dough from their console, Sony's losses on the PS3 keep piling up past the $3 billion mark. What would be funny, is if Nintendo came out with a console that had better everything than Sony or MS just to see how fast Sony's, "They are not competitors", attitude would change.

I suppose if you're in last place, the natural tendency is to attack the ones ahead of you in sales and profits. Perhaps Sony should focus more on making their console more profitable instead of attacking others. They are also in denial if they don't think the Wii is competing in terms of marketshare. For example, I personally would like to get the PS3. But, I bought a Wii instead due to my family. The lack of support for our PS2 games was also a big knock against the PS3. Sony take note.

I agree with everything Hirai says.

The Majority of the comments above have been posted by people exhibiting all the foresight of a 4yr old child.

Flame baiter...

1/10 - Must try harder

that has few games that are keepers

How can that be, every third party game that has came out, has been released on both the Xbox360, and PS3.

Are you honestly telling me there are only few good games. At Christmas there was an absolute flurry of fantastic games that came out at the same time on both the PS3 and Xbox360 and it was almost impossible to keep up, in six weeks time Resident Evil 5 comes out too.

The only problem Sony has with the Ps3 is its price, its almost double that of the Xbox360, which is the reason for the poor sales

Hardware wise its in a whole different league from the Xbox

If Sony can drop the RRP price to around £200 by next Christmas I believe it will definitely outsell the Xbox360.

@Anthony1uk

Oh dear, your Sony polaroid glasses working well for you I see.

There's a game called 'Left 4 Dead' which isn't out on PS3, and is not coming out on PS3.

The Hardware - well, what I laugh at is the fact you Sony fanboys come on here and start ranting this and that without backing it up with ANY tech specs at all. The Xbox 360 has a superior graphics card to the PS3, this is FACT - it has also less bandwidth limitation around its graphics subsystem. However, in real world gaming performance I would estimate they are probably about equal - so please don't try any of the 'better hardware' garbage, as it's utter nonsense. This isn't about simply hardware alone, the 360 has better games, does it at better resolutions (the PS3 GTA4 for example plays at a lower res, and upscales), and generally is better for gaming all round. The PS3 has a bigger storage medium called blu-ray - but this does not create better games. Hi-def movies ? Well, judging by the sales nobody really cares that much. Sony won't do very well this generation... not that I care... I have a nice PC which more than suits my gaming needs.

Of course the Xbox 360 will be by the wayside in 5 years as there will probably be a successor the same with the wii and i dont think sony will get away with a 10 year lifespan the next xbox will probably be way superior in processing power as it will be made years after it the PS3 with will in turn cause sony to release an new version to compete.

@Vic_M

One thing I am not is a Sony Fanboy, at least I hope I am not. In this instance they are by a huge margin the much better of the two evils.

If you check quite a lot of my past posts, they have been my lambasting Sony on their attitude for the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray format war situation

I was the firm backer of HD-DVD, and was hoping for them to win, they did not so I was forced to buy a PS3 for my hidef playback

From that I was actually amazed with what I had been putting up with when owning an Xbox360, as the PS3 is a much better made console, its completely silent and runs much better

When I said hardware wise I wasn't talking about comparing the memory, Graphics Card performance or CPU (even though I believe the PS3 has a more powerful CPU, but the Xbox360 has like you say the more powerful GPU).

What I was talking about is how pathetically made these Xbox360's are. You say you are a PC owner, which shows why you do not understand the plight of an Xbox360 owner, the Xbox360's, in particularly the Xenons are the most pathetic poorly made piece of trash ever made.
They are also guarenteed to sooner or later fail, and usually sooner, and Microsoft do not care.</p>

The three year warranty is a serious red herring as they just keep repairing the console with more Xenon parts, knowing they will just sooner fail again, and not with the Jasper or Falcons. Wouldn't you put that down as poor hardware?

If you had a CPU/GPU in your PC that is almost guarenteed to self destruct within a year or so, and the manufacturer doesn't care, but is also going around gloating how much money they made off selling that defective CPU/GPU to people. Would you then recommend to your friends to buy that CPU/GPU. Or would you recommend them to not touch it with a barge pole?

Furthermore Left 4 Dead, which I agree is an absolutely superb game, behind Call of Duty the best FPS game ever made, is coming to the PS3 this year.

Once Microsoft start getting their act together on correctly repairing the Xbox360's, and not just simply giving people more Xenons, and then just a 3 month warranty on repaired consoles, as replacements, then I may reconsider what I said. (but by that time it will be too cold in hell to type anything anyway).

PS3 overall hardware is much better than X360. Comparing graphic cards is stupid, I never thought I'd see that kind of garbage here.

PS3 components are top notch quality, the X360 is a piece of trash waiting to be returned to Microsoft every 6 months.

Thank you Ramza, now can you hand me back my Sony polaroid glasses http://www.cdfreaks.com/images/smilies/2/smile.gif
(Sorry, no offence Vic_M but couldn't resist that last bit it).

Hmm...yeah graphics cards on a gaming system not important at all...

before i start getting ripped to pieces here that i'm a sony fanboy, can i make the point that the PS3 and the 360 is comparitable by the graphics/CPU hardware it uses(PS3 has more powerful CPU, but the 360 has a more powerful GPU), however, where the 360 fails, is its DVD drive. nobody in this day and age should have to disc swap, or compromise on length of game or graphics, due to the disc being too small to put your game onto!!

if they had came out early with a HD-DVD drive installed internally, the HD-DVD format might have had a chance and Ms also should have put an update for the extrnal drive to be able to play games in!

I have to admit that the PS3 is a still a little pricy for a game console at this point in its life time!

I can come up with 2!!

manufacture defective!!

Yeah, sorry, I didn't notice I was on Guru3D suddenly! Get real.

Intel is coming out with a new GGPU which has been designed from the ground up as a serious graphics processing unit that can handle CPU operations.

Maybe M$ can use this to settle the war, nay grudge match, in 5years time over who has the best Console.

As it stands, the cell processor is still the most advanced, and highest performing multimedia processor on the planet, and no sum of generic components can come close.

I'm yet to hear of any server farms deploying clusters of Xbox360's .. yet they are deploying clusters of PS3's or Cell's.
Read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playstation_3_cluster

Video Processing Card Some companies, such as Leadtek, have plans to release a PCI-E card based upon the Cell to allow for "faster than real time" transcoding of H.264, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 video. "Leadtek demos Cell chip on a card".

Supercomputing IBM's latest supercomputer, IBM Roadrunner, is a hybrid of General Purpose CISC Opteron as well as Cell processors. This system assumed the #1 spot on the June 2008 Top 500 list as the first supercomputer to run at petaFLOPS speeds, having gained a sustained 1.026 petaFLOPS speed using the standard linpack benchmark. IBM Roadrunner uses the PowerXCell 8i version of the Cell processor, manufactured using 65 nm technology and enhanced SPUs that can handle double precision calculations in the 128-bit registers, reaching double precision 102 GFLOPs per chip.[39][40]

[edit] Cluster computing Clusters of PlayStation 3 consoles are an attractive alternative to high-end systems based on Cell blades. Innovative Computing Laboratory, a group led by Jack Dongarra, in the Computer Science Department at the University of Tennessee, investigated such an application in depth.[41] Terrasoft Solutions is selling 8-node and 32-node PS3 clusters with Yellow Dog Linux pre-installed, an implementation of Dongarra's research. As reported by Wired Magazine on October, 17, 2007, an interesting application of using PlayStation 3 in a cluster configuration was implemented by Astrophysicist Dr. Gaurav Khanna, from the Physics department of University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, who replaced time used on supercomputers with a cluster of eight PlayStation 3s.[42] The computational Biochemistry and Biophysics lab at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, in Barcelona, deployed in 2007 a BOINC system called PS3GRID[43] for collaborative computing based on the CellMD software, the first one designed specifically for the Cell processor.

[edit] Distributed Computing With the help of the computing power of over half a million PlayStation 3 consoles, the distributed computing project Folding@Home has been recognized by Guinness World Records as the most powerful distributed network in the world. The first record was achieved on September 16, 2007, as the project surpassed one petaFLOPS, which had never been reached before by a distributed computing network. Additionally, the collective efforts enabled PS3 alone to reach the petaFLOPS mark on September 23, 2007. In comparison, the world's second most powerful supercomputer at the time, IBM's BlueGene/L, performed at around 478.2 teraFLOPS. This means Folding@Home's computing power is approximately twice BlueGene/L's (although the CPU interconnect in BlueGene/L is more than one million times faster than the mean network speed in Folding@Home.). In late 2008, A cluster of 200 PlayStation 3 consoles was used to generate a rogue SSL certificate, effectively cracking its encryption.[44]

[edit] Mainframes IBM announced April 25, 2007 that it will begin integrating its Cell Broadband Engine Architecture microprocessors into the company's line of mainframes.[45]

I'm at the Swiss University where they used the PS3 cluster to break that encryption system. It's all about PS3 and its CELL processor in the scientific community for cheap processing power lately.

I wouldn't be suprised quite a few sales are coming from labs around the world, not even gamers.

debro, no offence, but i don't think all the information you have put up in your last post is relevent to the topic. if you felt that the above post was worthy of our attention, then you could have simply put a link in your post instead!

The WII has made it big with WII-FIT. Anyone and everyone seems to be striving toward fitness and this program takes the boredom out of weight loss. I don't know too much about the hardware and graphics capabilities of the different systems. The WII fits my families needs just fine even though I think that it is a bit pricey.

I beg to differ. It's worthy of a read.
Apologies for not posting a link, but what are the odds that the M$ fanboys wouldn't click it anyway? What's the odd's they wouldn't bother reading it, even though it's in front of them?

The PS3 was designed during boom-times, as a dedicated multimedia procesor, designed for heavy processing & operational lifespan exceeding 10years. The Xbox360 was hobbled together from generic spare PC parts & adapted to use.

The vision of IBM & Sony in creating Cell processor will make them much profit in a few years.

Teams of programmers (and students as well) are working on the Cell architecture now .. in a few years, these guys will end up writing applications, and games, for this architecture, the price of manufacturing for the cell processor will drop to nothingness .. and in a short time, the Cell will be mass-produced, TV's/set-top boxes/Bluray players .. you name it, it's being made with CELL processors. The massive manufacturing scale will lower the cost of the processor to pittence.
Microsoft has based theirs on common PC hardware.. much of which will reduce in cost, but not to the same scale .. in a year or sp it will reach the point where the hardware costs will begin to rise, because it's no longer off-shelf hardware, but is solely produced for Xbox360's, and hence subject to custom charges. At this point M$ will be deciding whether it's feasible to continue the Xbox360 line with possible compatability problems, or just make a new (incompatible) console line & ditch exising xbox360 customer.

So while Sony (and IBM) are shouldering the costs now, in a few years:
1) There will be scores of application (and games) programmers familiar with Cells programming language & abilities.
2) The manufacturing costs will be absolutely pittance.
3) The Cell architecture is expandable to incorporate more cells.
4) The Cell processors will benefit in terms of reduced die sizes, and hence lower manufacturing costs & lower power consumption.

M$ will either be forced to make an entirely new console product, or increase the cost of their existing console (not to mention design fees), or contine with Xbox360 line with possible compatibility issues.

Please note, I AM NOT a sony fanboy. Infact, im open to ANY manufacturer. Well...except phillips, LOL. But I read somewhere a while back that Sony PS3's were future proof. And I dont mean the Firmware upgradeability. I heard something along the lines of not tapping all of its potential. (Yes, Im talking about its GPU capability). Not even by 1/3rd. If thats true, I think their price MAY be justified. But I am not buying one. Im pretty happy with my PC If the PS3 could do even 1/10th what my computer can do, I'd consider it. The PS3 is both gaming rig(not into it), and a means for blu-ray playback(TOO EXPENSIVE RIGHT NOW). Give me a PC anyday of the week.

But it just has an Nvidia 7800 Graphics Card in there.

These are now very old in computing terms.

Sony were designing their own GPU for the PS3, couldn't get it right on time so just went for a version based on Nvidia's NV47 7800 card.

PS3 power is in the CELL architecture. GPU are specialised processors designed to handle specific algorithms relative to graphics. There is nothing the graphic card can do that a CELL processor cannot complement.

The CELL will just take over the workload the graphic card cannnot handle itself. You can already see this in current games. In theory the X360 games should always look better and have better FPS. The reality is that for most well developped titles, you cannot see a difference between both games and even if you find some, they are so small and precise you won't notice them during normal gameplay.

The CELL was supposed to handle all the graphhics of the PS3 originally with a graphic card doing minimal work. Problem was that cell was new, noone knew how to code that effectively so Sony went to Nvidia for a graphic card so the console could see playable games immediatly and not in 2010.

As time passes, the CELL will gradually be taking more and more off the graphic card on PS3. You can see the evolution by noticing the first games for PS3 were relying heavily on the Nvidia graphic card (and looked worse than on X360) and now the workload is more evenly balanced between the CELL and the GC.

That's why I keep saying in this console war, and especially on a site not designed for graphic card comparison and discussion, we should not be discussing of direct GC comparaison because it has no real meaning.

The two consoles hardware are lightyears from each other in terms of quality and theoritical overall capability.

The only saving grace of the X360 is its price and its lineup of games, and to be honest that's saving it ONLY in US. Europe and Japan has nearly equal or more PS3 sold than X360. I believe the only country with more X360 than PS3 over here is UK and the console has been out one less year than the X360.

That said I don't believe at all in sales numbers, they don't mean anything until several years in. 2-3 years is nothing for any console, it's just the beginning. Take DS vs PSP. PSP was selling like crap for years, then suddenly couple exclusive great games came out and sales skyrocketed....making it anything, but a failure.

Ramza you actually put up better arguments than both Kazuo Hirai and Arron Greenberg put together.

Very interesting read.

guys, i think all of you that are saying but the gpu is soo '2-3 years ago' should take a step back!

your graphics card is only as good if you have a fast processing cpu speed, and ram to back it up with!!

i'm not going into the CPU on the ps3 coz its been done to death.

the ram is shared as it can be used as a multipule between system and graphics! the 360 doesnt do this, the ram is fixed!!

so if you guys do your sums properly, thats some system!!

and have you guys ever fitted a fast graphics card to a slow cpu and low ram? its not that great!!

Been doing some reading on the Cell Processor. It is an interesting technology. From what I got from the article, it is a single processor with a souped up FPU's/ALU's, the SPE's. I can see why it accels on stuff that requires number crunching like decoding/encoding video and floating point intensive graphics. You can't really compare it to other processors out like Intel IA32. These processors have been designed to be backwards compatible. This compatibility comes at a cost of speed. Not only that, but the chipsets are designed that way also so there is another road block.

With that said, we are gonna see some stuff in the next 10 years that are going to blow the pants off even Cell processors, ie Quantum computers. Cryptologists are already sweating over it and trying to come up with new encryption techniques since a Quantum computer could crack the strongest encryption out there in hours.

for once i'll agree with you, the cell cancels out the weak graphics card!!

also, because of the cell, you can have smarter AI due to the major calculations, its just a shame that some companies are too lazy to exploit this!!

Now you're getting it
The Cell isn't supposed to have ANY dedicated video chip installed. The cell processor, and calling it a cpu is totally misleading, is an entire system on a chip including audio & video crunching.

The crappy dedicated video chip was an after-thought kludged in to aid initial phasing in, for lazy programmers, so that they wouldn't be working in a completely alien system.

I'd be suprised if in a few years the newer models didn't simply discard the dedicated video chip, and with shrinking of the die & lower power requirements, they increase the clock rate & implement software emulation for the crappy dedicated video chip in the earlier systems.

Unfortunately, now that the dedicated video chip is in the earlier systems, sony can't ditch support for it entirely - the tech support calls (and possibly class-action lawsuits) would be a massive drain on their resources.

Originally posted by Omegaman7769 " If the PS3 could do even 1/10th what my computer can do, I'd consider it. "

The PS3 can run the PPC version of most linux distro's, and most linux distro's have more freeware programs than you can shake a stick at, and they're totally free http://www.cdfreaks.com/jochem/../im...ies/2/wink.gif
So in actuality, the PS3 can probably do 1000x what you use your current PC for now.

So are you going to throw away your PC now?

An enterprising nerd has also run Windows Vista using software emulation under linux .. but it's unviable, due to the delays caused by emulating an incompatible CPU.

It's surprising that M$ hasn't jumped on the PPC bandwagon yet. I guess they're stretched for research & development funds atm.

I have been saying for a few years now that the days of the GPU are numbered ever since the advent of multicore processors.

Valve was interviewed a few years back about it saying the same thing.

Also, lets put this in perspective. The Cell processor is a number crunching monster. You cannot compare it to other CPU's due to the simple fact that other CPU's do more than simple number crunching.

I would like to see how fast it could calculate PI to the 32M point just to see how it would compare to my Quad CPU, Intel Qx6700. My Quad can do it under 20 minutes with SuperPI mod.

The difference is that CPU's are designed to be "jack of all trades", but aren't particularly good at serious multimedia crunching. With multiple cores, they can do it, but even a simple dedicated 3D chip will do it much better, and more efficiently. Similarly with sound processing, while the CPU can do it, it's chews up much resources & CPU time, for something that can be performed quickly & efficiently by a even an inexpensive dedicated sound processor.

The Cell was designed *just* for multimedia. The number crunching abilities only relate to multimedia. And the scientific community is only using the cell processor for applications that are "compatible" or would benefit from the specific abilities of the Cell architecture.

The cell isn't designed to replace normal PC CPU's - although if sony implemented additional cells inside the architecture (the cell architecture is very expandable) they could take a swipe at the market, but I doubt they will be doing this.

Intel are making a hybrid GGPU which is a GPU with semi-decent CPU abilities - and who knows, it mighty be the future.

It will be interesting to see how this all fans out over the next few years.

It's interesting to note that the RIS & CIS architectures are still battling it out, as the PPC architecture (Cell) is Reduced Instruction Set, while our Desktop CPU's are Complex Instruction Set. That war has been going on for about 15-20years now, and there's still no clear winner.

I have to agree with Debro that a CPU even multi core cannot handle multimedia well. For instance, I have an Intel 1.6 ghz dual core processor netbook that struggles to playback HD video, because it does not feature a dedicated graphics processor.

I dont know how people can keep saying the xbox360 is better than the ps3? I have both, but right now my 360 RROD for the 3rd time. There is no way people or microsoft can justify this. It doesnt matter how much better games xbox 360 has. Without a system, you cant play the games.

Well...I can see I have some serious reading to do, if I wanna challenge statements in here. We all have our own opinions. My opinion is, a pc out of the box, or built is ready to handle virtually anything you can teach it. THATS what im into. A PS3, and a 360 is a gaming machine. Thats what it was designed for. Well... I suppose the PS3 was ALSO intended for blu playback. A PC has more expandability than a gaming machines wet dream! Theres no question in that.
Please note, I respect EVERY opinion here. Infact I bow at most of you. You obviously know ALOT more than me. Im simply speaking from logic, from what I see. http://www.cdfreaks.com/jochem/../im...4/bigsmile.gif If im underestimating the gaming rigs, I sincerely apologize. But know this, PC's will be more than likely running EVERY one of those games within a few years. So why would I want a rig, thats DOOMED to failure, or extinction. Ok ok, pc's become outdated too http://www.cdfreaks.com/jochem/../im...es/2/smile.gifhttp://www.cdfreaks.com/jochem/../im...es/2/smile.gif
What a vicious cycle, LOL. Sad but true, im over it.

you're absolutely right!!!

you do have some serious reading to do!!

especially the last 10 posts or so!!

@Debro

Drivers play a big part in speed of these GPU's. With that said, I have seen some 3D graphics done in assembler under 512KB in size that would blow your mind and would run easily on an ancient 486 just fine. The software industry has moved away from small-compact in favor of quick output. Memory is cheap but the more you use the more you lose speed-wise. Sorry, must be the AL programmer coming out in me.

Hell yeah, totally correct!
It's amazing how often ATI will release a new drivers, and owners get a 10% speedup over the previous revision.

Unfortunately, programming at low level is very time consuming, and beyond the patience of most.

If you really want to go hardcore for speed, you can program in machine language, but you're really asking for trouble, and most people's eyes water just looking at it, even in Hex

I know mine did, back in Uni when they made us program simple IO operations using a crappy 4Mhz CPU to make lights blink with input from an integral timer.

Then after they tortured us, they made us do it again in assembly language, and then compare our's to the compiled code. The machine code version was significantly more accurate & had response times significantly less, but took most of the tute group more than 12hrs to do something (right) that took just 1hr to bash up in assembly.

Obviously most "programmers" rely on multiple levels of instruction interpreters .. and many again never really see much code, and spend their time playing with another companies game engine which is so far removed from the hardware that it could be adapted for any platform.

Occasionally, some wonderful company will revise their game engine, or lower level interpreters to recognise & optimize certain conditions or sequences & everyone gets a free speed upgrade, on the provisio that they recompile the entire application .. and fingers crossed there's no bugs.

@Debro

"Unfortunately, programming at low level is very time consuming, and beyond the patience of most"

Yea starting out it is but once you learn the ropes, it takes no time really. The learning curve is steep but that is because you have more power at your hands than other languages. Programs in C that I wrote and then wrote in assembler took about the same time if I called the cstd libraries from my assembler. The executable from assembler was 1/10 the size of the C counterpart even though they did the exact same thing with the same functions.

Maybe I'm just not into gaming and therefore don't understand the attraction, but everytime I see my son buy and play a new video game for either the XBox 360 or PC (mostly first person shooters) they're all pretty much the same. The characters , backgrounds, and types of weapons might be different, but the functionality of the games are all exactly the same! Is there anything out there that is truly original?

World of Goo and de Blob on Wii should have a PC version. Boomblox on Wii also. That's for "out of ordinary" games.

On the other hand, you can't expect FPS to be different from FPS either, have your son try some RPGs and RTS, those are completely different from FPS.

FPS-> Dude runs around with various guns .. kills various people/monsters.
RPG's & MMORPGS -> Dude runs around and gains abilities, upgrades armour ... kills people.
RTS-> Dude creates town + Army ... kills people.

They're pretty simple formulas.

Try assassins creed, or thief .. the aims of the games are to *NOT* kill people, except when you really have to

@CompUser

Try Mirrors Edge, Fantastic and very original FPS.