First impression: Sonic the Hedgehog
by Adams Briscoe 
{ May 10th 2006 at 11:15PM }
There probably aren't a lot of gamers out there who think about the blue hedgehog and don't have fond memories. The long and short of it are simple: he's come a long way from his grassroots on the Sega Genesis, but Sonic has never looked so good as he does on the PlayStation 3.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Drew @ May 11th 2006 12:11AM
And you know what's really great?
He looks even better on the '360!
Brian @ May 11th 2006 12:42AM
Oh man. Say what you want about the PS3's putrgaeous price and argue about it's controller theft (by the way since when did controllers become a point of contention?) but the PS3 looks to have some awesome games coming out for it that truely take advantage of next-gen hardware. The Marvel game, Heavenly Sword, Sonic, and that's just so far. I am very excited.
Scapegoat @ May 11th 2006 12:44AM
Hmm. Right now I'm on the fence in terms of whether I'll get a 360 or PS3. I'll wait and see what the Christmas period brings.
Eric @ May 11th 2006 1:11AM
The only PS3 exclusives I WAS looking forward to (until the price became 2x my budget) were Gran Tourismo and MGS...
The rest of the games I am drooling over are cross platforms...ie Grand Theft Auto, Sonic, I could go on.
I hope to GOD Sony knows what they are doing. And I hope to god they didn't have stupid yes men Analysists telling them "oh yes consumers will buy a $600 system. Of course they all want blu ray and 1080p really badly."
Ian @ May 11th 2006 4:39AM
i'd be wondering whether they would use the Nintendo Wii version as they have the new and improved (cough-ripoff) ps3 pad at their disposal now? and come on 340 for the cheap one where you actually loose the hdmi port (where has that full HD experience Sony were plugging), along with list of other features. makes you wonder doesn't it. lot of money 410, hope they give games away with these packages like "The Marvel One", ha, if your going to brag about games, actually find out about what your going on about, there much more impressive games come than those, for example the one that everyones saying is the best looking thing ever(of course until they saw the Halo 3 Trailer) Metal Gear Solid 4? i'll think i will save my money for the moment, or at least until there is something truely impressive enough for me to part with 400+games. happy hunting.
OyoyoY123 @ May 11th 2006 5:41AM
U dont see PS3 fanboys pissing at other systems and leaving nasty messages on other fanboys' blogs.
but there are more and mroe and more Xbox360 fanboys decided to be dogs and leave their piss all over Playstation 3 websites.
first,~hey if u dont like it, dont come to its websites.
~gethering from those messages they left, i would say that Xbox fanboys are threatened by ps3.....
~again, PS3 and 360 are taking two different approaches, PS3 is a super computer which supports Lunix, 360 is a next gen game system with next gen grapics. so choose what suits u. If you like 360, fine, I would tell you that is a great choice,b/c the 360 does have some great games.Just like if we were at McDonald's; u wanna eat combo 1 and i'd like some salad, you wouldnt come over and piss on my salad just because it doesnt suit ur taste, would you?
GO TO XBOX 360 fanboys and see for youself, they reported nothing but PS3 news for the past two days... hahahaha
IF u watched all the E3 press conferences, you will notice that Sony is the only one who didnt piss on other companies. They simply addres nintendo and microsoft as "other companies."
Nintendo needs to use PSP as example in order to prove how well the DS is doing..... didnt they say somehing about their goal for DS is NOT to race with PSP? and dont even get me started on Microsoft.
"a dog can bark and piss and eat and ****, but a man will try to improve his work by any means."
(I like dogs, and i'd like to know how dogs feel.)
I am gonna get Xbox 360, then Wii and finally PS3.~!!!!(just like evolution!!!)
Paul @ May 11th 2006 7:55AM
#5- Ps3 is not a super computer that plays games... it is a blu-ray player that plays games. 360 is a gaming system that will eventually play HD.
That said I am still going to buy a Ps3... but that is why we will lose the console war.
Catastrophic @ May 11th 2006 8:40AM
What are you talking about, Xbox 360 fanboys attack PS3 fanboys? I believe i've seen loads of PS3 fanboys (boots in particular) constantly on Xbox360fanboy.com and attacking every new update.
You should go check out other places, like SA, they seem cool with every console and they don't go around acting like fanboys. Everyones there is talking about getting an Xbox 360 and a Wii, for the same price as a PS3. I'd rather do that too, due to the outrageous price they put on it. I'm a college kid and I can no way spend that much on a system that, quite frankly, is only perhaps slightly better in power, but when did power make better games? Xbox was powerfuller than PS2 but you see beautiful games on both systems (BLACK!) so really, I don't wan't to dish out $600 for it. And who cares about the Blu-ray system? I can't remember people running out into stores and buying DVD's when they were high-priced.
Anyways, i'm glad Sonic is coming to both systems, as its a good-solid game, alittle tiredly-overused you ask me, but good.
Microdot @ May 11th 2006 12:30PM
hey paul.... so what would that make the xbox? or the wii?
i dont know if i would use the term "super computer".. but its definitely a step above the rest. 7 core cpu... dual ind gpu.. open pipeline.. 60gb hdd.. can double as a dvr... wireless lan... bluetooth... usb and wireless usb... *nix os. sounds like a computer to me. almost like comparing people paying more for an apple computer, and people settling for an e-machines from best buy. neither choice is bad.. its whatever fits you.
personally.. i think sonic looks pretty damn good. im more excited to see ff12 (for the ps2... but thanks to backwards compatibility, will play on either) and more so ff13 and versus. also... eight days is looking pretty damn good as well.
boots @ May 11th 2006 12:31PM
"What are you talking about, Xbox 360 fanboys attack PS3 fanboys? I believe i've seen loads of PS3 fanboys (boots in particular) constantly on Xbox360fanboy.com and attacking every new update."
I've only posted like what... 2 times or so? I only remember having criticized Microsoft for buying Lionhead, and didn't throw crap to your console. Another time I was there and stood up to the shit that was being thrown at PS3, not attacking the 360. I don't go there for the purpose of throwing shit as most 360 fanboys do here. Examples: Cage, Suicide Ninja, The Guru, Drew, and so on.
Also, nearly all posts in PS3fanboy have one 360 fanboy throwing shit at PS3. Or go to PS3Today and see for yourself that the same happens there. That's not true in the contrary case.
Ironically, there are no articles on PS3fanboy throwing shit at 360, but there are *tons* of articles throwing shit at PS3 on 360 fan sites.
I guess 360 supporters have a console inferiority complex. Even 360 bloggers, such as C. Grant and Ken Weeks throw shit at PS3. Awesome.
LongshotX @ May 11th 2006 6:18PM
The Xbox 360?s CPU, codenamed Xenon, takes a general purpose approach to microprocessor design and implements three general purpose PowerPC cores, meaning they can execute any type of code and will do it relatively well.
The PlayStation 3?s CPU, the Cell processor, pairs a general purpose PowerPC Processing Element (PPE, very similar to one core from Xenon) with 7 working Synergistic Processing Elements (SPEs) that are more specialized hardware designed to execute certain types of code.
Graphics- GPU comparisions
The GPU in the Xbox 360 uses a different architecture than we are used to seeing. To be sure, vertex and pixel shader programs will run on the part, but not on separate segments of the hardware. Vertex and pixel processing differ in purpose, but there is quite a bit of overlap in the type of hardware needed to do both. The unified shader architecture that ATI chose to use in their Xbox 360 GPU allows them to pack more functionality onto fewer transistors as less hardware needs to be duplicated for use in different parts of the chip and will run both vertex and shader programs on the same hardware.
We?ve mentioned countless times that the PlayStation 3 has the more PC-like GPU out of the two consoles we?re talking about here today, and after this week?s announcement, you now understand why.
The PlayStation 3?s RSX GPU shares the same ?parent architecture? as the G70 (GeForce 7800 GTX), much in the same way that the GeForce 6600GT shares the same parent architecture as the GeForce 6800 Ultra. Sony isn?t ready to unveil exactly what is different between the RSX and the G70, but based on what?s been introduced already, as well as our conversations with NVIDIA, we can gather a few item.
Interesting Read:
From what I read the PS3 processing power is only marginally better than the CPU found in the Xbox 360. But the GPU is only a slightly modified Nvidia 7800GTX. While the Xbox 360 Gpu is in an league of its own. I think as time passes we will recall that old adage "anything you can do I can do better". But the PS3 will have the advantage of displaying more on screen. Which do you prefer? More refined graphics or more stuff on screen?
LongshotX @ May 11th 2006 6:19PM
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2453
here is the link
Microdot @ May 11th 2006 7:00PM
the one item that it appears they failed to go into detail on, for whatever reason, is picking apart the actual processors themselves. having a super high throughput gpu is wonderful... but strapping a 7800gtx on a pentium 1 166mhz isnt going to do squat now, is it? while the 360s cpu has one enormous bottleneck with the cache, the ps3's cell has no limitations... (there is no bottleneck with cache it moves as quick as data is pushed. handles more as system ram than core cache. with an eib of 4 16byte rings with 64 bit tags, each spe allows a faster throughput individually than any other cpu out there... chained spe's - of which the cell in the ps3 is running 7 with 1 as redundant - creates a mini network capable of breaking extreme data chunks down to nil) the single most important is the extremely mediocre SHARED 1mb l2 cache. even on normal pc processors... thats miniscule nowdays. and... as they stated, it WILL be the eventual stopping block to just how much the 360 can do. having the worlds most powerful gpu is great... but if the cpu is incapable of pushing it... its wasted.
from your article:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2453&p=3
"The three cores share a meager 1MB L2 cache, which should be fine for single threaded games but as developers migrate more to multi-threaded engines, this small cache will definitely become a performance limiter. With each core being able to execute two threads simultaneously, you effectively have a worst case scenario of 6 threads splitting a 1MB L2 cache. As a comparison, the current dual core Pentium 4s have a 1MB L2 cache per core and that number is only expected to rise in the future."
Cage @ May 11th 2006 7:15PM
From Microdot its amazing that he can admit the 360 has "the worlds most powerful gpu". With all his random posting I would also like to nominate him PS3 Fanboy of the year. Your parents should be proud.
Catastrophic @ May 11th 2006 9:06PM
Whats Microdot doing? Like I said earlier, slightly powerfuller system or not, you won't see a difference in graphics, not one bit. Just like Black was on the Xbox and PS2, they looked the same to me, and its arguably the best looking game on the 2 consoles, so whats with all this jibberish? Stop it, your logic has failed.
boots (former bd) @ May 11th 2006 9:26PM
Well said again, Microdot. It doesn't matter if your GPU is great if it doesn't have a CPU of its level.
Also, don't get your hopes up 360boys. The reason the GPU for 360 is so good is because it's easy to program . It has unified shader architecture after all, which means that you can simply send the shader programs regardless of which pipelines they use.
Still, the RSX working *optimally* will beat the Xenos in how many shaders per cicle (and therefore per second) it crunches; of course it will be a lot harder to reach optimal performance in segregated shaders because you have to direct to different pipelines the different shader programs, and you might get more bottlenecks (just go to anandtech.com). But console games are optimized, unlike PC games which are designed to run in any platform. That's why PS3 can beat 360 graphicwise: because both will be programmed according to their strengths.
Yes, it's likely that the 360 will look better on cross-platform titles (i.e. titles from developers that don't have the time to optimize PS3 code), but I believe the PS3 has a lot more potential, and that its exclusives will look better than 360 exclusives. Just look at GT5 outputing at 1080p already; or look at how both FFXIII and MGS4 look better than anything on 360 that has been demoed, and both are 1080p.
I also believe that PS3 has a lot more potential (graphicswise) because:
--Thanks to Blu-ray, it doesn't have to rely on data decompression as much as the 360 has to (so either 360 wastes CPU power or simply has lossy compression that makes things look worse, or both), saving processing power.
--Thanks to Blu-ray, it doesn't have to rely as much on procedural algorithms as the 360 (again, PS3 saves processing power).
--It has the hard drive to rely on to reduce loading times.
--If programmed optimally, there should be no concerns about its GPU architecture, or CPU architecture.
That's not counting 1080p nor cut-scenes.
The cons should be it's very hard (and costly) to do all the above, like program it optimally, or create a lot of content to fill Blu-ray discs, so only the exclusive games (and most likely, the best of it) from big developers will actually take advantage of all its features.
Oh, and LongshotX, the RSX was long ago analized by Ageia (or was it Havok? I don't remember), and they said it's like a 7900 GTX, only better.
boots (former bd) @ May 11th 2006 9:33PM
Wait... the Xenos is easy to program for AND it has little or no bottlenecks, that's where its greatness relies. That's why ATI feels so confident in their "elegant" design. And as Microsoft said, "it's more Bruce Lee than Brute Force" (even when both games sucked), as opposed to the RSX I guess. That's what I meant.
microdot @ May 11th 2006 10:59PM
From Microdot its amazing that he can admit the 360 has "the worlds most powerful gpu"
actually... nobody knows. its a closed proprietary system that few are privileged to the inner workings of... people have analyzed what they test, but nobody can tell you 100% one way or the other without some educated assumptions and comparisons with architecture they do know. what it is capable of at the current moment though is quite good.
everyone seems to group me into a nice little stereotype with the ps3 fanclub... while i like their setup and the future of whats there... they arent the only player on the market here. m$ with the original xbox had a damn good system. it is still a damn good system. i still own the first xbox. the 360, graphically, is damn nice. unfortunately... its hardware is crap. there is no quality control at m$ (or has everyone forgotten the now 90,000, and growing, units - and that is SELF ADMITTED BY M$... NINETY THOUSAND... over 3% - returned units for overheating/shutting down, as well as the class action lawsuit against them?) after going through two brand new systems with the same shitty hardware... i called it. sold mine, and wont be touching another. compounded by that, when i called to have it serviced, and met with an ungodly turn around time that -i- would have to pay for to send.
real simple cold hard facts are: both systems are nice (outside of the obvious qa issues with microsoft and its lack of giving a shit) and both in gameplay (not features mind you... sony pulls waaaaaay ahead in that arena) are almost identical.... for now. sony has a little more horsepower on both the processor and arguably the gpu... but the end result is too close to say it is worse or better than the ps3. THE DIFFERENCE IS.... while the ps3 is only marginally better (depending on who you talk to) than the 360 now.... the ps3 has potential that the 360 cant even come close to. ever. think back to the release date on both the xbox and ps2. graphics were mediocre, overall gameplay was decent.. but nothing to jump up and down about. as time moved on... the systems were pushed to their limits by programmers. games looked better. graphics were more fluid. gameplay was tweaked to give everything the systems have. the limit on the 360 is much much lower than the ps3. and not by a little. that is why sony, as well as everyone else, is confident in a roadmap of 8-10 years, while microsoft will be forced to redesign and come out with xbox v2 long beforehand just to keep up with the ability of the ps3. if for no other reason... it will have long since depleted its ability to squeeze the sheer amount of data into a dvd workspace (remember... game companies have to program to the common denominator... and you are either going to be capped, or everyone is going to get to run out and buy an external hd dvd for the 360) as well as reaching the bottleneck on the base throughput of the processor itself.
so.. you can continue to whine and cry and bitch and moan like a school girl all you like. it wont change cold hard data or the facts. the only point you can even come close to complaining about is the price tag... and as i said before, if its too rich for your blood... fine. go play your "almost next gen" 360 and be happy about it. the rest of us prefer a little better system and have the money to buy the nicer things in life.
and cage... will you please pass along a message to your mom for me. tell that bitch to quit ad-libbing on the words she cant sound out when reading this to you. you seem to have a hard time following along in the conversation. ok? thanks.
boots (former bd) @ May 11th 2006 11:18PM
Microdot:
3%? HA! It was MUCH more than that. Just look at every poll taken on the net. There's gross satisfaction with 360 users (not fanboys).
50% of IGN's 360s ended up being defective. Most defective console ever.
microdot @ May 11th 2006 11:36PM
i was jsut being nice and using the numbers microsoft gave, so there is no room for argument. sane people are aware that the numbers are much higher due to a slew of reasons... ie: like selling them outright just to get rid of them.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051205-5687.html
"While Microsoft has claimed that only 3 percent of Xbox 360 units have problems, Robert Byers of Chicago believes that the company is lying, and he plans to take them to court.
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/technology/personal_technology/14471400.htm?source=rss&channel=mercurynews_technology"
Drew @ May 13th 2006 2:48AM
Ahahaha. This is great. Check it out, fools.
The PS3 is actually 70 GIGAFLOPS SLOWER than what Sony promised at E3 2005! That?s right, 70 FREAKIN? GIGAFLOPS. Talk about over-promising and under-delivering!
That leaves it at only about 15 gigaflops faster than the Xbox 360. That?s without the OS running, which, according to Sony themselves*, will take up about 25% of all CPU power. If you factor that little bit of ?minor? information into the equation, you?re left with a peak processing power of? (Drum roll, please.)
100.2 gigaflops.
Bam. Fifteen whole gigaflops LESS than the Xbox 360.
In ADDITION to all of that 18.75% of all of the system RAM is taken up by the CPU, also admitted by Sony*.
?
Here?s the article, in its entirety:
At this year?s E3 (or thereabouts) Sony proclaimed that their processor could achieve 200GFLOPS! However, according to IBM?s white paper, only 155.5 GFLOPS was actually achieved (Table 4). BUT, IBM?s tests used all 8 SPEs. The PS3 will only use 7 SPE?s, due to manufacturing yield issues.
The efficiency of the Cell is 75.9% (Table 4), with of a theoretical peak of 201GFLOPs (Figure 5)?running 8 SPEs at 25.12GFLOPS apiece (Table 2). Similarly, the theoretical peak for the PS3?s processor will be 176GFLOPS, using 7 SPEs at 25.12GFLOPS apiece. Assuming the same 75.9% efficiency, we could easily interpolate the PS3?s Cell to be capable of 133.6GFLOPS.
The take home message is that with the PS3 being capable of 133.6 GFLOPS and the Xbox 360 being capable of 115.2 GFLOPS, the PS3 is not nearly as far ahead of the Xbox 360 as we were lead to believe. We should expect relatively similar power coming from both consoles, processor power, and ease of programming all considered.
Not to mention that one of the SPE?s in the PS3 are reserved for the OS and the bottlenecking of the data transfer between the SPE?s and the on board memory. I see the 360 hand in hand with a gaming Revolution taking home this next round at least, if not the whole cake over time.
?
Credit goes to: http://xbox.joystiq.com/2006/04/30/ps3-smoke-and-mirrors-ibm-specs/
You can get the information that this analysis was based off of here: http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/power/library/pa-cellperf/?ca=drs-#table4
* = http://www.ps3portal.com/?view=article&article=352&p=2
Unlike Me @ May 13th 2006 2:47PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_4InHXPHvs
Guys check this out. P$3 Indeed.
boots (former bd) @ May 13th 2006 10:22PM
Hey Drew, that would be a good analysis if:
a. The Xbox 360 processor wouldn't use one of its threads *constantly* for the OS too.
b. The Xbox 360 processor was 100% efficient.
The Cell was designed to be a more efficient processor than the one in 360, otherwise IBM is screwed. Just look at the efficiency table comparison with other processors. Do you really think the 360 processor is 100% efficient? Or hell, 75% efficient?
Worse news for the 360 processor is that it will have to decompress and procedurally generate everything thanks to its lack of media disc space (i.e. no HD-DVD nor Blu-ray). Couple that with its OS, and you've got 3 of the 6 threads constantly occupied, while PS3 has only 2 of 7 constantly occupied. That leaves 3 of the 360 threads versus 5 of the PS3 threads (and guess which thread goes faster). And that?s not even counting the PPE.
So who should we believe? You? I choose to believe the centered opinion. If the only opinions available are that from ATI and nVidia, then you synthesize both to get a general perspective. Or better yet, developers (of cross-platform titles) already told us their opinion: the difference (at least, for their titles) will be indiscernible.
Also, you need to read the comments on the xbox360 fanboy section (which not only are interesting, but proved your conclusions to be BS) instead of simply posting the conclusions you quickly (and conveniently) jumped to because they seemed favorable, without a deep and rigorous analysis.
In my opinion, PS3 has more potential, and I've already explained why on posts above. As I said, the unified shader architecture, while not having to be optimized (because it is already optimized *on hardware*), console games have a clear difference in development from PC games: They are optimized for a single specific platform, which means that the RSX will be able to reach its peak if optimized correctly, just like the cell.
The good thing about the 360 is its ease of development, both software-wise (tools) and hardware-wise (lack of bottlenecks leads to lack of optimization which saves time and therefore money), so initially at least, if not always, 360 cross platform games, especially the ones from indie developers (if there are any) will look better than the ones on PS3. But for exclusive titles from Blockbuster makers, I believe the PS3 has a lot more to be exploited for. It has already proven to do 1080p after all.
All this is assuming the PS3 isn?t already dead in the water with its 500 price point (not 600, as the 500 pack is not retarded like the 300 pack for the 360). This is left up to be seen. If the hardcore and the rich don?t make it sell out its first 6 million consoles, or Sony doesn?t change the price (which is the only thing they can do now), then Sony is in deep trouble. If they do sell out, but demand starts to slow down, it would be obviously smart to follow with a price drop almost immediately. If that doesn?t happen, then no games will ever take advantage of the PS3 potential.
Oh, and ?Unlike you?, that reminds me of the time when the first Xbox was announced. Or better yet, of the times actual *finished hardware* on 360s have frozen (or worse, crashed).
Catastrophic @ May 14th 2006 9:17AM
To #1, I agree.
After going to E3, Sonic does look better on the 360 than on the PS3. It handled better too on the 360(in my opinion, atleast at this stage of development), the PS3's controller wasn't as good as the 360's, tilt is great, I admit, but it is too light. I'm sure slapping a battery in there may solve the problem though.
Drew @ May 14th 2006 2:51PM
And how does that PS3 controller work?
I don't know where they put the batteries.
I didn't get to go to E3 this year, else I would have found out myself.
ozymandias @ May 15th 2006 1:43PM
boots
most of the gameing blog world has already found the article posted by drew to be mostly assumptions and fanboy love. however
"The Xbox 360 processor wouldn't use one of its threads *constantly* for the OS too."
would you care to post were you found that info. windows xp, ce, and even the suck ass ME didnt use any system process while the cpu was idle. go ahead and bring up you task manager and look beside explorer, 00 right? look down at the bottom at cpu usage. unless you have some nasty spyware, or programs running in the background its probably sitting at 1 maybe 2 percent. So why would the 360s os be different?
Your second point was that the 360 cpu isnt 100% efficient. i would be foolish to say that the 360 is 100% or even 95% efficient. but its still pretty efficient. this can be seen in the games. according to microsoft the majority of developers are doing things no differently than they have been on the pc. a single thread is used for all game code, physics, and AI. the fact that the 360 can run games at the same level of a high end pc on one thread is amazing and proof of its efficiency.
The truth is, its hard to compare the cpus because they perform so different. take animation for example. the 360 can use poses that are stored in system memory as examples and interpolate new poses as needed based on the stored poses. the ps3 can be coded is such a way that 2 spes can constantly update a dispayed pose with a stored one. both give the apperance of fluid "life like" motion, and when it boils down to the end product, neither process it better than the other.