When it comes to technology, I am clueless. So can anybody tell me what are the strength and weakness for all three next-gen systems. Like, how different will the graphics be? Which one is better designed for next-gen? Or what does SPE or CELL or RSX do and how well is it used on each console?

I don' t know anything about technology but what I do know is that the PS3 is the most powerful gaming system on the planet and that it' s much, much more powerful than the 360. Sony said it. It' s true, look it up.

Yeah, but you can' t use your DS as a controller for your PS3. Check Google.

I can' t wait until that guy does the same thing with the Wii and the PS3. Until then I' m going to frequently use the " look it up" phrase.

Ah, well allow me.. Put on a pot of coffee because this will take some time.

Let' s talk about what they all have in common first, all next gen systems are what is called " risc" and that means that the code to run with-in the machine has to be very lean and with few mistakes and or loops, as oposed to " cisc" where it' s run any code.

However, not all cisc are made the same in this next gen, all look to achieve much the same thing, To run games with enough speed, and to do it as cheaply as possible.

The cell is differant because it uses little groups of little cpus to achive what might be done on a much more powerful cpu, like oompa lumpas, Those are the SPE' s and are only good at doing what they are told.

However because they went with this method, it' s required to have 1 general purpose cpu to tell the other guys what to do.

This is good, and bad..
Good because you can get mounds of performance if you have complex streaming code, like say decoding video or encoding data.

But bad, because if code happens to be redundant, it would crash the whole system.

The cell also has no effect on how the graphics look, because the RSX handles all of those.

The CPU' s in the xbox 360 are fine i guess, i would have much rather they used x86 cpus, like pentiums or athlons, those are both powerful and flexable,
But also a great deal more expensive then what microsoft is using now.

The RSX is fine for the world of PCs, where memory is as limited as to how much your motherboard can support, and constantly faster and more sophisticated cisc processors are flying to the market at breakneck speed.

But for a console, it might have some problems.
Unlike the ATI offering, that has a dedicated ram just to AA(getting rid of the jaggies) the RSX has nothing more then software, or it would have to take extra clock cycles to supersample.

The xbox360 has the best gpu on the planet right now, it' s no contest.

Because of this, the graphics will turn out much the same, if not worse then both the xbox 360, and possibly the Wii.

The xbox360 has the best gpu on the planet right now, it' s no contest.


Speaking of the Wii, it' s still up in the air.
Nintendo has never really upped the anti when it comes to graphics, they are more about content that nintendo players have always enjoyed.

I expect it to be nearly, if not more powerful then the xbox 1.

Well, that wasn' t as long as i thought...cancel that coffe.

In Laymans terms; 360 will most likely have the best visuals, PS3 won' t be far behind and Wii, though at the bottom end of the scale should be far superior to the original Xbox.

Wii' s specs haven' t been released and it' s believed that ATi are still working on the GPU and that the processor could clock in at something like 700MHz with a 1Mb L2 cache (so much for Mr Layman).

Depending on how things pan out, publisher support should be much more even and PS3 definately won' t have the volume of titles the PS2 and Playstation had.

Sony has the mindshare advantage but keeps making huge mistakes. Publishers are starting to doubt them, developers are looking to put out multi-platform titles, the price is putting some people off and they meay not even manage to launch worldwide this year.

I still expect Europe to have to wait until 2007.

I think the Wii titles shown so far could' ve been done on the Xbox. Does that mean we should expect better graphics than what we' ve seen so far.
This displacement-mapping the Wii would use that you talked about before, could you explain that in detail?

Nintendo was running everything on pumped up Gamecubes at E3. Wii' s hardware isn' t final yet.

The GPU is almost certainly not finished and the processor is said to be a PowerPC 750GX based on 750FX architecture. The 750FX could run at up to 1.1GHz, so if it' s based on that it will obviously be faster.

We know that the GPU is part of ATi' s R520 range and that in itself would enable the kind of visual output you can see on modern PC' s.

Since developers don' t have final dev-kits yet, then what we' ve seen so far isn' t what you should expect the final games to look like. There' s every possibility that Wii will be 3 - 5 times as powerful (with regard to visuals) as the Xbox.

360 games will see a jump in visual quality next year (well starting in November this year) and then again as developer get their hand on more advanced versions of XNA and then DX10.

...

As for the displacement mapping...

...Nintendo patented a new kind of DPM last year, most likely to be used in Wii. We also know that ATi has worked closely to develop a GPU that would work exactly how Nintendo wanted, leading some (including myself) that Nintendo have created a development environment that includes some advanced form of mapping technique which uses minimal syatem resources, and will be supplied with the final dev-kits.

Ther ARE more efficient ways of mapping, but Nintendo patenting their own would lead me to believe they' ve found an easier way to achieve the same results.

All we can do is wait really. But even if they don' t use displacement mapping, ...if the other specs turn out to be true, Wii will be much more powerful than Xbox was. The fact that Wii also uses a PowerPC processor certainly won' t do them any harm!

they' ve already dissmised rumours about any kind of uniqe shader techniques in Ati' s GPU.

Still, some effects in Mario are great (not unseen on Xbox , but used wise and really cool)

Textures are really sharp too.

What about the Bluray PS3 has? Will that have any effect on the games or is it purely for DVDs?

Blu-ray is no advantage for games ffs.
However yes you could do a mega ownage bundle,like putting some ps2 games into a ps3 blu-ray game for ex.

Blueray is good for 2 things,
Storage and movies, but i also hear it has terrible load time, as something that large, with comparativly little ram would.

Oblivion was on one disc.

Enchanted arms creators thought their game would be on 2 dvd' s and that next gen would req blu-ray format,to their suprice their 50 long main quest adventure fitted on one DVD9 with no problem.

Dont let SONY scare dev or gamers.

http://media.xbox360.ign.com/articles/617/617951/img_2812597.aspx

What does this mean?

It means that if you gave both CPU' s a formula, the cell would come up with the answer faster.

I would however like to see this as to compared to an athlon64 x2.

So what does that do for games specifically?

it doesn' t mean a whole lot for games, there might be better physics..but little else.

You seem a little too optimistic about the Wii hardware. In an IGN article about the Wii price they say that " Technologically, the Wii is approximately 1.5 times as powerful as the GameCube" which is not very impressive.
http://gear.ign.com/articles/710/710252p1.aspx
As a side note, as I' ve stated before they' re also stating that the small difference in price between the Wii and the 360 (in case of a 360 price cut) will make it difficult for Nintendo to convince people to buy the technically inferior Wii.
" a $100 mark-down would make the Core Xbox 360 only $50 more expensive than a $249 Wii."

" While the Wii can certainly of boast many innovations the Xbox 360 lacks, it is a much less powerful system, and the difference in graphical capabilities is rather noticeable if viewed side by side with a new 360 game running in High-Def. Nintendo must feel very confident that they will be able to show potential buyers exactly how much the Wii will change the way we play games if they will launch against the established Xbox 360 with so narrow a price margin."

Also, if the Wii-mote is shown to be something people want, it will be copied to greater effect on the xbox..Or to a lesser extent like the ps3.

Hey ginji. Not to question your quote, but if the 360 took a $100 price cut, that would make the Premium version only $50 more, not the Core right?

So, if they in fact were to cut the price that much, that could be HUGE for them. Just adding my two cents!