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[OCASM]

Custom hardware that gets you better performance at a lower price = Good.
Exotic hardware that makes the lives of devs hell = Bad.

 

[winjer]

ps5 is linux based or something. Chips are custom to a degree too.
So obviously it's not one button press away but for sure it's quite simple... yet they had to rebuild gow 2018 from sratch porting it from ps4... so maybe not easy

Not Linux. It's based on FreeBSD.

 

[rofif]

Not Linux. It's based on FreeBSD.

I have no idea. Just know it's not dx12 windows environment.
Also, bsd is almost linux

 

[winjer]

I have no idea. Just know it's not dx12 windows environment.
Also, bsd is almost linux

Only in the sense that both are Unix based.

 

[UnNamed]

People keep saying videogames used to have exotic hardwares and "boooh now are just PC", but since 1972, many console actually had pretty standard chipsets.

Atari 2600 had a MOS 6507 used in NES, AppleII, Lynx and other 30 systems or even more.
Megadrive had a 68000 also used in Amiga, Neogeo, ST, X68000 and so on, not counting many arcade boards.
Do we talk about the Z80?
PSX used a RISC3000, the same family we also found in N64 and some workstation and arcade.
Gamecube used a IBM CPU used for like 10 years in many devices, some of them even used in space rockets
XBOX had a Pentium 3 CPU
Dreamcast and Saturn used "not" custom Hitachi chips.

Different story is about video chips, but just that.

The only chipset specifically created for games were the EE, Cell and the Xenon.

 

[MarkMe2525]

It was out of necessity. There was no other way they could build a console with "pc" parts at an affordable price point.

It would be neat to see a modern stab at a "custom" modern chipset. I don't know what that looks like.

 

[simpatico]

I like the Nintendo cartridge idea where a game maker could choose to add actual hardware components into the cartridge to improve the graphics. People say it's not practical now, but it was probably even less practical then. Would love to see that kind of wild ambition return to the gaming hardware milieu.

 

[MrA]

This premise also ignores how custom computers were in the late 70s 80s and early 90s most computers had custom chips and even a pc would have mountains of custom stuff if you upped the graphics and sound capabilities
and even into the 2000s until opengl and direct x really developed pcs were heavily proprietary good luck running a glide game without a voodoo card
Proprietary hardware back then was a must to specialize and get results, now unnecessary, just look at the steam deck off the shelf apu ,400 dollars and plenty of power,
Ps5 and xsx are delivering amazing visuals and a reasonable price even the xss (well outside of jaded hard-core fanboys that will never be happy)
Switch 2 is likely to deliver ps4 visuals on a tablet, why customize when the off the shelf stuff is amazing

 

[calistan]

Given that everything is homogenised and there’s barely any proprietary hardware now, it’s kind of bizarre that people still argue over which console is the best.

It used to be that you could instantly identify a machine from a single screenshot. They had a particular look and feel, and that’s why people became attached to them. Now that’s all been taken away, the only difference is marketing.

 

[Clear]

I think some people are overstating the importance of the source of the CPU and GPU. Yes those components are familiar to the PC market, but the way the system is constructed as a whole is the key thing.

The PS5's i/o integration is pretty radical, and its a huge part of how it can trade blows with Series X despite that system being more powerful based on PC-style metrics.

For obvious reasons this sort of innovation can only really occur in the console space, even if AMD is the one providing the parts.

 

[tygertrip]

Ahh, remember the old days when every console had their own hardware and wasn't just a PC stuffed into a box! When engineers actually put their love and soul into a console and it resulted in industry defining hardware and architecture?

Nah, me neither. Proprietary hardware for consoles actually kind of sucked.

The Sega Saturn, what should have been a slam dunk for Sega considering how much of an innovator they were in the 3d video game scene, with titles such as Virtua Fighter, Daytona USA and Virtua Racing. The company that produced some of the most impressive eye candy arcade games in the early 90s, who was leagues ahead of every other company in the jump to 3d gaming. But then they got infected with the retard virus, and went with a totally weird, obscene, complex design that they expected everyone to understand and utilize. 2D games for the Saturn were difficult to make, and 3D games moreso.

The N64 had the exact same problem and while 3D games looked and played far better on the N64 than they did Saturn, the cartidge based storage format, all the expansions, and in general a confusing architecture is why the Saturn and N64 languished in the PS1's success. It was a simple and easy to develop for architecture with CDs for all the developers storage needs, and it's one of the many reasons for the PlayStation's success.

Not to mention both the N64 and Saturn are notoriously difficult systems to properly emulate thanks to their retarded architecture making reverse engineering them a bitch. N64 guys specifically got so fed up they decided it'd be easier to DECOMPILE the games and port them to PC. With Jak getting a decompilation as well, seems like the same thing is happening to the PS2. Which is good, because the PS2 is also a terribly engineered system.

"buh buh my 155 million units sold" shut the fuck up. It was engineered poorly as Sony focused all of their efforts on the 'EmOTIoN EngINe" and as a result that system was significantly harder to make games for than the PS1, and was weaker than the competition to boot. While the Xbox and Gamecube's visuals have aged gracefully on HDTVs thanks to their adoption of progressive scan over interlaced, the PS2 being weaker resulted in it using 480i which looks like SHIT on HDTVs today. Not to mention just like N64 and Saturn it falls into the category of being a bitch to emulate. Needs a shitton of power and a bunch of patches and graphical fixes for everything since the PS2's GPU rode the short bus and had their own special way of doing things. But hey, at least the hardware was unique and all the games weren't using that gosh darn industry leading Unreal Engine 5!

Or how about the PS3's Cell, an idea which sounded badass and awesome on paper! Power your console using a supercomputer processor, therefore you can have all the powerful processing and calculations you needed for the advanced games coming out at the time. It's genius!



It WAS genius... if you liked worse performance on games than 360 and expensive prices due to hardware being far harder to produce. Oh yeah, can't forget the fact that OVER 17 YEARS LATER Sony STILL can't find a good way to get PS3 games emulated on PS5 thanks to the fucking abysmal system design. even if RPCS3 is a thing that exists, the fact that the system's OWN CREATORS can't reverse engineer it to work with future hardware is just sort of proof that this whole proprietary hardware thing was fucking stupid.

"ah, but the engines. Everything using UE5 will make games all look the same!"

First of all, the new Spongebob game uses the same UE5 engine that's powering some of the most realistic looking games on earth. It's not the engine that determines the way a game looks, it's the developers art direction and vision for the game. Second of all... Forspoken came out a couple months ago with a totally new custom engine. Looks generic, plays generic, main protagonist speaks like they're a Marvel character, and the game fucking killed the studio who worked on it. Custom engines don't make a game automatically good.

In reality, every console using X86 is nothing but a good thing, and every gaming using either UE or Unity is also a good thing. Ports are identical to the one on the other console, games are easier to make, and even if they don't 'code to the metal' like they used to, games still look better than ever with more advanced systems and algorithms powering the stuff you play today. Unreal Engine allows better looking games to be made than ever while still giving the developer full artistic control over their project, and games STILL have varied artstyles.

Let's leave Cell and Emotion Engine in the past, people.

You make some really good points. Having said that… you do know gaming didn’t start with the Saturn, PSX, and N64, right? Compare Atari to the Vectrex, Snes to the Genesis, NES vs SMS vs whatever that crappy VHS system was. What about arcades? Early 80s bitmapped games vs Laserdisk vs vector systems. Don’t jump into the last 5 minutes of an orgy and brag about still being hard at the end!

 

[tygertrip]

You seem to be conflating a bunch of things. First, those arcade games from Sega you laud so much, they were built on entirely custom, proprietary arcade boards, it was simply impossible to do otherwise. The PSX was just as proprietary as a Saturn, one just had an elegant design and the other, not so much. The PSX was not "PC style" in any way shape or form, with custom GPU and CPU, the CPU used MIPS architecture not x86. Look at PC parts in the 1990s, you were not getting a PC down to console prices and it was a waste of silicon anyway, so console makers had to go their own way. It wasn't feasible until the early 2000s to stuff a PC into a console, and even then only barely as MS lost gazillions of dollars doing it with the original Xbox.

Right on. Plus, the first GOOD 3D card for PC didn’t come out until late ‘96 (IIRC… all I know is I was addicted to Quake and when I saw those glQuake screenshots, I immediately ordered a Voodoo). Hell, the PSX was NOTHING like a PC of the time.

 

[Topher]

Don’t jump into the last 5 minutes of an orgy and brag about still being hard at the end!

 

[peronmls]

Tech was ahead before the game developers where it seems. Its works but nobody knows how to use it.

 

[tygertrip]

Sony will keep getting closer to PC given their desire for PC ports. Could you imagine the job to port a game built for PS3 natively to PC? Ooff…

They’d pretty much have to remake it, most likely. I’m pretty certain they had to use tons of assembly on the impressive PS3 games, like the Uncharted series.

 

[tygertrip]

…

And PS2 picture always looked like ass, we did not have to wait for HD TVs.

Yea it did! Oh god, that aspect was such a step down from the Dreamcast. Hell, image quality wise, Virtua Fighter 4 on the PS2 looked like ass compared to Virtua Fighter 2 on the Saturn! Mind you, I’m only referring to the image quality (aliasing and what not), the models and effects in PS2 VF4 blows Saturn VF2 out of the water.

 

[Fafalada]

Nah, me neither. Proprietary hardware for consoles actually kind of sucked.

I mean - if your entire argument is 'but things were harder 30 years ago' - that's called progress, last I checked. PC gaming tech was a complete mess back then too, to the point it made Saturn look like a walk in the park to work with.
Unless this is the alternate time-stream where hardware from 2023 was available in 1990s but everyone just refused to use it out of spite and mean spirit attitudes towards developers and consumers alike.

Anyway to the whole point of 'custom designs for consoles' - had XSX/PS5 used the same AMD architecture(so only as proprietary as they already are today) but took the more 'old-school' design-approach that wouldn't give you nice 1:1 to PC ports (and indeed, would have put some extra challenges on developers) they could have fit roughly 2x the compute into the same 200W power-envelope that we actually got (and I'm being conservative here).
So... there's that.

 

[kingyala]

yeah and different food cuisines are shit we should all eat english mash and pie, different types of alcohol drinks are ass.. we should all just drink unncle hill billy moonshine, we should also stop dating different women and just be satisfied with our cousin's... mate you made the most retarded post since neogaf was invented... those ass proprietary consoles are the reason you have raytracing, compute shaders, and even a gpu in the first place...

without proprietary consoles there would be slow innovation and wed all have to obey microsoft windows gods for whatever they throw out to us peasants... just recently without ps5 io and direct storage on series consoles you would still have windows 2000 io system on your pc... in all your rambling retarded argument youve just went on to explain how hardware evolution happens and why proprietary electronics are needed.. the irony.....

 

[kingyala]

i would argue the reason current consoles are even blamed for poor raytracing and performance is exactly because they arent proprietary.. if sony decided to make ps5 with a modern cell processor it would have arguably rivaled the best gpu out there but becuase whiner's like op need a standardized machine just to play bc and crossgen then such advancements are held back.. if it werent for people like op we would have astonishingly looking games right now but here we are with xbox series s and backward compatibility to play grandma's favourite games...

 

[Corndog]

Proprietary console hardware was good when there were still many proprietary PC platforms and X86 hadn't finished standardizing. Gaming on 8-bit and 16-bit computers in the 80's was wildly inconsistent. Sometimes it was great and sometimes it sucked. But consoles were at least consistent because gaming was specifically what they were made for.

Even though modern consoles are based on mainstream hardware they're still very custom and I think that's a good thing. The customized I/O, bandwidth/bus architecture, and guarantee of an SSD makes PS5 and XSX punch in a performance class as some more expensive PC hardware.

What a load of drivel.

 

[Lysandros]

The PS5's i/o integration is pretty radical, and its a huge part of how it can trade blows with Series X despite that system being more powerful based on PC-style metrics.

How do we know that PS5's I/O integration is a "huge part" of how it can trade blows with XSX as opposed to its GPU and memory sub-system advantages in current multiplatform titles? And what do you mean by "more powerful system based on PC-style metrics" exactly?

 

[DeltaPolarBear]

Because of this, one of the wonders of PC gaming is the forever BC...

The fact that I can play the same Doom from 1993 at 8k/200+ fps today is amazing.

You litterally had Gabe Newell to thank for that. He lead the team to port Doom to Windows 95 and started Windows gaming. His reward for this work was used to start the new company Valve and the Steam store.

 

[Lysandros]

Gotta love these stupid comparisons. Of course the PS2 was weaker. I tell you why It was released before the GameCube and the Xbox.

PS2 wasn't even weaker than GC despite being released 1.5 year earlier and there are actual developers who put it above GC. GC was a cleverly designed and easier to use system with a more 'modern PC like' GPU. PS2 was an entirely different beast with order of magnitude more fillrate and bandwidth and powerful custom vector processors. Yes it was somewhat unbalanced and harder to fully utilize but whole raw power wise, it wasn't inferior to GC. As to Xbox well there isn't a debate here, that was a brute forcing monster PC essentially sold at a massive loss but even it wasn't ahead on everything. So yeah PS2 was very powerful when it launched remained competitive until the end of that generation.

 

[Chronicle]

It still is ass. Lookin at you Microsoft.

 

[Tal Shiar Agent]

I'm super glad Sony went with off the shelf M.2 SSDs for the storage expansion. I got a 1TB SN850 back in Dec 2021 for $150 and a generic heatsink for $10 and never looked back.

I don't think I'll ever get one of those storage expansion cards for my XSX because they are all still so fucking expensive for the storage amount.

 

[Fafalada]

People keep saying videogames used to have exotic hardwares and "boooh now are just PC", but since 1972, many console actually had pretty standard chipsets.

Most consoles designed between 1980 and up to mid 00s used custom or semi-custom accelerator hardware - the CPUs were usually based on off-the shelf parts but except for maybe original XBox - still semi-custom designs that liberally modified things the system designers wanted.
Main point though, is some chips were designed exclusively for use in 'a' console (or family of) - Sony and Nintendo both used fully custom Graphics for a lot of their devices until end of 2010s (PS3s was supposed to be custom as well - but that design failed to live up to its promises so it got swapped out at the last minute).
Such customization allowed for certain 'out of the box' approaches that could severely compromise cross-portability (and/or developer friendliness) but achieve other performance KPIs that would otherwise be impossible inside a console box power-budget/silicon constraints. General thinking is that such differentiation is no longer sufficient to justify trading off cross-compatibility aspects and developer adoption acceleration you get from being 'part of the standard'. But if we're being honest - noone's tried to test that in over a decade - so we don't really know for sure.

Owning the chip-designs also meant cost-scaling options that were much more of a focus back then - MS learned the hard way how expensive it was to *not* have that provision when they designed the original XBox.

Another big difference was they often used multiple component vendors (CPU, graphics, I/O, etc. came from variety of sources) - it was basically unheard of to use a single supplier until PS4/XB1 launch.

 

[damiank]

Funny thing is.... If it hadn't been for the Cell, early multiplats might have performed better on the PS3. The console might have been significantly cheaper. They might even have beat the 360 to market. Without the Cell's failure Sony wouldn't have had to go hog wild supporting some of the most amazing first-party content we'd yet seen. PS4 and PS5 are great systems with great content, but we don't get there without the lessons learned from cell.

So yeah, Sony's still paying the price for their hubris, but they're also still reaping the benefits of learning from it.

Funny thing is most PS3 games performs much better when RSX is overclocked, so hardly Cell's fault.

 

[tygertrip]

Grew up with the 360 which ran on PowerPC, then the 3ds which ran on ARM and then Wii U using PowerPC as well

…

Damn, you’re just a kid. No wonder you don’t know what you are talking about, yet think you know it all.

 

[DonkeyPunchJr]

Funny thing is most PS3 games performs much better when RSX is overclocked, so hardly Cell's fault.

It’s Cell’s fault they even needed RSX to begin with. Original plan was supposedly 2 or 4 Cell chips with no dedicated GPU. RSX was their plan B. And yeah it was pretty underwhelming (basically a 7900GT gimped with a 128-bit memory bus and a separate pool of GDDR3)

If they had designed PS3 around a dedicated GPU from the start, it’s safe to say it would’ve looked nothing like what we got.

 

[tygertrip]

People keep saying videogames used to have exotic hardwares and "boooh now are just PC", but since 1972, many console actually had pretty standard chipsets.

Atari 2600 had a MOS 6507 used in NES, AppleII, Lynx and other 30 systems or even more.
Megadrive had a 68000 also used in Amiga, Neogeo, ST, X68000 and so on, not counting many arcade boards.
Do we talk about the Z80?
PSX used a RISC3000, the same family we also found in N64 and some workstation and arcade.
Gamecube used a IBM CPU used for like 10 years in many devices, some of them even used in space rockets
XBOX had a Pentium 3 CPU
Dreamcast and Saturn used "not" custom Hitachi chips.

Different story is about video chips, but just that.

The only chipset specifically created for games were the EE, Cell and the Xenon.

Using the same CPU as another system doesn’t prevent a system from having a custom design. It just means that particular part is not custom. The Atari 2600 and NES were drastically different to develop for (you want an interesting read, check out “Racing the Beam”). I think you know that, I’m probably just arguing semantics.

 

[tygertrip]

I like the Nintendo cartridge idea where a game maker could choose to add actual hardware components into the cartridge to improve the graphics. People say it's not practical now, but it was probably even less practical then. Would love to see that kind of wild ambition return to the gaming hardware milieu.

There were many Atari 2600 games where the cartridges had extra hardware in them. Usually it just added extra RAM. Pitfall 2 had an actual processor in it, IIRC. Most say it was used for the music (which was VERY impressive for the time, at least to kid me, lol), but I could swear I’ve read an interview with David Crane where he said he used the extra chip for more than just the music.

 

[MrA]

Using the same CPU as another system doesn’t prevent a system from having a custom design. It just means that particular part is not custom. The Atari 2600 and NES were drastically different to develop for (you want an interesting read, check out “Racing the Beam”). I think you know that, I’m probably just arguing semantics.

yeah the cpu was a piece of the equation, but the graphics and sound hardware were what gave each system the identity, but one other that frequently get overlooked that practically defined the nes and the neo geo was the i/o/data busses, if Nintendo hadn't tried to save money on ram by addressing the graphics directly from the cartridge rom many of the nes's most impressive tricks wouldn't have worked. The neo geo is what it is because it has like 5 data busses that were all quite fast and wide for the time.
the cpu defined op codes, word length and address space but beyond that the graphics and sound chips had to be driven individually
even the z80, ti graphics , gi/ti sound family of consoles/computers (there were a ton of these that had nearly identical hardware, colecovision, sg 1000 msx, sord m5 , toshiba pasocom,casio pv2000 (this one is really dumb), sg 3000, spectravision svi 318/328 , pretty sure there are more than this list ) might use identical cpu, gpu and sound but they are addressed differently so porting still took considerable effort.

 

[OCASM]

PS2 wasn't even weaker than GC despite being released 1.5 year earlier and there are actual developers who put it above GC. GC was a cleverly designed and easier to use system with a more 'modern PC like' GPU. PS2 was an entirely different beast with order of magnitude more fillrate and bandwidth and powerful custom vector processors. Yes it was somewhat unbalanced and harder to fully utilize but whole raw power wise, it wasn't inferior to GC. As to Xbox well there isn't a debate here, that was a brute forcing monster PC essentially sold at a massive loss but even it wasn't ahead on everything. So yeah PS2 was very powerful when it launched remained competitive until the end of that generation.

PS2 was weaker. Even PS2 powerhouses like Capcom delivered worse results on PS2 than on GC. Even a launch game like Rogue Squadron 2 has no equivalent on PS2.

 

[iamvin22]

I can't play PS3 games on my PS5.
Whoever designed that PS3 was a monster.

Indeed. But Sony pumped out marvels because of it.

That gen I put in my most requested Sony dev support tickets. After the 2nd year our campus had no issues. Kutaragi, was a demon of an engineer at that time.

 

[LakeOf9]

Proprietary hardware for consoles at least gave them some reason to exist from a hardware engineering perspective; right now the only justification for consoles existing is the business case.

I guess this generation was better for PS and Xbox than the last one, since they both did include some custom hardware this time around; and Nintendo always does cool and weird shit with hardware, so I guess they're exempt from any criticism on this (for now).

 

[bentanchorbolt]

I’m not a developer, so it doesn’t really make any difference to me.

 

[cartman414]

yeah and different food cuisines are shit we should all eat english mash and pie, different types of alcohol drinks are ass.. we should all just drink unncle hill billy moonshine, we should also stop dating different women and just be satisfied with our cousin's... mate you made the most retarded post since neogaf was invented... those ass proprietary consoles are the reason you have raytracing, compute shaders, and even a gpu in the first place...

without proprietary consoles there would be slow innovation and wed all have to obey microsoft windows gods for whatever they throw out to us peasants... just recently without ps5 io and direct storage on series consoles you would still have windows 2000 io system on your pc... in all your rambling retarded argument youve just went on to explain how hardware evolution happens and why proprietary electronics are needed.. the irony.....

 

[64bitmodels]

Having said that… you do know gaming didn’t start with the Saturn, PSX, and N64, right?

yeah. 4th gen is one of my favorite console generations period. I feel like custom hardware didn't really hamper them as much (not to mention that PC and arcade hardware were extremely expensive back then)

Having said that… you do know gaming didn’t start with the Saturn, PSX, and N64, right? Compare Atari to the Vectrex, Snes to the Genesis, NES vs SMS vs whatever that crappy VHS system was. What about arcades? Early 80s bitmapped games vs Laserdisk vs vector systems.

actually have not heard of the vectrex at all... and crappy VHS system? you mean the TurboGrafx or something?

I can understand the arguments for 2d games when arcade and PC hardware was ridiculously expensive and framerate wasn't nearly as much of an issue as it is today (90% of video games back then ran at 60fps) but when 3D hardware came around & we got the PS1 it sort of set a standard for hardware and developer friendliness that not many consoles between 5th to 7th gen really adhered to.

Not to mention many of the custom hardware in the 2d gens actually had a really cool and interesting use, like the genesis's CPU enabling extremely impressive effects when used properly.

The funky FM soundchip enabled groovy funky tunes when utilized properly (Sonic 3 and Dynamite Headdy being amazing examples) & the CPU on Genesis enabled in general faster paced games and extremely impressive effects when coded properly. SNES Mode 7 created impressive effects, made racing games on SNES much better than on Genesis, and amazing orchestral compositions for your JRPGs using the SPC soundchip that used samples over frequency modulation. If you showed me a game i'd never seen before running on 2 systems, the Genesis and the Super Nintendo, i'd easily be able to tell which is which in a split second.

It works for PS1 and N64 too as those consoles had drastically different rendering methods, i can tell apart a PS1 and N64 multiplat based on which has wobbly textures and which has filtered textures (not to mention which actually has CD audio).

If you showed me a PS2 game and an Xbox game, which also have wildly different hardware... I would have to rely on button prompts, rendering mode (progressive or interlaced) and framerate to tell the difference. Despite all the arguments claiming that it gave the consoles an identity & distinctive style, most people wouldn't be able to tell apart the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of black ops if they didn't have button prompts. Custom hardware after 5th gen didn't do much other than hold third party dudes back and it's why i think switching to just PC style arch was a good move in 8th gen. If the PS5's IO is any indication we still have that, just in a more practical form.

Also, for the whole "if we still used custom hardware we'd have tech demo looking games now!" That's not a fault of the hardware the consoles are running on but rather a virus from 2019 to 2022 that sort of fucked up the entire world for a bit + inflation, chip shortages and insane scalpers making PS5s and Xbox SXs hard to get. There's a lot more factors as to why we're still stuck in crossgen hell (although not for long)

 

[MrA]

actually have not heard of the vectrex at all... and crappy VHS system? you mean the TurboGrafx or something?

he's referring to the action max, a console that watched for flashing lights to enable light gun usage, trash tier garbage but awesome anyway, well at least to someone like me. or the videomaster interactivision which actually loaded code off of video cassettes and overlayed graphics ontop of the video

 

[64bitmodels]

he's referring to the action max, a console that watched for flashing lights to enable light gun usage, trash tier garbage but awesome anyway, well at least to someone like me. or the videomaster interactivision which actually loaded code off of video cassettes and overlayed graphics ontop of the video

damn, heard of the commodore using cassettes but not literal video cassettes being played with visuals on top of the video. 80s consoles were wild dude

 

[tygertrip]

yeah. 4th gen is one of my favorite console generations period. I feel like custom hardware didn't really hamper them as much (not to mention that PC and arcade hardware were extremely expensive back then)

actually have not heard of the vectrex at all... and crappy VHS system? you mean the TurboGrafx or something?

I can understand the arguments for 2d games when arcade and PC hardware was ridiculously expensive and framerate wasn't nearly as much of an issue as it is today (90% of video games back then ran at 60fps) but when 3D hardware came around & we got the PS1 it sort of set a standard for hardware and developer friendliness that not many consoles between 5th to 7th gen really adhered to.

Not to mention many of the custom hardware in the 2d gens actually had a really cool and interesting use, like the genesis's CPU enabling extremely impressive effects when used properly.

The funky FM soundchip enabled groovy funky tunes when utilized properly (Sonic 3 and Dynamite Headdy being amazing examples) & the CPU on Genesis enabled in general faster paced games and extremely impressive effects when coded properly. SNES Mode 7 created impressive effects, made racing games on SNES much better than on Genesis, and amazing orchestral compositions for your JRPGs using the SPC soundchip that used samples over frequency modulation. If you showed me a game i'd never seen before running on 2 systems, the Genesis and the Super Nintendo, i'd easily be able to tell which is which in a split second.

It works for PS1 and N64 too as those consoles had drastically different rendering methods, i can tell apart a PS1 and N64 multiplat based on which has wobbly textures and which has filtered textures (not to mention which actually has CD audio).

If you showed me a PS2 game and an Xbox game, which also have wildly different hardware... I would have to rely on button prompts, rendering mode (progressive or interlaced) and framerate to tell the difference. Despite all the arguments claiming that it gave the consoles an identity & distinctive style, most people wouldn't be able to tell apart the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of black ops if they didn't have button prompts. Custom hardware after 5th gen didn't do much other than hold third party dudes back and it's why i think switching to just PC style arch was a good move in 8th gen. If the PS5's IO is any indication we still have that, just in a more practical form.

Also, for the whole "if we still used custom hardware we'd have tech demo looking games now!" That's not a fault of the hardware the consoles are running on but rather a virus from 2019 to 2022 that sort of fucked up the entire world for a bit + inflation, chip shortages and insane scalpers making PS5s and Xbox SXs hard to get. There's a lot more factors as to why we're still stuck in crossgen hell (although not for long)

I pretty much agree with everything you just said… but you named the thread “Proprietary hardware for consoles was ass, actually”. Clearly, you don’t feel that way about the 70s, 80s, and early 90s systems, given what you wrote above, so your post was titled poorly. Also, you are way more knowledgeable of older systems than I thought, please accept my apologies. I can’t help it, I like teasing the younger generations… just ask my kids, lol.

Anyway, the Vectrex was a home vector system, It came with a black and white vector display, so you could play games with graphics similar to the arcade Asteroids. So that meant higher resolution with true scaling and rotation… but with all the drawbacks of vector displays, like being able to see through objects (quite the drawback in a first person racing game, for example).

Regarding the VHS system, it was a system that used actual VHS tapes. It flopped HARD. I can’t remember the details, I never played one myself. It might have never even made it out of test markets.

 

[64bitmodels]

I pretty much agree with everything you just said… but you named the thread “Proprietary hardware for consoles was ass, actually”. Clearly, you don’t feel that way about the 70s, 80s, and early 90s systems, given what you wrote above, so your post was titled poorly.

Fair enough... Too bad you can't change thread titles on GAF.... or other forums for that matter. I probably should have titled it something different like "Custom console hardware is gone for a good reason" & prefaced with how good it was in the 2d systems & the sort of decline that lead to X86 PC style architecture dominating today. could have been a lot less aggressive about my opinion too

 

[polybius80]

PS2 was weaker. Even PS2 powerhouses like Capcom delivered worse results on PS2 than on GC. Even a launch game like Rogue Squadron 2 has no equivalent on PS2.

its funny you minimize RS2 in such way, most GC catalog wont look like that until 2004, and what is the non equivalent part of rogue squadron 2? tons of polygons? effects? if its about 3d spaceship combat, sure, but if its not about thesame genre, there are games like F1 that used as many polygons and ran at higher res I think it was the second game from melbourne house, they went from a bad port of their dreamcast game to a game that used the polycount of RS2, that should give hints about the power of the system, when it comes to effects in RS2 the most important is the use of environment mapping and emboss bump mapping, emboss in the scene floor and a combination of both for the ships, emboss is used in many games in both systems and of course environment mapping, emboss bump mapping wasn't as prevalent in PS2 at the beginning as in GC(problems using the texture swapping maybe?) but that doesn't mean it wasn't more common later or that aren't games that used such effects in fact if we are going to take the whole gen I can make a similar statement simply pointing at htman blood money that actually uses normal mapping perpixel and make the same argument and say "the GC has no equivalent to hitman blood money"

capcom is a very talented developer and as fun as their games are that doesnt mean they are the best when it comes to graphics on ps2, to put an example travelers tales is a much more competent developer in that regard they have a particle system for ps2 that can render 8M/s quads(or 17M/s triangles) on PS2 with their own movement where is the equivalent for that?

 

[OCASM]

its funny you minimize RS2 in such way, most GC catalog wont look like that until 2004, and what is the non equivalent part of rogue squadron 2? tons of polygons? effects? if its about 3d spaceship combat, sure, but if its not about thesame genre, there are games like F1 that used as many polygons and ran at higher res I think it was the second game from melbourne house, they went from a bad port of their dreamcast game to a game that used the polycount of RS2, that should give hints about the power of the system, when it comes to effects in RS2 the most important is the use of environment mapping and emboss bump mapping, emboss in the scene floor and a combination of both for the ships, emboss is used in many games in both systems and of course environment mapping, emboss bump mapping wasn't as prevalent in PS2 at the beginning as in GC(problems using the texture swapping maybe?) but that doesn't mean it wasn't more common later or that aren't games that used such effects in fact if we are going to take the whole gen I can make a similar statement simply pointing at htman blood money that actually uses normal mapping perpixel and make the same argument and say "the GC has no equivalent to hitman blood money"

capcom is a very talented developer and as fun as their games are that doesnt mean they are the best when it comes to graphics on ps2, to put an example travelers tales is a much more competent developer in that regard they have a particle system for ps2 that can render 8M/s quads(or 17M/s triangles) on PS2 with their own movement where is the equivalent for that?

Many PS2 games do stuff that RS2 does, but where are the games that do ALL of what RS2 does at the same time? For example the Hoth level: massive polycount, emboss bump mapping, cloud shadows, shadow mapping for self-shadows, projected shadows for ships and even little soldiers in the ground, an obscene amount of dynamic lights at once, etc...

 

[polybius80]

Many PS2 games do stuff that RS2 does, but where are the games that do ALL of what RS2 does at the same time? For example the Hoth level: massive polycount, emboss bump mapping, cloud shadows, shadow mapping for self-shadows, projected shadows for ships and even little soldiers in the ground, an obscene amount of dynamic lights at once, etc...

similarly what game on GC does what hitman blood money? for example the murder of crows scene with massive amount of character that actually react with physics and what you do, normal mapping dot3, light sources everywhere, projected shadows, volumetric light, variety of different characters, light bloom, dynamic light all at once, etc...


where are the other games on GC that do all that at the same time as that launch game?

 

[cireza]

where is the equivalent for that?

Animated grass and water in Wind Waker ?

This is so ridiculous by the way. PS2 had a few very specific use-cases in which it could perform things other consoles couldn't, how wonderful. But it was inferior in every other essential aspects to producing a quality picture and detailed graphics.

 

[polybius80]

Animated grass and water in Wind Waker ?

not really, but good use

This is so ridiculous by the way. PS2 had a few very specific use-cases in which it could perform things other consoles couldn't, how wonderful. But it was inferior in every other essential aspects to producing a quality picture and detailed graphics.

what is ridiculous is trying to argue 20+ years later if "PS2 cant do that", it was discussed to death already and there are thousand of games, in fact lot of people were born and became adults during that time and never touched the consoles of that era, no matter how much you try to paint PS2 in a bad way or how many laugh emoticons you put in comments, that wont magically port hitman blood money, path of neo, area 51 or black to GC or change the fact ps2 showed those graphic effects or how it won many comparisons to gamecube specially in later games like true crime 2, gun or ratatouille to name a few in fact there are youtube channels dedicated to compare old systems where you can find exactly the same that you could 20 years ago: some games looked better in one console just for the opposite to be true in another game with xbox usually having the better version except for the occasionally bad port, we can guess why this specific or that happens due to the hardware particularities of each and how it works but we cannot change the past you can argue as much as you want but thing like this



wont change, if it was inferior then why its rendering those effects?, you know those effect weren't present or used as much in most older games of that generation, the particles, the water with physics, different light sources, light effects, and decent textures, not too much detailed but with lot of different textures which may explain why they aren't that detailed compared to other different games, its way better than the first true crime yet ps2 is rendering those effects and curiously gc missing many things

this is the first one as reference

 

[cireza]

ps2 is rendering those effects and curiously gc missing many things

Do you have insight on the developers back then, the budget and time allocated to each version ? This is what happens with multiplats and ports.

I don't have to be convinced of anything, I know perfectly well how GC is the superior console overall, as well as the few strengths and many weaknesses of the PS2. You are the only one here arguing about this, cherry-picking games and effects on which nobody is saying that the PS2 was not good at.

And then you have games such as F-Zero GX, pushing a lot of pixels, a huge draw distant, insane speed, lots of vehicles, wide-screen, clean visuals etc... Or Wind Waker, with its largely animated scenery (water, grass, wind) etc... All things that made great use of the GC and could most certainly not be easily reproduced on PS2. Resident Evil 4 is a clear downgrade as well, despite having more time to port the game. The console had a superb picture and good textures as well, two essential points on which the PS2 was inferior. In the end who cares if a handful of games look better in instances, when 95% of the multiplats are inferior ?

 

[polybius80]

And then you have games such as F-Zero GX, pushing a lot of pixels,

the game output 640x480 just as most games, the internal resolution in the case of GC depends how much allocates to zbuffer as it shares the same buffer, in this game I dont know but I assume manages to have the 640x480 due to its simplicity and may not require to much precision in z buffer maybe?

a huge draw distant,

the game may be fun but the amount of triangles in the scene is not really that big, drawing all that doesnt seem as too big a deal

I mean they are different games but it falls in the comparison witth metroid prime and the ratchet and clanck series where they rely more in high poly counts and basic effects, just that this game doesn't have high poly counts

insane speed,

the game runs a 60 fps in NTSC (50 in pal ) you can have a camera at the beginning of the track and the next frame behind the finish line that wont make the game faster technically speaking if the cameras go too fast ints more a gameplay decision, it could affect in case of streaming the scene but dont see it necessary in this case, I mean the scene with textures its about 6.3 MB of data on my pc using png format for images, the GC should be capable of having that much data in its ram as is

lots of vehicles,

they and the characters are very low poly and they dont have vertex operations(except for characters?) on them they are only transformed(scaled, moved or rotated) that is very simplistic compared to move character that use a skeleton, having lot of them is not really very taxing for the system the most interesting effect may be some particles and light(the game uses vertex light )

wide-screen, clean visuals etc...

dont see wide screen as something relevant but I am curious if works by squashing the image letting the tv to stretch the image as most games at the time, grand prix challenge on ps2 runs at same 60 fps, have way more complex scenes and cars and runs at 640X960 giving it much more clean image than fzero gx

Resident Evil 4 is a clear downgrade as well, despite having more time to port the game. The console had a superb picture and good textures as well, two essential points on which the PS2 was inferior.

actually you already answered that

"Do you have insight on the developers back then, the budget and time allocated to each version ? This is what happens with multiplats and ports."


there are games later in the gen in both systems that show others and even more complex graphical effects. the ps2 runs those effects as well and in some comparison even better than GC and showing better textures as well, as already mentioned

 

[polybius80]

I don't have to be convinced of anything, I know perfectly well how GC is the superior console overall, as well as the few strengths and many weaknesses of the PS2. You are the only one here arguing about this, cherry-picking games and effects on which nobody is saying that the PS2 was not good at.

you can convince yourself the world is flat if you want, that is not my business nor I am "convincing" anyone, I am stating facts, that can be verified by anyone. you say I cherry pick effects yet you try to pass the 3d models of fzero GX as some kind of technological prowess despiter being too basic and the ..... "velocity" of the game? seriously?