Phil Harrison Unveils Fatal Xbox 360's Flaw

[Ascended_Saiyan]

Phil Harrison interview with GamePro.

Phil states that the Xbox 360 can not do 1080p games. Their design will not allow it! That is huge!

[phranctoast]

can you post story here?..

thanks

[hmurchison]

You know I think 720p is about as good as you need for games unless you're playing on a 10ft screen.

When I'm playing Halo I'm not looking at how beautiful the texture and background is I'm trying to prevent myself from becoming fodder.

I've seen too much reliance on specs where they don't matter. 1080p is for viewing material that demands a critical eye. Lossless audio is for material that demands a critical ear.

In a perfect world it'd be great to have 1080p games with lossless audio but truth be told I'd be happy with 720p, great Dolby Digital+ tracks and knockout gameplay.

Both the Xbox360 and the PS3 will thrive based on how immersive and well crafted their games are. The specs mean very little once you're in the game and the ensuing cacaphony.

[Ascended_Saiyan]

Originally Posted by hmurchison

You know I think 720p is about as good as you need for games unless you're playing on a 10ft screen.

When I'm playing Halo I'm not looking at how beautiful the texture and background is I'm trying to prevent myself from becoming fodder.

I've seen too much reliance on specs where they don't matter. 1080p is for viewing material that demands a critical eye. Lossless audio is for material that demands a critical ear.

In a perfect world it'd be great to have 1080p games with lossless audio but truth be told I'd be happy with 720p, great Dolby Digital+ tracks and knockout gameplay.

Both the Xbox360 and the PS3 will thrive based on how immersive and well crafted their games are. The specs mean very little once you're in the game and the ensuing cacaphony.

Then, why isn't 480p good enough. People always say "it's good enough" from one level down. Why not just see it at work at Best Buy? The demo should be up at Best Buy today.

I guess it will be a perfect world when the PS3 hits the streets, aye.

[Ascended_Saiyan]

HERE IS THE INTERVIEW.

At Sony's Gamer's Day event today, GamePro editor Vicious Sid had the chance to grab a few minutes with Sony's PS3 frontman, Phil Harrison. We touched on several topics: Blu-ray disc speeds, internal power supplies, and that nagging question -- is the PS3 graphically inferior to the Xbox 360?
Harrison at the Tokyo Game Show

Harrison at the Tokyo Game Show

Phil Harrison: What surprised you? What was the thing that you weren't expecting to see?

Vicious Sid: I think...to see so many games in 1080p, looking as good as they did. I think there's this assumption that in some way the Xbox 360 has more graphical power. It's got 512 MB of dedicated video RAM...and that somehow the PlayStation 3 is a notch below that.

Harrison: That's not true, by the way.

Sid: I'm not sure how that works. I guess it's 256 video RAM, 256 system RAM [on the PS3]?

Harrison: No, the way that Xbox 360 works is that they have 512 MB of memory, same as PlayStation 3. But they have general purpose memory, rather than system-specified memory. But they only have a 10 MB internal frame buffer...

There's no disadvantage [to Blu-ray], there's only advantages in terms of bandwidth, content, and detail."

--Sony corporate executive Phil Harrison

Sid: Yes, that's true...

Harrison: ....and so that's why they can't do 1080p full frame. Because the image has to be in the frame buffer and a full 1080p image is 8 megabytes, so you can't double buffer.

Sid: What do you think Microsoft's biggest vulnerability is right now?

Harrison: I'd rather talk about the strengths of PlayStation 3. I think that what we showed today maybe completes the puzzle that we didn't do a good enough job of completing at E3. Partly because the technology wasn't ready in all areas, but partly because we focused on the games...I think people were expecting to see more of the multimedia functionality explained. But that's then, and this is now. The integrated nature of the system is now obvious.

The fact that you've got cross media bar icons, ways of getting content into the system -- physically -- and digitally....

Sid: It comes full circle, with the PSP...

Harrison: Exactly! Did you get a chance to see the PSP [at the demo presentation]? It uses the full cross media bar [from the PS3]!

Sid: Obviously supply is going to be an issue for you guys through the end of the year. Is Sony still holding firm to launch shipment projections and through the end of March 2007.

Harrison: Yeah. I think that every successful game system has had some challenges in matching demand with supply day one. Sadly, we're going to be no different.

But, this seems a very difficult situation now, but in five years we'll be looking back and this will be a tiny little blip on the sales. While it's disappointing for users -- certainly disappointing for users in Europe, where we had to delay the launch -- but we'll catch up. We'll get supply going, we'll get the product out there, and we'll satisfy everybody.

Sid: One thing I find fascinating about the PS3 is that so much is integrated into one package; it's a very "neat" system, with integrated Blu-ray and especially the integrated power supply. Why is that important?

Harrison: Blu-ray functionality is something you get essentially for free. We need it for a game system, we need it as a game developer, and the fact that the disk is the same kind of format that gives us the movie cupcake as well -- that's great. And that was a strategic choice, as well as a tactical, practical, commercial choice.

[an IGN video crew has been rather visibly waiting for Harrison to finish up with me. Harrison turns to an approach crew member and says "I'll be with you in one second." He's clearly engaged when speaking about the PS3's hardware and wants to finish his thought.]

Harrison: Integrating the power supply is not for competitive reasons -- it's because we can....

Sid: [laughs]

Harrison:... It's because we have great hardware designers who can handle the functionality. In fact, because of the CPU power and performance of PlayStation 3, we need to have to have the power supply as close to the chipset as it possibly can be. And so that is the right technical approach. It's exactly what we did with PlayStation 1 and PlayStation 2, and then you saw later in the platform's life cycle, when the different silicon process are used, you can go to a small external power supply, which allows you to change the form factor...

Sid: Do you think that's in the cards for PS3? A slim-line PS3?

Harrison: [completely deadpan] I wouldn't even speculate on that.

Sid: There's been some talk about DVD-9 [dual-layer DVD, as in the Wii and Xbox 360], and whether it's actually faster in transfer speeds than Blu-ray. Is Blu-ray faster or slower than DVD-9, practically speaking?

Harrison: There is no practical game design difference between Blu-ray [and DVD-9] in terms of speed. You get the benefits of storage -- more files on the disk, more data on the disk. So once developers are up to speed on the logical geography of the [Blu-ray] disc, loading times will be sorted out.

There's no disadvantage [to Blu-ray], there's only advantages in terms of bandwidth, content, detail, et cetra.

Sid: Looks like you're out of time. Thanks again!

[Ascended_Saiyan]

I wonder if they will ever be able to make a slim version of the PS3. It is packed with too much goodness!

[phloyd]

Originally Posted by hmurchison

Both the Xbox360 and the PS3 will thrive based on how immersive and well crafted their games are. The specs mean very little once you're in the game and the ensuing cacaphony.

I agree that content is the most important (and this is true on the movie side too).

However, especially with computer rendered stuff, the extra resolution is really visible. It doesn't take much effort to see it.

[Ascended_Saiyan]

Has anyone looked at the Xbox 360 schematics to see if the Xbox 360's limit is true for yourselves?

[phloyd]

You mean you don't believe the Sony exec's take on the XBox? Heheh...

It would be interesting to have this independently confirmed...

[BTBuck1]

Originally Posted by hmurchison

You know I think 720p is about as good as you need for games unless you're playing on a 10ft screen.

When I'm playing Halo I'm not looking at how beautiful the texture and background is I'm trying to prevent myself from becoming fodder.

I've seen too much reliance on specs where they don't matter. 1080p is for viewing material that demands a critical eye. Lossless audio is for material that demands a critical ear.

In a perfect world it'd be great to have 1080p games with lossless audio but truth be told I'd be happy with 720p, great Dolby Digital+ tracks and knockout game play.

Both the Xbox360 and the PS3 will thrive based on how immersive and well crafted their games are. The specs mean very little once you're in the game and the ensuing cacaphony.

While I agree with you that 720p and DD is good for games, WHY LIMIT IT TO JUST THAT?????

you know lately almost all of your posts seem to aim at the heart of anything "Sony" or "Blu Ray" related. If you came with some factual backing to prove your point, say hypothetically an article on the human eye/ear and how much it can see/hear etc. Then I could see your point.

But this is like the 5th post in a row (it seems) from you that is just argument for the sake of argument. I'm really starting to think you just don't like anything associated with "Blu" and if thats the case, fine...but lose the phony sig line and start posting something worthwhile...that or keep the HDDVD "hype" over on avsforums/hd-dvd.com.

Your preaching this stuff to people with a completely different point of view than you have here, and it's doing nothing but annoy most of us, as we are tired of misinformation, fud, fanboyism and general "BD-Hate"

If you do have something credible and worthwhile please do post,(you used to I don't know what happened) But this post seems just aimed at nothing but increasing your post count, and potentially decreasing your credibility. To say "who needs 1080p & 7.1 lossless in games" is absolutely ridiculous and goes against everything electronics enthusiasts stand for...which is advancement in technologies/entertainment.

[theknub]

while i don't feel as strongly as brian, i don't understand your stance.

you constantly say give me more for the price. when a studio (whether game or movie) does, you say it isn't necessary and don't see why not do it in some lesser extent (in this case 720p instead of 1080i/p). it's the double talk i don't understand.

[dobyblue]

Originally Posted by hmurchison

You know I think 720p is about as good as you need for games unless you're playing on a 10ft screen.

Or any TV that supports 1080p!

Why go half way - your post doesn't make much sense.

[Blubaru]

It can already do 1080i. The 360 will be able to do 1080p over component once the update is released. Most games now won't even work in 1080p but there will be quite a few future titles that will be playable in 1080p.

This is all according to Microsoft.

[BTBuck1]

can someone post a link to a tv that supports 1080p over component. Much to do is made over this, but i've never seen a set that can do 1080p over components. Is this gonna be the new standard for y-pb-pr?

[Deciazulado]

Originally Posted by hmurchison

You know I think 720p is about as good as you need for games unless you're playing on a 10ft screen.

According to the BBC, viewers found 720 suitable for only up to 50" screens, at a 9 feet viewing distance.



50"

Isn't that 4 feet. Not even close to 10 feet.

So what's this talk about only needing 1080 for 10 feet screens?




Which brings me to the following point:

Originally Posted by hmurchison

Both the Xbox360 and the PS3 will thrive based on how immersive and well crafted their games are. The specs mean very little once you're in the game and the ensuing cacaphony.

Well to me, to experience a movie as a "immersive experience" I have to watch it at a size of approx. 6 feet tall and 10 feet wide for a 16:9 image. If the screen is smaller, the movie just feels like watching a TV screen, or a window, and I don't feel immersed. It's at around that size (or proportion, as the actual size changes with viewing distance, of course) that I feel like I'm living the movie. I've tested this with a few people and after experiencing it they agree. So 1080p not only has me excited for film viewing, it actually has made me have an interest in games and game technology, which didnt do anything for me before! So I'm really looking forward to 1080p gaming.

I could easily see myself at one point enjoying playing a Marvel FF 1080p game in a big screen. And instead of just having a passive "living the story" experience like in watching a movie, having a "making my own" living experience.

A smaller 720 image won't really cut it. At least not for me. It'll look too soft or un-detailed at my immersive size.
Or look too small when sufficiently detailed, but then it'll just be like looking at the action outside of my window, instead of being outside


Having 1080p is essential for me.

So imagine that. PS3, having 1080p, is the most likely to even make one gamer out of nothing! (I don't even know what the PS2 or XBoxes look like!)

[partridge]

Look, hang on a minute - 720 and 1080 are just screen resolutions. The screen I'm using right now is 1024x768, basically 4:3 720p!

Now we all know, for PC games, that the higher the screen resolution you can get your game to run at, the better the detail, etc. I realise a PC gamer sits very close to the screen, but if you had two 37" screens next to each other running the same game or movie; one at 720p and the other at 1080p would there really be no discernable difference?

I find that hard to believe.