1 Dec
1999
1 Dec
'99
1:52 a.m.
-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Kennedy <chris(a)mainecoon.com>
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Date: Wednesday, December 01, 1999 11:23 AM
Subject: OT: Game economics (was Re: The good old days of tape players)
ago
Glenatacme(a)aol.com wrote:
[snip]
> Their reasoning is: if I never bought a ZX81, but I use a ZX81 emulator
on my
> PC to run ZX81 programs, then what is to stop me
from using a Sony
> Playstation emulator on my PC to avoid buying a Playstation?
>
> My opinion is: the major game producers are afraid that if the public
finds
> out that for well under US$100 anyone with a PC
and a modem can pick up
an
> "obsolete" computer and get 10,000
games, free, the new hot-rod game
machines
might lose a
few sales.
Wellll, it turns out I have some insight into this. Until about 18 months I was director of special projects for TAEC, a division
of Toshiba. One of
the things which fell into my lap was developing the methodology for and
directing the actual verification effort for what was then called the
TX5900;
the 5900 is the superscalar 128-bit core for CPU2,
which in turn is the
processor for the Playstation II. As a consequence of this position I have
some
insight into the thinking at SCE...
One of the first things I learned was that "normal" assumptions regarding
economics associated with game consoles don't work. SCE more or less gave
the PS1 away and will do the same with the PS2; at some points in the
lifetime
of the product the wholesale price is less than the
manufacturing cost.
The
money is made on the titles, not on the individual
consoles, and hence SCE
has a motivation to see that as many copies of titles are shipped without
copies being bootlegged. In a somewhat misguided attempt to control that
SCE indulged in a bit of idiocy with the PS1 in the hopes of preventing
people from making copies of the code.
The economics changed somewhat as the PS1 reached end-of-life and the
production cost of the PS1 had fallen somewhat (such that some
miniscule amount of money was being netted out on console sales), but
SCE's objections to PS1 emulators were rooted not in the potential loss
of such revenue, but rather in the need to duplicate SCE code contained
in the PS1 console ROM.
As for PC's eating into PS2 sales, don't hold your breath. When you can
buy a PC with a 128-bit reconfigurable integer CPU with 10 floating point
units organized into two vector processors, synchronous rambus, a dedicated
rendering engine, ethernet, 56K modem, DVD drive and sound for $300
(they also throw a PS1 chipset into the box, since the PS2 chipset
cannot run PS1 code) then SCE will find themselves in the same position
they were in 12 months ago. But then I'd expect the PS3 to be in the
works by then ;-)
--
Very well put!
john
PDP-8 and other rare mini computers
http://www.pdp8.com
Chris Kennedy
chris(a)mainecoon.com
http://www.mainecoon.com
PGP fingerprint: 4E99 10B6 7253 B048 6685 6CBC 55E1 20A3 108D AB97
1 Dec
1 Dec
12:31 p.m.
As for PC's
eating into PS2 sales, don't hold your breath. When you can
buy a PC with a 128-bit reconfigurable integer CPU with 10 floating point
units organized into two vector processors, synchronous rambus, a dedicated
rendering engine, ethernet, 56K modem, DVD drive and sound for $300
(they also throw a PS1 chipset into the box, since the PS2 chipset
cannot run PS1 code) then SCE will find themselves in the same position
they were in 12 months ago. But then I'd expect the PS3 to be in the
works by then ;-)
--
Very well put! 
2 p.m.
New subject: *Really* OT: Re: Game economics (was Re: The good old days of tape players)
Mike Ford wrote:
[snip]
I would hazard putting forth the view that a
"cycle" exists in gaming where
consoles dominate a few years, then take a nose dive, and computer based
gaming dominates, repeat. Video games have some powerfull points pro and
con.
At any given level of technology it's easy to get an absurd price/performance
advantage over a more generic solution by addressing a particular special case.
As technology advances the generic solution will become competitive with the
special case, but historically a new special case solution using contemporary
technology evolves, again allowing the special case solution to provide
superior price/performance.
Part of the phenomina with games has to do with the hardware lifecycle of
consoles. Unlike generic processors, you can't do a subsequent shrink
or change process. This isn't rooted in economics, it's rooted in the
amazing fact that in this day instructions are still, in effect, hand
scheduled around the processor's clock speed and bus behavior. So whatever
you ship on day one is what you ship on day last. That console games have
the lifetime that they do is simply amazing. Imagine the x86 family
shipping at only one clock speed for the lifetime of the processor.
Pro
Dedicated hardware, massive sales, and low priced consoles.
Con
Low priced consoles mean hardware budgets are TIGHT, serious lack of talent
(ie lets do Donkey Kong one more time), no third party innovation, 3 dozen
different games isn't a lot choose from, Long product revision cycles (ala
3 years vs 6 months). TV based products have limits that PC based does not.
Hardware budgets are subsidised by software revenue. Software budgets aren't
tight at all; SCE claimed the average development budget for a single title for
the PS1 was in excess of *twenty million US dollars.*
I can play most N64 games on a moderate PC, most
playstation games on a
newer G3 mac. When you look at just what a current generation machine can
do, I'm not sure how much all those bells and whistles will really gain a
person in actual game play on the new consoles.
Probably not much until the guys writing the code come to grips with it. Well,
there *are* some obvious things; the PS1 uses static backgrounds or backgrounds
which are pulled from CD; the PS2 synthesizes them on the fly. There's such
an obscene amount of computing power in the box and enough persistant store that
SCE requires that titles be designed to modify their behavior based on the
past behavior of the gamer. I've only seen a few game trailers, the image fidelity
is much better than on the PS1 and N64 and there are nice little touches, like
clouds of steam when characters exhale in cold rooms :-) The point is that a new
G3 mac can't approximate the level of hardware that's in current generation
(the PS1 is hardly current) consoles; by the time it does there will be another
batch of oddball speciality hardware (and it *is* oddball. When was the last
time that you saw a CPU chip which could be a DMA target?) with another batch
of hopelessly counterintuitive instructions specified by the game writers
ready to take up the challenge.
--
Chris Kennedy
chris(a)mainecoon.com
http://www.mainecoon.com
PGP fingerprint: 4E99 10B6 7253 B048 6685 6CBC 55E1 20A3 108D AB97
9154
days inactive
9154
days old
2 comments
3 participants
participants (3)
-
chris＠mainecoon.com -
dylanb＠sympatico.ca -
mikeford＠socal.rr.com