More great interviews

Here's a great interview of J. Allard (every one that I've read has been great, though).

Q: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 … there have been rumblings about which system is technically superior. How does the hardware compare?

A: I think that basically [Sony] mislead people who were very specific about certain numbers in the press conference on Monday. We're launching a product campaign, they're launching a political campaign.

You can kind of go through it, and guys have completely torn it apart. In the end, it's basically a wash. You can make the case for us; you can make the case for them. We'll publish a whole bunch of details and you guys can speculate, but it's basically a wash.

What I can say is theirs will be harder to program for. And we're going to have better software support. Both of these machines are so sophisticated that theoretical performance doesn't matter. What matters is how much of the performance you can unlock, and the key to unlock performance is hardware/software.

J. Allard is such a down-to-earth guy that it's hard to think of him as being Microsoft's corporate VP. I've played with him on Xbox Live a bunch of times (he's a busy guy, so in the ~2 and a half years he's been on my friends list, he's rarely online). We've talked about things and he's very open and intelligent (this also comes through in all of his interviews). I respect this man very much and am glad that he decided to take on gaming. He is a gamer at heart and he listens to the community. He's a realist and a visionary at the same time. He's also very respectful of his competition and his allies (something one can't say for Sony). ;) He's not your typical exec.

There are MANY other similar excellent interviews I'm thinking of putting into this post (possibly at a later date).

BB IMAX

Well, I'm back from seeing Batman Begins in the only close IMAX theater here in southwest Ohio. I had initially planned with friends to go the 4:25PM showing, and although we didn't make it due to unforseen (and incontrollable circumstances), but we did get a refund for the tickets and bought some for the later showing (7:25).

On the way down there, we stopped in Middletown for some food. We ate at Sonic, which was pretty darn good. Then, while waiting for the movie to start, we waited in the theater's Bar & Grill. We had some drinks. That was one of the nicest theaters I've been to. The atmospere was like a hotel or something. They had a player piano going and live musicians performing. Plus the bar was nice and was cheap, too.

Also, one of my friends (Ben) who was going to go, couldn't because his Dad had fallen and injured his back and was going to be in surgery, so please pray for the best outcome.

The movie was good, though I thought the dialog seemed a little campy in places, and the comedic relief seemed forced. Overall, excellent Batman movie (you just know they are going to go sequel crazy with this, though if they can do for Batman, what's been done for Spiderman, bring it on!).

The IMAX theatre (which seemed like a regular theatre renovated into an IMAX theatre) didn't look too much different, UNTIL they started playing the movie, which was SUPER clear. While getting my refund at the help desk, I glanced over a display where they had some samples of IMAX film. IMAX movies come in 70mm reels, which is twice the size (and therefore twice the picture detail) as standard 35mm. Therefore, since the film itself is bigger, when the projector puts it up on the screen, it doesn't have to stretch it so much. Basically, twice as much picture detail in the same, or even bigger, space. I'd compare it to the difference between Standard Definition TV and HDTV. That's my layman's understanding, anyway. ;)

Next-gen anticipation!

I like this quote : "At any rate, Playstation 3 fanboys shouldn't get all flush over the idea that the Xenon will struggle on non-graphics code (branch-intensive game control, AI, and physics). However bad off Xenon will be in that department, the PS3's Cell will probably be worse. The Cell has only one PPE to the Xenon's three, which means that developers will have to cram all their game control, AI, and physics code into at most two threads that are sharing a very narrow execution core with no instruction window. (Don't bother suggesting that the PS3 can use its SPEs for branch-intensive code, because the SPEs lack branch prediction entirely.) Furthermore, the PS3's L2 is only 512K, which is half the size of the Xenon's L2. So the PS3 doesn't get much help with branches in the cache department. In short, the PS3 may fare a bit worse than the Xenon on non-graphics code, but on the upside it will probably fare a bit better on graphics code because of the seven Spes."

I'm not so sure it will be that much better off in terms of graphics code with the Xenon having multiple VMX-128 vector units, which are nearly identical to what the SPEs do (the GPU and CPU are MUCH more innovative as well with the use of MS patented applications of procedural synthesis and having intelligent RAM on the GPU). These next-gen consoles are similar and very difficult to stack up in terms of comparisons as to what is better. It's not just as as 16 vs. 32 bit, the amount of polygons, pixel-fill rate, etc... They will look very similar in terms of graphics and performance and the devs will do better with better tools (which MS has always been good at providing; ex: XNA).

The initial mis-conception that the ps3 is another league in terms of performance is proven wrong with later technical discussions about the two that show that comparisons aren't so simple. If anybody still believes that those ps3 'demos' shown at E3 were 'actual gameplay representations' is in complete denial and is mostly likely one who jives with sony's cycle of over-hype/under-deliver and use of cute marketing buzz-words that are based on bullshit (the ps2's emotion engine, etc...). I'm also getting increasingly annoyed with Ken Kutaragi's arrogance and ignorant comments berating his competitors (it's almost like a political smear campaign except MS hasn't stooped to his level).

I have confidence in the fact that the Xbox 360 will not be under-powered and be sufficient to compete with the others, quite easily. The Xbox is receiving some strong Japanese support this time around (the one thing that was obviously lacking previously). Along with the fact that the Xbox 360 is actually coming out this holiday season, I have grown very fond of MGS' first-party lineup and am eagerly waiting to play some of these games.