PS3 Limitations

How soon into FFXIV do you think this excuse will be used? :)

How? It's the original system for release, and PC.
If anything, there will be 360 limitations if they decide to add 360.

PS3 is a super computer don't expect it to be outdated in the next 5 or 7 years

thunderblaze you should shoot yourself for even thinking the PS3 will have "limitaions" for FFXIV. its what the game was supposed to come out on.

please people, don't feed the trolls.

FFXI was originally designed around the PS2, yet it's the least powerful system that it's available on, and has been given as a reason that things couldn't be improved at times.

Powerful as a PS3 may be now, over time, it really won't be. The advantage of the PC platform for things like this becomes apparent. A decent gaming PC is already more capable than a PS3 or 360. In 2010 moreso...in, say, 2015...you get the idea.

Hard to say when the first instance of that will crop up as we haven't seen how much they've managed to squeeze out of the PS3 yet.

Could hazard guesses based on the limitations of the machine...RAM limitations are certainly going to be a concern long-term. 256MB system + 256MB video, with the ability to use up to 224MB of the system RAM for video...on the PC side already, most gaming cards are 512MB-1GB of video memory, and system RAM is probably 4-6GB now (6GB for DDR3 based systems mostly).

Relatively, there's already the kind of gap that the PS2 and PC had. Could be that we won't see large textures as a result. Certainly not what will be considered that in 5 years. So we could see the same thing where the PC version could be made to look better, but the consoles wouldn't be able to hack it.

I don't think we'll see some of the things, like inability to increase inventory or something though. The resource discrepancy is still there, but as the base amounts in question are far larger, and the actual space needed to hold a list of items shouldn't be much different.

Considering that the PS3's Cell Broadband Engine is being used by doctors at the Mayo Clinic for medical imaging, and researchers at Standford University for running simulations to study changing proteins in different diseases I really don't see the PS3 placing any limitations on FFXIV. I suggest you read up on "Folding@Home" more commonly called FAH.

I really hope FFXIV isn't released on the Xbox 360. PS3 is the only current generation console that I think could pass bare minimum 7 years down the road when FFXIX (or w/e the next MMORPG will be in the series) replaces it.

I'm probably just going to stick to PC again personally. I'll *facepalm* if it is released on the 360 tbh. A lot of ppl I've known have had issues doing stuff like besieged on FFXI, I'd hate to see the lag on FFXIV in that case.

A ps2 can be used to control chemical missiles and unmanned aircraft but can't let you hold more than 80 items in one place.

Who knowswhat limitations ps3 will have :P

we got to the moon and back with the equiv of like, a ti-82

that has to do with the slower speed of the ram. Computers don't have X "good" value. There are many different parts.

the ps3 can easily play the FFXIV better than 360 especially in situations similar to Besieged in FFXI. But to say there won't be limitations down the road or that the ps3 can last another 7 yrs or so in this cycle competitively is dumbfounded. the ps3 is not a super computer, its cell processor is used in super computers. like Isiolia mentioned above its dedicated video memory and total available video memory are already kinda limiting as far as the optimum platform. don't get me wrong, for now it will be just fine but few years down the road it will possibly limiting to the same extent as the ps2 was for FFXI. if i could afford a ps3 at the moment or before FFXIV launch i would get one to play it at launch but i will most likely just get it for pc at launch

Folding@Home is cross platform, and included as an optional install with graphics drivers on Windows. Not really something unique to the PS3, and not something that necessarily reflects on a particular machine's attributes outside of that set of functions.

A lot can be said about specialization when it comes to platforms. For example, GPUs on the PC side are very specialized CPUs. Doing what they're built for, they far surpass general use processors. An HD4800 series GPU, say, can outpace an i7 CPU over 10x with pure operations per second. It's just not very flexible as to what those operations can be.

A PS3 is, as far as Folding@home goes, a middle ground between CPUs and GPUs (according to their FAQ). It's slower than GPUs, but more flexible...but not as flexible as general CPUs, which it's faster than.

"supercomputer" is often a marketing term for consumer level hardware anyway. Remember back around 10 years ago when Apple marketed the G4 as a "supercomputer"...since it was, based on operations per second and standards at the time?

Either way, the PS3, like any console, is a moment in time for hardware. It'll be relatively slow in 5 years, assuming we don't hit some wall in hardware development. That's just how it goes.

also, there is a misunderstanding that the larger number of RAM in a card means it's better. The RAM in the GPU of the Ps3 is so fast it dosnt need to have alot, cause it can render a visual so fast, and grab the next bit of info.

id give it 2 years, thats how long it was for xi when SE started spowting that ps2 limitation BS.

It uses GDDR3, which is also what the 360 uses for the entirety of the system's 512MB of shared memory. The Wii also utilizes GDDR3 for it's main memory. It's also what most graphics cards on the market use. Very low end cards are still using GDDR2, and ATI has some, even midrange, cards on the market now using faster GDDR5.

Not saying it isn't fast memory. More that it's absolutely nothing special, and doesn't represent a reduced need for video memory compared to anything else on the market today.
The "Reality Synthesizer" is an nVidia product, based on the 7800 architecture. Cutting edge PC graphics, circa 2005. I had a 7900GT in my last PC, certainly not a bad card, but it's low end in today's market. Any way you slice it, the PS3 GPU is commodity hardware, several years behind what's in a modern gaming PC.

More likely, consoles get away with less memory because they have one config to work with, and developers can tune to what works. Notice how a lot of games render at 720p and upscale, versus actually rendering at 1080p. Takes less power to do that, need less video memory because textures can be smaller, and so on.

Not saying that to trash on a particular platform or not, I have a PS3, a 360, several PCs, etc. It's just the nature of the beast. Consoles are special-purpose, but generally comprised of commodity hardware by the time they hit the market. That's what makes it feasible to sell millions of them for a few hundred bucks a pop. When the 7800GT was released, it was around a $250 card - no way Sony is paying that much for the chip now.

How often does the "average" PC gamer upgrade his/her PC? Every 2-5 years and more often only when a part absolutely must be replaced. I say this because the majority of individuals build their PC around the idea of it lasting for several years. Assuming people who will want to play FFXIV will upgrade their PC to play the game the average gamers aren't going to be upgrading their PC for the next couple of years after.

You're all also comparing FFXI developed for PS2 to a game being developed for a PS3. I'm sorry, but a PS3 is fairly more powerful than a PS2 and I just don't see "storage" being a problem in the upcoming game. But than again we don't really know anything about the game other than a cg trailer and some interviews.

I'd like to think SE learned from it's problems w/ the PS2 and designed the game for the PS3 w/ these very problems in mind.

Sure, PC upgrades won't always happen every year. I'm only on my third primary PC since FFXI was released. However, the hardware available -now- is already more capable than the PS3, much less what will become available, or what will become cheaper, in the coming years. The PS3 will stay the same, other than the inevitable cheaper-to-produce hardware revisions and price drops.

We should wind up seeing a better PC port as a result of Crystal Tools being a multi-platform development environment versus FFXI being a painfully obvious PS2 port to multiple platforms. Perhaps SE will actually allow for the PC version to grow with hardware capability this time around too. There's really no info regarding that so far, so we can't really say.

il get it on PS3 so i can use it to play FFXI :P

but who cares atm about Limitations anyways lets worry about it when the game is released

For years the main method of making faster processors was to simply make the components smaller. Not many people really think about it, but even though electrical currents move at such a fast speed, if you halve the size of a processor, the current has half the distance to travel and will get there twice as fast.

I don't know where we're currently at with this, but 6 or 7 years ago I guess, it was estimated that by 2008 circuitry would be down to the atomic level in size, and could not physically get any smaller. Even if this date approximation was way off, we are approaching a physical wall, and the only way to continue to improve technology is to change and adapt the way things are actually made.

Of course hardware developers have been working on improving their products in as many other ways as they can instead of just making it smaller for years. Thankfully these people are a lot smarter and know a lot more about it than I do, but either way we can expect technological improvements to slow down in the not too distant future.

What this means is that consoles and pc's are going to last longer each generation. On top of this, there's a limit to how good graphics can get anyway, if something looks 100% life-like, how can it get any better? We're pretty close to this point as it is, so I don't see how people will be craving for more power when they can play a game that looks like a movie and has 700 characters on screen.


Yes, but when we went to the moon we didn't have to fight off the Mamool Ja at the same time with high shadows and anti-aliasing.

ROFLMAO you sir are full of win. that made my day. Kudos, cheers, best reply ever.

And that's why MMO's are better then reality!

Seriously, though, yeah, Moore's Law be damned, at some point, we're gonna hit a wall with how much we can shrink the processors down. Eventually, the transistors in a processor are gonna be so close together, and the circuits that connect them so small and thin, that any amount of electrical impulse through it is pretty much gonna melt the circuit.

This is why speeds aren't necessarily increasing at this point, we're just throwing more cores at it. I mean, we've had 3 GHz Procs for what, 5 years now?

Anyways, I look forward to seeing what can be done with Quantum computing. Hopefully it'll be around in practical usage during our lifetime...

The universe will implode with Quantum computing. You know this.

I actually read something somewhere on the internet (I know, how useless is that) about how the way we are going about designing computer chips will lead to a definite "wall" as you put it. Something about the physics involved. I read it at like 3 AM and remember only that, but some physicists said that it's just a matter of time before we have to completely rethink how computer chips are designed / manufactured if we're going to keep developing them to be smaller + faster or whatever.

Yeah, it's physics. You can only make a circuit so small before it can't handle the electricity running through it without melting.

So either we find better materials to make our chips out of, which in time will also "top out", or like you said, we look at computing a completely different way (Such as with Quantum Computing)...

I don't know much about it, TBH, but I've heard that at it's base it looks to be FAR more powerful then current 1+0 type computing.

That and we keep making them smaller and smaller so we can fit them into the same defacto space of a typical CPU, which makes for even more heat. This gave rise to the advent of active cooling, the Pentium that HAD to have a fan on top to keep it from cracking. Of course that fan isn't enough now, now more and bigger fans are needed or no fans at all in favor of liquid cooling. What hasn't changed? The size of the processor.

What I heard about quantum computing goes something like this:

Modern day computers run off of digital information that is stored/interpreted as binary ones and zeros. In quantum computing, the information can be a one, a zero, both a one and a zero, or neither a one nor a zero. Of course when I heard this I was like, "Um...wait. What?" Then they said something about instead of being in two possible states (one or zero) it could be in 11 possible states. Sometimes I wish I were smarter so I could better understand this, maybe I'd be a lot more excited about it then,

That's why you now see processor companies producing multi-core processors instead of spouting out GHz ratings. With the current state of electronics, we are approaching the fastest we can go with silicon and the only efficient way to speed up processing power is to have multi-threaded applications.

Hardware dev. is nice now can we get some damn software that actually use this damn new techno stuff T.T

anyways Ps3 fan boys off your high horses

PC in 2~ years will probably out class the ps3 by a HUGE amount and then the limitation crap will start kicking in pretty much

you can quote this or that but you all know the pc will just release a new GFX card, processor, more ram, etc, etc and rape all the consoles into dust

its how PC works but to be able to have those things is pretty much being broke 4evar ; ;

And when that happens, 6-8 years into FFXIV's lifecycle, it'll be just like Lu said:

"God, why won't SE drop the *** PS3 already?! It's holding us back, we could be playing this on our virtual reality system right now if it wasn't for the stupid PS3..."

Or like someone else said a ways back:



"You gotta use your hands? That's like a baby's toy!!"

"dood we could be totally cybering that mithra right now but stupid ps3 is holding us back!"

o.o

tbh I wouldn't mind if they stop making new Hardware and started making decent software for once >.>