Perhaps the PS3's (and Sony's) fates might have been a bit better off had Sony not assumed that innertia from the PS1 and PS2 would keep them on top this generation, and instead, did what kept them successful, and focused on a platform that lagged behind some others in terms of graphics and processing power, but presented a platform that was inexpensive to own, and compelling as a media device. (the PS1's CD player, and bigger yet, the PS2's DVD player)
It's true that at first, the high cost of the Blu-Ray player was a major factor in the PS3's high cost, but also present were Sony's insistence on using a fully-scaled CBE CPU, which is NEVER utilized for gaming. The CBE is good for 32-bit single-precision floating-point used for decoding and encoding streaming media, but horrific at 64-bit double-precision floating-point that's actually used in games; a lot of Core2Duos, (like the E8400) and all Core2Quads and Core i7s best it there. (that, and even harvesting THAT much power from the PS3 requires programming for no fewer than 7 hardware threads, compared to 2-4) For what it does, it was a massive waste; it's utter overkill for handling high-def media, even with some filters used. And of course, it wasn't necessary to cram the highest-end filtering into a $500-600US device; kinda sheer idiocy to make what was one of the cheapest players of the time by far the best. Better to simply make it merely sufficient to handle it without taking quality-degrading "shortcuts," and hence make it cheaper to produce.
Also, they might've made a few better choices for the graphics sub-system. With the GPU having access to only 256MB of video RAM directly, it has to steal anything further from the CPU's pool of XDRAM, which comes at VASTLY lower memory bandwidth, and bandwidth which is ALSO stolen from the CPU's usage. This actually more or less entails that the PS3's graphical capabilies, in many games, actually lag behind the Xbox 360, in spite of being more expensive. It's slightly offset by the fact that as the RSX GPU is, more or less, just a cut-down G71, it cannot use Anti-Aliasing in any games using HDR, more or less freeing up some graphics processing power that's normally taken on the Xbox 360 and its mandate that all games use AA on it. This is usually shown as higher resolutions; virtually all PS3 games can actually run natively at 1280x720 without using a sub-HD resolution and upscaling to 720p like the Xbox 360 does. (Halo 3 is some 1138x640, and Oblivion&Fallout 3 are a mere 1024x576)
An "unintended and unfortunate" consequence of some of these cutbacks is that it might've been a bit easier to get the full power out of the PS3, by making it a tad simpler. Of course, also partly because there'd be less power to exploit, but that sort of potential is really one that can't be reasonably made use of in a normal game; if it DOES use up that much processing power, it's because something's hideously unoptimized.
Facebook
Twitter