6 years. Only 6 years. It took Sony for so many years to become a leader in the gaming platform market. Many people think that the corporation has always been there, but it is completely wrong. Moreover, the Japanese, initially, did not even plan to appear on it. Yes, there were attempts to cooperate with the SEGA on the manufacture of components, but there were no thoughts about their own system. Everything, as often in such stories, began in the event. Once, Ken Kutaragi, seeing his daughter playing video games, also became interested in them and decided to take a contract from the Nintendo to create an audio chip for their next prefix. Despite general disapproval, the project was still given a green light thanks to the support of Norio OGA, the then executive director of Sony. As a result of success, Nintendo with Sony signed an affiliate agreement. The new project was already a different nature, more ambitious, so to speak.
Super Nes Play Station
The beginning of the 90s was accompanied by a change in the standards of carriers; Cartridges due to small volume and insufficient reading rate was already difficult to consider as an actual solution – they were a thing of the past; And the next evolutionary step was to be disk carriers, and joint development was just this and. The device was planned in two versions: as an additional CD drive for SNES, as well as as a hybrid console Sony Play Station (inherently, SNES, but already with a built-in CD-drive). The system existed and even represented by the public in 1991, but literally at the last moment due to licensed and, in the future, financial disagreements were canceled. Despite the failed project, Sony and, in particular Ken, with the support of the same Mr. OGA, continued to work on creating their own game system, all the more already having experience working with similar.
Further fate
Ken Kutaragi and PlayStation 2 Slim
Due to copyright, the project will replace the Play Station to PlayStation already familiar to us, and after a while it will win the championship in the 5th generation race. And if the first “Sonya” was still a kind of experiment, then the creation of the second was already approached thoroughly, which allowed us to maintain the relevance of iron for a long time. PlayStation 2 will become the best -selling and successful game prefix in history, will disperse around the world in the amount of 150 million. copies, leaving the “mastodons” in the person of Sega and Nintendo far behind, and Ken Kutaragi himself will proudly call the “father of PlayStation”.
PlayStation 3: Beginning
Obviously, after two successful generations, Plasystation 3 was only a matter of time. Indirect development began around 2001 by the creation of an alliance called “STI” (Sony, Toshiba, IBM). The main goal of the research was to create a flexible universal processor capable of calculating from conditionally home TV and to a supercomputer. The result of 4-year development was a processor known as “Cell”. Sony created the basis for their new console, but obviously did not force the events – they were in a hurry to do nothing, because the PlayStation 2 continued to disperse like hot pies, the number of audience only grew, and it would be madness to throw it with madness.
Another thing is that competitors represented by Microsoft and Nintendo have no dealing with Sony. And if the neighbors from Japan decided to get away from a direct clash, taking their niche, which will soon allow evolution as part of game controllers – for which, of course, a huge plus for them, then the newly -made American competitor was full of ambitions on one field.
Sony were the hostages of the success of PlayStation 2, it was simply unprofitable for them to end “their sixth generation”, but at the same time there was a great risk of falling into the new one, tritely missing the start. A separate circumstance creating the problem was “Cell”. As it will become known later, the initial PlayStation 3 concept did not imply a graphic chip in principle, and the processor, in addition to computing operations, was also supposed to engage in graphics. So bad luck, the development of graphic technologies either went too fast, or a slightly different road than Sony, but it turned out that the early phenomenal results of Cell were significantly different from those obtained in the 2004-2005s, and far from the better. The situation was extremely not rainbow, but given the average generation of 5 years, a long -term failure loomed over the corporation.
Measures had to be taken as soon as possible, and there was no time to develop your own decision. Thus, another chip appeared on the Platstation 3 maternal board, with the pathos name “RSX” or Reality Synthesizer, which was actually an ordinary PC-hide video card of the outdated series, and also with a cut tire, but allegedly with “raised frequencies”. A series of chips G7X, which was used in video cards, having a separate architecture of shaders, caused discomfort and a number of problems with performance, and frankly “survived”, and the whole world literally expected the 8th generation of graphic chips. It is clear that in the future this will be reflected in the fall of Framreite, and in low resolution, and of course in the beloved – smoothing and its absence.
Technical characteristics and potential
“I blinded him from what was. "
PlayStation 3 Fat motherboard. Behind two sealing in the center, Cell and RSX are hidden, behind the extreme on the left – Emotion Engine and Graphics Synthesizer, combined into one chip.
The final characteristics turned out to be https://slotablecasino.co.uk/ as follows:
1. Central processor: 8 nuclear Cell 3.2 GHZ;
2. RAM: Rambus 256 MB XDR 3200 MHz;
3. Graphic processor: NVIDIA RSX 256 MB GDDR3 550 MHz;
Despite the fact that, at first glance, PlayStation 3 had similarity with a PC, in fact, everything was far from the case.
1) Cell was not an 8 nuclear processor. In fact, only one core (two-way) and 8 co-processor elements was full-fledged. What does it mean? In simple and understandable words, the very core was a conductor for these elements, and coordinated their work. This technology made it possible to create a huge number of parallel calculations, which was then a decision of modern trends. Most of the games did not support two streams, not to mention eight. Even Crysis, one of the most technological projects worked mainly on one core. However, the story of “eight flows” is not entirely true, one SPE was always blocked for the sake of reducing the marriage of crystals in production, one was busy with sound processing, and finally another was engaged in the processing of the operating system. Thus, from eight SPE there were only five, which was also still impressive. In addition, each SPE had its own cache and memory, and interaction with each other was realized through the tire.
2) Despite the appearance of a separate graphic chip in the PS3, according to the idea of Sony engineers, rendering was still mainly carried out by Cell forces, the very SPE. And this really was logic; During the experiment, it turned out that if you use 5 SPE as pixel shaders, then they achieve the result at the level of similar shaaders of the GT 7900 video card. In other words, Cell compensated for the shortcomings of the separate architecture of the RSX, and this was not a whim, but really a necessity.
Most of the third-party developers when creating or porting, due to a simpler and more understandable architecture, focused on X-BOX (quite a logical solution) and threw off the entire game code for one thing, let a powerful core and a moral-worried graphic chip, while completely using SPES. That’s the answer why the entire multi-platform until 2009-2010 looks strikingly better on the console from Microsoft.
"Wow! We left the bay!"
The issues with the “filling” somehow resolved, and in 2006 Sony, with grief in half, entered the seventh generation of consoles.
Presentation of the PS3 design
The PlayStation 3 exit was remembered by everyone as a big holiday and failure at the same time; The console, appearing a year later, lost many projects, including several exclusives that migrated to the X-Box 360, and as a result of which had no much attractiveness in the eyes of consumers. The first games suffered from a galloping framework, a lack of smoothing, and sometimes even a lack of HD resolution. Many famous companies spoke negatively about PlayStation, and some projects did not even come out due to the complexity of development. A separate “tarry of tar” was the cost of the device, people simply did not understand why buying a console on which the games look worse and which, moreover, is still $ 100 more expensive – it is really incomprehensible. However, this was not a complete list … Another surprise was overheating, which took place up to the Slim-revision. In general, this problem concerned not only the PlayStation 3-X-Box 360 “burned” as well, already like a year; another thing is that Sony had time to foresee this.
Thus, for the Japanese corporation, the seventh generation was not as rosy as the previous one, but was threatened by a breakdown. It was necessary to do something until the market was finally formed. In addition, 2006 was generally difficult for Sony, and in many ways a turning point. Ken Kutaragi, known before “Father PlayStation” leaves the post of president of the corporation, is perhaps by his decision, he was “asked”, since it was he who was responsible for the Cell architecture, and the head of the American Branch of Kazuo Hirai comes in his place. And if Kutaragi was a romantic engineer who dreamed of creating a console, then Hirai was a pragmatic marketer manager who came to correct the situation, if possible quickly and clearly.
"Fire, water and copper pipes"
Ken as if symbolically convey the fate of PS3 cazuo
First of all, Cazuo took up the maximum cost of the console by reducing the cost, and almost personally controlling. The PlayStation 3 Fat River seemed in many ways a dream console, except for its main chips, the chips with PS2 were also attended on its motherboard, for the reverse compatibility that on the one hand it was an interesting solution for customers, because many from previous generations had a library with their favorite games, and on the other hand added fifty green, if not more to consistency resistance. First, they tried to replace the hardware compatibility with software, but due to problems with performance, they left the opportunity to launch games only with PS. Also, for the sake of reduction, the cartridder was “cut”, the housing materials and the cooling system became simpler.
Solving the problem of cost, Sony also did not forget about games, allocating huge budgets to internal studios and third -party developers. Yes, of course, there are no pancakes without coma, and it is difficult to call the first line of exclusives “12/10 masterpieces for all times and fingertips”-they were very raw, but some still stood out from the masses: the same Uncharted, which came out during the crisis of the Aquenchur, Mototrstorm mixture and flutout, and Heavenly Sword, the animation in which still looks very much. Basically, Sony, of course, made a bet on games for a mass audience, but niche projects like Metal Gear Solid, Gran Turismo and Demon`s Souls also appeared on the system, the latter will completely be unexpectedly popular and generate a series of success later, and many will try to repeat the formula of success.
In the 2009th year, the new line of exclusives took place, and Uncharted 2 became the “cherry on the cake”, which was considered by many as the main “why’ to buy PS3; Kilzone 2 was also not lost, let nothing and did not do anything for the development of the genre, but finally demonstrated the same “potential”.
A separate event was the output of the SLIM revolution, the consoles of which became less overall and could boast of a smaller process (45 nm, unlike 90 nm in FAT), which allowed to practically completely forget about overheating, but also for the sake of saving, several USB ports were cut off from them.
"The trouble does not come alone"
It would seem that the main “stones” are successfully reset from the neck: the cost is reduced to a competitive figure, the PlayStation no longer shines with yellow lights, expected exclusives come out, God of War III blows all their heads, and Heavy Rain “forces people to give four thousand for Kinzo”, and even third -party developers began to study the features of Cell, like those the same Dice using the SPU for the implementation of the MLAA-stroke in Battlefield 3, but a new problem appears … And PlayStation is already hacked! On August 20, 2010 it became known about the partial hacking of the console-it became possible to launch images of games from the hard drive, and even after the quarter, on New Year’s Eve, on December 30, a gift fell under the “Christmas tree”-a full hack, allowing him to turn anything, even to put Linux, which the Japanese “cut off” relatively long ago, but the timely release of the new update of the Sony firmware has already been finally. eliminated the possibility of hacking, and soon launched a chain of criminal prosecution of offenders.
After a while, the owners of PlayStation 3, and in particular, the regulars of network games await a new test – the fall of PSN. In the period of time from April 17 to April 19, 2011, as a result of unauthorized access, and in simple words, hacking the PlayStation Network, data from 77 million. users. Sony is forced to turn off access to the service, depriving tens of millions of online players, which, against the backdrop of a possible hacking, is no longer a PSN account, but bank cards, it does not seem like such a tragedy. Access to PSN will return a month later, on May 15, 2011, but court cases in users’ claims will last another 2 years.
In the same 2011, PlayStation 3 entered the third phase of its life cycle; The new audit of Superslim frankly, except for the maximum reduction of the cost, did not claim and differed only by design, and the next line of games was ambiguous: Uncharted 3 and Motorstorm 3 were frankly weaker than the previous ones, and Kilzone 3 and Resistance 3 finally got rid of the crooked game design and became playable.
It was clear that the PlayStation 3 era and the seventh generation are systematically approaching the end, and even if a couple of projects are planned, but this is still the last note of harmony, and the devil take it, everything is just the same for a full-fledged game, the large DLC, God of War: assension (what you) simply should not have left after the epic) the third part (which, according to the tradition of long -playing episodes, ended “the sequel should”). The gaming community with developers was already literally awaited by the announcement of a new generation when suddenly the "Swan Song" PS3 comes out.
Generation 7.5
Who would have thought that at the end of the generation we would see a game of such quality as Beyond Two Souls The Last of Us. The new project in the new franchise, not spin-offs and no sequel, as is usually done recently. Honestly, even now the TLOU setting is not trustworthy: zombiepocalypse is already so beaten by everyone who can be, from the old man Resident Evil to the newly-made Dead Island (Dying Light), and besides, the LEFT 4 DeAD coop also should not be forgotten, but the accents and details are determined much more. Moving a little from the topic, the main drawback of UNCHARTED has always been shootings, namely their delay and not leaving the feeling that Nathan Drake is by no means an adventurer, but an infantryman on the front line of the third world. Many expected from Naughty Dog, creators similar to TLOU, but the opposite came out radically. ND abandoned the thoughtless extermination of the infected and focused on history, creating a real Road-Muy in the setting of zombiepocalypse. Disassemble the plot of The Last of us is certainly entertaining, but another is interesting: how Sony could still improve graphics compared to Uncharted?
The effects of fire look just phenomenal, but the character of the characters are worthy of a separate praise – they are truly alive. Yes, many will say that Motion Capture is no longer new in working with animation, but only faces from this do not cease to look "cast iron", with an incomprehensible brilliance and reflections. Superficent scattering a completely different matter. The skin is known to pass the light through itself and the PBR is aimed just at the simulation of this effect. Technology today will not be easier to say in which game there is no one than the opposite, but for the seventh generation it was a new product, and in my memory it was implemented only in Battlefield 3 (if you know other examples, please write in the comments), but the same brainchild of Dice was stuffed with anything, and at one time it required a fairly productive video card, which in the 2006 console was not close.
Elley’s hair looked quite realistic, and let the real hair still be far away, but nevertheless it did not eat the dofig resources as Nvidia Hairworks, while looking quite damage.
A small evolution was also committed in the framework of the voicing of the heroes, now everything took place to match the game scene, and the sound was recorded with similar movements, but only playing this technique could try this technique, ours, Russian was made according to the old fashioned way.
Time to say goodbye?
As planned, The Last of US became a “swan song” for PlayStation 3 and consolidated success after the difficulties passed. Naturally, the console was still supported for some time after the PlayStation 4 release, and during this time several interesting multi-platform games also appeared on it, but this did not last long, somewhere until 2014, and after the FIFA 14 Legacy Edition appeared (but every year with renewed forms and compositions), some kind of indie projects and the Japanese. Sony in 2017 officially stopped production, and two years later they finally closed the servers for multiplayer games. However, the PlayStation Store is still available and there are periodically discounts.
According to the results, PS3, like the X-Box 360, dispersed around the world in the amount of 80+ million. units, taking an honorary second place and being behind the very technically weak gaming platform of the seventh generation – WII.
PlayStation 3 went down in history as one of the most ambitious consoles, giving rise to a huge number of memes, and for Sony, becoming a big lesson that sometimes “the best is the enemy of the good”, and it is very easy to overdo it with architecture, creating unnecessary problems for itself.