Final Fantasy XIV Producer Blames PS3 Delay on Console Memory Restrictions
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Zyrusticae
replyI don't think anyone's particularly surprised by this.
Personally, I am amused at just how far behind-the-curve the consoles have become. They were already pretty short on memory when they were first released, but nowadays, with 4GBs of RAM being bog-standard for gaming PCs, the consoles literally possess a fraction of the capacity.-
PC memory is a hell of a lot cheaper then what they are using in the consoles. The ps3 has i think 256mb but it super fast and super expensive.
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Uh, no, no it isn't. It's using XDR RAM, which is nothing but special-purpose RAM for the system, equivalent to DDR2 SDRAM, which is nearly a decade old technology-wise.
It's not only not super fast, it's not super expensive, either. It's manufactured similarly to DDR2 SDRAM, which is only semi-expensive today because no one makes it anymore. If they did, you likely could quadruple the RAM in the PS3 for ~$25, at wholesale cost.-
I don't think RAM was so cheap at the time. Nowadays you can get 8gb of flash RAM for like $5, but we're talking about 5 years ago -- that's a huge leap in production in the tech industry. And the PS3 in particular was always going to be sold at a loss, so every dollar they saved adds up to millions of dollars in the long run. If they spent ONLY $5 on more ram (at a loss), and then build 60 million PS3's, that ALONE adds up to $300,000,000 ($300 million... gone). Now imagine a $25 loss!
Granted, they make back some of that by selling games at a premium, and peripherals and whatnot, but still, when you have to take a loss it's better to reduce one expensive component than sacrifice 4 or 5 smaller ones that would make the entire package seem less enticing. For instance, if you offer 8 USB ports (or whatever), it looks more impressive than listing off the RAM specs, which oblivious console buyers don't know anything about. I couldn't resist a shot at consolers, sorry :)
Besides, Sony's secret weapon is the Blu-Ray player. You can stream gigs of information very easily, something the Xbox can't do, so it needs less RAM (and produces less heat, which accounts for all the RROD's).-
You speak of the PS3's Blu-Ray player like its some special amazing piece of technology! All it is is a optical disc drive! The speeds of this PS3 driver aren't even impressive! 2x BluRay, 8x DVD and 24x CD, the Xbox 360's is even faster then that!! The Xbox 360's dvd drive is 16x DVD and 48x CD, that's twice as fast!
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So what. It's still slower then the 360 16x drive. Do the math. Of course 1x on bluray is faster then 1x on DVD.
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So a 2x BR drive in a PS3 does 9 MB/s vs the 360's 16X DVD Drive that does 21.6 MB/s. (1x is 1.35 MB/s for a more precise count)
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Then factor in the enormous seek times for BR and the stats start looking less impressive.
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