The day, October 26th. The year, 2000. The system, the Sony Playstation 2. A follow up to the PSX, the most successful game console ever. With such a legacy behind it and the hype machine working on all eight cylinders, it has already had a couple of strikes working against it. Yes, against. Nothing can live up to the hype. Very few things do. Not Star Wars, not the XFL, and not even the PS2. Hype, however blinding, sells systems. Has anyone seen Sony's marketing blitz? If you answer "yes," I will call you a liar. They don't need to market it now, because every time the system hits store shelves or is available online, it sells out. That my friend is the power of hype. By the end of next month, the system will probably reach 10 million units sold worldwide, despite the shortage. Not bad for a system that has only been available for year in Japan or so, and four months in North America.

Let us delve beyond the hype, and examine the console itself and the games that it plays or will be playing.
Remember always, any console that doesn't play great games is a two to three hundred dollar paperweight.

Technology

This is where many complaints from developers have come. Being use to the straight forward nature of PC hardware has spoiled and dare I say, made them lazy. If it isn't easy they complain. Simply put the PS2's architecture is different, and lazy developers, cough, Oddworld Inhabitants, cough, do nothing but complain and sell out.
With the PS2, they are required to rethink how they program.
Conventional wisdom must be thrown out, or you'll never get the most out of the system.

3D/Caching

PC: The PC paradigm when it pertains to 3D is large buckets with small pipelines. In computing terms, this translates into large amounts of RAM with a narrow data bus leading to the RAM. Video cards nowadays are being designed with more and more RAM. Just a few years ago, 8 Megs were the norm, now we're seeing cards such equipped with 64!

PS2: The system adopts another way of rendering 3D. Instead of having large buckets, it has a small one, however, the pipes leading to the bucket are significantly larger than PC's. If a developer adopts the PC paradigm when coding for the PS2, you will run into problems. You cannot cache large models and textures into the VRAM, and store code and data in the L1 or L2 cache. There simply isn't enough room in the systems 4 megs of VRAM. Instead the PS2 has and extremely fast, extremely wide bus leading the the 4 megs. Data, must be streamed, and the bus must be used extensively to get the most out of the system.

SIMD processors

Vector Unit 0 and Vector Unit 1: These processors provide developers access to alot of raw power. Both units are 128-bit SIMD processors. They are identical, but their roles different and are hardwired. Vector Unit 0 also has 16k of data and 16k of instruction cache, compared to Vector Unit 1's 8k for both.

-Vector Unit 0 is coupled with the central processor and the floating point unit to calculate physics, AI, and emotions. VU0, and the FPU have their own dedicated 128-bit bus to communicate with the CPU.

-Vector Unit 1 is coupled with the graphics synthesizer. The VU1 does simple geometry calculations and sends them to the graphics synthesizer via a direct, unshared 128-bit bus.

Almost all subunits of the emotion engine have their own dedicated bus. This bypasses any network traffic that a unified architecture may encounter, thus allowing for a more efficient data transfer.

Many of the earlier games relied strictly on the CPU, and some haven't even touched these units yet. A game being developed by Naughty Dog is said to take advantage of the vector units, thus producing games that are just shy of CG quality.

A system such as the N64 has evolved very little in terms of graphics. Compare Zelda Ocarina of Time to Majora's Mask. There is very little difference. The Xbox may follow this trend - Open architecture, Direct X-Api, and its PC-like nature. There exists the possibility that games that are released this fall will look nearly identical as games released several generations from now because of its ease of development. I could be wrong, but the framework is there. Look at the Dreamcast as well. Shenmue aside, not too many have surpassed the quality of Soul Calibur - a launch game.


The Games

Like I stated earlier, without software, the PS2, or any system is nothing more than an expensive paperweight.

This has been a minor sore spot. When someone says there aren't any good games available, I point my finger towards SSX, Madden 2001, Fifa 2001, Tekken Tag Tournament, Timesplitter, Kessen, Rayman 2, ATV, etc.. I then direct them to the games that are in development. Some are even just around the corner. I'll let these games speak for themselves.

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Onimusha: Warlords, Zone of the Endors, Devil May Cry, Gran Turismo 3, Tekken 4, Vitua Fighter 4, Final Fantasy VII - XII, Soul Calibur 2, Ace Combat 4, Star Wars Starfighter, Red Faction, Extermination, Tenchu 3, Klonoa 2, Kessen I, II & III, Soul Reaver 2, Seven Blades, Blood the last Vampire, Bloody Roar III (produced/published by Namco!), Dark Cloud, Wipeout Fusion, MDK 2 Armageddon, NINJA GAIDEN!!, Resident Evil 4, Resident Evil Code Veronica: Complete, Rayman 2, The Getaway, Silent Hill 2, possibly Grandia III, the next Lunar game, Suikoden III, Twisted Metal: Black, Le Mans 24 Hours, The Devil and I, Ico, Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance


Conclusion

Technology aside, the PS2 has an extremely bright future ahead of it. By the time the big N and Microsoft launches their systems, the PS2 will have a user base of around 15-18 million. In addition to that, there will be a good deal of quality games available.




Recommended: Yes