Mac Gaming: Xbox 360 and PS3 Emulators?

Some very interesting points raised here. Like someone said above, what I would really love to see is OS X on PS3 (screw you XBox fanboys!). The PS3's CPU may be POWER-derived (not exactly PowerPC...which is another flavor of the POWER family), but that doesn't mean much because the POWER part of the CPU just acts as a "controller" module to the 8 "cores" or APUs, which do the actual number flipping. Incidentally, only 7 of the 8 do useful work; the last is reserved as a redundancy. Whoever wants to write an emulator/virtualization layer for the PS3 CPU would have to know that architecture pretty well, and it's a new architecture, I might add. I guess it's a bit more feasible with XBox's triple-core PowerPC chip. Anyway, I hope someone makes it.... I want to get my hands on OS X but I just can't justify spending the extra $$ for an entire hardware setup (which, I think, is overpriced to begin with!)

What I want to know is why hasn't anyone created a word prosessor for any system we have now, or future one. surely ps3, xbox360, or ps2 and xbox could handle word.

Yeah, it's not gonna happen, not without much more powerful Macs. Just look at this anecdote: http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/615/615667p1.html That's a G5 choking to provide the performance from a triple-core XBox 360. If Sony lives up to their hype (they never have, of course) the PS3 would be even more difficult. For a frame of reference, the P3 CPU inside the original XBox is barely powerful enough to emulate a N64 or PS1, and not powerful enough to emulate a Dreamcast. While using the same CPU makes things much easier, you still have to emulate all of the other hardware, AND duplicate any kind of embedded software and firmware, which would likely cross some kind of legal line.

no.

ps3 looks nicer also and shows that open GL is just as capable if not better than Direct 3D. By the time the ps3 comes out I think the mac and pc's will see quite a leap in processor specs and video cards will be available better or equal to what the ps3 has currently. Think of how happy IBM is about all of this they get money from PS3 sales, Xbox 360 Sales and Reveloution sales as well as PowerMacs and iMacs. I wonder how the supply will be with IBM delivering all the chips to so many companies. They have trouble getting chips to Apple I hear. Better now but still.

It is completely possible to port the games to the Mac platform, but standard Macs will have to get better hardware. For example, the best way to do this would be to include a Cell processor (as a co-processor) into standard Mac hardware to complement the G5. There could be other outstanding benefits to this, such as HDTV encoding/decoding if you wanted to use a Mac mini (with such processors) as a DVR. Next, the Mac platform needs better videocards, which GPUs at similar levels as the Xbox360 and the PS3. Obviously, it would be easiest to port the PS3 games to such a Mac platform since the PS3 is using OpenGL and not DirectX.

teksno, the Xbox games' development platform is G5 based. The chip in the PS3 is PowerPC based. Read your fellow commentors. Sorry, headache. Original post was overly harsh.

WHAT!!! how did you make a post out of one of my comments!!!! your a sly one C.K.

I belive that the PS3 runs OpenGL and not direct X like the xbox. It is using a power pc chip and should be easy peasy to port games over from the ps3 to mac. Right?

hey ck....ask you cohuarts over at engadget about the cpu's for the ps3, and the 360.... sorry bro...you are simply wrong this time....