Our friends over at GamePro.com have written an interesting article on a topic I get asked about all the time — Is the PS3 harder to develop for than other systems? I gave them some feedback on this and the reporter, Blake Snow, does a nice job of presenting a well-rounded story. For this piece, I spoke to our PD group and asked them for input on this question and thought you might be interested in reading their full reply:
This is an interesting question and hidden within the question is an enormously complex subject! If the game starts life on PS3, then man-hours per feature or costs related to asset production are comparable with industry norms. For that, you can include Xbox 360 and high-end PC games, and exclude PS2 and Wii. However, since PS3’s Cell processor allows MORE features – better physics, more complex graphical processing, lighting or sound, etc. — there is inevitably going to be more cost in supporting those extra features. It’s not that PS3 is harder to write for, it’s just that you can do more with it.
Middleware tools like Havok and other specialist graphics tools are now customized to exploit Cell’s SPUs. These mean that developers don’t have to reinvent those particular wheels themselves. Also, PlayStation Edge does some very difficult and performance-critical aspects of the graphics pipeline on the SPUs: geometry processing, animation, compression – delivering performance unachievable on other systems. This is available for free to all developers from SCE. So, given that PS3 can draw more on screen, the assets required to fill that capacity go up, too. This can, but not always, require more people – however depending on the game, much of that extra content can be produced automatically – procedurally in software, not by hand. Compared to PS2, the SPUs are much easier to code for. In PS2 we had some custom chips called VU0 and VU1 which were powerful, but tricky to write for. The SPUs use a more standard programming language.
Now, it’s not without challenges:
1) SPUs are not ‘normal’ processors like the PPU. There is a trade-off between performance and versatility. A Ferrari is not the best car for a visit to Home Depot…
2) If you are porting:
If your game starts on Xbox 360 you will have to re-engineer aspects of the game to run properly on PS3. This means additional effort. Some developers have been complaining about this but I don’t believe we can solve that. Xbox 360 is a different machine with good, but lower powered hardware in a different architecture. Developers have to view them as two different machines not as a common platform.
3) If your game has heavy online use:
XBL provides more and better standard libraries for online gaming to developers. For the same features on PS3, developers have to do some extra work. We’re catching up, but there is a difference.
BTW: Glad you guys and gals are enjoying the new blog!
@Kratos and whatthegeek
I picked my gravatar yesterday afternoon and it appeared today morning so just wait till it updates (??)
blizzard182,
That’s what it all really comes down to isn’t it? Personal preference. If load times don’t bother you, than it’s not an issue for you. I agree with you in that I’m ok with load times IF they don’t break up gameplay. I have friends that get mad whenever they see a loading screen for more than two seconds. It really is all about personal preference at the end of the day.
I hope devs stop the constant complaining and work hard to get more out of the PS3 so that their games could be played to their fullest~
Excellent read. Insightful. Not a lot of people want to listen to good reasoning but you presented it well Dave.
@whatthegeek
Yeah but thats why I say it depends on the game and the part of the game you have the load time.
If you made all the level of a FPS and then you have to wait 2 minutes to load the final boss battle, I would be pissed off. But, if you have 2 minutes between chapter and chapter there is not that much of a problem.
One thing to avoid he feeling of the load time is to have some introduction to the level while it loads in background.
Maybe a brief of the mission or a video of the track in a race game.
“It’s not that PS3 is harder to write for, it’s just that you can do more with it.” – This is the most ludicrous logic I’ve read all day.
More features means it takes longer to code and longer to learn for the net result of games that, so far, look just as good as the simpler-to-develop-for X360.
Cost-benefit is the single biggest driving factor for third party publishers. Which do you think they’re going to develop for? A system using simplistic tools (similar to those of PC programming) or a system requiring specific tools and a longer learning curve?
The logic of that statement is absolutely backwards. It’s no wonder developers are sticking to X360 and then PORTING to PS3 – it’s cheaper for their bottom line to program for a more simplistic console and make minor tweaks to put it out for the PS3.
You’ve not given them any major reasons to START developing for PS3 and PORT to X360.
[…] through the Sony Playstation blog (Is the Playstation harder to develop for?) and I decided to browse a few comments because I love fanboy […]
Frankly I think Sony has been doing a great job lately with the PS3. The PS3 DevCon a couple of months ago was extremely candid and immensely resourceful. The PS Edge stuff looks promising too, although I have not used it myself. The 1.80 update was awesome and I now expect a lot more from my PS3. The best is still to come but if Sony keeps it up like this.
One quick request, the PS3 browser runs the system out of memory when viewing rich media sites … don’t know if this can be improved .. but improving the browser would be great
Heya, I’m a first time poster, but I’ve been following Sony in the “console wars” for about twelve years now.
I have to say that I love the blog, but not necessarily for what it says. This blog is fantastic because it allows us, as industry followers, to give feedback.
Market research and PR agents do a good job of assessing what consumers expect from Sony and the other hardware/software giants, however, a blog like this one – nurtured correctly – can do far more for knowledge than 100 analysts.
Why? You already know why – because unlike having 100 analysts, a blog like this exposes your ideas and views to the criticism of not 100 but 1000s of very opinionated people. This is as “hard core”, or more accurately, “passionate” or “dedicated” gamers have very strong views – to say the least. More importantly, unlike analysts, you don’t have a body of people who are neutral, but a sea of people who are both strongly opposed and strongly allied to your corporation. This allows you to view not only what we like, but major arguments against your console and software. These arguments against are the ones you must address, and it looks like you’ve done well by this article.
Now to point out what you’ve done wrong here. The PSblog in the very few posts which have been made, has already been branded by half the non-x-rated-internet as a place where PR reps can feed lies directly to the consumer as opposed to relying on middle-men like Gamepro. This puts you in the very same shoes as the Major and numerous other blogs.
So to bring you to an argument which you cannot really deny in any medium – stop copying people. If we needed bias, we’d only read playstation magazine and only ever listen to the sales reps at Sony Style/Central.
Other corporations have resorted to blog-based biased articles to put positive spin on PR issues, but this is not what any actual gamer wants.
Dissecting your article, the main point where EVERYONE agrees you have been candid is your final point where you have admitted a lack in your online infrastructure. The main point everyone agrees you have been bias is your insistence that the Playstation 3 is the most powerful console.
Articles in this blog – in order to break free of the sledges already being made against it – must not balance PR spin with candidness, but either justify its reasoning or avoid direct bias completely.
If the same article focussed purely on the actual differences between the Playstation 3 and the Xbox360 and how that effects developers, you would not have scored a simple 10 points to credibility, but 10,000. Stating that the playstation 3 is more focussed on multithreading than the 360, thus allowing more processes being run, but slightly slower (ie – avoiding going into bus speed differences) and how this effects programming is far more credible than stating the PS3 is more powerful – although numbers support this statement.
Please strive to be different. Avoid sledging matches and bias. Arguments around what Maytrix says are not productive – actual feedback is.
*Double post – readability issues – please delete my previous one if possible*
Heya, I’m a first time poster, but I’ve been following Sony in the “console wars” for about twelve years now.
I have to say that I love the blog, but not necessarily for what it says. This blog is fantastic because it allows us, as industry followers, to give feedback.
Market research and PR agents do a good job of assessing what consumers expect from Sony and the other hardware/software giants, however, a blog like this one – nurtured correctly – can do far more for knowledge than 100 analysts.
Why? You already know why – because unlike having 100 analysts, a blog like this exposes your ideas and views to the criticism of not 100 but 1000s of very opinionated people. This is as “hard core”, or more accurately, “passionate” or “dedicated” gamers have very strong views – to say the least. More importantly, unlike analysts, you don’t have a body of people who are neutral, but a sea of people who are both strongly opposed and strongly allied to your corporation. This allows you to view not only what we like, but major arguments against your console and software. These arguments against are the ones you must address, and it looks like you’ve done well by this article.
Now to point out what you’ve done wrong here. The PSblog in the very few posts which have been made, has already been branded by half the non-x-rated-internet as a place where PR reps can feed lies directly to the consumer as opposed to relying on middle-men like Gamepro. This puts you in the very same shoes as the Major and numerous other blogs.
So to bring you to an argument which you cannot really deny in any medium – stop copying people. If we needed bias, we’d only read playstation magazine and only ever listen to the sales reps at Sony Style/Central.
Other corporations have resorted to blog-based biased articles to put positive spin on PR issues, but this is not what any actual gamer wants.
Dissecting your article, the main point where EVERYONE agrees you have been candid is your final point where you have admitted a lack in your online infrastructure. The main point everyone agrees you have been bias is your insistence that the Playstation 3 is the most powerful console.
Articles in this blog – in order to break free of the sledges already being made against it – must not balance PR spin with candidness, but either justify its reasoning or avoid direct bias completely.
If the same article focussed purely on the actual differences between the Playstation 3 and the Xbox360 and how that effects developers, you would not have scored a simple 10 points to credibility, but 10,000. Stating that the playstation 3 is more focussed on multithreading than the 360, thus allowing more processes being run, but slightly slower (ie – avoiding going into bus speed differences) and how this effects programming is far more credible than stating the PS3 is more powerful – although numbers support this statement.
Please strive to be different. Avoid sledging matches and bias. Arguments around what Maytrix says are not productive – actual feedback is.
“XBL provides more and better standard libraries for online gaming to developers. For the same features on PS3, developers have to do some extra work. We’re catching up, but there is a difference.”
Yeah keep working on it, in the meantime I’ll enjoy the rich feature of XBL.
I prefer an online service thats already there and only improved upon to be better. Not to be there and slowly watch if they can ever match the offering of one of the best software developer in the world.
Being free is a good start, I’ll get back in a few years once the ‘catching up’ is finished and if its good will definitely give it a chance.
I see some people talking out the side of their necks concerning elder scroll. Here is a great read on the subject straight from the developers mouths.
http://uk.ps3.ign.com/articles/762/762882p1.html
again people do research. I see also some people cant distinguish between OPINION pieces from yellow journalist websites and actual interviews where developers state the FACTS.
*
Yeah keep working on it, in the meantime I’ll enjoy the rich feature of XBL.
” I prefer an online service thats already there and only improved upon to be better. Not to be there and slowly watch if they can ever match the offering of one of the best software developer in the world.
Being free is a good start, I’ll get back in a few years once the ‘catching up’ is finished and if its good will definitely give it a chance.”
dude be quiet because when xbox live first started 2002 it was whack and they had alot of time to work on it and improve it on the 360
@Wanker Bloke | June 13th, 2007 at 10:50 pm
you enjoy you xbox all you wish no one here will ever care and give sony some props there doing great.good things come to those who wait I belive by the time home is released the online will be about even with the two company’s.
Keep up the excellent work on frequent and informative blog entries. I still find it disappointing that the software library is more limited, but I have faith PS3 will pull ahead in the end.
I develop on the PS3. And I have to say I love it. Some of the complaints that it is more difficult to develop for, probably stems from the fact that the architecture is new and different, and does require a little new way of thinking.
I worked on porting an Xbox 360 game over to the PS3, and I admit, it wasn’t easy. However now that I’m working on a PS3 exclusive title, I feel like I can design the engine to take advantage of all the PS3 has to offer.
Just today I ported some code from the PPU to the SPU. Not only did I free up cycles on the PPU, but I was also able achieve 15 times speed improvement after first pass optimizations. The Cell processor is amazing.
I have developed on the Xbox 360, and I enjoyed it, but not as much as working on the PS3. Sony has been doing much better at developer support and tools.
Now I only wish I could afford one for home.
some developers just don’t get it…
they can’t understand that when a new console comes out, it’s going to be revolutionary and DIFFERENT because it’s the next generation.
the xbox 360 doesnt quite cut it, it’s a half @$$ job, it’s not revolutionary like the PS3 is.
i hear people saying, the ps3 is ahead of it’s time, but it’s not compeliment when they say it.
people saying it’s too advanced.
What is wrong with people these days.
You cant compare the PS3 to the xbox360 because they are two different things.
im comfortable to say the difference between the 360 and the ps3 is by a whole generation.
this of course makes little sense to mast because the ps3 and 360 are both in the same generation, and for me, that is hard to say.
Continuing from my previous post…
As for the playstation 3 being harder to develop for – many savvy fans such as myself wonder why on earth Sony does not simply bite the bullet and release guidelines and stronger toolsets for easy and effective conversion.
As consoles are fixed entities, with understood languages and programming methodology being vastly stagnant, a set of toolsets and guidelines (for what it would take a developer to make fast and effective transfers from games of other platforms to the PS3) would increase developer productivity, developer ties, and the standard of games coming to the PS3.
Rather than developers wasting time and money on figuring out conversions between languages, compression and optimised process scheduling for multi-threaded processors of different core types, could Sony not release tools to make said conversions simpler?
Programming differences between programmable shader systems and fixed systems may also be assisted by Sony-specific tools and guidelines. This would allow for games to be more rapidly converted between systems employing said technologies – something which is not exclusive to the xbox360, but extends to the PC.
Any such tools do not necessarily have to compile code, but may just be workbench-type applications which highlight code that can be optimised, with references to examples. The difference between this and any such existing applications is this being optimised exclusively for Sony platforms.
Compare this with the current method employed by Sony, which is to develop a large amount of exclusive games in-house.
News Flash to Sony – the previous generation was not won on the backs of SCE programmers, but of those from Square-Enix, Capcom, Ubisoft, and countless other third party developers. Rather than having 15+ design teams working on multiple B+ titles, the AAA teams may be expanded, with the rest being rerouted to making tools for Third Party developers.
Futhermore, why leave middleware to companies such as Havok when you have a mountain of employees who can be rerouted to developing middleware which can be exclusive to Sony products?
Strengthening third party support is a far more powerful rout to success than expanding in-house development. Such support actually lends itself to securing third party exclusives and development speed, allowing for more, and better games being released to Sony platforms. More games, and more exclusives translates to more hardware sales and more money.
Domination of the middleware market, releasing more dev. tools and dev guidelines leads to better games and, again, more money.
Anyone else here see a connection here?
Can someone puh-lease ban these obvious trolls? They send the comments way off-topic and it makes it difficult to make sense of anything…
NEwho, apart from the trolls, this blog’s been a great read. Keep it up!
and it makes what aggrivates me even more is when people port these games from the 360 to the ps3 and say…
“we want the same experience for everybody”
i mean, they dont even think to attempt using the ps3’s massive power to make their game even better and more beautiful than they ever imagined.
and this, to me, is waste of even making the game in the first place.
this is why i look only for ps3 exclusive games, because they are the ones that attempt to use the ps3 for what its made for, the people who develop these games arent swayed by money or deals with other companies, they know what is best for their game, they have enbraced the next generation and they know what it is, the Playstation 3.
About the DVD vs. Blu Ray drive speeds:
DVD is a constant angular velocity (CAV) drive and has variable transfer speed. slower in the inside, faster on the outer half of the disc. 12x dvd ranges from 66mbps to 132mbps; you’re always somewhere in between because of location. dvd’s are written from the inside to out.
Blu-ray is a constant linear velocity (CLV) drive and has a constant transfer speed. the 2x blu-ray will always transfer at 72mbps. that goes for data on the inner and outer part of the disc.
Also, the 360’s 12x DVD Drive can’t read a dual-layer DVD at 12x, it can only read them at 8X.
quilliry,
You’ll see less and less of that as time goes on. Right now, many developers can’t justify the cost of doing anything other than a straight port from one console to the other. In the case of the PS3, when it’s in more homes, and developers feel that their losses will be recouped by sales, they’ll start refining games for the PS3. You’ll also see more PS3 exclusives. The PS3 got off to a rocky start, but they’ve got some good things coming down the line. The more good things sony does, the more people will buy PS3’s. The more people that own PS3’s the more devs will favor it.
great post :)
I’m really tired of hearing people say that the ps3 is so much more expensive than the 360. In my experience ( i have both ) the 360 ends up being a never ending drain on my wallet.
-first off.. it lacks wifi.. so thats 100 dollars plus right there (something i needed)
-the fabulous xbl is 60+ a year.. a never ending drain thought admittedly it’s not that much for online gaming.
-hd drive is.. somewhere between 100-200 dollars.. i haven’t checked because honestly… why bother for a movie restricted device?
-Now the fun part.. Maintenance.. I can’t play GoW or Dead Rising without crashes.. the fan add on reduced the freezes on GoW from 1 every 20 min to 1 every 2 hrs or so.. another 100+$ dollars.
OR
i could opt to send it back to Microsoft and hope they fix the problem but since the warranty expired i’m looking at 100-200 dollars. IF i’m lucky enough to have a fixed system returned to me and never need any more repairs.
You see why i’m annoyed? That’s my experience with the 360… that doesn’t even touch on the 60gig vs 20gig drive.
And if a rabid 360 fan wants to disagree with any of this.. send me your console and i’ll give you mine. See how faithful you are to a company that releases a flawed system simply to get to market first.
Okay. i’m frothing at the mouth now. i’ll shut up.
Great article, it was outlined well and explained in an easy to understand way. ;]
Good to see the blog being updated. Now where’s TWISTED METAL PS3? ;)
[…] Link to PlayStation.Blog » Is the PS3 Really Harder to Develop for? digg_url = ‘http://www.lazygamer.co.za/ps3/the-ps3-is-not-harder-to-develop-for/’; digg_title = ‘The PS3 is not harder to develop for’; digg_topic = ‘gaming_news’; […]
Wow, great [url=http://www.cheers4game.com]gold[/url].
Very candid especially item # 3.
Keep it up.
Keep up the good work on the Blog guys.
I love the straight forward nature, especially when admitting that you are doing your best to close some of the gap between PSN and XBL based on Microsoft’s strong previous entry in the online space.
Close that gap and show all of the Naysayer that a free online model can be a competent and feature rich online model (Which you have already shown a lot of people)
Seeing as most games are going to have an online component and the use of the PSN to facilitate that is going to be ever more required.. can you elaborate a little bit more (I understand if you cannot spill the beans in too much detail technically for your competitors but…) and explain about what the extra work is that is required on the PS3 and why, and how you see we are catching up and how we may be trumping XBL soon?
TWISTED METAL FOR PS3 PLEASE! ;)
360’s gpu is better than ps3’s gpu but ps3’s cpu is better than 360’s cpu. overall i’d probably give the edge to ps3 but not by much. not that what hardware is more powerful matter much when multiplatform games are being developed for 360 and then ported to ps3, without much effort most of time i might add. reason multiplatform games look and run better on 360 is because they were made for 360’s architecture, so the ps3 is basically having to run games not made for it’s own architecture. what sony needs to do is help multiplatform developers and not keep everything secret to their own first party developers. porting from ps3 to something else is much easier than porting from something else to ps3 since you basically have to re-build from the ground up anyway if you want it to run and look good.
huge respect for admitting psn is lacking compared to the competition, by the way.
Twisted Metal is Jaffe’s territory, head on over to his blog. http://criminalcrackdown.blogspot.com/
This needs to be heard, and i posted it here because it has to do with PSN and this is Sony’s official blog.
With the news of Tekken: Dark Resurrection on PSN being online now in Japan, can we expect a U.S. version. Also, please make it $5 or less. I know its costly to keep us dedicated servers, but anything over $5 bucks for a bonus feature kinda feels like BOHICA territory.
I love this blog site. It was about time you had this in place Sony. Thanks.
P.S I think you guys are not going to wait till the end of the system life span to really show its power those days are over.
Thanks for the clear explanations on the PS3 vs. 360. Constant information between player and publishers/developers is the best way to create, maintain, and grow a fanbase. Congrats on the long overdue and much welcomed blog!
i hope you guys keep up with these daily updates. its nice to have my PS news straight from the source. I digg it ;)
I am seriously loving this blog.
Very nice post indeed – nice to get a more technical insight.
I have a strange question – when i tried to register with my xxx@yyy.dk e-mail account i didn’t get any e-mail (and no i don’t have any spam or virusfilter enabled). But when i used my gmail account it worked right away – any ideas?
this blog is really great!
@nepra
You mention the 360 gpu is better than PS3 gpu, and the PS3 cpu is better than 360 cpu.
What I bring into question is just how much more powerful is the 360 gpu that the RSX? Could you tell me the specs of the RSX? As far as I know, we don’t know the specs of it, so it’s hard for us to know how much better it is.
So we don’t know how big the difference between the gpus are, but we definitely know that the Cell is leaps and bounds better than the Xenon.
The RSX may be able to pull off comparable things to the 360 gpu alone, but bundled up with the Cell? I’m speculating we will see some good looking games. In terms of scale, I’m guessing we’re going to see more games like Lair and Heavenly Sword on the PS3, as opposed to very small scale (but still very good looking) games like Gears on 360.
I think it will be interesting to compare Gears to Uncharted when it comes out, it could be a good indicator as to how far ahead the PS3 is because they should be within about the same time in each console’s life cycle and because from what we’ve seen, both are in fairly closed enviornments.
About my last post^^^^
Sorry for bringing system wars into this!
&
Thank you for another great blog post!
Who is the PD team you mentioned who said everything after the first three sentences? Just curious.
Thank you. i dont think anybody has really gone into this subject before. its honest and to the point, thank you.
This is the best i’ve had this issue explained to me. Most just say the PS3 is more difficult becaue of the CELL’s which isn’t a traditional processor but they really dont explain why. And most usually get way too technical for the less tech oriented person to keep up. Good post, really helpful.
“360’s gpu is better than ps3’s gpu but ps3’s cpu is better than 360’s cpu.”
That is not only bogus, it actually doesn’t make any sense when referring to the PS3’s graphics hardware.
The PS3 is not a desktop PC.
The RSX is a pixel pushing monster and Cell is transform/physics/dynamics monster. Both were put into the PS3 to work as a team with each half being able to excel in with their half of the rendering duty but also with the ability to take on work from the other.
This type of misinformation that is filling the Net is exactly why Sony needs to have its own developer site instead of the garbage that gets posted on places like beyond3d and other pc sites.
hehe it wasnt my intention to come off as if i think i know what im talking about ^^
im just saying what i’ve read on the intraweb
Nice post, and hopefully the PS3 will catch up, and surpass the online capabilities of the 360.
PS: I see the blog is being updated daily, very, very awesome.
i love this blog!
Very interesting post liking the blog.
This reinforces the opinion that better middleware support, plus time and experience will allow the PS3 to blossom into something amazing.
Also helps prove the point of Jack’s earlier entry.
First I would like to say I am not an MS fan. I like my Ps2 right now better than my 360. But when it comes to getting a PS3 all I see is the high price and the less amount of games. I think it doesn’t really matter which is more powerful, as proven by the WII, but who has the games. The XBOX was more powerful than Ps2 but that didn’t stop Ps2 from selling 110 million units. Will I be getting a Ps3?? Hells to the yeah. Only in 2008. thats when all the great games such as FFVIII and metal gear solid 4 and so on… I know most of my friends feel the same way and I think thats whats hurting sony is all there great exclusives ar so far away. I hope both systems do well thus making a better gaming market.