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!
i have a PS3. Dave, i have some honest questions for you. Brand loyalists (kindest way I could put it), feel free to try and answer them since I doubt Dave will. Or can.
– why is it “ok” to ask us to pay a 50% premium over your competition and then WAIT?
– why is it “ok” that PSN still hasn’t caught up to XBL over a year and a half after it’s next gen incarnation?
– why is it “ok” that the PS3 hardware was feature frozen in 2005 for sping 2006 release but Playstation EDGE developer tools (and network libraries) are still not up to par?
– why is it “ok” to claim games on DVD are “last-gen” when games small enough to download over PSN are good enough for two of your biggest franchises (WarHawk and Socom)? What gen are those?
– why is it “ok” to forsake single-player campaigns for highly anticipated franchises like these? Since when is “it’s not good enough” a reason to release half a game?
– why is it “ok” to leave out true hardware scaling, and rumble, and have a less advanced graphics hardware a year after and $200 more than your main competition?
– why is it “ok” to expect delayed versions of ports that are of inferior quality on a ostensibly more advanced machine? Xbox1 also came out a year after the PS2 but its ports were on time and clearly superior from the beginning. it cost the same.
– why is it “ok” to ask us to wait for PS3’s version of “Gears of War” in November/fall timeframe, when we’re still waiting for PS3’s first GRAW? a port of a game engine that debuted in March 2006?
There’s tons more questions like this, and for the most part Sony’s (and your legion’s) answer seems to be the ability to play HD movies out of the box offsets all of PS3’s current teething problems. it will get better.
if that’s the case then, my biggest question is:
why was the Playstation 3 conceived as an HD movie player first, and a videogame system second??
nevermind. that one I’m pretty sure I do know the answer to.
thanks for the official outlet. again, better late than never eh?
when do I get my resident evil 5 ?
c’mon hook a homie up, i need it
BAD!!!!!!!!
I’ve had my PS3 since about february and I haven’t play a single BD movie on it. But I have watched my 300+ libraary of DVD’s and recently got to upscale to higher resolution for my HDTV. That alone gives enough value to the console. To me PS Online is better than XBL. I’m not a huge online gamer. But XBL just seems annoyingly constrained. I enjoy the free PS Online as is, and can’t wait to see how they improve with gamers in mind. Not just piracy control, and $. To admit we are behind XBL is obvious, sony is a year late. But they are catching up exponentialy using user input. I am proud to have bought PS3, and I am too affriad to buy an Xbox because it freezes way too often. I will eventually but not until I’m persuaded that it will work as advertised.
Nice article, I loved the comment about the Ferrari :D
@ Digi Smalls
No one said that was all okay. But they are working to improve upon their mistakes. DVD is last-gen. BD is next-gen. And the idea to have a standard so that development doesn’t suffer was much better than X-box saying you can add-on. PS3 will have all it’s titles on better storage media. Where Xbox developers will drastically cut their consumers by upgrading to better media. And the downloadable games are much less expensive, so the comparison is not substantial next-gen vs last-gen.
And it’s not that it’s an HD movie player first, it’s just HD period!!!! You know HDMI and BD, and software to implement across the backward compatibility, that’s all used in gaming, more so than movies in my home. You get what you pay for homie, pay cheap, get cheap. Pay wise and game on for ten years.
[…] Karriker, the man you all know and love as the head PR man at Sony, wrote up a nice little article to show the in’s and out’s of development for the PS3. This is an interesting question […]
Jakinja,
Socom and WarHawk will be a fraction of the size of “last gen” DVD. so what does that make them? as you said, you paid for games on Blu-Ray (the console), but they’re including these and other downloadable games as their “15 for this year”
i certainly didn’t get what i paid for. neither did you, because by the time the PS3 will really be worth it’s price vs. the competition (HOME, “caught up” PSN, rumble, FULL 1st party games on BD etc. etc.), it will not be $600 anymore.
Not having the PS3 or 360 devkits, I can only speculate here about why the PS3 is harder to program for in an architectural standpoint. The X360 uses symmetrical cores, and the PS3 uses asymmetrical cores. Since the Cell model of asymmetric cores is new, compilers are probably not as mature in abilities to manage optimizations. From the little bit of work I’ve done with the Linux Cell SDK, it requires more manual work in terms of managing the processes between the cores. However, it isn’t really any “harder”, it’s just that explicit management of on which core type threads are run must be done. It’s not really any “harder” in the sense of requiring more thought, it’s just a little more tedious.
That being said, it says a lot for the ability of the PS3 just to have comparable ports from the 360. Again, not knowing how they were done, I can only speculate that they probably rely heavily on the Cell PPE being essentially the same CPU as in the 360, with minimum implementation of the SPEs.
[…] David Karraker ha levantado la voz en el PlayStation.Blog para contarnos si es verdad que es difícil desarrollar para PS3 […]
Jhonnywit; Ubi they said americas army would be a 360 exclusive because of user base.
An you believe that? Ubi was always a multiplatform dev. Do you know why that game is only for 360??? A lot of cash flowing from Microsoft account to Ubisofts account thats the only reason.
First of all I think this blog may be (at least for myself) a blessing in disguise. As an someone who is studying game design as a career and (this term) is happening to write 10 page report on why I believe that SONY can revolutionize the industry with the PS3 this blog would be very useful.
SONY is not stupid, we know this. They will not invest this heavily in a system without good reason. I myself own both a PS3 and 360. We all know the “attacks” SONY is under from media and rabid fanboys. Personally I would say talk is talk.
Over time we can see games cost more to create. We see companies are trying to make money moreso than making quality games. This is primarily because of cost. Companies will stick to the tride and true means. Why make a different kind of Need for Speed with x-amount of gamers already buy anything with Need for Speed on it (example).
SONY is breaking the generic format. They are making their own games, and funding them immensely. They are creating new franchises that will hopefully breathe life into the industry again and force inovation. Yes I said force.
Change is never something that is easy, it is never something that is accepted. No one likes change, especially at a cost. And, as we know change is expensive, on both sides. However, this change MUST be done. I applaud SONY for taking the stand, pioneering a new route and forcing innovation and change.
Few can understand SONY’s plan and many have forgotten their first words about the PS3 at E3 2005 I attended. Banners posted all over LA and all over the showroom floor “Welcome Change”.
DooM
yes I do believe the user base thing. If you are a developer you release your game on the system that sells it the most. that Is one reason why games are still coming out for the best system ever (PS2) Because 110 million ppl own one. Alot of ppl felt resistance sold poorly. Consindering alot of game magazines gave it just as good a rating as Gears. But Gears sold 4 million. I want PS3 to do well because I’m getting one and you can call me crazy but if they stopped making PS3’s after FFVIII, God of War3, and MGS4 I would still think it was 600 dollars well spent.
Thank thats good to hear that.
@261 –
“SONY is not stupid, we know this. They will not invest this heavily in a system without good reason.”
If Sony just got their act together in the digital media space, using the PS3 as the gateway, that would more than justify the cost to a bunch of people.
Unlike Microsoft, Sony is a huge company with their fingers in every part of Entertainment. The one real gripe I have with the “PlayStation Network” and “Playstation Store” is that, I think, from day 1 there should have been a huge library of digital media (music, movies) available for download.
Getting this part “right” is all Sony really has to do in order to absolutely clobber Microsoft (and Nintendo).
If something like that would happen, then I think it’s inevitable that PS3 would become the primary target for games, and XBOX/Nintendo receiving the dummied down ports, instead of the other way around.
Until then, I’m using Unbox from Amazon.com and my Tivo and playing COD3 in what looks like 20fps.
@DOOM POST 205. I CAN KINDA UNDERSTAND WHERE YOU ARE COMING FROM. I OWN ALL THREE CONSOLES AND I LOVE GAMING IN GENERAL. THAT SAID, COMPETITION IS A GOOD THING. ITS NOT PROPAGANDA, OR SOME VAST CONSPIRACY THEORY. I LOVE MY 360 AND ESPESIALLY LIVE. SONY COMES NOWHERE NEAR THAT ONLINE ARENA. IF IT DID I WOULD STILL LOVE MY 360, BUT I WOULD ALSO GET MORE OUT OF THE PS3. BOTH CONSOLES HAVE THEIR FLAWS, BUT THE GRAPHICAL ARGUEMENT IS NOT WHAT SHOULD BE IMPORTANT HERE, ITS THE EXPERIENCE YOUR GETTING. SO FAR SONY WITH THEIR LACKLUSTER TITLES (SAVE ONE) IS WAY BEHIND IN THE BETTER EXPERIENCE RACE. IN THE FUTURE SONY COULD PULL AHEAD IN THAT AREA, HOWEVER THEY CURRENTLY ARE DRAGGING THIER a$$ES SO HARD EVEN I HAVE RUG BURN. ALSO, I WOULD LIKE TO ADD BOTH CONSOLES GRAPHICAL CAPABILITIES HAVE BARELY BEEN EXPLORED, AND NEITHER WILL EVER COMPLETELY UTILIZE THEM. SO LIKE YOU SAID IGNORE THE “XBOTS” JUST LIKE I HAVE TO IGNORE THE MORE INSANE PS3 FANBOYS OVER AT MAJORNELSON. THEY ARE BOTH GREAT CONSOLES AND ITS A SHAME TO TAKE A POLITICAL POSITION OVER SOMETHING SO USELESS TO ARGUE OVER. I CANT WAIT UNTIL I HAVE THE GREAT GAMES IN SONYS LINEUP, BUT EVEN MORE SO THE EXPERIENCE THAT COMES WITH OWNING THESE GREAT CONSOLES WITHOUT WISHING ONE OF THEM WOULD GO BRICK THEMSELVES FOR ITS LACK OF SUBSTANCE.
PUT AN END TO TEXTCHAT; VOTE VOICE ONLY
PEACE
YEah I can agree with what there saying, I mean look at what EA said when making fifa. They said it was hard to develop at all and its going to be just as great as the other console. And rockstar said the GTA IV would run smoother and loading time would be a whole lot better on the PS3 because of the CPU and it wouldnt run no where near as good on the XBOX 360 because its a dvd9 and some other stuff.
Go Sony!
Lots of people are quite excited about the future of the PS3. The features you started with compared with what’s happening now are impressive and we all know more are coming.
RemotePlay is amazing. Sharing media from the PC is amazing.
This year will be when the PS3 spreads its wings and soars fully.
Gamasutra picked up this blog entry, including some special love from Microsoft.
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=14326
I think the statement from Microsoft is secret code for: “Anemic hardware in the 360 is going to be the limiting factor for next gen titles, since 360 will become the defacto standard.”
Hi all,
Richard Marks from SCEA R&D here, adding some thoughts.
First off, let me say that my area of expertise is in computation; while I’ve done things that generate graphics, sound, etc., and I haven’t had any real difficulties, I’m not personally pushing any boundaries there. So I’ll target my comments to the area I know best–processing.
If you want to do what you were already doing on a pc, with little modification, xbox360 is likely easier, because it is more similar to a pc. (I’ve never programmed for xbox, but I’m pretty confident this is true).
But on ps3, you can do things that you just can’t possibly do on PC.
Which system is easier to program? Analogy: If you were given a management job, what would be “easier” to manage, a team of 6 similar, familiar,
average employees or 6 extreme, independent specialists? It is easy to be effective with the first team, but the second team will out-perform once you understand how to leverage it.
Or in gaming terms, what would you rather have, an rpg party whose attributes are all 12 out of 18, or a party that has been min/maxed?
Unfortunately, the great potential of the ps3 had an unforeseen downside–out of the gate, some games didn’t utilize the cell spus, partly because programmers assumed they were only useful when you optimized for them, or for tasks that were ideal for them. Using the above analogy, that’s like the manager (ppu) not asking the experts (spus) to do any menial tasks, and instead he gets overburdened trying to do too much himself. I’ve been guilty of this mistake (both when programming ps3, and when managing a team of experts :)
But we developers have learned a lot, and the tools for leveraging the spus have gotten better, so I think we are past this.
I think developing for ps3 can be challenging, but equally rewarding. I’ve been working on a computer vision framework for the last 2 months, so my head has been buried in low-level ps3 code. Watching the spus really hum now, I can’t imagine anything coming close on any other system.
Thank @Dave Karraker for clearing that up, great post :D. I think that it will take couple year until the 3rd party developers will be using most of the ps3’s powers.
I really cant understand those xbox360 guys who troll here and shouting all kind of [DELETED] and childish things. Like once one guy said to me that ps3 games look like cod2! well the ps3 games are its first ones and the developers didnt have dev’s on the start. The funniest thing in this is that cod2 was one the first games on xbox360, what an idiot =D. Plus xbox360 has been a year longer on the market, let see things after a year!
The other thing that xbox360 player brag about is the DVD speed compared to Bluray, which aint so MUCH faster. offcourse it will have a little faster download times but thats IT =P…http://www.gamespot.com/pages/profile/show_blog_entry.php?topic_id=23916169&user=skektek
I think that if those developers were smarter, they would already know that its easier to port ames from PS3 to XBOX 360. The guys developing Lair confirmed it, but they didnt have to worry about porting at all..
Snake75 is right on that the craphics and power doesnt matter so much, its the fun and exciting experience of gaming. Offcourse ps3 has what it takes to make game look nice and stuff but the biggest thing is the game itself not the graphics! And i think that the games that ive seen coming on the ps3 now are going on the right direction. their different,innovative and fun.
Thank you guys, keep up the good work!
GREAT COMMENTS MR. MARKS. AND WHILE I LEAN AT THE MOMENT TOWARDS THE 360 I DO KNOW THE ENVIRONMENTS, PHYSICS AND GRAPHICS ARE FOR THE MOST PART A HUGE SCEA ADVANTAGE. I JUST WISH YOU GUYS COULD EMULATE SOME OF THE STANDARD YET PRETTY COOL STUFF XBOX LIVE HAS ACCOMPLISHED. I KNOW THIS WILL ENFLAME A LOT OF PEOPLE BUT EVEN THOUGH THE PS2 RIDICULOUSLY OUTSOLD THE ORIGINAL XBOX, THE XBOX WAS A BETTER CONSOLE. YES PEOPLE I OWNED A PS2 LAST GENERATION (4 OF THEM TO BE EXACT AND THE FIRST THREE WERE BRICKED VERY SHORTLY AFTER THE ONE YEAR WAS UP. I ONLY WENT THROUGH 1 XBOX LAST GEN.). THIS GEN I CAN HONESTLY SAY: YES THE PS3 HAS BETTER EVERTHING EXCEPT FOR A VIABLE ONLINE EXPERIENCE (AND WELL… GAME LIBRARY). ONLINE GAMING IS NOW, NOT THE FUTURE. I HOPE SONY DOES NOT FAIL TO RECOGNIZE THIS AND VASTLY IMPROVES UPON IT. I KNOW IT IS PROBABLY COMING BUT VOICECHAT, NOT TEXTCHAT, IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT. YOU EVEN HAVE A PERFECT PLATFORM TO EMULATE EVEN THOUGH IT IS A COMPETITOR.
Richard, thanks for chiming in.
love the analogy. but are the SPUs really independent? they can’t exactly “take initiative” can they? they still have to be told what to do by the manager, the PPU.
which is why the question we’ve been trying to answer this year is: what can do more, 1 manager and 6 extremely hard “workers” that need to be told what to do (PS3) or 3 managers that always know what the other is doing (X360)?
If you guys can please give us XMB Access in games. I over heard some guys on Warhawk talking about how it’s something to do with the OS of the PS3 that makes it difficult or something.
Someone mentioned he doesn’t see a need for custom music in games, well to him I will say. That’s your opinion and it does not reflect the rest of us. I hate having to quit a game to see what one of my friends sent to me in a message. Custom Backgrounds on the XMB just like the PSP has we should have on the PS3.
I also would like to have .AVI files playable on my PS3. I have tons of videos on my external HDD that I would rather watch on my HDTV with my PS3 rather then my PC.
Come On Sony HOOK US UP!
@268:
I love the way the MS rep just neatly sidestepped the X360’s shortcomings while addressing the issue. Classic PR move. It’s weaker hardware from top to bottom, but I seriously doubt it’ll be the baseline standard for development at this time next year.
I gotta tell you guys, hearing you talk openly and realizing your faults is making me feel better. I thought you guys were just being stubborn. Especially on that 3rd point about online.
This blog is turning out great! Obviously let’s make sure it’s not all talk ;)
~Brian Hughes
@275 –
PR or not, it’s really just evidence of the Microsoft “Developers!” strategy. It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, as long as you get developers to use it. It’s basically the same strategy they’ve used (pretty successfully) to overcome their late entry into the Internet Age.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMU0tzLwhbE
Dear SCEA,
Please give us more content on the PS Store. Having 1 movie trailer per week simply isn’t enough for me to warrant even looking at the PS Store.
We need multiple updates per week, game demos for EVERY PSN games, and by golly more PS1 games!
Hopefully your Movies/Music download service comes soon so i have no reason to go elsewhere to rent movies (that aren’t even in HD)
Sincerely hope someone is listening,
TONX
Microsoft’s “default system” is only currently a standard because it bought its way into the market on some of the series that the PS brand has fostered. They use some pretty cheap tricks and try to give some low blows to Sony.
I dont see Microsoft as being optimal for the gaming industry. Sony wants money, however Microsoft wants it ‘more’. PC OS dominance is apparently not enough.
@TONX
dude! you have to get me into neogaf! Im lurker at you guys like tanod, Wollan, Jim etc. etc. all the time. But the mods havent even confirmed my registration :(.
I think you all at sony have more things to worry about than posting things like this on your blogs. Like the lack on contant in your PS store. I know the problems is world wide. And the lack of games is also a drawback. I think my PS3 collects more dust than play games or watch Blu-Ray movies. How long till the good games come out and how about a good use of the Harddrive, Like why can’t i put my own sound track and play it when i’m racing in motorstorm? Why is the controller so flimzy it feels like i can break it at any moment? Why doesn’t my web browers have more support to be able to surf the web correctly. These are just some of things i look and wonder why this hasn’t been taken care of. I know your of to a slow start but wow it doesn’t seem any better,
@ Digi Smalls,
What makes you think it will be less than $600.00 by the time home comes out? And as I said PSN is good enough for me at the moment, I dislike XBL, as do my roommates and friends that come over. My neighbor, an avid x-box fanboy, even admits that he’d rather have PSO for free over XBL gold. I can voice chat over bluetooth on all the games I play online.
And I didn’t pay for BD games, I payed for a fully HD addition to my entertainment setup, and I got exactly what I wanted. HDMI for my new TV, a BD player for all future media stoarge needs. It connects to my PC and I can listen to all my music on my surround sound now, in HDMI by the way. All in all, I am very happy with my purchase, so please don’t tell me I didn’t get what I paid for, that oppinion is reserved for myself, not a flaming troll arguing with sony execs and fans.
I look forward to the future of the PS3, and will keep a close eye on this site! Thanks to all the sony staff for being a part of this site!
I do agree the controller is VERY flimsy, for that price it should be solid gold! I never enjoyed web browsing on TV’s, I’d rather sit next to a PC and do what I have to do… Maybe that’s cause I grew up with web TV. But hey it is better than web TV was when it first started. The hard drive does everything it should, they just need software to make it accesible in game. That, everyone is asking for…
jakinja your roomate is either broke or crazy(or both), and VosrotH, i agree with you on the controller. the 360 controller feels like you could beat someone to death with it, not to mention i would take a 360 controller over the playstation one any day any time (i like triggers not bumpers). i think the boomerang would have been better than the same’ol somewhat weak feeling piece of crap. its like picking up an original nintendo controller.
Sony should make a special release on the boomerang controller. Damn that looked lovely. Not to forget, it was pretty ergonomic (well at least by the looks at least hehe). Plus it was nicely diverse from the plain PS controller. I bet the boomerang would really feel right when playing.
WHERE DO I COMPLAIN ABOUT THE EMBARASSING LACK OF CONTENT ON THE PLAYSTATION STORE?
Please someone post something about the lastet store update so that we have a place where we can go to express our frustration
Thank you
Ofcourse that developers are going to say that the Ps3 is harder to develop for becasue it is more powerful than any other systems. If you are going to want to make a game with better graphics, more characters, good gameplay it is going to require more effort, which in turn requires more money and time. So like the blogs says, I dont think it is harder to develop for, it just does more.
[]%XO
@snake75,
Did you mean my neighbor? He has Xbox Live Gold, and for what he gets he’d rather have free PSO, admittedly he isn’t exactly a hard-core gamer either. Hell he got stuck on gears of war. But besides all that, for what PSO has available, it is great! In the future, I have no doubt that they will blow XBL out of the water. I mean what exactly makes you think XBL is better than PSO? Seriously, I want a list to see why everyone thinks XBL is the godsend of online gaming…
One thing that I think is cool, is how it can work w/ vista, but I dont even know all those details yet. Seriously though what’s so hot about it?
Also, my neighbor’s x-box was bought a day before my PS3. And it freezes and crashes DAILY. My PS3, runs perfectly and has been running continuously for months since I got F@H working. Anyone have oppinions about that? Because that’s the only thing keeping me from buying an x-box elite!
Digi Smalls,
At the risk of carrying this analogy way too far, the spus effectively need a list of tasks to do, and then they can do them independently. Each spu can be given its own list by the manager, or there can be a “master list” that each spu accesses. (btw, for some reason, for the expert team, the tv show “Criminal Minds” with the fbi behavioral analysis team keeps popping into my head.)
“WHERE DO I COMPLAIN ABOUT THE EMBARASSING LACK OF CONTENT ON THE PLAYSTATION STORE?”
AHMEN…
This blog is a great idea and just in time. Now point me to the NEOGEO GAMES so I can delete MKII off my HDD.
Thanks again, Richard.
That’s what I thought. Really appreciate your time and input.
jakinja,
XBL isn’t just what you see at your neighbor’s house. It’s also an established set of developer networking libraries and APIs that any developer can use to get their game online. If you’ve wondered why some ports take so long to come to PS3, it’s because part of the problem is developers had to make their networking code from scratch.
You asked why XBL is so much better than PSO, well ask Dave Karakker, he just admitted it. He’s not even talking about the vast content (demos, community features, web integration, and HD media) lead they have.
“WHERE DO I COMPLAIN ABOUT THE EMBARASSING LACK OF CONTENT ON THE PLAYSTATION STORE?”
I hear ya’ brotha’! And what’s the deal with the Resistance Maps? (Insomniac are ready and right now the ball is in your court)
This is a nice blog you have going here. Some ?’s Do third party developers have the Playstation Edge tools at their disposal to optimize games? We all know for a fact that most 3rd party devs are concentrating on the 360 versions of their games, but maybe with the Edge tools in their hands, no reason a port of a game cannot be at least optimized for the PS3. We all know that the PS3 is more capable than the ports we have seen so far (Splinter Cell, F.E.A.R.) And if some developers are actually reading this, just wondering… If you’re making a multi-platform title, would some of you consider leading on the PS3? You’ll still be releasing the game on the 360, so you’ll still reach a bigger audience than the PS3 has right now. If the architecture needs a little more work to get more out of it, at least you’ll have the bigger obstacle out of the way, and working from there should be easier. I own both systems, so this is an unbiased comment. I would love to get more games for the PS3, but it’s a shame when you get inferior versions of the same game. Or perhaps we’ll see more developers having two distinct teams working on a game, taking advantage of what each system has to offer, optimizing for each system specifically. On a side note, one big reason for me getting a PS3 is the reliability of the console so far. I can’t begin to tell you how frustating it is to send the 360 back for repairs (a second time) and not be confident that a gaming session on it will be my last. I want to be really proud of my $600.00 investment. Thanks for listening…
Hi all,
I’m Mark Danks, a Senior Manager in the Developer Support group. This means that I help out all of the PlayStation developers and try to make it so that they can focus on the gameplay instead of only the hardware. Before I joined Sony, I was a technical director on a number of games on many different platforms.
To echo what Richard said, the key to the PS3 is the SPUs. The PlayStation EDGE libraries which we have given developers show how to use them in ways which might not have been obvious if you were trying to port a PC title. Games which are only using the SPUs around 10% are barely tapping the potential performance.
The challenge, of course, is finding ways to make your game run on the SPUs. Most developers already see how to do things like animation and graphics there…AI and scripting engines are harder. This is because while the SPUs are really fast, they can’t access main memory the way the PPU (the main processor) can. SCE is working on ways to make it easier to create SPU code, but it is still fundamentally a different way to set up your game engine from a PC.
I remember trying to figure out how to use the vector units on the PS2…we eventually did it, but it took some time :-)
Mark
Time + Money + Creativity = Good Game
[]^XO
yes jakinja i meant your neighbor. but you obviously have never experienced xbox live. and an xbox dies it doesnt “crash daily”. yes they do brick, however microsoft has extended the warranty and taking care of their own on that issue (yes it is still a pain in the @$$, but at least its a free pain in the @$$.
heres a list for you.
1) voicechat whether your on the dash, playing a game, playing a different game, watching a movie, playing the same game private chat is available.
2) friends list, and their achievements
3) knowing what your friends are playing, when they were last on, messaging and from anywhere on the console. whether it be from the dash, watching a movie, or in game.
4) you can actually do whatever you want on the dash while chatting. dowload content, get updates, get downloads, PLAY GAMES.
5) XBOX LIVE ARCADE
6) HALO, CALL OF DUTY 2&3, GEARS OF WAR, SHADOW RUN, RAINBOW 6 VEGAS, SPLINTER CELL (ALL OF THEM), LOST PLANET, PROJECT GOTHAM RACING, NBA 2K, MADDEN, AND MANY MORE THAT HAVE A BETTER ONLINE EXPEIRIANCE.
7) DOWNLOADABLE MOVIES AND TV SHOWS (MOST IN HD!)
8) GAMER PICTURES/THEMES
9) YOU OBVIOUSLY DONT KNOW WTF YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT IF YOU CANT AT LEAST CONCEDE TO MICROSOFT ON THE ONLINE ARENA. THEY ARE KING OF ONLINE AND THAT IS WHY THEY ARE STILL HERE
Sony should put a counter on this site showing how many PS3’s have been sold around the world and should update it daily or weekly. I think that would be really cool!!
10) oh and demos, web features, community intergration.
also my ps3 IS WORKING FLAWLESSLY I DO LOVE THAT TO NO END. thanks scea.
Wow, this blog gets better and better with the Sony employee cameos. I’m impressed. Thank you all.
Hi Mark, I have a question. Generally, how much does the overhead of managing all the SPUs and trafficking all their output affect the main PPU?
I know there’s lots of code that should only be handled by the general purpose PPU and not the SPUs (like branch heavy AI and some physics), that would be affected so that’s why I ask.
great read>.>
But im tired of not seeing demoes and other stuff up on psn constantly it makes me not even wanna check store since i know there would be nothing there.so yeah i hope you guys get that fix-_-