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!
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.
This is some much appreciated candor.
We would all be interested in knowing what ONLINE features may eventually become standard?
For instance, in-game/cross-game/cross-XMB messaging and voice? Chat support for all online games? Voice messages? etc…
Even a rough road-map of future features would be very nice to hear about.
I agree with 351 give us some knowledge of things that are to come why be secretive about features the competition already has i understand the not telling us about things that other don’t already have but what they already do have you should be able to at least tell us your working on it
I agree that the PSN guys are really in for a flamefest when they finally post on this blog, however, consider an update announced recently which excited a lot of people and how the development of this would effect the current employee base for the PSN.
I suspect (although we are indeed waiting on input, but gads this thing hasn’t been up for long – give the men some time) that the development of Playstation Home is currently taking up almost all of the PSN guys’ resources, especially given that, to my knowledge, they are currently in – or coming out of – a closed beta.
Home, not the current PSN is Sony’s answer to XBL – and they suspect that once it comes out, it should rattle enough cradles to make up for these dead months. Once Home is out, I suspect that updates for it will be coming out hard and fast, including quite a few of the things yall have been asking for. Sony’s ideal is that an ever expanding online world with heaps of user generated content being available in places like the cinemas etc will be more effective than anything they can do right now.
It kinda makes sense, as when I’m on skype with my old highschool buddies, hours and hours go by – but I only ever spend 3 hours max casually gaming (ie while I’m waiting for the next big release). Socialising – at least, with friends – on Home will be awesome.
I’m happy they kept it from us till they did – the revelation as to the reasoning behind Home being the PS button’s name was awesome.
That said, it will be interesting how they balance Home and the current store when it comes to media updates etc…
Give them some time, and yes, wait till the PSN guys post – we all want an explanation, be it home or, well, anything.
Did you read Yosuke Hayashi’s (Team Ninja) comment on the issue? It’s a good read.
http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=77737
good update thanks sony now its time to do more with pstore
Speaking about developing games, a few months back I read that Sony and Namco Bandai created a studio together called Cellius, I have not heard anything regading it since, Has anyone heard anything?
[]^XO
http://www.engadgethd.com/2006/11/16/ps3-doesnt-do-1080i/
Look at that link SONY!!! IGN has address this issue since last year during November’s launch….why aren’t you doing anything about it??? Instead fixing this dumb RGB bullcrap??? Come on now….I am one pissed off PS3 owner….mark my words, others are too if you read the comments in the link above…I have told all of my friends and families about this to boycott the PS3….wake up SONY, you have this blog, time to listen to what we want!!! Go google Ps3 1080i fix/problem……..see that a lot of people feel the same way I do….you piss me off Sony…I’m going to go buy a 360 game now because all of my PS3 games looks like my Wii games…. (Resistances, Tony Hawk, Fight Night Round 3)……..COME ON ALREADY, FIX THE BIG ISSUE NOT THIS LIL CRAP..
Wow…what response. 357 comments…
I would like to do the programming myself. Maybe sony should open a few programming school specifically tailored for development on the PS3. Maybe we can weed out the complainers and get this awesome machine rolling.
I find it funny that so many people claim to care about how hard it is for developers to make games for one system over another. Why should gamers care? Obviously, given tihe archtecture of the PS3 (Linux + OpenGL + Cell processor with multiple SPUs) its not a simple machine. I’m okay with that. In fact, I think that’s great.
Why is a lower-performance machine that’s easier for programmers to program for better than a high-performance machine that takes time to learn how to make the best use of? I’ll take the higher-powered system any day.
Dose anybody at sony know if theirs going to be news on the game “EIGHT DAYS” at this years e3. At last years e3 this was the game to me that defined what a ps3 game should look like. Would love to hear more about it.
Dave, Mark, there are some great comments on your post but there’s also a lot of noise – I wanted to suggest you consider using a threaded comments system so folks can ignore threads they’re not interested in. I noticed you’re using WP – there is a plugin for threaded comments here: http://izachy.com/2007/04/30/threaded-comments-plugin-for-wordpress/
@ Mark Danks, thanks for explaining a bit about the process of using the SPUs. Well, now that developers have Edge at their disposal, maybe they’ll start optimizing the performance of their games for PS3. I hope all developers begin to start tapping into the PS3 and really see what it’s capable of. One game I hope really makes use of the Edge tool from a PC perspective is Half Life 2: Orange. I know that EA UK is working on the port of this game. Would you possibly know if they have the Edge tool at their disposal? That’s one game I would really love to see run well on the PS3. Here’s hoping…
Yeeees, it does appear to be quite an extensive pile of extremely smelly coporate BS. Its a pity no game developers have actually used these so called “almighty” abilities in graphics and physics and the like, to create as good a game with such beautiful graphics or physics as Gears Of War
Hi,
I think this is a really great thing that you guys [Sony] are doing. There are some great comments here, “Richard Marks (#269) and Mark Danks (#294, #307 and #323)”.
There should be a way to see only Sony comments so that I don’t have to look through all the other posts to find them.
Keep up the good work guys.
Kraken
[…] see such frequent and interesting updates. Through posts that include interesting revelations and thought provoking industry pieces, the blog is clearly a means for Sony to communicate directly with their audience. […]
Knowing Sony cares and admits the adversaries of PS3 from reading this post made me happy.
I have faith you guys will make this system as good as the ones before if not better.
Keep up the good work guys.
[…] alert! Dave Karraker recently slapped a new post on the official PlayStation blog regarding developers’ complaints that the PS3 is hard to develop for. His stance on the issue […]
PS3 sucks.
to the x-troll up there ^^^ why don’t you get back into your box. oh I forgot that you can’t handle the truth that your box is a outdated piece of junk that is only good to play wile overheating your food with a red eye/ring of dead :0
I hope these devs figure out the cell sooner than later. They are getting too lazy making inferior looking Wii games.
Yes as siggy said i hope they figure how to develop for the ps3 i want evreybody to say WOW when they see its graphics :-)
Fear and Splinter Cell were pretty lazy, but I’d rather have them as shotty ports then not at all.
As for the general principle, you can’t expect developers to work hard on a game they know will only ship 3-500k max, it’s not going to happen.
This article basically says, “higher end is always more expensive.” Good argument, but only if you really see something higher end, still waiting on that.
Oh and,
“A Ferrari is not the best car for a visit to Home Depot…” I love it. :)
Is this all this blog’s gonna be for, useless PR [DELETED] for fanboys to drool over?
I do not know why they even bothered with the ports of F.E.A.R or Splinter Cell, they sucked. It would of just been better if they used the money on sequels or something else. They were not worth it.
[]^XO
“to the x-troll up there ^^^ why don’t you get back into your box. oh I forgot that you can’t handle the truth that your box is a outdated piece of junk that is only good to play wile overheating your food with a red eye/ring of dead :0”
Incredible. You reply to a troll with a trolling comment. You deserve a medal or something.
You guys writing the blog seem very honest, something that’s very refreshing. I really like Sony, and the PS3 is starting to win my heart. This blog’s openness only helps. Thanks for your work.
There are some myths being touted here, so I’m going to write a long post that will upset some fanboys enough that the will cal me a fanboy. Any comparisons to teh 360 are purely as a point of reference and by no means indicate any preference on my part. As a consumer I want good games, which machine i slide the disc into is irrelevant to me.
The PS3 is harder to code for, it is asymmetrical and requires libraries for 2 different instruction sets. That’s a pain, but do-able. The 360 is symmetrical , all your code will work on any of the cores. Sony need to offer robust libraries and information to developers like Microsoft have with the 360. Microsoft built their business on developer relationships, Sony can learn from that.
Convincing the public that the PS3 is easier to program for or port from seems rediculous. The end porduct matters to the consumer, not how it was made. Convince the developers, it si my understanding they could do with some more information on how to harness the Cell’s architecture.
The Cell can be used to back up the RSX, this is nothing special any CPU can perform graphical calculations PC, 360, Wii or whatever. This is a problem however, as you are using hardware to basically perform the tasks, that the 360 does using it’s ATI hardware, in software on PS3. This is inneficient, but it’s the results that matter. Consider though that thanks to the shortcomings of the RSX, the power of the Cell is being used to emulate effects the that 360’s unified shader architecture does with considerably less effort by the hardware. Those vector units could be being put to tasks they are better suited to, and I’d be interested to know how much processing it would take on the vector units (or SPE’s if you insist on using that silly name) to emulate programmable shaders.
Blu Ray in PS3 is a trojan hore to bolster the earnings of Sony pictures and offers little benefit to gaming. People often say how are you going to hold HUGE textures on a DVD. You can’t and there’s no need to. You could have a disc that holds terabytes of data, you still only have a finite amount of memory to store it. Over thr coming year or two space will only matter for pre-rendered cutscenes. The industry is moving over to more procedural techniques for geometry, texturing and animation. With hybridisation of traditional and procedural techniques games will actually begin to reduce in physical size. Assets are generated by the cpu on the fly from code, not loaded into memory as hard data (which is much larger). These generated textures and geometry are idealy sent directly from the CPU to the graphics hardware for rendering, never being stored in memory. While Blu Ray can store all this as hard data it will never be able to transfer that magnitude data from the disc to be displayed quickly enough, even with buffering from the HDD. This procedural synthesis requires good bandwidth between the CPU and the GPU.
In comparing PS3 and 360 you must consider these things. How much of the Cell is being used to make up for a lack of programmable shaders on the RSX? How well suited are their architectures to handling the procedural generation of repetative geometry, textures and animation? How much memory is then required for unique assets that are less well suited to procedural generation? How many minutes of high def. video am I using for cutscenes? Feell free to call a winner if you know which machine will achieve this more efficiently.
Most games currently aren’t even testing these systems. They are using previous gen. techniques on current gen machines, and that is inefficient. Titles this year will continue to produce mixed results.
For an example of what can be done with procedural synthesis check out the winner of BreakPoint 2007’s PC demo award. .debris by farbrausch – http://www.theprodukkt.com/debris this 177kb demo exemplifeis that you don’t need Blu Ray, just good code.
I know you’ll just dismiss me as a Xbox fanboy, but I figure I’ll throw in my 2 cents.
Carmack did indeed say that the PS3 was “THEORETICALLY” more powerful than the 360, but the problem lies within the Cell architecture, and the dev kits for it.
“Xbox 360 has far and away the best development tools,” Carmack said. “PS3 is probably marginally more powerful, in terms of raw flops and graphic operations, but that’s not really the best way to look at things. When you look at these development cycles that stretch over years and years, being 20% easier to develop on is much more important than being 20% more powerful.”
“I make little nitpicky decisions about say, well, I prefer the symmetric approach that MS has over the asymmetric Cell approach, but you can do great games on either one of them, and I make fundamental decisions based on development tools and depth of documentation, which Microsoft has been superior on.”
quotes from his interview on G4TV. He also goes on to say that the problem lies in the fact the Cell has a single dual core symetrical processor that does most of the work load…then if you want, you can take advantage of the other cores, which require a completely seperate compiler, and they run on a seperate language set. This brings up problems with development cycles.
But the true problem has best been stated by Gabe Newell,
“Most of the problems of getting these systems running on these multicore processors are not solved. They are doctoral theses, not known implementation problems. So it’s not even clear that over the lifespan of these next generation systems that they will be solved problems. The amount of time it takes to get a good multicore engine running, the Xbox 360 might not even be on the market any longer. That should scare the crap out of everybody.”
So it seems as if neither system is going to have an advantage, due to the fact that noone knows how to write properly multithreaded games. This is largely due to the way we write games. As a student game developer, I know the process, and I can tell you, writing games for a multi-core processor is difficult. Thread based code is one of the more difficult things to learn, much less master. It can make bugs astronomically more diffuclt to trace down. If you have thread collisions it can cause all sorts of issues, and if your threads don’t run all synchronized together, you can wind up waiting on data, or waiting on other threads to catch up. So imagine trying to code for 3 processors, which can run a multitude of threads on each processor (this is the Xbox 360) vs coding on a singal dual core processor also running multiple threads PLUS another 32 processing units which run single threads (this is the PS3)….either way your screwed!
The point is, both systems are difficult to code for, but the problem is Sony doesn’t know how to write good dev tools. They’re relativly new to that process compared to Microsoft, who has been writing developer tools since its inception in the 80’s. Afterall, Microsoft is responsible for quite a few programming languages that have been used over the past 20 years.
So when you look at it this way, Microsoft gains a huge edge due to the fact that developers are already comfortable with the languages and tools that they have access to with the 360, because they are similar to what they have been using with the DX tools for PC. Where as the PS3 tools are completely new and different, which means that much more time has to be spent learning to use and take advantage of them. Its like the developers are having to learn an entire new language, which can cause all sorts of problems in your development cycle.
This is why I’m personally for Microsofts proposal to make XNA a universal toolset for all consoles. Nintendo has been in talks with MS for the past 2 years helping with the XNA toolsets, and Sony is the only major console manufacturer/game publishing company that refuses to talk to MS about XNA.
So push Sony to adopt XNA in their future consoles, and you’ll see the dev cycle times cut in half!
Double post a-go-go on reading my above post I noticed this. ‘Blu Ray in PS3 is a trojan hore’.
While not the only typo. It’s the one I’m happiest with.
its very interesting to read this blog. Having said that, im very surprised that SquareEnix, a long time Playstation developer has stated that the PS3 is also hard to develope for, considering their one of the industry leading companies to creating huge and beautiful and complex worlds
I look at it this way I think third party devolopers for the PS3 is lazy they make a game for the 360 and port it and it get a bad review on the PS3 but I believe that things will get better in the future for the PS3 cause the Wii is a fad and the 360 only thing they have right now is Halo 3
Come on, what are those MS workers doing here?
I do not even look info or visit pages of Xbox, if XB is so great, then do not come to visit the ugly, bad, expensive PS3 (sony) blog you are losing your time with the losers.
Anyway, I think ps3 will get better and better over time, it is made to last at least 7 days in technology, at least sony is not afraid to invest.
not like gates that before said the future would be in control the game with body movements… wait is not that the WII MOTE!!! or the EYETOY!!
go tell billy to invest and get original ideas,
Oooops I meant 7 years
most here seem slightly insane… I mean why is everyone so crazy about a piece of hardware. The PS3 isn’t the greatest thing ever… it’s just a console… it’s a console with hardly any real force out in the market unlike it’s competitors, but hopefully we’ll see Sony put up some good numbers this holiday and maybe Wii will choke a bit under the price drops from Sony and Microsoft.
This is my FIRST post to any threads of the like since the “console wars” started, there is so much bad rep for Sony from guys like this because they dont have a PS3 to spend thier time on so they go around spreading this plague of ignorance… GO HOME SOFTBOYS, well gotsta get back to my baby!
cruisx wrote: “actually graphical prowes of the ps3 and 360 are not the dame, they are very different. Just compare the 2008 ps3 games commeing out with current 360 games.”
He meant to say they’re not the same, not dame. He also wasn’t thinking to clearly with the rest of what he meant. He was implying that 2008 ps3 games will look better then 2007 360 games. Likewise I could make the same argument 2009 360 games would look better then 2008 or even 2007 ps3 games.
Case in point is you may as well be bragging about how ps3 games look so much more better then the original 8 bit Nintendo system.
You guys r right and I’ve seen XBOX 360 titles and yea the devolopers got their hands dirty with the system but the first party games from Sony and they look very impressive I mean look at MotorStorm and Resisitance , Ninja Gaiden Sigma , Lair , Warhawk , and last but not least Heavenly Sword **NOTE** Be Patient and the games will come and Sony never launched first “remeber Dreamcast so it’s only a matter of time till we see the power of the PS3.
LOVED this, its just a matter of time before the ps3 can begin to show its true colors…these 360 ports are getting the ps3 system a bad and completly undeseved name i almost wish they didnt exist, they just insult the system and hinder it from the full concentration the developers should be giving it…but some are and i think by the end of next year the 360 will be in BIG BIG trouble….MGS4…..cant wait!!!!
Great read, cant wait until the full potential of the PS3 can be unlocked, i wish their wasnt any ports. We need more exclusive PS3 games.
i dont care how hard it is to develop for, it still cost me £500…. twice as much as my 360 but guess what…. the only thing better about the ps3 is the eject button!!!
Unlike most people here, I AM a software developer(custom business applications) with a Master’s degree, so I can speak on the behalf of developers.
We developers are humans. Just like you like to do things simple and easy, we too want to do our jobs simple and easy as well. This is why we pick the language and tools most suitable for any particular project unless specific language and tools are mandated on us. Exta-complexity equals extra development time, and extra development time equals money. There is only so much money that could be spent on developing software, and using difficult development environment is counter-productive and undesirable. You may not be aware but there is a pervasive hatred of Playstation 3 among 3rd party game developers for this specific reason. Non-programmers may call us “Lazy” for trying to write our software quick and fast, but this is really an economic issue.
As for an apple to apple hardware comparison, Xbox 360 hardware is superior to PlayStation 3 hardware in all aspect, even the CPU. Xbox 360’s GPU superiority is never disputed, as even The Resistance developers admitted to this. The highest reported polygon throughput for an Xbox 360 title is 180 million polygons/s with no CPU assist, whereas PlayStation 3 titles are capped at 45 million polygons/s for the moment. PlayStation EDGE attempts to double this figure to 90 million polygons/s using backculling at the cost of 2 SPUs, but is still running at half the throughput of Xbox 360. While CELL might sound more powerful on a piece of paper, job scheduling issue makes sure SPUs are never utilized for more than 50% of time, sitting idle for the remaining 50% waiting for context switch(100,000 cycles), DMA wait, etc. xbox 360’s “traditional” CPU cores do not suffer from these problems and run at 100% of time as long as six hardware threads are attached to it.
so basically what it amounts to.
CPU : Xbox 360 has a slight advantage over CELL on real-world codes.
GPU : xbox 360 has four times the throughput of PlayStation 3 and holds an absolute advantage. In fact, ATI Radeon 2900 HD is the PC version of Xbox 360 GPU.
Memory : Xbox 360 memory architecture is far more flexible and has 56 MB more memory available to developers. Whereas the maximum game executable size allowable for a PlayStation 3 title is 200 MB with current firmware, it can be upto 400 MB for an Xbox 360 title, a world of difference to developers.
The conclusion is that Playstation 3 is a terribly flawed and unnecessarily complicated machine for developers. Extra work is required just to match Xbox 360 output visuals, much less surpass it. It is no wonder developers prefer to work on Xbox 360.
[…] see such frequent and interesting updates. Through posts that include interesting revelations and thought provoking industry pieces, the blog is clearly a means for Sony to communicate directly with their audience. […]
[…] alert! Dave Karraker recently slapped a new post on the official PlayStation blog regarding developers’ complaints that the PS3 is hard to develop for. His stance on the issue […]
Great blog! Very well done :)
I totally agree on PS3 having MORE to offer and I look forward to seeing all the great things possible soon.
One thing that I think is worth mentioning is that with the MORE sometimes the usability suffers. This is not a rant, but simply some thoughts I’ve had about the frequent system upgrades as a PS3 user and fan.
For example, I just turned on my PS3 wanting to play an online game of Motorstorm, and was then required to leave the game for the 1.81 update.
Now, from reading about the update in the blog I couldn’t see why it would be required for me to download it in order to play a simple online race.
But even if it is required, the experience (of upgrading) should be much quicker and as painless as possible.
I’m a big fan of arcade games because they let you INSTANTANEOUSLY engage in a fun activity. This is incredibly important to kids and gamers of all ages. I agree that some tweaking is fun for many people but i think for a mass-market device, most people just want to have an amazing device that works.
The PS1 & PS2 were amazing machines without ever needing to upgrade firmware through the net. Part of their charm as well as the older consoles’ was in their PLUG AND PLAY nature. Playing games on the PS3 should be no more difficult than on those older consoles.
Still, I’m sure the folks here know this and are working hard on making the experience as enjoyable as possible because this is what the business is all about.
Some day someone will relize that MGS isn’t that big of a game( and it’s bigger in the US anyway where sony is getting their butts kicked)… it’s a really good seller, but it’s not even in the same league as Halo and GTA or even Zelda to a lesser extent. Neither Sony nor Nintendo has any single title that is exclusive that will match up well with Halo or Gears of War right now(console wise)… and that is something that I’m sure is being worked on at Sony at least… they have something good going with Resistance, but that team needs to be working hard on getting out it’s sequal with before people start forgetting about it. Sony needs to step up with something soon… that will sell system… perferable a price drop and something like White Knight that has some interesting implication and isn’t starting to disappoint people like Lair.
Well, to start with, a personal opinion, I do not care Halo, gears, or that maybe the best games ever, but simply, for me they are nothing, not even woth to watch a video or something, if you are fan of course go buy an Xbox and go play it, leave us alone.
if I had an Xbox, i simply would be there playing not here, as soon as I can buy a PS3 I will never come again here :)
btw, it is well known, and this is better now, the consoles are directed to diferent markets, wii to children and new ones, Xbox is more american, shooters, racing, sports, remember the americans love war and so the top games are war themed, that’s why in america have more supoporters,
HALO IS A SLEEP PILL FOR ME!
PS3 is more directed to Action/RPG, Simi and the rest , that’s why there is no Xbox in japan
Everyone mentions Wii is kicking butt in sales to PS3 but.. is kicking Xbox too, which already have more than a year on, need help here, when the xbox came up how long it lasted? because I have my old fat PS2 still working perfectly.
Good article:)
I know it is common knowledge that the PS3 is the most powerful of all the systems; now if developers would stop being lazy and use it to it’s fullest abilities, I think it would do the entire gaming world a big favor; because in the end, gamers want the best games presented in the best possible way, no matter what platform it’s on.
I think this is the third time that I’ve heard a dev. say this.
I don’t think it’s hard to develop, it’s just that game developers are a bit skeptical of the PS3’s potential at the moment, and don’t want to put, the proverbial, all their eggs in one basket.
I dont think it’s to hard to develop. Developers just need to get used to it and figure out all the new awesome features and technology the ps3 has to offer.