Developers Discontent With PS3 Development Tools

[Phil]

What reason would I have to doubt the estimates Sony has made about their own hardware?

Because it's as meaningless as claims that x is y times more powerful than z. I thought this is Beyond3d, shouldn't things like this be obvious? Besides, you like talking about "Sony" (= a faceless entity) as in making those claims:

1.) Do you have a direct link of where those estimates were made (both, Sony's estimate and Microsofts one) and by whom?

2.) What are you trying to accomplish by arguing one devkit of being more representative to final hardware over the other one? If it is that developers holding the more representable devkit have an advantage over the other one, are you accounting for the differences in timeframe and shipped quantities of those devkits? Are you also factoring in what kind of work are being done with those devkits; i.e. in what development phase those developers are?

*hint* at some stages in development, developers design game mechanics, ideas, plot, assets etc before starting *actual* development - are you factoring in that at those given points in development, representative hardware is wanted, but not necessarely required to progress beyond that phase?

 

[Nesh]

ps3 alpha kits were much closer to final hardware than x360 kits until x360 final kits came out in august. developers have had a much better sense of the hardware and power of the ps3for a longer period than 360.

Any link confirming this?

i think that was just an assumtion.No one has an idea of how far or close PS3's alpha kits were to the final hardware.

Actually I believe it was very far from the actual hardware judging from some slides I ve seen

 

[Shifty Geezer]

AFAIK PS3 SDKs have always been on Cell. There were no kits before Cell. The GPU is similar in concept and use as a standard nVidia part. Hence the kits were quite close to final hardware, Cell CPU + nVidia GPU. For XB360 the inital kits were very alien to the hardware. A non US, tiling GPU and a dual PPC that's quite different from the XeCPU. This is from known info though I haven't any links to substantiate.

 

[Nesh]

AFAIK PS3 SDKs have always been on Cell. There were no kits before Cell. The GPU is similar in concept and use as a standard nVidia part. Hence the kits were quite close to final hardware, Cell CPU + nVidia GPU. For XB360 the inital kits were very alien to the hardware. A non US, tiling GPU and a dual PPC that's quite different from the XeCPU. This is from known info though I haven't any links to substantiate.

Similar to the final hardware yes.But its not necessarily an indication that in overall performance first PS3 kits were closer to final hardware than what XBOX360 kits were to final hardware

 

[mckmas8808]

I swear to god I didn't know that B3D had so many clueless people. The PS3 alpha kits being closer to the real thing than MS's alpha kit is easy open knowledge. It's funny seeing people actually debate this. Shifty I'm not sure if you can ever convince him. My head is about to explode reading him actually trying to debate though.

 

[Nesh]

Are you refering to architecture being closer to final kits or performance wise?

And can you please be more polite?

I am not saying I am right either.If someone can explain me even the better

 

[mckmas8808]

Are you refering to architecture being closer to final kits or performance wise?

No actual power.

 

[Nesh]

No actual power.

Can you elaborate for me?I am clueless and you should inform the clueless.The forums dont exist sto show off who's got the most knowledge but to share knowledge and discuss.

I am open to all knowledge and opinions.


Thank you

 

[zRifle1z]

Obviously I meant the technical demos, where did I say game demos?
Makes little difference anyway regarding the devkits, so that comment of yours was unnecessary.

True, I did read your post wrong, but my question was serious as I thought you may have seen actual game play running on dev kits at the show. Thank you for the clarification.



Edited for (sp) "carification"

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Can you elaborate for me?I am clueless and you should inform the clueless.The forums dont exist sto show off who's got the most knowledge but to share knowledge and discuss.

I am open to all knowledge and opinions.

Good for you. Mckmass - you are being quite rude at the moment. Not everyone who says something wrong is going out of their way to be awkward. Sometimes people don't know better and just need correcting. At the moment you seemt o throwing out quite a lot of rather negative attitude. Even to those that are spreading FUD we ought to be keeping polite.

Nesh : The dev kits need more to be akin in architecture than power to develop for. You could provide a supercomputer with the same power of XB360, with no GPU and all the graphics done in software, but developing for XB360 by writing for this supercomputer would be worthless. If the architecture is similar you can write the same code, and just aim a bit higher for performance. So if you want a 30 fps game, on the SDKs you might write for 20 fps knowing on the final kit it'll get a 50% boost in performance, sort of thing.

The PS3 SDKs (AFAIK, always. I don't nor have ever owned a PS3 kit so can only go by reports!) started with comparable architecture and performance-wise were quite comparable. The XB360 SDKs started of with maybe the same power differential, but a quite different architecture so using the power of the SKD efficiently wouldn't result in an efficient use of final hardware. MS's SDKs have undergone a long evolution. It's their policy to offer updates every month (including software, not just hardware) and they started early long before they had working XB360 components, so the first code on XB360 SDKs was pretty far removed on hardware platform to the final thing.

But that's what lends to my confusion, as PS3 dev kits with Cells have been out months and people have written working code for them, that looks pretty amazing, yet apparently without any development tools

 

[London Geezer]

Well i'm sure Deano and nAo will be able to answer many questions about PS3 development tools.

 

[pipo]

Well i'm sure Deano and nAo will be able to answer many questions about PS3 development tools.

Or won't. As in NDA.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

L-B's right. They are able to. They just won't.

 

[London Geezer]

Or won't. As in NDA.

Well at least they can say "i'm happy with it" or otherwise.
Surely more interesting than out-of-context quotes out of broken articles. And well it's Deano and nAo...

 

[EpicZero]

No it's not. Sony stated themselves that the dev kits used at E3 were 70% the final power of PS3. While the dev kits for 360 were only 30% or so.

CAn I get a link?

 

[Fafalada]

Well at least they can say "i'm happy with it" or otherwise. Surely more interesting than out-of-context quotes out of broken articles. And well it's Deano and nAo...

Try sending them mail and private messages every hour, maybe they'll listen
Anyway I'd suspect they have a somewhat unique perspective on the situation - compared to the rest of the dev community.

 

[London Geezer]

Try sending them mail and private messages every hour, maybe they'll listen
Anyway I'd suspect they have a somewhat unique perspective on the situation - compared to the rest of the dev community.

nAo would tell me things

But Deano doesn't like me, i'm still working on that one. Give me some time and he'll be on his knees too!!!

 

[Fafalada]

nAo is a good boy, don't you go tempting him to break his NDAs now

 

[London Geezer]

nAo is a good boy, don't you go tempting him to break his NDAs now

Who said he hasn't done it before!!

Besides, i would NEVER tell anyone!! err

 

[nAo]

To LondonBoy: Domandare e' lecito, rispondere e' cortesia