Develop Magazine has a couple of small tidbits and coverage of various PS3-related happenings lately, which might be of interest. The full issue is available for download for free on their website, you just have to register:
http://www.developmag.com
The issue has been up for a short while, but here's some of the PS3-related highlights anyway:
- On Sony's online strategy, and why Sony has waited this long to really take online by the horns, Sony's line is that it does not matter to be first, but to be there at the right moment. David Reeves says "“A high-level strategic decision was taken that we would do a leap frog and say ‘Okay, what we’ll do is aim to do it even better for PS3’ and link it to the PSP. And when Cell gives us the power to be able to do that in terms of the actual distribution, then it would be something that was really next-generation in terms of network platform. Really, what we did was spend a lot of time – three or four years – just training on PS2. It’s a question of tipping point – when are you going to hit the point when it hits mass market? You know, your average Sun reader – and there are millions of them, who own PS2s – were not that interested and the broadband penetration wasn’t high, so we thought that 2006 was better than 2001 or 2002 to go for it.â€
- On the interface, Reeves mentions that a "shit hot" SCEJ team is working on it, that won't disappoint.
- There's a small report on Devstation back in March. Talks about how Sony's internal technology groups in different regions have been brought into closer contact. Mentions that SN Systems is working on a compiler for PS3. “It’s been one of our largest R&D projects over the past year, so rather than just put it away when Sony bought us, we thought we’d carry on and see how it goes. If it turned out tomorrow we couldn’t do as good a job as GCC and offer other benefits to game developers, we would stop it and work on other things, but so far it’s very encouraging.†The VP of SCEEs tech division shares a couple of their own learning experiences with PS3, including not going purely double precision
Apparently, very initially the team took a pure 'supercomputer' approach, using 64-bit, but moved back to 32-bit. The article also mentions how one SPU is reserved for the OS and "security processes" (no mention of involvement of a rumoured second..). That SCEE VP refers to the one SPE as a maximum, that they'll try to bring down over time.
- There's an article on Havok. Just mentions that 'Havok Complete XS' is bundled as a source code-tree release with PS3, and that it has been optimised to scale up to 4 SPUs. Also talks a bit about Havok's in-development Havok Behaviour tool, which sounds like a competitor for NaturalMotion's Euphoria.
- Finally, there's an interview with Josh Resnick and Greg Borrud of Pandemic. Resnick mentions somewhat enigmatically that they will be launching what he 'confidently' believes will be PS3's game of the show at E3..
http://www.developmag.com
The issue has been up for a short while, but here's some of the PS3-related highlights anyway:
- On Sony's online strategy, and why Sony has waited this long to really take online by the horns, Sony's line is that it does not matter to be first, but to be there at the right moment. David Reeves says "“A high-level strategic decision was taken that we would do a leap frog and say ‘Okay, what we’ll do is aim to do it even better for PS3’ and link it to the PSP. And when Cell gives us the power to be able to do that in terms of the actual distribution, then it would be something that was really next-generation in terms of network platform. Really, what we did was spend a lot of time – three or four years – just training on PS2. It’s a question of tipping point – when are you going to hit the point when it hits mass market? You know, your average Sun reader – and there are millions of them, who own PS2s – were not that interested and the broadband penetration wasn’t high, so we thought that 2006 was better than 2001 or 2002 to go for it.â€
- On the interface, Reeves mentions that a "shit hot" SCEJ team is working on it, that won't disappoint.
- There's a small report on Devstation back in March. Talks about how Sony's internal technology groups in different regions have been brought into closer contact. Mentions that SN Systems is working on a compiler for PS3. “It’s been one of our largest R&D projects over the past year, so rather than just put it away when Sony bought us, we thought we’d carry on and see how it goes. If it turned out tomorrow we couldn’t do as good a job as GCC and offer other benefits to game developers, we would stop it and work on other things, but so far it’s very encouraging.†The VP of SCEEs tech division shares a couple of their own learning experiences with PS3, including not going purely double precision
Apparently, very initially the team took a pure 'supercomputer' approach, using 64-bit, but moved back to 32-bit. The article also mentions how one SPU is reserved for the OS and "security processes" (no mention of involvement of a rumoured second..). That SCEE VP refers to the one SPE as a maximum, that they'll try to bring down over time.- There's an article on Havok. Just mentions that 'Havok Complete XS' is bundled as a source code-tree release with PS3, and that it has been optimised to scale up to 4 SPUs. Also talks a bit about Havok's in-development Havok Behaviour tool, which sounds like a competitor for NaturalMotion's Euphoria.
- Finally, there's an interview with Josh Resnick and Greg Borrud of Pandemic. Resnick mentions somewhat enigmatically that they will be launching what he 'confidently' believes will be PS3's game of the show at E3..
