Are Sony devs aiming higher?

[Arwin]

I personally think that both platforms will have great developers. But there may be one or two reasons why the PS3 can at least be perceived to have developeres that 'aim higher':

1. Many PS3 exclusive developers and ace development teams come from the PS2, which was much harder to develop for and if you wanted to shine, you already had to master streaming and threading technologies. The Xbox, AFAIK, had much less need for such low level programming.

2. The PS3 is an architecture that is sure to appeal to tech-heads, die hard programmers who like a challenge and will probably see the beauty of the Cell design and related system.

3. The PS3 doesn't have as much higher-level support in the toolsets, and typical PS3 developers will be using plain GCC and inline assembly from day one. It is widely believed, imho, that if you want to go for the highest performance, this is still the best way to go. Microsoft's tools are great, but typically have a lower rating when it comes to optimising for the best performance.

I'm not saying that these things are necessarily good, or have any bearing on the performance of the 360 - each of these points is also a disadvantage if taken from another perspective (ease of development). However, it may explain why you'll see more technological prowess earlier on with development teams working on PS3 games.

 

[TheChefO]

So whats your point? That devs have more reasons to aim high for the PS3 and not for 360?

There is no rationality in your post

I could speculate on why ps3 devs seem to be "aiming higher" but really at this point that is all it would be is speculation. My concern is that devs are not currently utilizing features that are hard coded into the 360.

I have no clue why this is the case. Perhaps it is also related to devs seemingly "aiming higher" on ps3? You tell me. All I know is there does seem to be merit in the "aiming higher" sentiment and I would like to see MS remedy that sooner rather than later.

 

[liverkick]

Just a quick note on the Kojima "MGS4 could be done on 360" line. Its been misrepresented quite a bit it seems. The gist of the response was they could have chosen to put it on 360 as far as production was concerened (but chose PS3 for obvious reasons). He also said MGS4 could have been on the Wii if you need to put this in proper context.

Kojima Production's philosophy is to tailor their games to the strengths of the target hardware as much as possible. Kojima has stated their aversion toward multi-platform development for that very reason (and that they can afford this luxury). If MGS4 (or any KP game) was on the 360 it would of course be the same deal. Saying it could be "done" on one platform or the other is different than whether it could be easily ported or replicated. Any piece of software that significantly leverages a unique architecture will naturally impose complications on a divergent platform.

 

[TheChefO]

I personally think that both platforms will have great developers. But there may be one or two reasons why the PS3 can at least be perceived to have developeres that 'aim higher':

1. Many PS3 exclusive developers and ace development teams come from the PS2, which was much harder to develop for and if you wanted to shine, you already had to master streaming and threading technologies. The Xbox, AFAIK, had much less need for such low level programming.

2. The PS3 is an architecture that is sure to appeal to tech-heads, die hard programmers who like a challenge and will probably see the beauty of the Cell design and related system.

3. The PS3 doesn't have as much higher-level support in the toolsets, and typical PS3 developers will be using plain GCC and inline assembly from day one. It is widely believed, imho, that if you want to go for the highest performance, this is still the best way to go. Microsoft's tools are great, but typically have a lower rating when it comes to optimising for the best performance.

I'm not saying that these things are necessarily good, or have any bearing on the performance of the 360 - each of these points is also a disadvantage if taken from another perspective (ease of development). However, it may explain why you'll see more technological prowess earlier on with development teams working on PS3 games.

Good post Arwin and I agree these points will probably play a big role in the best ps3 games showing what the ps3 can do. Which brings up a good question in my mind: How much ps2 developer head hunting has MS done to secure top talent up to this point? Buying a company here or there may get them a handful of people who would stay but I think the better method for securing top talent would be to seek the individuals as individuals and sweeten up the deal for them one at a time. By doing so they could start developing internal studios that truly compete with Sony.

Frankly not to disrespect any efforts of MS or their devs but Arwin is right, I think it's pretty clear the best dev efforts last gen came from the ps2 camp. This trend seems to be continuing this gen with early efforts again pushing hardware past percieved limitations. I'm not going to assume that MS dev teams do not have the ability or skill to compete head to head with the best of the best but the big difference in my mind is they have not show this ability in produced software. It could be that they don't have the skills or it could be that MS has not given them the time/money they needed to shine or it could be that MS has not encouraged or pushed these teams to produce the best of their ability.

I'd like to think that MS realizes the importance that this code quality disparity will have this gen as the machines are neck and neck power-wise and the only real difference in game quality will come from the ability and effort of their developers. Developer quality is what kept ps2 competitive last gen and if they didn't have teams that could master ps2 and do so relatively quickly it might have been a bit different outcome. This gen if these same teams are given a system with roughly equal power I expect them to eventually outclass MS's offerings.

Hopefully MS realizes this and is actively doing something about it. Either funding their teams better, giving them more time, encouraging/demanding/pushing them harder, or getting better talent. In the meantime devs, there are some transistors ya might want to look into utilizing in the 360 that are sitting idle wasting silcon

 

[inefficient]

Vroom vroom!

I'm probably going to get owned for making this comparison.

But I am going to risk it to put out there that if these consoles were cars, Xbox360 would be an automatic and the PS3 a manual or stick shift.

An automatic transmision is going to be much easier to drive for the majority of people (what the hell - probably all people). And many will argue, there is really no need to give a driver so much control under ideal normal driving conditions.

And even if you put a bad driver in an automatic, he could probably take the machine from point A to point B without totalling the vehicle. The same cannot be said for the later.

But there are some drivers who feel they need more control over the performance of their machine. They want that ability squeeze out a little more performance at just the right times. The manual transmission provides these opportunities.

The manual transmission also requires more skill from the driver himself for the machine to reach its full performance. And there is more room for a driver to really set himself apart from other drivers when racing under these conditions.

Similarly with the PS3, there will probably be a measurably larger gap between what AAA developers create and the B devs. And since the driving desire to distinguish one's game from the competition is so feirce in this industry, the PS3 has a strong chance of being embraced. At the very least, it is not going to be dismissed simply for being harder to work with.

 

[Arwin]

Frankly not to disrespect any efforts of MS or their devs but Arwin is right, I think it's pretty clear the best dev efforts last gen came from the ps2 camp.

Mind you, the Heavenly Sword guys' previous game was an Xbox exclusive, and they were pushing that hardware a fair bit too, if I remember correctly. It just didn't have as wide an appeal, and they themselves probably recognised that fans of this genre are more likely to own a Playstation.

Also, Microsoft has had to find the right balance between getting a lot of titles out fast, and getting great looking titles out. Before the PS3 is out, I think they have been right to prioritise getting the titles out there fast (160 or so?), as their games will look better than anything else on the consoles by virtue of being the only next-gen. But once the PS3 is out, they no longer have that luxury and every title will be compared to its PS3 equivalent, appropriate or no.

Also, from what I've read the 360 development stuff does allow for a lot more direct programming on both processor and graphics chip than was possible on the original Xbox, so they are learning, and I'm sure we'll see some neat Xenos related stuff coming up yet.

In general though I stick to my original observations ... the PS3 is a cutting edge machine, and I was initially surprised myself at how ambitiously some developers are already trying to get the most out of it.

 

[Pugger]

If I remember correctly certainn developers have stated programming to the metal is more open on Xenos than it is on the PS3. So the Automatic and manual comparisons are possibly only valid when it comes to what the developer wants to do.

 

[Arwin]

If I remember correctly certainn developers have stated programming to the metal is more open on Xenos than it is on the PS3. So the Automatic and manual comparisons are possibly only valid when it comes to what the developer wants to do.

Probably a more valid comparison would be that the 360 comes in both automatical and manual, and the PS3 only in manual. That still means that 90% of devs on the 360 may choose automatic at first, but every dev on the PS3 has to learn manual from day one, forcing them to become better drivers. Sort of.

In any case, the Cell is as open as it gets, so nothing on the 360 can be more open than that, but I guess you're saying that the Xenos is more open than the RSX, which could very well be possible - I don't know much about graphics programming, but I could imagine that the uniform shaders have a lot more programming flexibility (I've heard one or two things about greater branching support on the ATI stuff, which seems to indicate as much)

 

[Platon]

I'm probably going to get owned for making this comparison.

But I am going to risk it to put out there that if these consoles were cars, Xbox360 would be an automatic and the PS3 a manual or stick shift.

An automatic transmision is going to be much easier to drive for the majority of people (what the hell - probably all people). And many will argue, there is really no need to give a driver so much control under ideal normal driving conditions.

And even if you put a bad driver in an automatic, he could probably take the machine from point A to point B without totalling the vehicle. The same cannot be said for the later.

But there are some drivers who feel they need more control over the performance of their machine. They want that ability squeeze out a little more performance at just the right times. The manual transmission provides these opportunities.

The manual transmission also requires more skill from the driver himself for the machine to reach its full performance. And there is more room for a driver to really set himself apart from other drivers when racing under these conditions.

Similarly with the PS3, there will probably be a measurably larger gap between what AAA developers create and the B devs. And since the driving desire to distinguish one's game from the competition is so feirce in this industry, the PS3 has a strong chance of being embraced. At the very least, it is not going to be dismissed simply for being harder to work with.

The only thing though is that the 360 has both automated and manual transmition. Just because MS might be providing high level tools and libraries does not mean that if a developer feels like he would be able to get even more perfomance out of the box that he can not go down to the metal...

 

[Simon F]

and the PS3 a manual ...

Having recently overheard some devs chatting, it sounds like it doesn't have synchromesh either.

 

[TheChefO]

Mind you, the Heavenly Sword guys' previous game was an Xbox exclusive, and they were pushing that hardware a fair bit too, if I remember correctly. It just didn't have as wide an appeal, and they themselves probably recognised that fans of this genre are more likely to own a Playstation.

Also, Microsoft has had to find the right balance between getting a lot of titles out fast, and getting great looking titles out. Before the PS3 is out, I think they have been right to prioritise getting the titles out there fast (160 or so?), as their games will look better than anything else on the consoles by virtue of being the only next-gen. But once the PS3 is out, they no longer have that luxury and every title will be compared to its PS3 equivalent, appropriate or no.

Also, from what I've read the 360 development stuff does allow for a lot more direct programming on both processor and graphics chip than was possible on the original Xbox, so they are learning, and I'm sure we'll see some neat Xenos related stuff coming up yet.

In general though I stick to my original observations ... the PS3 is a cutting edge machine, and I was initially surprised myself at how ambitiously some developers are already trying to get the most out of it.

Good point - but I believe Marco was not part of the team prior to HS though. Not to say the rest of the team contributed nothing but I think he was instrumental in Nao32 But then great ideas are born everyday by lots of smart people. Some just blossom more than others for lots of different reasons. Agreed on the rest of your post as well wrt competing against ps3.

Here's to hoping for GREAT competition between MS and Sony on this front and may we, the gamers benefit from some of the best software this industry has ever seen this gen.



Now if we can just get MS to drop the ue3 based 1st & 2nd party Blockbuster games...

 

[Platon]

I totally agree here. It's pretty ridiculous to have cheap AA as a highly prioritized design goal, and then adopt a 3rd party middleware engine that can't even implement it.

Does anyone else think it would be worth the money for MS to invest $10-15million in creating a true engine for 360 that they could then license out? Seems like peanuts in the long run

I was thinking that as well, since they are making all the tools and libraries why not make an engine as well, it shouldn't be too expensive in the grand scheme of things.

But I guess there could be a couple of problems, one being that it might be difficult to make an engine that really takes advantage of everything offered in the console and is suitable for every kind of game, and the other thing good luck convincing Epic & Co to make games for you, especially exclusive if you comete with them in the engine market...

 

[TheChefO]

I was thinking that as well, since they are making all the tools and libraries why not make an engine as well, it shouldn't be too expensive in the grand scheme of things.

But I guess there could be a couple of problems, one being that it might be difficult to make an engine that really takes advantage of everything offered in the console and is suitable for every kind of game, and the other thing good luck convincing Epic & Co to make games for you, especially exclusive if you comete with them in the engine market...

Agreed it would strain their relationship but I imagine Epic also has a relationship with Sony and I imagine Sony also has internal teams developing engines as well. The best solution would be to have engines developed for specific scenarios/game-types and I imagine any engine developed would at least support predicated tiling as this is a major component designed into the box.

Regardless if they offer this/these engines to 3rd parties I would like to see at least the first party games maxing out the 360.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Mind you, the Heavenly Sword guys' previous game was an Xbox exclusive, and they were pushing that hardware a fair bit too, if I remember correctly. It just didn't have as wide an appeal, and they themselves probably recognised that fans of this genre are more likely to own a Playstation.

HS was destined for multiplatform in the beginning, from XB devs. They weren't targetting the PS market because the PS owners are more receptive to this genre. They're targetting the PS crowd because Sony gave them a publishing deal!

The reason NT are working well with PS3's hardware is more because the dev team are a talented bunch with ambition to use the hardware well, rather than had experience with a specific hardware type, and they recruited the right talent too. The deal with Sony may also give a lot of leeway (or funds!) to generate the best game they can to showcase the platform, rather than the more usual 'just make it good enough so we can sell it and you can start on the sequel'. Some devs are capable of better than they show, but are driven by economics to be more conservative in their approaches. Being housed in the SCEE Cambridge office probably helps NT too

 

[blakjedi]

HS was destined for multiplatform in the beginning, from XB devs. They weren't targetting the PS market because the PS owners are more receptive to this genre. They're targetting the PS crowd because Sony gave them a publishing deal!

The reason NT are working well with PS3's hardware is more because the dev team are a talented bunch with ambition to use the hardware well, rather than had experience with a specific hardware type, and they recruited the right talent too. The deal with Sony may also give a lot of leeway (or funds!) to generate the best game they can to showcase the platform, rather than the more usual 'just make it good enough so we can sell it and you can start on the sequel'. Some devs are capable of better than they show, but are driven by economics to be more conservative in their approaches. Being housed in the SCEE Cambridge office probably helps NT too

All very good points shifty.

Going back up in the thread a little bit... I dont know if I necessarily agree that because of the skill needed to the program PS2 the developers are better off than the purely Xbox devs...

The three games that come to mind as the best of last gen (in terms of visuals) are God of War, Resident Evil 4 and Splinter Cell 3. Without reservation I would say that Ubisoft bested the other two teams in terms of graphical prowess... God of War was 1st party and RE4 was originally designed specifically for the GC chipset strengths... meanwhile Ubisoft is a multiplatform dev house...

The motivation to use unconventional techniques or create your own (a la NAO32) in order to make your title shine is not really quantifiable... but when you see it in a piece of software you know it... This gen I think Ubi did it again with GrAW and probably will with RS6. The Gears Team, the Forza Team, Bioware, Silicon Knights, 2K games and Bungie will more than likely pull out all the stops also. The rest remain to be seen...

 

[wco81]

Here might be an indication of PS3 developers pushing the hardware. Resistance developers are trying to reach 1080p and using SPEs to simulate the physics of individual weapons.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=8316673&&#post8316673

 

[Nesh]

I could speculate on why ps3 devs seem to be "aiming higher" but really at this point that is all it would be is speculation. My concern is that devs are not currently utilizing features that are hard coded into the 360.

I have no clue why this is the case. Perhaps it is also related to devs seemingly "aiming higher" on ps3? You tell me. All I know is there does seem to be merit in the "aiming higher" sentiment and I would like to see MS remedy that sooner rather than later.

Ist simple, they are aiming just as high on both.

 

[blakjedi]

Based on TGS... I think i beleive the title to be true... *sigh* I think DMC4 tilted the scales for me... BTW Afrika is the most impressive thing to me yet... lighting, skin, deformation, animation... the best of each...

 

[czekon]

based on TGS : BD,LO,trusty bells,LP... i think MS aiming very high to

 

[silhouette]

Well after seeing, Lost Odyseey, Blue Dragon, GoW, Rainbow Six:Vegas, Assassins Creed, FFXIII, and lots of ofther PS3 titles, I would say everybody is now aiming high, which is of course very good news for all of us in both camps