EA only using 20% of PS3 potential

[Ben-Nice]

http://www.psu.com/node/5822

Well IF its is true...it sure shows

Recently Glenn Entis, Vice President and Chief Visual Officer at Electronic Arts discussed his feelings about the PlayStation 3 console.

When asked, how do the PS3 and Xbox 360 match up? Glenn responded:

"The whole industry knows it's been a challenge; the PS3's a very complex piece of equipment. On one hand it's a challenge, on the other hand there's tremendous potential in that box. I think it's going to take developers a little while to figure out how to unlock that power.

We've got games coming out now where we feel we've hit maybe 20 per cent of the potential of PlayStation 3. We know the power's there, but like any new platform it's going to take us a little bit of time to unleash it.

Was it more complex than we were expecting? Yes, probably; there were some challenges that we didn't expect. We've got tremendous confidence long-term that it's going to be a phenomenal games machine."

So to find that EA has only tapped into 20% of the PS3's power, you look at games like Fight Night Round 3 with amazing graphics and realistic facial animations, it makes you wonder what the PS3 will have in store for us in the future. Like Glenn said,"...We know the power's there, but like any new platform it's going to take us a little bit of time to unleash it."

 

["Nerve-Damage"]

EA is full of nOoBs......

EA hasn't and will probably never get 60% potential out of any console lifecycle.

 

[JardeL]

Hmm ... " Excuse us for Fight Night Round 3 disappointment PS3 owners " or maybe " We're not as good as eg. Evolution Studios on programming PS3 " ...

Who knows , maybe he's not lying ...

 

[rounin]

Maybe off topic, but I really don't see why so many people here hate EA. I admittedly don't follow many of their games, but I have played some and they're not bad at all at making things look good / making good games. I've briefly played some of the new NFS, Black, Fight Night games, and one PS2 James Bond game. All were really nice. Just wondering what it is with people always slandering this company...

 

[Acert93]

Maybe off topic, but I really don't see why so many people here hate EA. I admittedly don't follow many of their games, but I have played some and they're not bad at all at making things look good / making good games. I've briefly played some of the new NFS, Black, Fight Night games, and one PS2 James Bond game. All were really nice. Just wondering what it is with people always slandering this company...

Already a thread on this active on the forum. It doesn't appear you have played enough of their games and for a long enough time to understand, but that thread should clear that up. If not convince, at least explain that the dislike is rational.

 

[Nesh]

Didnt know EA hasthe Performance Analyzer 3

 

[DeanA]

Didnt know EA has the Performance Analyzer 3

By that, I take it you are questioning how they've come up with the 20% figure? There are some pretty thorough performance analysis tools available to devs.. and CELL has a good chunk of silicon dedicated to performance monitoring. Anyway, it wouldn't be hard to come up with some kind of usage stats with them - assuming your initial algorithms are good, of course..

Dean

 

[London Geezer]

By that, I take it you are questioning how they've come up with the 20% figure? There are some pretty thorough performance analysis tools available to devs.. and CELL has a good chunk of silicon dedicated to performance monitoring. Anyway, it wouldn't be hard to come up with some kind of usage stats with them - assuming your initial algorithms are good, of course..

Dean

Hey Dean,

I remember reading that on PS3, the "Performance Analyser" is standard on all toolkits, unlike on PS2 where you had to rent time with the PA because there were so few in circulation, and looked like defribillators attached to PCs Is it true? If a performance monitoring system is as standard as i understand it, then devs will be able to tap into PS3 resources much more easily than on PS2...

 

[SugarCoat]

So to find that EA has only tapped into 20% of the PS3's power, you look at games like Fight Night Round 3 with amazing graphics and realistic facial animations, it makes you wonder what the PS3 will have in store for us in the future.

80% improved graphics over the Xbox360 according to your way of thinking i'd imagine

this is more generalized, totally useless, completely unfiltered PR.

 

[Bad_Boy]

By that, I take it you are questioning how they've come up with the 20% figure? There are some pretty thorough performance analysis tools available to devs.. and CELL has a good chunk of silicon dedicated to performance monitoring. Anyway, it wouldn't be hard to come up with some kind of usage stats with them - assuming your initial algorithms are good, of course..

Dean

Makes me wonder what kind of percentage HS would be around.

 

[DeanA]

Is it true?

Well, it's not quite the same as the PA stuff for PS1 or PS2 as in both those cases the hardware didn't really have any performance monitoring capabilities.. the hardware for those just tapped into pretty much every signal available on the board. Obviously this approach complicates development kit hardware design, and as such makes the kit more costly.

Both CELL and RSX have extensive performance monitoring functionality built in, and the tools that SCEI develop (PA Suite, SN's 'Tuner', and a couple of others) make use of this functionality to present PPU/SPU/RSX stats in a usable manner. There's a *lot* of effort going into these tools to allow devs to easily see where there bottlenecks are, and the guys writing the tools are amongst the most responsive I know when it comes to actually providing the stuff that developers want. I know on the stuff that I've worked on (animation) it really has made a significant difference to have this kind of detailed information available.

Cheers,
Dean

 

[warb]

A little more from the interview: http://gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=21563

Once that power is unlocked, do you think the games will be much better looking than those for Xbox 360?
I don't know. We'll probably see some differences between the platforms, but those differences... I don't think I could generalise to say better or worse looking.
I think there's probably going to be differences between the platforms - in some cases in simulations, in some cases fidelity of the animation, in some cases graphics. There will probably be some generalisations, but even then it may be differences team-by-team or game-by-game too, depending on what people decide to focus on.

In your Montreal Games Summit speech, you discussed the importance of emotion - of getting game characters to exhibit it and players to experience it. Hasn't that been tried before with Sony's Emotion Engine?
The Emotion Engine was really a label they put on a piece of hardware. Their point there was that this hardware's powerful enough that we can create emotions within games. People could take any hardware, however simple or complex, and create characters that are very expressive.

How do you move that on to the next level, and go from the Emotion Engine to actually making characters feel and look real?
I don't think it's just about graphics. I think it's as much about animation, AI and direction, the way characters interact and respond to things in a scene.

 

[22psi]

I bet EA caps at 25%

 

[Jabjabs]

EA hasn't and will probably never get 60% potential out of any console lifecycle.

* Excluding the stuff that Criterion turned out.

 

[infinity4]

if biggest third party (nobody earns as much as ea does) can only get 20% now, then i wonder how it is possible for other small third parties to take advantage of ps3 hardware

 

[aselto]

if biggest third party (nobody earns as much as ea does) can only get 20% now, then i wonder how it is possible for other small third parties to take advantage of ps3 hardware

Better management?

 

[Tap In]

And here I thought one EA bashing thread would be enough.

 

[infinity4]

Better management?

probably, ea workers have no motivation at all but to suck up money from people

 

[Cheezdoodles]

if biggest third party (nobody earns as much as ea does) can only get 20% now, then i wonder how it is possible for other small third parties to take advantage of ps3 hardware

EA makes the amount of money they do, not due to excellent coding, but with the act of reuse, licensing and marketing.

When you develop a game for EA its not a question of when will we be finished? Its a question of how much crap can we put in before the release date.

EA being the biggest, doesnt matter, they have never strived to achieve techinical achievements, they got a formula with small budgets for coding, massive porting and tons of marketing.

 

[Nesh]

By that, I take it you are questioning how they've come up with the 20% figure? There are some pretty thorough performance analysis tools available to devs.. and CELL has a good chunk of silicon dedicated to performance monitoring. Anyway, it wouldn't be hard to come up with some kind of usage stats with them - assuming your initial algorithms are good, of course..

Dean

Yeah thats what I did

Btw now that I remembered, wasnt it EA that said they have reached fully 360's potential or am I wrong?