MS regulating developers choices on other platforms *spawn

[goonergaz]

It's more complex in every way shape and form due to stuff like slower optical drive, slower graphics card, less memory, worse tools, and compounding it back in 2009 when I was still in the biz Sony was pressuring devs to get their versions of games to look as good as 360 versions with said lesser hardware and tools.

Yet devs still managed and today we even see better games on that 'poor in every way bar disk size' hardware.

In a typical 5/6 year gen dvd was plenty. They've stretched this gen to 8 years so a single dvd is tight and no longer adequate for all games. Turns out though you can just ship two dvd's and the problem is magically solved. On the other hand you can't get around the limited gpu and memory on the PS3, so if limits truly are a concern to you then you should voice them to Sony for holding the industry back and causing everyone to have to spend more money and time to develop games.

So you're saying games are being held back by PS3 limitations yet we see better looking games on PS3?

I can see that it was hard for devs to get to grips with the PS3, but we've had (close to) parity for years now wit the odd blip.

 

[joker454]

So you're saying games are being held back by PS3 limitations yet we see better looking games on PS3?

No that's not what I'm saying, and no to me the best looking games this gen are multi plat but that's the wrong thread for that.

I'm saying that if you are indeed so horribly appalled that devs have to front some extra money if they need to go to 2 dvd's, then you should be far more appalled if you knew how much extra dev time and money PS3 games have added to general development this gen.

 

[function]

Yes, Sony really had the for-thought beyond 2 years, you see, when you make a product that's supposed to be about for a few years you need to think about these things. MS were too interested in leaving out HDVD/BR so they could sell the expensive HDDVD add-on, as for HDMI...well it was the future, they could have included it from day one as an option for little extra.

And yet here MS are with a six year old machine outselling the PS3 and rolling around on the floor laughing, rubbing dollar bills earned from Xbox Live against their groin. They must have done something right.

MS had the forethought to add cross game voice chat and allow Xbox Live to be upgraded in a way that worked with all games. You see, when you're making a product that supposed to be around for a few years you need to think about these things (can you see what I did there etc).

I doubt HD-DVD was left out of the 360 so they could charge for it as an expensive add on. The HDMI 1.2 spec wasn't ready when MS finalised the design of the video output chip.

Yet devs still managed and today we even see better games on that 'poor in every way bar disk size' hardware.

So you're saying games are being held back by PS3 limitations yet we see better looking games on PS3?

That is an opinion, and not a fact.

I can see that it was hard for devs to get to grips with the PS3, but we've had (close to) parity for years now wit the odd blip.

We have had close to parity on game content between PS3 and 360 for years, guess that means DVD storage is just fine ...

 

[dobwal]

Yet devs still managed and today we even see better games on that 'poor in every way bar disk size' hardware.

So you're saying games are being held back by PS3 limitations yet we see better looking games on PS3?

I can see that it was hard for devs to get to grips with the PS3, but we've had (close to) parity for years now wit the odd blip.

PS3 games of today and those specifically developed exclusively for the PS3 are no proof of the realities at the beginning of the gen. Outside of UC, which at the beginning of the gen wasn't a highly thought of title before its first release, the vast majority of the first party high tier PS3 tites took years to come to the PS3. There are numerous early third party titles where the 360 held IQ, framerate, or resolution advantages.

MS set up the 360 so alot of performance could be accessed up front, while Sony boasted it would take years for developers to extract the totally capabilities out of the PS3. Its easy to see why Sony may have pushed developers toward parity in the early stages of the gen. Now that devs can extract that extra power out of the Cell and take advantage of the BRD its understandable that MS still wants that parity to exist.

 

[AlphaWolf]

Yes, Sony really had the for-thought beyond 2 years, you see, when you make a product that's supposed to be about for a few years you need to think about these things. MS were too interested in leaving out HDVD/BR so they could sell the expensive HDDVD add-on, as for HDMI...well it was the future, they could have included it from day one as an option for little extra.

are you serious?

Sony launched a year later, for a $100 more, because of blu-ray. And it had nothing to do with foresight and everything to do with pushing their own tech.

In 2005 HDMI was just a damn waste of money. If they wanted to waste extra money on every system built I can think of a dozen ways they should have spent it better than HDMI.

Anyway this was all hashed out years ago, this isn't the place for it, feel free to read the threads where it was discussed.

 

[liolio]

I don't care much about the isse as I only own a 360 but clearly it's time to MS to change its policies in regard to instal they have to make disk swap a thing of the past (without bringing extra security holes).
That's just stupid to ask people who installed x disks to swap disks, do you hear me MS: STUPID!

 

[goonergaz]

No that's not what I'm saying, and no to me the best looking games this gen are multi plat but that's the wrong thread for that.

I meant multi plat (ie head to head same game)

I'm saying that if you are indeed so horribly appalled that devs have to front some extra money if they need to go to 2 dvd's, then you should be far more appalled if you knew how much extra dev time and money PS3 games have added to general development this gen.

I was just saying it was a 'extra disk' tax - to help persuade devs to stick to 1 disk (or as few as possible) - a deterrant as it were to make it seem 1 DVD wasn't enough (like Sony had said)

 

[Arwin]

Just a few things:
- The DLC on PS3 releases does happen sometimes because of Sony regulations, but those are only for when a multi-platform release comes out significantly later on PS3.
- I don't blame Microsoft for releasing the 360 with DVD. It was the right decision for them. No discussion from me about that. HD DVD and HDMI came too late at too high a price. They had a hard price target, and a hard release target, and had to make sacrifices to get to those targets, but it was the right approach. Sony recognises this, as you can see from the way Vita was launched.
- Streaming from BluRay on multi-platform releases (and even some exclusives unfortunately) is most of the times done fairly inefficiently, because rather than spending time on a system that uses the HDD as an intermediary cache for loading data from BluRay, multi-platform developers spend time optimising their game to run from optical drive only as best as possible because of the 360's Arcade unit. This directly affects how much memory has to be reserved for textures in RAM, and how often you can change them out for new textures.
- I don't doubt that development costs for programmers can be higher for PS3, but I wanna bet that for every example you find where a development team used more programmers/time for the PS3 code, there is at least one where the development team for the PS3 consisted of one guy who was having to port the PC or 360 version pretty much by himself.
- I don't blame Microsoft however for making PC ports really easy, as it greatly helped them get a lot of good releases early on in the cycle. Then by having a nice, friendly platform to develop on they attracted a lot of studios to develop on 360 directly for a while too (though I'm thinking some are now back to PC). Unified RAM is also undoubtedly easier to work with, and they did great with optimising their OS and services and their soft and firmware updating systems.
- First party studios don't pay licence fees, so they can release on as many discs they like.
- Sony's titles typically released 10 euros/dollar cheaper than 3rd party titles, showing that they don't have to pay that licence either, but give that savings to the consumer, or (more common) retailers. That does seem a tad unfair for third party publishers though.
- Microsoft put hard restrictions also on game updates. They are only allowed to be 5MB, and cannot contain content. You can only do it as DLC, and that has to be paid for. PS3 updates can basically be as big as publishers dare them to be, though they do pay a fee for the bandwidth incurred. Generally though it means that multi-player games can show DLC upgrades that others bought, where on 360 they would show placeholders.

This discussion does not have to be one-sided. It is just interesting to look at a particular policy. I wonder for instance how many games released later on PS3 with more content because of the PS3 version not actually being finished, or because Microsoft sort of forced their version to be released first. How did that go with Batman: Arkham Asylum for instance? That game allowed you to play as the Joker exclusively on PS3 (and it also unlocked a Home space).

 

[goonergaz]

And yet here MS are with a six year old machine outselling the PS3

In the US - and only because of the headstart.

MS had the forethought to add cross game voice chat and allow Xbox Live to be upgraded in a way that worked with all games.

Doesn't stop 50m PS3 gamers playing, online is still far from a clear majority of the gamers today...6 years after launch.

The HDMI 1.2 spec wasn't ready when MS finalised the design of the video output chip

But HDMI was about, and MS stated HDMI wasn't needed this gen.

That is an opinion, and not a fact.

No, it's a fact that some PS3 games look better than the X360 version.

We have had close to parity on game content between PS3 and 360 for years, guess that means DVD storage is just fine ...

If you don't mind swapping disks.

Maybe I've said something to upset a sensitive few, I'm not saying PS3 is any better than X360, just that the IMHO the DVD and lack of HDMI were a little short-sighted by MS (along with HDD not being included as standard).

 

[goonergaz]

If they wanted to waste extra money on every system built I can think of a dozen ways they should have spent it better than HDMI.

maybe in the QA department

 

[Lucid_Dreamer]

Not to mention how slow the brd drive is, it was a pain in the ass to deal with. Throwing more data on it just increases the problem of being able to get access to it due to that slowness.

2x BD-drives do not have variable read speeds per layer. In other words, your last sentence doesn't appear to make sense.

Edit: If you are talking about seek times, you are adding a layer change to DVD's time. Third party devs don't usually use more than a single layer BD. Plus, DVD is covering more area across the disc.

If you are truly concerned and bothered by the extra costs devs are hit with due to that second dvd, then you would be utterly appaled by the extra costs devs are hit with for PS3 development. It's more complex in every way shape and form due to stuff like slower optical drive, slower graphics card, less memory, worse tools, and compounding it back in 2009 when I was still in the biz Sony was pressuring devs to get their versions of games to look as good as 360 versions with said lesser hardware and tools. The mere existince of the PS3 as it is had a significant effect on dev costs and dev time on every dev out there.


In a typical 5/6 year gen dvd was plenty. They've stretched this gen to 8 years so a single dvd is tight and no longer adequate for all games. Turns out though you can just ship two dvd's and the problem is magically solved. On the other hand you can't get around the limited gpu and memory on the PS3, so if limits truly are a concern to you then you should voice them to Sony for holding the industry back and causing everyone to have to spend more money and time to develop games.

That's right. PS3 development costs for all 3rd party developers, like DICE, is more expensive than the 360's development costs (kind of sounds like 2008 to me). That's why Battlefield 3 has been shown running smoothly on the 360 and not the PS3. That's, also, got to be the reason why DICE has been talking about the trouble and extra work they have been doing on PS3 version of the game. Again, because they got the 360 version running so quickly. That's why DICE has had all that extra time to put together and present developer slides on 360 development of Battlefield 3, right? I think I've got it, now.

Of course, these supposed PS3 issues with GPU and memory has to be why DICE says using the PS3 the way they have was "an excellent opportunity to raise the bar on graphics." So, it's Sony that's "holding the industry back", huh? Got it. Nope, those statements aren't biased at all.

 

[AlphaWolf]

But HDMI was about, and MS stated HDMI wasn't needed this gen.

Find that quote, show us where they said that.

It seems quite clear you don't have a damn clue what you're talking about.

 

[-tkf-]

I'm saying that if you are indeed so horribly appalled that devs have to front some extra money if they need to go to 2 dvd's, then you should be far more appalled if you knew how much extra dev time and money PS3 games have added to general development this gen.

Having 50 million customers should help swallow that extreme extra cost for developing on the PS3 and as is evidenced, plenty of those developers obviously do not spend enough money and the PS3 owners end up with sub-par ports.

The point is that 360 developers know that if they keep the content tight and compress hard enough they can SAVE X amount of dollars since there aparently is a DVD tax in the form of royalty pr pressed disc vs just the costs. Add an extra track a level more, change the game so it fits on one dvd vs making "millions" up front because you don´t need the 2nd disc.. It´s an easy choice.

For those games that doesn´t have a choice because they of sheer nature just is "big" they of course will pay the extra price, knowingly and maybe save a bit on the PS3 port to make up the loss?
Then it´s usually just a question of having a game that is designed around the swap thing, or changing the game so it will work with disc swaps.

 

[Arwin]

Maybe I've said something to upset a sensitive few, I'm not saying PS3 is any better than X360, just that the IMHO the DVD and lack of HDMI were a little short-sighted by MS (along with HDD not being included as standard).

It's not short-sighted. It was a conscious decision based on that they learnt from the previous generation that better hardware can be a competitive encumbrance. They had twice the RAM back then. They had the harddrive. Yet they could never compete on price last gen against the PS2 for various reasons (among which that the price of the HDD never dropped below $50, basically, or that they had a fixed licence fee for Nvidia's nforce main board and gpu). And they identified primarily that the PS2 reached bigger audiences faster because of the low price, and that multi-platform developers would favor the lowest common hardware denominator comparatively, and much more so if you were the biggest installbase. So Microsoft aimed to get a big installbase early on quickly, and banked on multi-platform devs to neglect most features the PS3 would have over them tech-wise. I'm willing to bet that the success of their GPU, EDRAM, and unified memory for multi-platform titles almost came at a surprise, success that was amplified by Sony stumbling to make good use of releasing a year later.

And then both being blindsided by the Wii ...

This is not the discussion I was hoping to see in this thread though.

 

[function]

In the US - and only because of the headstart.

I thought it had been outselling the PS3 globally since Kinect, but I can't find confirmation of that atm.

Doesn't stop 50m PS3 gamers playing, online is still far from a clear majority of the gamers today...6 years after launch.

But MS have a service that allows them to charge - I think it was over half a billion dollars last financial year from Live Subscriptions alone! It also give they some stickiness to hold on to customers between generations. I hope Sony are in a position to challenge Live next gen.

But HDMI was about, and MS stated HDMI wasn't needed this gen.

The HDMI (1.2 iirc) that they needed wasn't finalised when they needed to finalise the chip, so they decided to leave it and add it when they could. Technically they were right about not needing it - I still use VGA and - but given their position due to the early launch I'd expect MS to play down HDMI till they had it on every new system on shop shelves.

No, it's a fact that some PS3 games look better than the X360 version.

I misinterpreted your comments (perhaps because of the recent lines of debate in some threads) to be saying that, as a matter of fact rather than opinion, PS3 exclusives look better than 360 games. It's a kind of unreasonable posturing that I don't really like these days, and it's my fault for jumping to the wrong conclusion about about what you were saying.

If you don't mind swapping disks.

Doesn't bother me, personally. Perhaps sales of upcoming games will show how joe public feels about this issue.

Maybe I've said something to upset a sensitive few, I'm not saying PS3 is any better than X360, just that the IMHO the DVD and lack of HDMI were a little short-sighted by MS (along with HDD not being included as standard).

I don't think they were short-sighted decisions, but smart tradeoffs in order to get a powerful system out of the door at the right time and for a realistic budget. I think they called it right (including the optional HDD).

 

[Arwin]

Doesn't bother me, personally. Perhaps sales of upcoming games will show how joe public feels about this issue.

It bothers me so far as that I got the impression some of FFXIII (and other RPGs) questionable design decisions were informed partly by this limitation, just as JRPGs seemed to be moving more and more to worlds where you could go anywhere all the time.

 

[goonergaz]

Find that quote, show us where they said that.

It seems quite clear you don't have a damn clue what you're talking about.

well we are talking 6 years ago now, it'd be like finding a needle in a haystack...while I'm looking maybe you could find something to back up your comment WRT "Dvd was only challenged as an option by cartridges (and those would have been 256MB or something)" because I'm sure PS3 and X360 would have been being designed around the same time - you make it sound like Sony pulled out some wonder tech that no-one had heard of!

 

[L. Scofield]

No, it's a fact that some PS3 games look better than the X360 version.

DICE...

So the exception proves the rule, right?

 

[Crossbar]

- Streaming from BluRay on multi-platform releases (and even some exclusives unfortunately) is most of the times done fairly inefficiently, because rather than spending time on a system that uses the HDD as an intermediary cache for loading data from BluRay, multi-platform developers spend time optimising their game to run from optical drive only as best as possible because of the 360's Arcade unit. This directly affects how much memory has to be reserved for textures in RAM, and how often you can change them out for new textures.

I don´t hear that much complaints about the load times of PS3 games any longer. The difference was much bigger when the majority of 360 games shipped on single layer discs. Now that most AAA games require dual layer DVD disks the difference (BD) in read speed is small.

It´s also a bit odd that some people who were strongly against mandatory installs in 2008-2009 have become great fans of installs lately, the times are changing.

 

[goonergaz]

It's not short-sighted. It was a conscious decision based on that they learnt from the previous generation that better hardware can be a competitive encumbrance. They had twice the RAM back then. They had the harddrive. Yet they could never compete on price last gen against the PS2 for various reasons (among which that the price of the HDD never dropped below $50, basically, or that they had a fixed licence fee for Nvidia's nforce main board and gpu). And they identified primarily that the PS2 reached bigger audiences faster because of the low price, and that multi-platform developers would favor the lowest common hardware denominator comparatively, and much more so if you were the biggest installbase. So Microsoft aimed to get a big installbase early on quickly, and banked on multi-platform devs to neglect most features the PS3 would have over them tech-wise. I'm willing to bet that the success of their GPU, EDRAM, and unified memory for multi-platform titles almost came at a surprise, success that was amplified by Sony stumbling to make good use of releasing a year later.

And then both being blindsided by the Wii ...

This is not the discussion I was hoping to see in this thread though.

sorry if I inadvertantly de-railed it...WRT XB tho it was always onto a loss, even after the price cuts it died a death - it was up against the PS2 juggernaught which splattered anything in it's way! It was late to the party and MS were far from popular, esp after taking Halo from the PC crowd!