Next Generation: Who will bring best software tools for Devs, Sony or Microsoft?
- Thread starter Xenio
- Start date
How old is that quote? Is it from 2004? Many devs think the current PS3 tools are great, and the Vita SDK is considered best in class. I can't imagine devs will stymied by the mysterious world of x86 CPUs and AMD shaders.
4 April 2013
http://www.gamespot.com/news/bushnell-xbox-720-will-win-next-gen-6406405
anyway x86 what means? I think that the most sensible area is debug tools and so on
Then he's just badly out of touch. How many decades since he shipped a game?
I'm just curious about the developing envirorment, not about the financial situation of atari, Brad
I'm so confident that the best strong point of 360 is the software envirorment, wonder if the story will repeat
Bushnell has literally been out of game development for decades. It sounds like he's basically repeating things he heard about the PS2 12 years ago. To my knowledge he has never made a game for a Sony platform. He was forced out of Atari in 1978, for god's sake. There's no reason to take anything he says about the current console climate seriously!
Let's ignore Bushnell's comment and just take Xenio's question as open ended. In that respect, Sony's tools have been steadily improving over the years, they will have AMD supplying a lot of a core technology presumably, the dev environment is Microsoft's IDE AFAIK, and Cerny has said development ease is the most important feature. MS may well have the upper hand in tools, but it's not going to be massive chasm like previous Sony consoles. for 3rd party engine based stuff, I'm not even sure where the platform specific tools come in. If it's the same GPU architecture, performance analysis on any of the three platforms will be applicable to all platforms, so devs could use the best tools and aplpy the same developments to all machines. Same with CPU analysis. If MS's tools provide better tracking of workloads the CPU is doing and bottlenecks in AI or whatever performance, as PS4 uses the same code and processor, it'll gain from the same tools and code improvements.
Any issues with specifics like efficiency of compute on GPU will either be the domain of the middleware (physics engine needs to be optimised), or be something improved on over time.
Any issues with specifics like efficiency of compute on GPU will either be the domain of the middleware (physics engine needs to be optimised), or be something improved on over time.
tongue_of_colicab
Veteran
ZeroEx
Newcomer
Microsoft will have great development tools since they are after all a software company.
I don't think Sony is to be taken lightly this generation however. From reading various interviews on the PS4 it seems like Sony has taken a more international approach to the development of the PS4 system. If course the international team still has to report to the heads on Sony in Japan, but there is more western influence on board this time around.
So as an answer to the question, I think it'll be even this coming gen in terms of software development tools. Sony might just pick off the shelf tools and tailor it to their PS4 platform, while they work on custom tools to use the Hardware efficiently. And MS will do what they've done this generation and last gen with Xbox development tools, in offering great tools to work with.
I don't think Sony is to be taken lightly this generation however. From reading various interviews on the PS4 it seems like Sony has taken a more international approach to the development of the PS4 system. If course the international team still has to report to the heads on Sony in Japan, but there is more western influence on board this time around.
So as an answer to the question, I think it'll be even this coming gen in terms of software development tools. Sony might just pick off the shelf tools and tailor it to their PS4 platform, while they work on custom tools to use the Hardware efficiently. And MS will do what they've done this generation and last gen with Xbox development tools, in offering great tools to work with.
How far have the crossplatform engines improved ?
I doubt Sony SDKs are still Japanese heavy when the western companies seem to make more home console games than the Japanese developers these days.
The base technologies are provided by western vendors anyway.
What may be different are: Product packaging (including naming), OS stability and ambition (i.e., painting a compelling vision, infrastructural investment). Strong vision may drive the tools and workflow (e.g., speech recognition, Kinect integration, Gaikai/RemotePlay).
Sony seem to focus on ease of development.
I doubt Sony SDKs are still Japanese heavy when the western companies seem to make more home console games than the Japanese developers these days.
The base technologies are provided by western vendors anyway.
What may be different are: Product packaging (including naming), OS stability and ambition (i.e., painting a compelling vision, infrastructural investment). Strong vision may drive the tools and workflow (e.g., speech recognition, Kinect integration, Gaikai/RemotePlay).
Sony seem to focus on ease of development.
so each tool can be used outside the original envirorment with a different console/platform or I understood wrongly?
As far as the IDE is concerned Microsoft has a winner in Visual Studio, but I assume Sony will just use that too.
Sony has experience with giving devs good tools for exotic architectures though, experience gained by initial failure perhaps ... but that's the best experience. I think as far as abstracting the GPU for convenient access Sony has the advantage.
Sony has experience with giving devs good tools for exotic architectures though, experience gained by initial failure perhaps ... but that's the best experience. I think as far as abstracting the GPU for convenient access Sony has the advantage.
Let's say you have an AI routine running on the Jaguars, and it's clearly slowing down somewhere. You are running the same code on both platforms as they're the same processor, so you can profile on PS4 tools and Durango tools. Whatever you find from both you use to optimise the code, and that code optimisation works for both platforms. This won't work when you are heavily optimising code for either platform, so engineering solutions to use extended compute in PS4 or maximise low latency code on Durango or whatever opportunities there are, but the main bulk of shader program and x86 code, the development platforms should be interchangeable.
Confirmed at GDC.
Profiling tools are such a small part of development, not that they aren't important, but devs will implement their own regardless of the quality provided in the SDK. They are a luxury tool used by a small subset of the developers a small subset of the time. Having good accessible performance counters is much more important that the tool to look at them.
What really matters are two things, three if you count familiarity with a tool, but since both are hosted in VS now that's a wash.
Basically it comes down to stability and iteration time.
The first is obvious, doe it crash all the time, does the debugger work, can I easily do the 5 things I do repeatedly in the debugger etc. These should not be assumed to be a given in the console world, Though in a post Xbox world things are a lot better.
The second part is about after making a change how fast can I see it, outside of the game code itself that comes down to compiler, linker, the speed at which you can serve files to a remote target, whether the dev-kit has a long reset time etc etc etc.
The basic functionality being equal Dev's will usually prefer the platform with the better iteration time.
What really matters are two things, three if you count familiarity with a tool, but since both are hosted in VS now that's a wash.
Basically it comes down to stability and iteration time.
The first is obvious, doe it crash all the time, does the debugger work, can I easily do the 5 things I do repeatedly in the debugger etc. These should not be assumed to be a given in the console world, Though in a post Xbox world things are a lot better.
The second part is about after making a change how fast can I see it, outside of the game code itself that comes down to compiler, linker, the speed at which you can serve files to a remote target, whether the dev-kit has a long reset time etc etc etc.
The basic functionality being equal Dev's will usually prefer the platform with the better iteration time.
Interesting. I believe it was Joker of Faf or some other dev who said PS3 had a significant advantage in build times this gen.
upnorthsox
Veteran
how much was this significant advantage in time?
Similar threads
