theinquirer: PS3 powerful but hard to develop for

[ERP]

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=23306

The question is: will developers bother with tapping all the power of ps3, or will this be a repeat of the situation with ps2, where most devs don't try to tap all the power of the console?

I don't think it's a question of not trying, more a question of what's practical.

The PS2 really requires that you lovingly handcraft every piece of code in a game (and even then it has serious limitations). This gets less and less practical as team sizes get bigger and bigger.

A stellar 5 person engineering team can probably do it, 10 people it starts to get close to impossible to control code quality, much more than that and your fighting to keep the codebase running never mind worrying about if it's cache friendly.

Middleware doesn't help much here either.

 

[Hellbinder]

I just dont think that Cell is going to be hard to develope for. What made the4 PS2 hard to develope for was the Graphics subsystem more than the processor.

Worst case sinario you have a single core thread at 3.2ghz execution along with a massive Video procressor. That alone is far far far more powerful than the Ps2. Resulting in a much more detailed game enviornment. Later on in the next year or two games will look even more advanced as they develope routines and libraries that utilize the full potential of the processor.

 

[Acert93]

But I think once this rethinking of game archiecture is done, PS3 has much greater potential the the Xenon architecture.

I agree. CELL may offer some initial hurdles but its power cannot be denied. I think the Xbox 360 may be more "familiar" at first, but when Sony's first parties start exploiting the 7 SPEs in a well balanced streaming environment I think the CELL will be able to do things to a percision and speed the xCPU.

While the GLFOPs are only about 90% ahead for CELL, I would think in an environment dedicated to CELL to exploit its power that it would be more than that. Better/more physics objects, etc...

To that end I think CELL is awesome because the environment allows a seamless transition to the PS4. PS4 game developers will be able to jump right in and really expose the machine. I am not sure MS has any answer for that although hardware will become less of an issue over time.

In the end I think it will amount a lot to how people use the systems. The xCPU does have a lead in interger and general processing with 3 PPC cores, so there may be times where it may be better suited for some games. No denying the CELLs insane power though.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I concur with the seemless transitionto future Cell projects. Any future consoles could just be more Cells and be done with it. PS4 = 4x1:8. PS5 = 16x1:8...

This'd help loads with Backwards Compatibility and making design new and poerful systems and absolute doddle. I don't know how any other system will be able to compete without a similar scalable architecture.

 

[Spidermate]

With Sony's track record for producing world class software development tools I wouldn't worry.

Cheers
Gubbi

The irony of this comment is that the PS1 was supposed to be very easy to develop for. Of the two systems they've made, one was easy, one was tough. So naturally, everyone assumes this one will be tough too. PEACE.

No. THREE was easy to program for while one was not: PS1, GScube, PSP. Correcting the difficulty problem for the PS2 was a no brain to me if Sony were looking to remain competitive. But I can still remember people stuck on the non-nogotiable fact that it wouldn't because they felt it just wasn't possible in the very same way they thought they could predict the console becoming yet another lagging competitor in the hardware race yet again. It seems different as we speak, however. Now those same odds are being brought up again but only in cost or online. Lightning does not always strike the same place twice. Which means, in other words, history is not always a reflection on what could possibly turn up in the future. Waving such odds as a no existance in comparison to a possible existance is more likely to be wrong than right.

 

[Hellbinder]

Ultimately this is totally moot.

The processor will only do so much. Its about the Graphics Subsystem. In this regard the Xbox may well be able to whip out a Better looking product. It likely has a very fine Shader core and excellent low cost FSAA and AF on full time. Not to mention GDC and whatever else ATi has thrown in there.

When you get down to the games themselves and what the CPU's of each console are doing its going to be virtually undistinguishable. 100 million polly Scene with Physics and Ai here 100 Million polly Scene with Physics and Ai over there. The real difference is going to come down to What the Final Product looke like, The Frame Rate and the little bells and Whistles.

Xbox's Cpu is no slouch either. It may not be until the 3rd year on the market before you see some really interesting things done on the PS3 that may not be able to be easily duplicated on the Xbox. Its the Kind of thing that the SEGA dev houses are really good at doing. Getting into the hardware and pumping out stuff that just makes you scratch your head. Like VF2 on Saturn.

 

[Spidermate]

We heard these assertions many, many times before, and for some reason it turned up a little different afterwards. I'm sure you can see that as well as I. Therefore, I would halt on the all the guessing at this point and just let everything just play its way on out.

 

[pc999]

I concur with the seemless transitionto future Cell projects. Any future consoles could just be more Cells and be done with it. PS4 = 4x1:8. PS5 = 16x1:8...

This'd help loads with Backwards Compatibility and making design new and poerful systems and absolute doddle. I don't know how any other system will be able to compete without a similar scalable architecture.

At that time IBM can sell the cell to every body, now they cant.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I imagine so, but when all three parties release Cell based consoles, why bother having different consoles? They'll all be pretty much the same machine underneath. Except Sony will ahve the upper hand in manufacturing their own processors, getting them cheaper.

 

[pegisys]

in five or six years something better might come along, I can understand why sony will use it next gen becuse they probally will still be recouping from the R+D cost but there are plenty cpu companies and I'm sure they are already thinking of ways to top the cell