X360 Developer Critiques Sony's PS3

[zed]

Xbox, and although the console has sold over 24 million units, it still struggled to equal the GameCube (also over 24 million) and could come nowhere near the PlayStation 2 (over 100 million).

is this true? (i dont know the latest figures) but if so then why does ms always talk about coming second last generation?

 

[Hardknock]

is this true? (i dont know the latest figures) but if so then why does ms always talk about coming second last generation?

No. Xbox is like 2 or 3 million over GC last I checked...

 

[rabidrabbit]

Should Sony respond to these mudslingings instead of remaining confidently quiet, it's like they let MS representatives attack them verbally from all sides, and MS seems to take advantage of this in their various PR and interviews.
I know it's not exactly been the Sony policy to get too much into these PR wars, but maybe as their direct competitor this time is very aggressive in that kind of PR, perhaps Sony should change their PR tactics accordingly too.
Well, I can sense a Phil Harrison interview coming soon, setting things straight...

 

[scooby_dooby]

Should Sony respond to these mudslingings instead of remaining confidently quiet, it's like they let MS representatives attack them verbally from all sides, and MS seems to take advantage of this in their various PR and interviews.

What goes around comes around I guess...I agree MS has been pretty agressive lately with the mudslinging, but they got slammed pretty bad last year.

 

[bRoNx]

Clearly you didn't get the humor. Jab. at. Guden.

Whoops

*Sarcasm meter malfunction!*

 

[Robert.L]

Exactly. I see the responses to the OP, such as Guden's, way more inflammatory than the OP itself. I read the interview given with Lee, and it seemed very interesting. There was a bit of PR speak, but nothing nearly as bad as Kutaragi-san and like. This guy is an engineer and game programmer, and he gives some godo reasons as to why X360 is better suited for game development than PS3. His points are valid; that doesn't that PS3 doesn't have certain other advantages, but comments like the 512MB ram being UMA rather than NUMA is on target. Sure, NUMA has advantages such as smaller latency penalty and (at least in case of PS3) better bandwidth throughput, but fact is PS3 will never be able to address more than 256MB for graphics data. And SPE's are basically DSP's, which is what he says. I don't see anything in there that should really be replied to as "Don't post this shit here" (Guden).

explain that one , and yes ps3 can address more than 256MB for graphics data.

 

[patsu]

I don't think the Cell is as well designed for game development as Sony would have you believe, ... the design of the PS3's Cell is more suited for "serialized streaming math code" which is common in video codecs and audio processing. This makes sense considering Sony's push for the inclusion of the next-gen Blu-Ray format in its console.

... The PPE appears to be essentially identical to one of the Xbox 360 cores... except without the VMX128 enhancements and with half the cache. However, a much greater assortment of work has to be crammed into this single core -- all of the game loop, all of the rendering commands, and the system allegedly takes over some time as well

The comments painted the subject as "half-empty" vs "half-full". At the end of the day, substantiation seems weak. Cell is more suited for "serialized streaming math code" compared to what ? Xbox 360 ? Does "more suited for streaming math code" automagically means less suitable for gaming code ?

3 * VMX128 reference is made without comparing to the 1 * VMX + 7 * SPU's vector engines.

Similarly "half the cache" is used by only 1 PPE as opposed to "twice the cache" shared by 3 PPEs, giving the paper advantage to Cell (Actual performance derivation is of course more complex than this).

See other B3D posts on similar discussions.

Lee, however, feels that the Xbox 360's custom triple-core PowerPC-based design is better suited to provide "cool stuff" such as the Xbox 360 Guide.

In addition, he speculates that porting games between the two next-gen behemoths will be difficult for developers. According to Lee, the X360 has more "general purpose processing power" that is more easily reallocated, because the X360's CPU cores have equal access to all of the console's memory. Sony's PS3 cell has an asymmetric nature that could, according to Lee, lead to "situations where the game has too little of one type of processing power and too much of another."

Lee warns that games will suffer because "you'll never see a PS3 title with more than 256 MB of textures at any given time, due to the split graphics and system memory banks." The X360 offers 512 MB of unified memory, which Lee says "gives developers much more flexibility in how they allocate memory for various resources."

Is XBox 360 Guide cool ? What advantages does it bring to the end users that cannot be done on a PS3 ?

The above Xbox 360 advantages seem genuine. I look forward to next-gen Xbox 360 games.

PS3 has its own strength to tap on. Xbox 360's philosophy does not necessarily make sense in PS3 context, and vice versa. In this sense, it's a good thing Mr. Matt Lee is not developing PS3 games. I'm sure if he's a PS3 developer, he will see different ways to optimize his game on PS3.

 

[Titanio]

Should Sony respond to these mudslingings instead of remaining confidently quiet, it's like they let MS representatives attack them verbally from all sides, and MS seems to take advantage of this in their various PR and interviews.

Cell doesn't need defending, not least from MS reps. These comments are a throwback to the post-E305 critique that emerged from his very own group. It's a shame the interviewer asked or that he responded like that, because otherwise it's a great interview. And it's a shame it's those comments that have been so reported outside of Ars, despite what else is in the interview. But no, I don't think Sony cares to address this - what a MS engineer says does not change reality.

And yeah, this is old.

 

[valioso]

Should Sony respond to these mudslingings instead of remaining confidently quiet, it's like they let MS representatives attack them verbally from all sides, and MS seems to take advantage of this in their various PR and interviews.
I know it's not exactly been the Sony policy to get too much into these PR wars, but maybe as their direct competitor this time is very aggressive in that kind of PR, perhaps Sony should change their PR tactics accordingly too.
Well, I can sense a Phil Harrison interview coming soon, setting things straight...

what? yeah, because Kutaragi has said nothing about the xbox..

 

[LunchBox]

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=31431
why try to revive something that was locked?