Comments on: Sony: PS3 is hard to develop for--on purpose

The Japanese electronics powerhouse is making it hard on developers to create games for the PlayStation 3, and believe it or not, the company is fine with that.

[monkeyman1140]

So let me get this straight, The PS3 has vastly superior technology to the Xbox 360, thus making it a bit more difficult to program, so we should not buy the PS3 and instead go with Microsoft's off the shelf gaming system that breaks 50% of the time?

[johnnybex]

I am a developer and I LOVE the PS3. Yes it's hard to develop for but the biggest positive comes of this: EVOLUTION AND ADVANCEMENT.

If everything was easy we would never have something bigger and better. Last time I checked my first program was the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life, now I look back at it and I laugh.

To developers who cry about it, step up to the plate and better your skills, soon enough developing for the PS3 will be easy and the gaming world will advance to bigger and better games, and graphics.

[screamapillar]

Innovation, advancement in technology etc, these are great things for games. However, surely you agree it is ignorant to simply label devs as "lazy" regarding this? There are many pressures on developers, many of which are placed on them by the distributors, publishers etc. In addition, it is possible the development firm you work for has paid their dues to Sony to acquire better tools to develop with or something similar. Sony has often placed roadblocks like this for development firms (Microsoft too is guilty of this, many large organisations with this level of monopolistic power are) to basically have more control over the 3rd party providers and increase their profit margins (by essentially selling the capacity to develop the game that they'll then make money out of). Much like supermarket chains squeeze their suppliers for things like shelf height.

In addition, being 'different' does not necessarily mean better. So new innovation does not need to be at the expense of other matters such as capacity to develop. No one is saying advancement isn't a good thing in this industry, it is a lack of balance here due to Sony's clear anti-competitive and bully attitudes that is the issue. It reduces creative capacity and increases the possibility of clone games with just a new fancy skin on top.

[silas_miller]

I must throw out a disclaimer and say I do love my PS3. But I've loved all console and PC gaming for as long as I've been around. But for most of that time consoles and PC games had different niches and got along nicely and complemented each other well. When I wanted a platformer or fighter I went to my console.(mario, tekken) When I wanted a flight sim or FPS I went to my PC.(falcon, quake) Then MS bought bungie and took Halo away from PC and Mac to use it to lure people to buy the XBox. Now I am no MS hater, but that pissed me off. Furthermore I see the XBox(or Direct X box (where it gets its name)) as nothing more than a PC with some good hardware copy write protection(perhaps not good enough). This bums me out, because we all know that all XBox and XBox 360 games are really just PC games. That coupled with all this multi-platform release junk just annoys me, because it muddies the waters with **** poor games. If the XBox was more than just a PC I'd have more respect for it and its developers, but as it stands It's worth waiting for the good XBox games to come out for PC seeing as my PC is vastly more powerful than an XBox 360. Atleast with the PS3 exclusives I am getting a true console game that I can appreciate for what it is without comparing it to the other console or PC versions. I do believe that as in the past with the PS2 sony is poised for a long life with the PS3 and part of that is the development learning curve. It is exciting to see each development cycle get better graphics and performance out of the same hardware and I feel like that doesn't happen as much within the XBox realm. It's sort of like you spend $200-300 every 2 years with the XBox to get the latest graphics, where you just spend $400 with PS3 for 6-8 years. Just my 2 cents.

[Radchek]

When Microsoft and Nintendo (and according to rumour, Sega) release a new console in a few years time do you honestly think that Sony are going to say "Hey, we don't need to release a new system yet because ours was designed to last longer!". I think not. Sony will probably be working on a new console already to compete with whatever the other companies are going to make. and they will release it to compete with these. Like the PS2, once new hardware is announced you will stop caring about it and will just look forward to whatever comes next.

[Jimmy_Estrada]

You Sony fan boys need to chill. Sony may have the most powerful gaming system in the market, but its in last place, period. Sony want's to compete with the XBOX and the Wii, not be a luxury gaming system. The development process may be handicapping them in their efforts and the CEO's comments come off as a bad explaination simply because his job is to offer a good quality product that does better than the competition. The end.

[MARS2025]

Um....Yeah...right Sony. That is the weakest excuse I have ever heard since Clinton said "I smoked, but I didn't inhale." GTFOH with that BS Sony!!!

[sggram]

Using Sonylogic? I have concluded that the Playstation 3 is too perfect a console to own. Indeed if by some chance I happened to come into ownership of a Playstation 3 then I risk becoming instantly unaware of its brilliance.

[epross]

It's like they invented the fastest, most fuel efficient car on the planet, "We did this on purpose" explained Sony, "That way you will feel that you are driving something unlike anything else you've ever driven before." And oh yeah, it still takes gasoline, but only in solid form -- what do you mean the gas companies are balking at having to deliver gas in solid form - they should because our vehicle is so brilliant!
While there may be some merit to say that the PS3 is technically superior, why did they hobble it by making it hard to program for? Companies don't have unlimited funds to invest in reinventing themselves so that they can accommodate Sony's brilliance. Sony could have made the platform more efficient, powerful, etc. and provided tools to assist developers - maybe then the number of games being produced for PS3 would be greater. I love my PS3 but wish that the library of games I can choose from was a lot bigger and not filled with many ports from Xbox 360 that don't always perform as well.

[ProbableCabbage]

I don't believe Sony intentionally set out to make a console that's hard to program for, in fact I'm certain of it. They set out to make a ridiculously powerful console, that would blow people out of the water and remain relevant for years and years and years. To that end, they put a potentially revolutionary processor in it, the Cell microprocessor, which, by objective standards, is a very powerful processor. The problem is that the Cell processor in the CPU consists of nine cores: 1 CPU core, 1 vector unit, and 7 SPEs (Synergistic Processing Elements.) Your average computer has 1, 2, or 4. The Xbox 360 has 3 (with the vector units as part of the General Purpose cores) I believe. The advantage of more cores is "you can do more things at once", which means you can get more things done in a smaller period of time. The problem is that parallel computing is very, very hard. Basically, parallel computing works via "you have a problem, the computer breaks it down into smaller parts, assigns one to each available core, which solve the problem concurrently, and give back each part of the answer (hopefully in the right order)." The problem with this is that unless you are very, very careful you end up in situations where the result of the process critically dependent on the timing of other events, and this invites a whole host of bugs. So to avoid these so called "race conditions", more care must be put into programming. If the developer kit isn't very good, a huge amount of care must be put into programming. By all accounts, this is what happened with the PS3.

The thing that's giving them trouble is that programming is almost never done in an environment of "best", since you can spend an essentially infinite amount of time optimizing any particular small task. Programmers tend to work under the constraints of "good enough, and maybe a little better than that." Which is part of what's holding back a lot of the "utlization of the PS3's power" since ultimately, what determines "good enough" in the gaming business is "moving units." So if you make a game for the Xbox 360 that sells well, you probably don't need to make it look much better on the PS3 to sell a lot of copies, particularly since if it's a really good game, it doesn't need to look particularly good in order to sell well (sometimes gameplay trumps graphics).

[screamapillar]

BMW have developed a vehicle that runs on Hydrogen fuel rather than gasoline - zero carbon emissions (in fact the 'waste' product is water - I say we all drive them in the drought stricken regions). The difference between BMW and Sony? BMW are working WITH governements and energy distributors to make this a reality (and have several Hydrogen fuel pumps in Europe which is where their main sell base is). Sony is working against the developers and just acting as if it is a good thing that there is no fuel.

That and BMW actually have a backbone.

[Radchek]

It's funny! I remember when sega made a console that was difficult to develop for. The Saturn was more powerful than the Playstation but developers took short cuts and only used one of it's two chips most of the time resulting in inferior ports of playstation games. But when used properly games like Sonic R were made. The developers of Sonic R said the game would be impossible to make on Playstation. It's funny because Playstation fan boys ridiculed the Saturn for this, calling it inferior because developers found it too tricky to develop for. Now that the roles have changed the Sony fan boys have changed their stance citing that this is genius on Sony's behalf. PS3 is the modern day Saturn, Technically superior yet inferior because it isn't developer friendly. The difference is the PS3 will succeed, due to a large and loyal fan base. I am a PS3 owner and I think it's a great console but I am starting to think that maybe 360 is the better option as the games available for that console are impressing me more and more every day. The games are what I care about, not console specs! The Sony fan boys should open their eyes and stop being so biased. You are all brain washed by Sony and it was people like you that killed the fantastic Dreamcast. Get a life!! Get a 360 :)

[livingaudio]

One word:

Wii

(^_^)





yea right....i want all 3 consoles baby!

[chasepwns]

@SteveW928

I registered an account here just to inform you that you sir, are a blind idiot and I'm sick of reading your 100+ blatant uneducated fanboy comments. You have good intentions with the hope that Sony was thinking long term gaming console, but this is just an excuse for them to allow for lazy programming on their part and not developing tools to build a more easily accessible toolkit for 3rd party developers developing games.

You can justify it all you want, and place Sony's CEO up there with Einstein for whatever reason you dream of, but the cold hard truth is that Sony is wrong, stupid, and they continue to pay for it to this day with Xbox360 exclusives that look and play better then PS3 games, even though the xbox360's hardware is "inferior" to the PS3. This is because of the difficulty involved making PS3 games. Developers have more time to polish and add finishing touches to their game when they have a simpler toolkit to work with instead of living in their cubicle during crunch-time because of a framerate problem in the opening level that won't go away due to a difficult developer toolkit.

BTW, easier-to-use dev toolkit DOES NOT = continuous flow of cookie cutter games; and DIFFICULT to use toolkits DOES NOT = better games. That is the most retarded and immature assumption I've ever heard in the games industry. This is how it really works. Easier-to-Use Dev toolkits = MORE TIME TO POLISH X GAME and display creativity. Difficult to use toolkits = LESS TIME TO POLISH and inhibits creativity.

Heres an example to help put things in a perspective which you lack. Lets say I want to bake a pizza and I'm going to make it in a specific way but I'll be baking it in two unique ovens. One oven is more advanced then the other, but I don't know how to use it, while the other oven works fine and I know how to use it since i've been using it for years. I put the first pizza in the oven that I'm familiar with first and press go; I then put the other pizza in the oven I've never used before. I spend time reading the manual that was poorly translated, and I play around with the buttons which aren't accurately labeled. By the time I finish figuring out the "advanced" oven, the first pizza is almost done so I wait for that to finish. When it finishes I take it out and realize that the flavor is wrong and I know how to perfect it, but heres the problem, we need 2 pizzas to be done at a specific time for the consumer. Theres time to perfect the first pizza and remake it, but the second pizza in the advanced oven will have to go out the way it is because there isn't enough time to remake it.

In my opinion that is exactly what the situation is with the Xbox360 and PS3. The dev teams with the most time on their hands usually come out on top (like Uncharted 2) but it shouldn't take 4-5 years to make a game for one platform because the toolkit is so damn hard. That's time that could have been spent polishing it even further (better UC2 multiplayer), or maybe the game would have been good and polished a year ahead of time, allowing an earlier release and more time for a 3rd sequel (you also have to remember that with a 4-5 year dev time, there are a lot of people who get laid off, fired, hired, get a job at a rival company, etc, which can impact a game too.)

From Day 1 they've marketed it as a Blu-Ray movie player, and that's what it will ever truly be. It's a terrible gaming platform (photos? really? Do I really need photos on my gaming platform?) compared to the Xbox360. http://zerk16.blogspot.com/2009/11/why-i-game-on-pc.html

Any comment you say back defending the PS3 would just make you look like a tool at this point...actually you already do.

Thanks. Have a good day.