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Sony Endorsing Open Graphics Format For PS3
News for nerds writes "At the tech talk as part of the forthcoming SIGGRAPH 2004 conference on August 11th, an open graphics file format for the interactive 3D [videogame] industry called COLLADA will be unveiled by Sony Computer Entertainment. COLLADA is supported by major 3D toolchain companies including Alias, Criterion, Discreet, Emdigo, Novodex, Softimage and Vicarious Visions. If you combine this with the recent news that Sony has joined Khronos Group to support OpenGL/ES, OpenMAX, OpenVG and OpenML, it seems evident that Sony is quietly fighting back against the loudly trumpeted Microsoft XNA (/. coverage) with its plan of an open game development platform."
I don't get it, which link am I supposed to click on to figure out what this story is about? All I see is "blah blah blah" and I have no idea what this is even about.
Sony has a vested interest in making it easier and cheaper for companies to develop games.
Sony... Open Format... Did the wires get crossed here or what?
Sony, known for pushing proprietary interfaces, is backing open standards. Pure pragmatism at its finest - Microsoft is pushing a closed standard, Sony wants to fight Microsoft, and the only effective way to do that is to be the opposite of Microsoft. Hence, make it as easy as possible to port games to the PS3. Of course, Microsoft is making it as easy as possible to port Windows games to Xbox, but that's just more lock-in as we have all come to know and hate it.
This is great news for everyone, because a giant like sony supporting open standards can only be good for us, so long as they don't pull a microsoft-like embrace and extend. So far though, Sony has been pretty good about that, choosing instead to create their own completely separate competiting formats when they want to try to kill a technology, which is infinitely preferable in my mind.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Blue lasers, now this... Lets all not forget about ATRAC3. Yet more proof that Sony is indeed afraid of the Xbox and the next gen Xbox.
...I will get to start my development of "Al Michaels: 2005". I will completely obliterate my competition!
Time to put in my letter of resignation for the current job...
Does it come with a little paper umbrella?
If Sony (or any other company) releases free development environments then they should be applauded because at least it gives anyone the opportunity of turning a good idea into a tangible game or piece of software.
The problem I have is with the game companies themselves because making money from games and having a constant supply of good quality games are mutually exclusive.
For starters, I don't understand why there is a necessity to constantly re-invent the wheel and create gaming engines from scratch just about each time a new game is released. Surely it would be better to throw out the source code to current gaming engines to the Internet community to see what enhancements get added as a result - sure, keep the level design, textures, etc. for a specific commercial game that uses that engine under wraps so that, as a game company, you can make money from it.
One advantage that consoles have over a PC is that developers for a console platform must constantly "push the envelope" to get the console to do more and more as time goes on - this, in turn, creates better, more efficient coding. On the PC, the expectation is that users simply upgrade hardware to meet the requirements of a new game, no games developers get long enough with a particular, say, graphics chipset to fully understand what they can get it to do and, as a result, we, the end users, end up with sloppily coded games that need constant upgrades to get them to work properly.
My point is that we need a return to the good old days of the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum & Amiga when it was possible for "bedroom programmers" to create good quality games. Sure, games were much smaller then but that's why game development environments like XNA, SDL, etc. exist now in order to cut down the development times. What would really put games development back into the hands of single programmers or small groups of game designers, is having access to the core engines as well so that the most important aspect of game design, the initial good idea for a game design, can become tangible much easier.
Incidentally, I don't, for one minute, expect this to happen because there are far too many concerns about making money (which is why money and good games are mutually exclusive in my view) but it would be good to see the games buyers become a lot more discerning when it comes to purchasing games.
Sure, we all own games that we feel were worth the money and that provide us with good entertainment but I guarantee most game players have spent far more money on disappointing games than good ones.
Is this something along the lines of a graphics metafile format for 3d, or does it go beyond that?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
One of the major issues (or so I've read) about developing games for the PS1 and PS@ has been that they're difficult and expensive to develop for. Hopefully this will decrease development times with some form of cooperative graphics system, and thereby reduce costs and speed production.
The additional upside to this is that decreased development costs is good for the bottom line, which would decrease the likelihood that any given game publisher will go out of business, seeing as how they seem to die off with alarming regularity. And the upshot of this is that longer-lived publishers tend to increase the quality of their products over time thanks to experience.
Or maybe they'll just blow the money on ale and whores.
www.kitchengeek.com -- Nosh for
Just wanted to point out that the w3C recently published their intention to have a finger in this pie. With this, they hope to be able to support graphic formats that are representable in XML - notably SVG.
There is no such thing as luck. Luck is nothing but an absence of bad luck.
Any technology with "Ada" in its name is doomed.
-- TTK
In other news, the average cost of developing a console video game today reached $50 million, not counting the all new renderfarm. Developers complained that 18 months was still too long to spend setting up their "next generation workflow paradigms." A completely new graphics engine was then moved into development, prompting a long, drooling yawn from the gaming press. Management refused to comment and moved on to the salad course.
Redemption XII: Soaked in Money: The Curse: $Random Noun: The Sequel was delayed indefinitely to make use of the new graphics format. Management was unavailable for comment as they were busy opening another package of croutons.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
It has al been done before... in 1995!
It was called
keystone back then.
Bram Stolk http://stolk.org/tlctc/
My school has an upper year course for designing PS2 games, and currently it is very hard to get into. They have to keep a small number of people in the class due to the large costs involved in purchasing an SDK and console. Also, from what I have heard, the programming for PS2 is difficult because it uses assembly with multiple processors/gpu's. Hopefully this new open source side will lead to easier access to the development side, increasing programers and allow for more people to get in the industry.
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Will it be a truly "open" format, or just an alternative - open only to members of their club?
My rights don't need management.
It takes the presence of a 800lb gorilla to get big players like Sony to do open standards. This is more of a reaction than a strategic decision.
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
Of this.
meanwhile, nintendo has recently discovered full-size cds
Sony still make kit that requires special sony only connections/plugs/adaptors. They still have their one memory cards format and sony only works well with other sony products. They still use plenty of DRM - I still don't like sony...
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The PS1 wasn't difficult to develop for.
The Sega Saturn, now that was a beast. Processors everywhere and no inherent capabilities for sound and movie compression.
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Sony practically invented "not invented here"... in Japan.
The PS2 "devkit" shipped without C libraries... good times were had by all.
And yet we Mac users, who've had both for ages now, are out in the cold in the gaming market.
Tanj. (There Ain't No Justice.)
Those who complain about affect & effect on
What's with the "Japanese a plus", for the qualifications? I hope that they are talking about the language and not the ethnicity, because I know if you put Caucasian a plus you would have a shit storm from the equal rights groups.
I mean, will it support Ogg Vorbis???
He cut and paste it from this article by pandrijeczko. The only difference is replacing MS with Sony for this comment!
DirectX (and XNA) detail more than just graphics.
You also have sound, storage management, process control, peripheral access (joysticks, etc.), and communications (broadband, dialup, etc).
To truly be an open standard, all of above need to be addressed.
And of course, once the above are agreed upon, deploying those same games on Linux becomes possible, without any added significant development costs.
(I specifically did not mention content protection)
Hopefully this will decrease development times with some form of cooperative graphics system, and thereby reduce costs and speed production.
Unfortunately, the increase in resource requirements for a next-gen title (Xbox2, PS3) is huge. This may be Sony's attempts to get a handle on that, but they're slowing the trend down-- not reversing it. Next-gen titles will require larger teams (and larger budgets) than the current generation.
Which, of course, will make publishers even more risk-averse than they are now. Get ready for the real Attack of the Clones.
I take it you never played ET, or any of the less famous but nonetheless horrible Atari titles. Not every title was a Defender or a Centipede there was a lot of crap. And I think children would find it easier to convince their parents to drop $40 on a good game rather than buy them 10 games.
Woe be on to them, all who rise against poor people, shall perish in a the end. Buju Banton
There's a big difference between open APIs and open source.
OpenGL is an open API, meaning that the API spec is published openly and anyone can implement code that follows that spec, whether it's an application or a driver. The drivers though that follow this API don't have to be open source, and usually aren't. The same applies to applications that use it.
I believe the same applies to the other APIs that are being talked about here.
Sony will, I am sure, have their own proprietary implementations of these open APIs. Sure, some code may be opened to help porting the API to other platforms, but the very low level stuff that talks to hardware is likely to remain proprietary. I also say "opened" here, but in many cases that openness will be restricted to companies within "the club".
--Sony is trying to leverage existing open standards (OpenGL/ES) for engine development, and create a standard for middleware & engine communication. This allows Sony to spend less $$$ on internal development costs, eases 2nd & 3rd party development costs, thus allowing for easier porting of games. --This also could help development houses wary of the new EA/Criterion merger, and make new middleware products like RenderWare to be more easily accepted. --Open standards should mean more $$$ spent on better game-play, and could mean more innovation too. --This does NOT mean ps3 dev. kits will be opensouce, or even cheap... With opensouce or cheap kits, Sony would loose $$$, and their stock holders do not like that. --This does NOT mean that idie game companies can now make ps3 games... although it helps if they ever want to port from pc (opengl/es :)
--This does NOT mean a lot of things, but is a step forward, in a common interest of Microsoft rivals/haters/many /.ers
Sony is so huge. I'm in SEL not SCE but I wonder how much of Sony's bandwidth is used up in employees reading /. The SEL IT group in Mexico has a /. link on their website last time I looked.
:)
~posting anonymously for obvious reasons.
Microsoft was right to use DirectX as the API for Xbox because it allowed PC developers to move content and code to Xbox. The PS2 API instead required a complete rewrite of graphics code-- not an easy way to start your console game project.
I hope that PS3 will be OpenGL-like and support open formats because it reduces the cost to developers and increases portability between platforms (Xbox -> Xbox 2 will be a much easier engine port than PS2 -> PS3).
-m
For anyone who has posted ideas about how Sony is doing this in order to fight Microsoft, I'd like to suggest to reconsider. Microsoft is NOT the 800 lb. gorilla in the cosole market. NOT even close. It holds 2nd place in the US ONLY and is 3rd world wide. The ONLY reason it has fared this well it is because it sells a PC for $150. If you have kept up with the specifications for the Xbox2, you know that it will not be as powerful as the first Xbox was at its time; therefore, it will lose some of its mass appeal. I own all 3 consoles and Halo, but one or 5 good titles do NOT make a console. Look at Dreamcast, granted, Sega had other problems as well, but their original lineup was impressive. Xbox2 must have a superb lineup in order to stay a close 3rd in world wide sales. Sony is trying to appeal to developers and correct its mistakes with the PS2 (difficulty in programming). I prefer Nintendo over the other 2 consoles, but I am realistic. I know it won't beat out PS3 and I am sure Microsoft won't be a real contender. Microsoft will not keep on throwing money after 9 years. By that time they will have lost 4 billion dollars, with a B.
Susanna: NO! A si NO. Octavio: Pos...entonces como?
So, how does this 3D (for games) affect students. Is there something about these open source formats that I can go learn, NOW before they are implemented?
Sony, known for pushing proprietary interfaces, is backing open standards.
Sony the freaking GAME MAKER is not all proprietary. Take a look at what they did provide on the PS2:
Linux port
Standard DVD player (if they had done what the gamecube did piracy would have been harder)
Bog-standard USB ports
Standard Firewire port.
Seems like they were doing pretty good to me! Yeah I would have liked to see them use CF cards for game saves (or even thier own memory sticks - how many memory formats does the world need)? But they did better than any other console maker at supporting standards already, this is just another step in that direction. I don't think it's fair to label Sony the company as a whole with the brush of proprietary formats.
And as a sidenote all the sony vidcams use standard firewire and standard tapes. Even the laest Sony camera uses CF cards (and memory sticks)! Sony is waking up.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I wouldn't say we are totally out in the cold - we did get UT 2004, we get a number of top games about a year later (like KOTOR), and Doom3 should be out for the Mac about the same time as other versions.
Of course, then I read about Half Life 2 and I feel the need for a sweater.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
ODE is a BSD licensed physics engine that is starting to gain acceptance in the propreitary game world. Open standards are no doubt important but I think LGPL and BSD licensed middleware is going to have an even bigger impact on the future of gaming, console or otherwise.
I'm working on an open source driving simulator and we're using ODE to dramatically cut the development time, looks like Techland figured it out with Xpand Rally. It's refreshing to see rampant innovation due to the reuse of code.
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'Colada' is Portugese for 'Glue'... Co-incidence?
Heute die Welt, morgen das Sonnensystem!
But an open PS3 console, for which anyone could write games, would be cooler!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
didn't atari do something like this? and didn't they end up buring thousands of copies of ET in th desert?? I'm not sure, this article confused me
I'm a Mac owner, with a dual g4 450.
So realistically speaking, the XBox version of doom is actually the cheapest solution available to me.
> Also, from what I have heard, the programming for PS2 is difficult because it uses assembly with multiple processors/gpu's.
Yeah, technically 7.
The VU0 has only 4K of RAM. (usually used for Physics calcs)
The VU1 has 16K of RAM. (Usually used for T&L)
It only has 1 GPU.
You need a good mesh stripper to get maximum performance out of the beast.
--
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Microsoft owns part of Softimage, so this "open" Sony standard, endorsed by SoftImage, is hardly a decisive blow to Microsoft.
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Build your own Duke Nukem Forever for the PS3!
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As long as Sony makes and freely releases a Linux Knoppix-like DVD, complete with office tools and a whole pile of other goodies on the PS3..... the newer Xbox doesn't stand a chance.
More open standards is just icing on the cake for all the developers.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Remember, Microsoft owns the patents covering OpenGL, which they bought from SGI.
So, how long before this initiative is buried under a mountain of patent litigation, or the licensing fees are jacked up to make XNA cheaper?
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
If they are really just memory sticks inside, I wonder hy no-one has ever come out with an adaptor that lets you use normal memory sticks? Given the price of PS2 memoy it would be a welcome thing, that and being able to back-up games to a PC (which I have a very small PS2 USB drive that copies from the memory cards and also mounts as a USB drive on a PC or mac).
Is that whole "MagicGate" thing part of memory sticks as well? I had thought that was PS2 memory only.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If more of the calls had been "wacky," maybe I'd still be programming.
"The focus inside the industry really isn't on ports, it never has been. Ports, by rule of thumb, sell very poorly. Are you going to buy Doom 3 for Xbox and PC? Given the choice of one or the other, which would you choose? So would I."
:)
Yea, me too. After not having to deal with Windows or any random other problems when I played SW: KOTOR on there, I'm really looking forward to not having to buy any fancy new video cards for playing Doom 3. Plus I get to enjoy co-op play with my friend via XBL, so I'm getting the total Doom experience. I'm glad you've realized that console gaming, especially when the game is treated as well as Doom 3 on the Xbox has been by vicarious visions, is less hassle, more fun
--
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Sony, known for pushing proprietary interfaces, is backing open standards.
So, let me get this straight. When they're in charge of the market, in this case the console market, Sony plays with open standards. But when they're in a market that they have little share over, say mp3 players and online music distribution, they go with about as closed a standard as one can muster.
Sounds like a couple of people accidently switched briefcases in the lobby of Sony to me.