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Japanese Devs Talk 360 Development

Posted by Zonk on from the friends-in-far-off-places dept.

Japanese developers have had the chance to work with the Xbox 360, and as Gamespot reports, there are mixed feelings over there. From the article: "...but even with Microsoft's development tools and strong technical support (another aspect for which the developers had kind words), there are still a number of issues game makers face. Many developers consider the system's graphic capabilities 'double-edged.' The Xbox 360 can handle much better looking graphics than previous consoles, but it also requires a lot more effort in development."

3 of 65 comments (clear)

  1. Re:To be fair... by FadedTimes · · Score: 5, Informative

    I've read that the Nintendo Revolution dev kit is very similar to thre previous generations, so the learning curve for existing developers won't be as much. The revolution is just basically a more advanced gamecube when it comes to processor and graphics. from Ninendo's Press release
    Freedom of design: A dynamic development architecture equally accommodates both big-budget, high-profile game "masterpieces" as well as indie games conceived by individual developers equipped with only a big idea.

  2. Re:To be fair... by AscendantOat · · Score: 3, Informative

    What'll make cross-platform work hard is they're difficult in different ways.

    The 360 has three PPU cores, so without multithreading you can only use a fraction of the available power. With the PS3 you instead have to do low-level SPE unit programming, and any code that can't be adapted has to run on the single PPU.

    Those are the big CPU difficulties, but thethe PPU's used in both systems have weak/nonexistant branching predictors, which lowers production costs. Poor branching performance doesn't hurt streaming media (they're excellent for graphics), but 360 and PS3 won't be much better at AI than current systems.

    Hardly any information out about Revolution's CPU, but it's the last chance for easy development or truly next-gen AI. Keep in mind though, that Nintendo's the most budget-concious of the three.

  3. Re:To be fair... by Rayonic · · Score: 2, Informative
    I've read that the Nintendo Revolution dev kit is very similar to thre previous generations, so the learning curve for existing developers won't be as much.

    Same for the Xbox 360, according to the article. Its the 10x increase in rendering capacity that they're complaining about.
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