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First-Gen Xbox 360 Games Single-Threaded?
Scott Gualco wrote to mention a report at The Inquirer indicating that, despite the 360 itself being capable of multi-threading, first generation 360 titles will be single-threaded. From the article: "Every new machine has a nasty first set of games as the programmers work up to speed on the hardware. In this case, the up side is that there is about 6x the CPU power available and coming to a console near you in the second generation of games. The scary part is that everyone tells me that the PS3 is harder to program for than the Xbox360, and the tools are nowhere near the quality of Microsoft's. That means that even with an extra six months of design time, the initial PS3 games may be worse." Commentary available at Joystiq.
I wouldn't be surprised if it were true; first generation games do not have the luxury of time or access to working, complete, hardware. What you're given is performance estimates which are garbage (with the exception of the Gamecube and Dreamcast in the last generation), 'similar' (ie very different) hardware, and an exec who thinks it is possible to produce a game that is '10 times beter than half life 2 in 18 months (with 10% the budget).'
How do they do it then?
You licence existing technology (Unreal Engine,Doom Engine, etc.) which for the most part have focused on a single threaded environment, and create content that runs at a 'acceptable' rate on the crappy hardware you've been provided (ie. 20-30 FPS) and hope that the real harware will provide better performance.
You should of hyperlinked the word "new" to a site that talks about how long multi-threading has been around. That actually would have done the trick quite well. Your welcome. =)
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Don't act silly, he clearly means 'everyone who has a PS3 dev kit'.
You're right that the dev kits are still beta, but you have to realise that the launch titles are being developed right now.
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