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Conflicting Reports of PS3 Programming Difficulty
xenongamer writes "It appears there isn't any type of concensus regarding the programming difficulty of Sony and IBM's upcoming Cell processor. From the article: 'Although few doubt the relative power of the Cell microprocessor, many have expressed concern over the chip's asymmetric design, which makes programming for it a potential disaster ... One such man was 3D artist Josh Robinson, who was fired from his position at Sony just weeks after making a public, negative comment about PlayStation 3 development on his Internet blog.'"
I don't see the conflict in the article.
One group is saying the PS3 is hard to program for.
The other group is happy that it's so much better than the PS2.
It can be both. Quite difficult is still better than insanely difficult.
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
The guy was an ARTIST fired for for saying less than flattering things not only about an early development box, but the product he was working on. His opinion about how hard it is to program counts for nothing, he's not doing it, everything was heresay. His primarily complaint was that his game was not taking advantage of the PS3 because they were putting schedule before quality. Anecdotally he referred to other companies that may be doing the same. Nor do I give any attention at all to someones COMPETITOR who claims it is "a nightmare".
I wouldn't give him much air time, I'd rather hear from developers actually working with it. Those who have detailed architectural drawings, APIs etc. Even (especially) if they have to go to great lengths to achieve anonymity. Those guys would know what potential may or may not exist. This article does not give us information on that, the closest we come is a chief architect at a game haus who says he likes it. He's probably closer to development than the others, but still not reliable (since he's on record) and unless title inflation has gone mad, not someone directly doing the work.
A non-story.
Compared to Sega Saturn's dual processor hell, the Sony PlayStation was leaps and bounds easier to develop on. Of all the games released for the Saturn, only one (Panzer Dragoon Saga) managed to utilize them correctly (and it looks beautiful to boot). Everything else was designed either on one processor or a staggered mechanism that failed to extract the parallelism. This led to the belief that the PlayStation was far more powerful than the Saturn.
Now, the PlayStation 3 has (God knows what reason) nine concurrent microprocessors. Even if only one is primary and seven of the secondary ones are active, it'll be leaps and bounds more difficult to develop software than just two. And the difficulty curve is not linear; more processors would yield far more difficulty.
Of course, all this would be theoretically handled by a smart compiler. But compilers today are struggling with mere dual-core systems, let alone nine different processors. As for assembly coding, look at the failure that is the Saturn. I'm not questioning the power of the Cell. I'm questioning whether a developer exists in the world to extract at least half of its potential.
The same thing was said about the PS2. The developers of Oddworld switched from the PS2 to the XBOX early on, citing the fact that the PS2 was too hard to code for. There was widespread concern then that the PS2 was going to be too difficult to be viable.
How about everyone wait for the system to actually come out before making judgments on it?
I always thought it was because Nintendo systems didn't use "standard" media, like CDs and DVDs. They used carts up until the GameCube-era, and even then, they had some mini-disc format. (I'm not sure how protected that media was)
... it's certainly been a while.
When games were in cartridge format, there were various accessories that were sold that let folks read them in and "back up" the games to a separate storage device. Conversely, you could also read from such devices as well, and it opened the door for piracy. I believe (although I'm too lazy to Google), that Nintendo did frown upon that and went after people/groups that did this. I could be mistaken though
-- jchenx