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Microsoft Says PS3 Linux Not 'Competitive' To XNA

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the ignorance-is-bliss dept.

nz17 writes "Gamasutra has a preview of its upcoming interview with Dave Mitchell, Director of Marketing for Microsoft's Game Developer Group. In the interview Mitchell dismisses Linux on the PS3 as a game creators' solution and has said, 'What we [at XBox] are focused on doing is providing great tools at a free or low price point that are going to enable consumers to be absolutely successful at creating games for both the Windows and the Xbox 360 platforms.'"

11 of 231 comments (clear)

  1. He may be right by Blikkie · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sad as it might sound, he could very well be right. Although linux may be very nice as a development tool, XNA is here and now, and already has hardware access, and is very affordable. No matter how much people may hate Microsoft, this is very possibly a good tool for indie game developers who want to create a console experience.

    1. Re:He may be right by Zero+Degrez · · Score: 5, Informative

      No. To everything.

      XNA is an input and graphics interface wrapper, like Direct X but sits 1 tier higher. It also provides some objects to store typical things every game engine designer has to write for a new game engine so that you don't need to reinvent the wheel. It is NOT a template for 2D games. XNA is NOT a game engine. There is NO restriction on art content. You can include whatever models and textures you want. It's even a piece of cake to include vector and pixel shaders.

      In fact, the demo game provided with XNA is a 3D game. Styled like the old spacewars games. 3D and 2D are both easily doable on XNA. Why you may be seeing more 2D than 3D is simple. Indie game developers are not often artists, and it is far simpler to create a 45x45 animated gif of a player, than it is a 2 million polygon, parallax and normal mapped, skeletal player model. Not that 3D art needs to be nearly that complex...but in a 2D world, people don't expect the things they have become accustomed to after all the triple-A game titles, with the budget of a small Hollywood movie.

      If you indeed did "look into it" you saw a few screenshots and derived your judgment solely from that.

    2. Re:He may be right by kjart · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I suppose it depends on want you intend to do with Linux when you get it. Yes you can write games (+ play an enormous number already written), but you could also use Linux for MythTV, VLC, web browsing, email, or any other use imaginable. Where the PS3 Linux sucks is the video driver is a frame buffer, however I believe that if you dedicated a handful of SPUs on the backside of Mesa that the performance would be pretty good.

      That's his point - XNA is all about game development and the PS3 thing isn't that focused and isn't really "in the same vein" (to quote the article).

      Besides XNA has drawbacks even for writing games. a) It uses .NET, thereby hobbling its performance, b) you have to PAY to publish your games c) You have to PAY to see and play them d) You don't get paid for either. To me it looks more like vanity publishing than a legitimate means of encouraging games development.

      Well:
      a) There is a fairly impressive demo on what you can do visible in this video from channel9. Performance seems pretty nice to be. Would it be faster if this was all in C/C++? Probably - but this is meant to be widely accessible.
      b)Yes, it's a $99 USD a year fee to publish your content to the Xbox right now and only people with a similar subscription will be able to access it. However, according to the article, the sharing of these homebrew creations is one of the things they will be working on. I for one can't wait for the day when I can login to a special section of Xbox live to browse through all the user created games (pretty much suggested at one point in the video I linked to above).
      c)See above.
      d)I'm sure this isn't far away either. As a developer I would love to be able to create the next killer Xbox arcade game or whatever and be able to sell it for a few bucks on Xbox live. As Microsoft I'd love to be able to have developers doing this so I could take a cut (i.e. as a the publisher, etc) and to drive interest in the console. I can't recall reading about this, but I imagine it must be on the horizon at some point.

  2. He's right... by Erwos · · Score: 4, Informative

    I've been using XNA for a while, and it's really a good effort by Microsoft. Easy to develop with, and exposes a pretty nice amount of the graphics and audio hardware. Compare this to PS3 Linux, which apparently doesn't even have accelerated 3D, and it's hard to argue with him - what Net Yaroze was a couple generations ago is now XNA - and much cheaper to boot.

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    Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
    1. Re:He's right... by Harlockjds · · Score: 4, Insightful

      it's not like developing under linux on the ps3 will allow for 360 and wii development (and it hardly enables ps3 development thanks for the restrictions sony puts on the platform)

  3. Actually... by shaneh0 · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's more robust than that.

    From the FAQ:

    "The XNA Framework Content Pipeline, a set of tools that allow developers to more easily incorporate 3D content into their games"

    From an Ars Technica Article:

    "3D models come in a dizzying variety of formats, depending on what tool has been used to create them. In order to make it easier for developers to create their own content, Microsoft has announced that SoftImage has added support for the XNA's native ".X" format to their Mod Tool 4.2 software, a free version of the company's popular 3D modelling program. In addition, the XNA software supports the Autodesk .FBX format, which can be exported by tools such as 3D Studio Max and its free cousin, GMax. The .X format is text-based and very straightforward, so it is easy for other modelling software companies to add support for the format, and some free file translators are already available."

    From the same article:

    "Microsoft hopes to help by providing subscribers to the XNA service access to the "XNA Creators Club," which includes a large database of free 2D and 3D art, models, and textures. Developers can use these assets as-is free of charge in developing their own games, or modify them to suit their purposes."

    Again, from Ars Technica:

    "XNA acts as a bridge between the .NET frameworks and the lower-level game interfaces such as DirectX. Programmers call routines in the XNA game library that activate 3D screen modes, create polygons, paint textures on 3D meshes, play sounds, and interface with control devices such as joysticks or the Xbox 360 game controller."

    http://arstechnica.com/articles/xna.ars/1
    http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/xna/faq/

    Let's all work together to bust the FUD.

    1. Re:Actually... by squiggleslash · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I've been thinking for a while that this really is the direction GNU/Linux needs to go into if it wants a reasonable selection of games, and it's perhaps something Sony should consider assuming they're serious about homebrew development and haven't just put GNU on the PS3 as a tax dodge.

      What's needed is a cross platform framework into which modern games can be developed with relative ease. Preferably this should incorporate some basic engines covering a wide range of game types so the programmer can concentrate on the art and logic rather than the technical details of 3D accelleration. Libraries could exist containing free/adaptable art, and simplifications of certain types of logic (for example, for bots.) Over time, such a system would become increasingly useful as more and more people contribute to the libraries to scratch their own itches or improve games they've obtained and wanted to improve a little more.

      I've been really impressed with the Unreal frameworks, and while they concentrate on a specific type of game, it's not difficult to see how the idea can be extended. Buying "Unreal Tournament" (any version) is not buying what's on the box, there's a wealth of homebrew stuff that's freely downloadable and frequently better than the games Epic, and its competitors like id, come up with.

      With Java entering the GPL-domain, a significant part of the low level stuff would be implemented (and systems like Jake2 prove that Java is a practical, fast-enough, VM for real time 3D games.) There are enough stillborn projects on SourceForge et al to prove that people like writing game engines, robots, and other components for games - the problems tending to be that the people who write one component get bored when they realise they have to write the other bits. So the skills are out there. To some extent, the technology is out there. What's missing is the integration and the coordination.

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      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    2. Re:Actually... by Zero+Degrez · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The Tao project is working on porting XNA for the The Mono project (which is a port of .Net). So theoretically, you could write it in XNA, and run mono on the PS3/Linux and bring any XNA game to the PS3/Linux. At some point in the future. Check it out.

      http://www.taoframework.com/Mono.Xna

  4. Re:Well... by J-F+Mammet · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yep, it's been confirmed by Sony just a few days ago that at least for the moment RSX was locked out of PS3 Linux because of security concerns. That's a big disappointment, but it looks like the framebuffer device will be fast enough for HD videos. It's "just" a matter of someone optimizing ffmpeg for Cell I guess.
    For games though, it's a bad news. Let's hope Sony will update the hypervisor to allow RSX access for Linux.

  5. Hearing a lot about XNA lately... by AlXtreme · · Score: 4, Interesting
    methinks Microsoft is pumping up the marketing on this one. XNA seems to be a combination of previously-separated technologies (DirectX, IDE), and integration (if you like it or not) is one of Microsoft's strongpoints IMHO.

    As the target of XNA seems to be both the professional and the home-brew-market, can the Free Software camp beat this? Well, we already have quite a few game libraries, heaps of engines and a number of IDEs. I'm not aware of any FOSS-'game asset pipeline management tools', and targetting consoles (outside of the Linux-on-the-* projects) has always been something for the big players due to licensing fees.

    What is interesting is their idea of having various 'starter kits' for certain types of games (FPS, RTS, platform), all using a common framework. Using them you could quickly get nice results. Is anyone aware of similar FOSS-projects? Might be interesting to build something similar on top of pygame.

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  6. I'm developing with XNA right now by BShive · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I prefer Java/Eclipse personally to C#/VStudio, but XNA seems to be offering a good opportunity for Indies. Other than Beta1 to Beta2 transition, I've been impressed with the XNA team. I loaded my game on to a XB360 earlier this week and it was amazingly painless. A 'duh' issue where some content files were missing, but only had to do a few minor code changes. An hour later my game was running on an Xbox360! It's hard to believe that Microsoft managed to put such a solid product out. They did it with a very small team, which is why it is only VStudio Express and C# are supported right now. It's nothing like the bloated behemoth that Windows OS development has become. Other coolness is that Remote Debugging works, and works well. I've never had remote debug in hardware or software that worked so painlessly. Create the PC-360 link, start debug, play on the 360, and watched variables will update, you can insert breakpoints on the fly, step through, all that jazz without any problems at all.