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PS3 Issues Caused GTA IV Delay?

Posted by Zonk on from the cue-wacky-sad-noise dept.

Dr. Eggman writes "According to statements made by Michael Pachter on Gamasutra, 'The Rockstar team had difficulty in building an exceptionally complicated game for the PS3, and failed to recognize how far away from completion the game truly was until recently.' The article goes on to describe an agreement between Rockstar and Sony not to favor the 360 by releasing their version first, necessitating the delay on the 360 as well. Pachter's comments are interesting, because all Take-Two has been willing to say is that 'technological issues' were causing the hold-up. "

11 of 117 comments (clear)

  1. Way to spin it into a PS3 problem zonk. by pl1ght · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Oh i guess its to be expected. Nowhere in the article does it blame the PS3 for the delays. It specifically states BOTH systems have their technological issues that they need to work through. In typical Slashdot fashion, it is turned into an anti-ps3 article. Way to be unbiased in the news reporting once again.

    1. Re:Way to spin it into a PS3 problem zonk. by Carbonite · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The GP was claiming that the article never blamed the PS3 for a delay, presenting this as evidence of Zonk's bias. This simply isn't true, as the quote I provided proves. You can make the argument that Sony shouldn't be blamed for the delay, but it's obvious that they are being blamed for the delay (at least in the article).

      --
      ich muß mehr Kuhglocke haben
    2. Re:Way to spin it into a PS3 problem zonk. by Anamanaman · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Considering the RAGE engine is initially developed for the 360 (Table Tennis), its a fair assumption to make.

      Also, Rockstar isnt the only ones having problems. Its widely known that EA sports games on PS3 are currently running at half the frame rate of the 360 version. Also, every Unreal Engine 3 based game on the PS3 this year has had major technical issues (slowdowns, glitches). Its not like its the PS3's fault. 360 was a year ahead of them, and developers are more familiar with it.

      Take Two really cant afford this slip. They are in big trouble as it is, and this might sink them (or force them to sell out to another company). They should have gone the traditional route of timed exclusive on a platform (either PS3 or 360). They would have been able to get a nice chunk of change from the console maker plus been able to completely focus on that single platform. And in 6 months they could port it to all the other systems.

    3. Re:Way to spin it into a PS3 problem zonk. by jamie(really) · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Zonk did post the article title with a question mark at the end of it, which to me implied that it was not fact, but a question. The analyst asserts that the PS3 is a port of the 360 version, and speculates that this caused the delay, and further goes on to speculate why this would also delay the 360 version. Hence the question mark in the title.

      If the PS3 version is a port of the 360, that's very interesting information. Early in the PS2 / Xbox generation, most developers made PS2 games and ported to the XBox, and it was easy, because the XBox was in many ways more powerful and had a harddrive. (I base this opinion on concrete experience of shipping PS2/XBOX1 games). With the early PS3/360 titles, many developers have a 360 title or engine, and then port to the PS3. In some ways its similar: the later platform in each case (XBOX1 then, PS3 now) has a harddrive while the earlier platform doesn't (PS2 then, 360 now). However, in the most significant ways, its different. The XBox1 and the 360 are "easy" to program. It was easy to go from the PS2 to the 360. It's clearly not easy to go from the 360 to the PS3. The PS3 is a fantastically powerful beast (the Cell is one of my favorite chips of all time), but it simply cannot be programmed like a 360.

      The upshot is that because Sony failed to get to market first, and because Sony continued their direction of creating extremely complicated hardware, developers are failing to transition titles from 360 to PS3. The result is more 360 exclusives and more delayed PS3 releases.

      The average PS3 zealot may not care about a game that was coming out on the 360 anyway. "It couldn't have been any good because it didn't use full power of the PS3 if it ran on a 360" they say. But for many people, and for many developers, its a reason to not buy / support the PS3. And it is Sony's responsibility.

  2. "Zonked" again... by Intellectual+Elitist · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As the first article states, it's only the uninformed opinion of a financial analyst that PS3 development difficulties were responsible for the delay. Of course, the financial analyst also believes the PS3 version is a port of the 360 version, when in fact the PS3 has always been the lead platform for the game. Shows how much his opinion is worth.

    Rockstar says they have challenges on both platforms (likely Cell development on the PS3 and stuffing everything onto a DVD-9 on the 360). Nothing to see here, folks...

  3. Re:Damn PS3's by fistfullast33l · · Score: 5, Insightful

    But I think it's fair to blame this on the PS3, because their stupid architecture is the one that deviated from the standard.

    Who said there was a "standard" gaming architecture? What part of the PS3 is not standard? It has a processor, a motherboard, a hard drive (hell, the 360 doesn't even adhere to that standard), RAM, a CD/DVD/Blu-Ray disc drive. I know, it's the wireless card that's throwing Rockstar off!

    Want to dive in deeper? You have to deal with threading in the cell, core duo (2), and of course the PowerPC. The only difference is the division of the work to the cells, and Sony has released software to help deal with that. The 360 has that newfangled Unified Shader pipeline versus the PS3's traditional pixel/vertex pipeline.

    So what's exactly not standard? The fact that you have those mysterious cells that no one knows what to do with? It's all API'd out at this point. Sony released help for developers at the GDC six months ago. So I don't think it's really a good argument to say that it's such a craaaazy hard platform to program for anymore. There's help there if they want this.

    Even Pachter said, this was a failure of management to figure out that it was taking so long. They should have known this weeks ago. I personally was surprised to find out that they were going to be able to develop this game so quickly - look at MGS and FFXIII, they're taking much longer.

  4. Re:Damn PS3's by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Actually it doesn't have one processor. It has seven of them that the developer must use in tandem in order to achieve any level of real performance. The Cell of the PS3 is like having a V8 engine without a timing belt. Yes, it can be damned fast, but only if you can manage to get each SPU processing chunks of data and completing their jobs in a timely manner without having any of the "luxuries" of synchronization features that every other flavor of SMP, including that in the XBox 360, have had since SMP first came into existence. What's worse is that the SPUs don't speak the same language as the CPU so you can't just take a normal task and thread it like you can on a normal SMP system; each task has to be built specifically to be handled by the SPU.

    So yes, the PS3 introduces a number of unique challenges. The only other console system which was similarly difficult to program was the PS2 which was basically the same infrastructure except instead of 7 SPUs it had 2, and developers still complained about how massively difficult it was to work with.

  5. Re:Damn PS3's by fitten · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Actually... to extend your simile, it's like an 8-cylinder (not necessarily a 'V') where two of the cylinders are of one size and run on standard gasoline (PPE) and the others (SPE) run on diesel and are a different size and crank length (to reflect the differences in capabilities) and there's no timing belt or single crank shaft or valves :) It's up to the programmers to keep the cylinders fed at the right times and synchronize all of them properly and in ways such that the power can be applied efficiently to the transmission :)

  6. Re:Hilarious Zonk FUD! by toolie · · Score: 4, Insightful

    PS3
    25/50 gig BluRay drive standard
    20/60/80 gig harddrive standard

    360
    3.5/7 gig last gen DVD drive
    No standard harddrive You forgot one:

    PS3
    No demo of GTA 4 ever shown in public, or private that we are aware of.

    360
    Demo shown at E3 using the engine developed on the 360.

    --
    -- toolie
  7. This is Rockstar's first big game. by LKM · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It's easy to forget that R* has never developed a game the size of GTA III or GTA IV from scratch. They used Renderware for their previous "big" GTAs. GTA IV is the first "modern" GTA to be developed from scratch. Sure, they used an early version of the engine in Table Tennis, but something like GTA IV is in an entirely differen league.

    My guess is that they simply underestimated what it would take to polish a game like GTA IV to a shippable version.

  8. Re:RTFA much? by Emetophobe · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Wedbush Morgan's Michael Pachter says Take-Two management has "stumbled badly for the first time" with the delay of GTA IV, and said that he believes difficulties porting the game to the PlayStation 3 are to blame and that the company's new green light policy appears to be a failure."


    Who is this Michael Pachter and why does his opinion matter? He doesn't work for Take-Two nor is he quoting a Take-Two representitive. It's just his opinion that the PS3 is to blame for the GTA IV delay. Hardly news worthy.

    While this may be true, I also believe fitting GTA4 on an Xbox360 DVD9 might also be an issue.