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Valve's Orange Box For PS3 Delayed, Not Console Related

Posted by Zonk on from the there-are-elements-here-that-are-confusing dept.

Eurogamer is reporting that the package of Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episodes One and Two, Portal, and Team Fortress 2 known as the Orange Box will have a delayed release on the PlayStation 3. The 360 and PC versions are still slated for retail release on October 9th, with the PS3 version coming two-to-three weeks later. But, Valve was quick to point out, it's not because of the console: "The reason for the PS3 build's late arrival, marketing director Doug Lombardi told Eurogamer, is simply that the EA UK team handling [the PS3 Orange Box's] development are on the other side of the ocean and are necessarily a bit behind the core Valve team's development. 'We weren't going to hold up PC and 360 for PS3,' Lombardi told us."

8 of 58 comments (clear)

  1. First Post delayed by LiquidCoooled · · Score: 5, Funny

    This post is delayed as well, though its not because of the PS3 console either.
    Its because I outsourced my typing and there is some lag.

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    liqbase :: faster than paper
  2. Gabe Newell is poisoning his own well by DrXym · · Score: 2, Insightful

    His constant bitching about the PS3 must be severely dampening interest in the Orange Box on that platform. I expect most of his complaints stem from the PS3's outright impudence of not being a Microsoft platform and not using Microsoft APIs. Even so, when the head of Valve slags off a platform, what confidence does it instill in games they're making for it? Apparently they're so allergic to this strange and terrifying console that they've shoved the port onto some EA team. Perhaps the game will end up being great on the PS3 but at the moment I have no confidence at all that it will be. Mr Newell needs to shut up or say something positive. Worse is that I just know that if the port does turn out to be poor or sales are a flop that he'll blame the console rather than acknowledge his own hand in the outcome.

    1. Re:Gabe Newell is poisoning his own well by Clazzy · · Score: 3, Informative

      To be honest, the game engine is being updated all the time. We had HDR, better facial animation and now we're getting better physics, optimisations for multiple processors, motion blur and more. I could understand your point if the engine remained static but Valve are putting a lot of effort into the engine so it's not just an addon that's three years late. This is more-or-less the way episodic content will be anyway, this might be the norm if enough people see it as a good way of making money.

      --
      If we can hit that bull's-eye, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards... Checkmate.
    2. Re:Gabe Newell is poisoning his own well by revengebomber · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Mod parent up. This is a prime example of the advantages of cross-platform (and likely, open source as well) libraries and APIs. Had they developed on an SDL-OGL-OAL system in the first place, porting the game would boil down to nothing more than re-doing the online features. As it is, however, they likely have to scrap and rebuild the entirety of the graphics, sound, and input code, before they can even think about the PS3 (which they're not even doing).

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    3. Re:Gabe Newell is poisoning his own well by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      No, it's pretty much identical. Yes, the API is different in a few important respects, but OpenGL 2.1 supports every feature that D3D 9 supports except for one (instancing, which is absolutely required in D3D games, but isn't that big of a deal in GL games). One can simply ignore all the legacy baggage in OpenGL, and code for it exactly the same way you would for D3D. The only real difference is GLSL vs HLSL, and frankly that's just a matter of personal preference.

      It gets trickier if you count D3D 10. There are cards available that have support for all the D3D features, but hardly anyone has both Vista and a D3D 10 capable card. There are no games that make use of D3D 10 for anything other than simple special effects, and there won't be for several years, simply because it's not worth limiting your audience. Besides, games being released even a year from now would still have been in development long before D3D 10 was announced.

      What D3D 10 is useful for right now is prototyping. If you're in the early stages of a game that'll ship in 2 or 3 years, D3D 10 is going to be important. For this kind of prototyping, OpenGL 2.1 with either the vendor-specific (nVidia) or standard (EXT / ARB) extensions are just as usable, and OpenGL 3 will be usable long before the game ships. Chances are the renderer is going to be mostly rewritten several times before the game ships anyway, to keep pace with new hardware that defies the assumptions made about existing hardware, so simply developing on GL 2 now and porting to GL 3 later isn't that big of a deal. Neither is developing on GL 2 and porting to both D3D 10 and GL 3.

      Frankly, OpenGL is just as good for writing games with now as D3D is. Always has been, really. It just didn't have Microsoft's marketing department behind it.

    4. Re:Gabe Newell is poisoning his own well by WhiteWolf666 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Huh?

      Where did that come from?

      The PSP, PS2, PS3, N64, GC, Wii, and DS all use OpenGL. Graphics on the PS3 are at least equivalent to the 360 (and I say this as a 360 owner who doesn't own a PS3). The architecture might be more difficult to program for (crazy CPU, etc . . . )) but how does that demonstrate that OpenGL is inferior?

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      WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
  3. Re:On the contrary by DrXym · · Score: 4, Informative
    Gabe Newell is a pro-Microsoft business hat. His opinion of the PS3 is non-technical, biased and quite ill informed. And spectacularly bizarre considering (I assume) that he wants the Orange Box to sell well on that console.

    Carmack gives a reasoned technical criticism but it wasn't particularly pro or anti the PS3. His opinion was that you had to work harder to get at the power, specifically - "They are both powerful systems that are going to make excellent game platforms, but I have a bit of a preference for the 360's symmetric CPU architecture and excellent development tools," he said. "The PS3 will have a bit more peak power, but it will be easier to exploit the available power on the 360. Our next major title is being focused towards simultaneous release on 360, PS3, and PC."

    That doesn't sound like badmouthing to me but an informed observation.

  4. Re:So they couldn't by DrXym · · Score: 2, Insightful
    I still don't believe this 'they won't hit the limits of the PS3 for years' crap, though. The thing simply doesn't have enough RAM. It's sick to have that massive processing power and a tiny little bit of RAM. I can't imagine what they were thinking.

    The PS3 has exactly the same amount of RAM as the 360. It has been partitioned so that CPU & GPU have optimized access to their own halves. But there is nothing to stop a game from storing data in graphics memory if it wants to. Conversely the 360 has unified memory for CPU and GPU. Both strategies have advantages and disadvantages.

    The significant difference in memory is that the PS3 reserves more memory for the system in anticipation of features it might add to the firmware (e.g. Home). Initially it reserved 96Mb but it's already dropped by 24Mb. It's bound to drop further as they figure out exactly what they do and do not need.

    I doubt memory has anything to do at all with problems in Dynasty Warriors. You'll have to ask the team why it runs at 1080p on a 360 and not on the PS3. Lots of reasons could be behind it.