Sony Makes It Hard To Develop For the PS3 On Purpose

adeelarshad82 writes "CNet reports on a bizarre comment from Sony's Computer Entertainment CEO in response to complaints from developers on how hard it is to develop games for the Playstation 3. 'We don't provide the "easy to program for" console that (developers) want, because "easy to program for" means that anybody will be able to take advantage of pretty much what the hardware can do, so then the question is, what do you do for the rest of the nine-and-a-half years?' Given that games heavily drive console sales, and the fact that the PS3 is already 8 million units behind the Xbox 360, I think making a developer's job harder is the last thing Sony needs."

Comments

Call him Monkey Boy all you want

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Ballmer was absolutely correct in emphasizing the one thing that really matters for any platform.

Developers, Developers, Developers

Re:Call him Monkey Boy all you want

[BadAnalogyGuy]

That really isn't what Hirai said, though. If I'm interpreting his comment correctly, he is saying that he wants to see a progression in quality over the 10 year lifespan of the PS3. The first games will take little advantage of the HW, but as time goes on and developers become more acquainted with the platform they create games that take more advantage of those HW features.

It sounds like a post-release justification for a massive blunder.

Re:Call him Monkey Boy all you want

[Computershack]

The first games will take little advantage of the HW, but as time goes on and developers become more acquainted with the platform they create games that take more advantage of those HW features.

That's if they've not got sick of fighting the console and decided to put their development money elsewhere. Developing games costs a lot of money and there's not going to be many software houses happy about having to needlessly waste money on R&D just because Sony decide to make it deliberately hard in order to artificially prolong the life of a console.

Re:Call him Monkey Boy all you want

[Sparks23]

Except the PS2 was like this as well. (Albeit to a lesser degree.) Until later in the life-cycle, no one had really fully figured out what you could fully do with the hardware.

Speaking as someone who actually did work a bit on coding for the PS2 at a past job, my understanding is not that they /deliberately/ made the console difficult, but that they poured technology into the console without regard for saying 'this piece must be used in this way.' As such, people figured out their own paths (and innovated what was done on the platform).

In some ways, it's a valid strategy. PS2 games unquestionably got more advanced as people explored what they could do with the console's capabilities. (Granted, this understanding comes from other developers at the PS2 training seminar I went to, not officially from Sony themselves.)

Since different companies came up with different techniques (probably including some Sony didn't expect), there was some real variety in the games as well. But the PS2 was also the dominant console, hands down, and so developers were targeting that as their primary platform; they had the freedom to get into exploring the edges of the hardware and figuring out what they could do with future projects.

I suspect the same philosophy applies here. Not so much 'let's make it hard,' but 'let's put lots of power in this thing, and not provide guidance on any particular best way to use it all.' There's a sort of hacker beauty to 'there's no One Right Way, find your own.'

The issue this time around, of course, is that the Xbox 360 is 'good enough' for most gamers; even if the PS3 is more advanced, the 360 is a perfectly workable gaming platform and quite popular. Most major games need to release on both platforms, and so developers are generally not trying to innovate on the PS3 but just trying to take the same game and shoehorn it more or less equally onto both. And so the PS3's untapped potential becomes less a cool puzzle to figure out ('hey, look what I realized we can do!') and more of a higher bar to entry.

Re:Call him Monkey Boy all you want

[DavidTC]

The real question that Sony should ask themselves is if people are going to buy a 9 year-old console to play a cool game?

Or will they move over to MS's X-Box 720 or whatever and play the exact same game, along with a bunch of other games that came out at the same time as the 720 because, duh, it's easy to program for.

I mean, duh, the XBox itself is a counterexample of this. MS essentially walked into the marketplace because programming for the XBox was easy if the game had a Windows version. Ease of programming=more games and better games.

And Nintendo isn't giving a shit about 'utilizing hardware to the max', has essentially given up on building faster boxes, and has decided to build fun ones. (They have a point. Consoles really are fast enough to do essentially anything you want. Hell, my computer is fast enough to real-time near perfect 3D rendering.)

I have a feeling that Sony is trying to pull off a NES, where some of the best games for that came out years later, but has forgotten that a) There were very little competitors at the time, and b) A lot of that was the entire industry maturing.

(Before anyone think I'm being unfair, or if I'm just wrong about something, be aware I haven't had a console since the NES.)

Re:Call him Monkey Boy all you want

[hob42]

Maybe there is a pattern, though? NES->SNES was consumer momentum... PS1->PS2 the same... but notice the switches between vendors is from a no platform to a yes platform.

Just a thought.

Re:Call him Monkey Boy all you want

[LearnToSpell]

Yes, no, yes, no, yes, no... You don't see a pattern there?!

Re:Call him Monkey Boy all you want

[Pharmboy]

It would seem that they also believe that the singular reason a game is "good" is related to the programmer's understanding of the hardware. This just isn't true. Plenty of games have nice graphics and a horrid storyline, or are pretty to look at but clunky to play. If programmers spent less time figuring out the hardware, perhaps they could spend more time working on plot, playability, and flow. Or you can be Sony and make excuses after the fact.

Re:Call him Monkey Boy all you want

[mabhatter654]

more musicians are funded as "studio players" that work 9-5 than as rock stars by a wide margin.

In the same way more programmers are out there paid to write "TPS report 2009" than are paid to write games or operating systems by an even wider margin. The customer is an internal middle manager that's going to decree what the product does, who uses it, and how much it costs.

Re:Call him Monkey Boy all you want

[MikeBabcock]

Its a good question with an answer already: PS2 the most played console of 2008.

Please note the PS2 still sold 410 thousand consoles in December of 2008. That's after already saturating the market with 43.6 million total sales.

At $100, you can't beat buying a PS2 as a gaming platform. In five years' time, Sony hopes the PS3 will be in the same position.

Re:Call him Monkey Boy all you want

[CastrTroy]

VB isn't dying with .Net. There's VB.Net, and it's still going strong. In a lot of cases it gets new features before C# does. VB.Net is still a very good languages. You may not like the syntax. but it's just syntax, and some people like it.

Re:Call him Monkey Boy all you want

[hairyfeet]

You wanna know why VB was a good language and popular? As someone who deals with SOHOs and SMBs I can tell you quite easily. It is because VB6 was(and to an extent still is) the engine that small businesses run on. Why? Because they ALWAYS have some funky ass little job that needs an easy to use program to fill that would just be too damned expensive to have written by some big software house. Let me give an example that sadly I can't seem to find where I put the code to anymore.

I was doing some work setting up the PCs for a junkyard/car repair shop. While there I noticed that they were always having to call a guy in or spend a lot of time pouring over these books. When I asked what they were doing they explained that they had 1000s of car and trucks spread out over 3 sites and would have trouble sometimes with finding where a particular make and model was or even if they had it. So I told them for $500 I could make that problem disappear by giving them a custom application that would track where the cars were. All they would have to do was input the data one time(or pay me an extra $200 to do it) and then add any new cars to the database. I promised that it would be simple to use and would show them mockups and customize it to their requirements. I cooked up a VB6 app linked to a database that would give them the choice of typing manually or using a pull down for make/model. Since they already labeled their lot by numbers such as B3, D4, etc it was trivial to have it call up a map JPG for whichever site it was along with the number. Last I heard they are still using it to this day and it takes them seconds to call up any car without needing to pour though books or call anyone off the job.

And THAT is why VB6 is STILL even after all these years the #3 business language. For simple jobs where web access isn't required it allows for an app to be created quickly with minimum effort and at a price that even the smallest shops can afford. When you figure in the amount of man hours I saved that shop by giving them a simple way to keep track of their inventory I'm sure it payed for itself in a few weeks. It is fast, stable, does its job day after day without needing to pay for updates or maintenance. In short it just works. While I wouldn't even attempt some giant complex app in VB6 for these small jobs it simply can't be beat, at least IMHO.

Re:Call him Monkey Boy all you want

[shutdown -p now]

Yes, I'd say you are correct and I agree with you. Unfortunately, this has also resulted in games being programmed for the Xbox then ported to Windows. This leaves you with clunky interfaces and bugs that are nearly unbelieveable. One good example of this is GTA4. Designed with the Xbox in mind, it's been hell for anyone trying to run it under Windows.

While true, the question, as usual, is - who's to say that, if there were no XBox, there would be GTA4 for PC?

I'd still rather take the bastardized console offspring over the complete lack of the game...

Re:Call him Monkey Boy all you want

[Anonymous Coward]

Another bad consequence is that the X-box has relatively little memory compared to a PC and e.g. Thief 3 had ridiculously small levels compared to its predecessors only so that it could be released for the X-box too. A PC you bought a couple of years after the X-box was released was hardly high-end even if it surpassed the X-box hardware.

The fact that releasing patches afterwards for a console game is harder does, however, not seem to result in more rigorous testing and less buggy games for Windows. X-box owners have to live with what Windows gamers can patch: Thief 3 sets the difficulty level to the easiest if you save the game - so if you want to play it on a harder level than easy, it's really hard because you must remember not to save the game...

Re:Call him Monkey Boy all you want

[alienw]

The PS3 will never be $100. Just like the Xbox was never $100, just like the 360 will never be $100. That's not possible when you need to have a hard drive, a Blu-ray drive, a fairly advanced processor that you don't manufacture, and expensive high-speed RAM. The only console that is cheap enough for this is the Wii -- it could already be sold for $100 if Nintendo wanted to do that.

Besides, the PS3 is seriously lagging behind the 360 as far as games go. For the most part, the 360 has better games, better graphics, and better online play. Of course, some people buy both, simply because the 360 is a good console and the PS3 is a good Blu-ray player.

Re:Call him Monkey Boy all you want

[alienw]

Well, that's all nice when you have crappy competition like the N64, which was pretty much a complete bitch to program for. Unfortunately for Sony, Microsoft is extremely well positioned to compete with the PS3. They have excellent dev tools, a lot of experience with game APIs, and an understanding of what it takes to actually write games. Sony is fundamentally a hardware company that has no understanding of software development. The problem is, hardware is now a commodity. That is what bit them in the ass with music players, and it will bite them in the ass with consoles, too.

Re:Call him Monkey Boy all you want

[Draek]

If programmers spent less time figuring out the hardware, perhaps they could spend more time working on plot, playability, and flow. Or you can be Sony and make excuses after the fact.

Or you could let programmers worry about the programming and hire actual writers for the plot and, if the plot sucks, hire better writers, not call Bob from programming and tell him to start writing.

Re:Call him Monkey Boy all you want

[hairyfeet]

I think it is because unlike most "jack of all trades" languages VB6 is really only made for one job: Make a GUI frontend to a database. Pick up any VB6 book, and while they will always have a few goof off jobs(mine had make a Trident based web browser) nearly every lesson is "make a GUI for a database" just different variations thereof.

And let us be honest here, for most small businesses that is all they really need. They have data that they need a way for even a temp worker to find the information and get it out quickly. That's all. They don't need web access, or multi-level permissions or auto synced information that goes halfway around the planet. They just have data they need to access quickly and easily. Be it buying history, order information, or as in my example locations of products. Databases really don't care WHAT you put into them but the average person needs something other than cooking up SQL statements to get the data out. That is where VB6 excels and why it is still popular to this day.

Could you write the same program in Java or C++? Sure you could. Could you do it for $700 including data entry and have it done and deployed in less than 3 weeks? Kinda doubt it. Not and make any profit on it anyway. With VB6 hooking up a GUI to a datatbase is beyond simplistic. So all you really need to do is tailor the GUI to the small business that needs it. A couple of mockups and feedback solves that problem pretty quick. So while I can't comment too much on other languages(I am a PC and network repair guy by trade not a programmer) I can say I have never seen anyone whip off a GUI that hooks to a database as quickly as I have seen it done in VB6.

And programmers really shouldn't look down so on VB6. It is not the languages fault if bad programmers try to fit it into a job it wasn't built for. If you do as I do and ONLY use it to make GUIs for databases I bet you'll find VB6 is perfect for that niche. And it just happens to be a niche that SOHOs and SMBs often need filled. And to me that is the ultimate answer. If it makes the customer happy and fulfills their needs in the time and price allotted, who are we to say they are wrong? They are happy, I have money in my pocket. Seems like a win/win to me.

Re:Call him Monkey Boy all you want

[nacturation]

... just because Sony decide to make it deliberately hard in order to artificially prolong the life of a console.

I don't think the point is that Sony made it deliberately hard. Sony made a system with a lot of longevity, but the price for that longevity is complexity. It's the difference between developing something really easy to use where you'll max out its potential in a short time vs. something that's not very easy to use but you can do just about anything. A simple calculator vs. a reverse polish notation programmable calculator, for example.

Re:Call him Monkey Boy all you want

[electrosoccertux]

I think this is a flamebait article. Of course Sony doesn't make it hard on purpose. What they have is a choice of hardware platforms on the table. Platform 1 is hard to develop for, however given quality programming, can provide great graphics. Platform 2 is easier to develop for, however does not have the same potential for optimization.

Let say I sell plants. I have two choices of shelves on which I will store my plants for the customer to browse through. On one of them, the bottom shelf has 3 feet of room, the middle shelf has 2 feet of room, and the top third has 1 foot of vertical space to work with (ignore the top of the shelf); for a total of 6 feet. The other shelf has 3 shelves as well, but each has 2 feet of space.

If I go with the first shelf, I can put big plants on the bottom, medium plants in the middle, and small plants on top. However, this using shelf requires extra effort on my part (sorting the plants into small, medium, and large). The second shelf, however, I don't have a chance for optimization-- all the shelves only have 2 feet of vertical room. As a result I cannot stock plants which are taller than 2 feet. Lets say the profit potential on the 3x2 foot shelves is $100. However, if I am willing to make the time investment to maximize plant placement on the customized shelves, I can make $120; the extra $20 coming from buyers who want plants larger than 2 feet high.

PS3 is a similar scenario-- the extra $20 is the potential for better graphics quality. Microsoft chose to go with the 3x2 foot shelves. All their developers can make great looking games. But the potential for game and engine optimization is minimal. Sony, on the other hand, went with the customized shelves. This enables their developers, with greater time investment, to make a game with more visual effects, that the Xbox360 would not be able to run, no matter the level of optimization.

I think Sony's choice would have been the right one if they could have released alongside the Xbox360. But coming late to the game hurt them. When games as great as Killzone2 can be made with a 40 man team, the Xbox360 team takes what, 35 people? If you can make a good game, a game sells 2 million units at $50/game (that's $100million!) an extra 5 developers to optimize the engine for the hardware is not a problem.

Re:Call him Monkey Boy all you want

[Rimbo]

Actually, ever try programming in C on, say, an Apple //e?

You can try it right now. Go get Virtual II or some other emulator, grab a copy of Aztec C compiler, and try it yourself.

The reason BASIC was so popular back in the days of 8-bit PCs was because it was simpler than Assembly language, and the interpreter could easily fit in a very tiny amount of ROM; the programs themselves were efficiently-stored as well.

On the flip side, C requires a compiler, a linker, a decent library to take advantage of the system. Aztec C even came with a full-fledged C shell, two separate compilers -- the second compiler provided an interpreted bytecode-style object, just like BASIC, to keep the binary size from exceeding the 64KB page limit.

The problem with C at that time was that it was a 16-bit language in an 8-bit world.

So BASIC became something that shipped with nearly every PC in existence, and lots of people learned it. It stuck around because BASIC was, in a sense, something Microsoft was really attached to, but also you had these massive armies of people who'd only really learned BASIC as a language. When Microsoft became dominant, VB became important along with it.

Re:Call him Monkey Boy all you want

[Anonymous Coward]

"Basically, I'm guessing VB was originally designed for people who were familiar with BASIC because back then it was "easier" than hard languages like C..."

The attraction of VB was rapid application development. At a time when "Visual" C meant hand-coding to the Windows API (never saw what was "visual" about that) or (even worse) the useless wrapper layer MFC, VB let you drag and drop controls on to a form and quickly write object-oriented code. Same thing with COM and OLE; C programming required "marshalling" and "interfaces" and 3 gazillion long random strings called GUIDs. In VB, you checked off "Microsoft Excel Object" and declared an entire document as a variable. There are many things not to like about VB, but there are also things that did make it a joy to use. (Borland C++ Builder/Kylix was also pretty good, but the IDE was always just a bit more buggy and it never seemed to work as smoothly with COM.)

As for VB.Net and C#, they've basically made two languages which differ only in minor irrelevant details (eg. put/don't put semicolons at the end of lines), and destroyed the parts of VB that were actually clean. VB6 rarely had deep hierarchies of objects (eg. you want a form caption, you say Form1.Caption). Now you have names like Windows.Controls.Forms.Attributes.Captions.Text.Characters or other nonsense. How you're supposed to write or debug code when one line can't even fit on the monitor, I don't know.

As for the PS3, though....well, I don't know anything about the official toolkits. The libraries on Linux aren't bad...still low-level but better than for plain-vanilla x86. (The PS3 has, for example, sin() and cos() as SIMD functions for either the SPU or the CPU. No trig SIMD functions on gcc/x86, sad to say...you'd have to install Intel's math library, and that's not Free.) I'd like to know how the Cell compares to CUDA/GPGPU; it looks interesting, but my computer is limited to AGP cards (too old forn CUDA). It'll be interesting to see if the Cell architecture, long term, can outpace nVidia.

Re:Call him Monkey Boy all you want

[Nebu]

I am tired of having to defend my purchase of the PS3 to people blindly assuming 'everyone has a 360, why get a PS3?'

Uh... why do you feel you need to defend your purchase of the PS3? I'm pretty confident nobody on the Internet really cares what you, personally, have bought and why.

If you're happy with your PS3, that's great. But any anguish from "having to defend" is just coming from within yourself. There will always be flame wars around consoles on the Internet. Learn to just relax and enjoy the consoles you own. Who cares what other people on the Internet think is the better console? If you're happy with your console, that's all that matters, right?

Number of reasons to make a console difficult

[L-Train8]

There are a number of reasons to make a console hard to program for, but they all rely on a huge install base that the PS3 doesn't have. The article quotes a developer saying that if you are going to develop for multiple platforms, it is best to start with the PS3, because it will be easy to port to other systems than to port to the PS3. If there were 20 million PS3's in homes, this would ensure that the 360 and the Wii would be seeing lots of ports instead of original games. Another reason is that investment in programming knowledge and tools is very expensive, and once a studio has the expertise, they are likely to stick with the platform in order to maximize their investment. Sony was counting on a success similar to the PS2, were developers would have to program for the PS3 because that's where the users would be. Without it, the 'benefits' of a hard-to-program console become liabilities.

Re:Number of reasons to make a console difficult

[Quarters]

Right...so you actually think the 360 will die out because games may at some point look better on the PS3. Outside of platform exclusives, which are a dying breed of game anyway, no developer will ever utilize that extra oomph that they may be able to eek out of the PS3. There will never be enough ROI on PS3 only game sales to justify having one set of art assets for the 360 version of the game and a different set of art assets for the PS3 version.

People don't care that game X has 20% more polygons than game Y. What they care about is owning a fun game that looks good. Developers care about being able to develop a game quickly, easily and on/under budget. The 360 provides all of that currently and will continue to do so. The PS3 is a PITA to work with now (yes, I am a dev), and it will continue to be a PITA to work with in the future. Whatever untapped potential the PS3 may have that is yet to be unlocked is not worth the time/expense it will take to find it. Especially not in this economy and especially not since the ratio of potential sales 360:PS3 is heavily weighted against the PS3 currently.

Never attribute to malice...

[orkybash]

I don't know if Sony intentionally obfuscated their API as the summary claims, but rather just didn't care about ease of development. Sounds to me like they're saying that developing for a cell architecture is necessarily hard, and they didn't want to compromise on the architecture because (as Sony has previously stated) the PS3 is supposed to last ten years instead of the typical 4-5. I guess the cell is supposed to be more longevous?

Of course, the end result, that developers are preferring the Xbox and Wii, is the same whether malice or just misguided...

Uhhhhh

[Sycraft-fu]

I'm going to hope that he just misspoke and what he was really trying to say is "Because our hardware is so advanced, it can't be made easy to develop for." I would hope he's really not so dumb as to think that deliberately making it hard to program for is a good thing.

However I fear his actual words have some truth to them. Not that Sony tried to make it hard on purpose, but that it is in fact hard, and won't be getting easier for two reasons: Sony doesn't really have an interest in making it easier. I think there's two reasons for this:

1) The Cell processor is, well, odd. What I mean by that is that it doesn't work like processors in the past. So tools that exist now aren't going to be good at dealing with it, nor is the knowledge that programmers have. It is different and that makes it hard.

2) Sony doesn't have good dev tools, and isn't good at making them. Because of the difference in the processor, making it easy would require some rocking dev tools form Sony. However they don't have those, and don't seem to have the people needed to make them.

So the combination of those gives you a situation where game programmers are being asked to figure shit out, and it seems that Sony thinks that's ok. They figure you ought to.

Well that's a program, especially when MS is your competition. Say what you like about them, but they've got really slick dev tools. Visual Studio is a really slick development environment, and that's what you get to use for Xbox 360 development. What's more, it is something that many programmers are quite familiar with, since it is often what's used to write PC games. Add to that the fact that the 360's hardware is far more like a PC than the PS3 and you've got a platform that is much easier to develop for.

Personally I can't figure out why the hell Sony put the Cell in the PS3. Seems like a really retarded move. When the PS3 came out, the Cell was a brand new architecture. Hell the first thing I ever saw on the market with a Cell was a PS3 (you can now get other things like processing cards for PCs). Ok well a mass market consumer electronics device is NOT where I'd choose to test a new architecture. Start that shit out in research computer (like the aforementioned cards) and then maybe servers and super computers and such. Give it some years on the market for people to get used to it, and for the kinks to be worked out, then look at tossing it in mass market devices.

So who knows, maybe they are right and maybe there is tons of untapped potential. However it also might not matter. If your console is hard to program for, developers may just elect to give it a miss, and thus so may consumers. That does seem to be what is happening. Nintendo and MS are outselling Sony by a good margin. Just because the PS3 might be more powerful (and who knows if that's true or not) doesn't matter if the end result is that it is hard to make games for.

Heck, ask Sega about that. That was one of the things that really hosed the Saturn. It was actually a fairly powerful console. However it was rather hard to develop for. It didn't work like most other consoles and PCs (for example it used quadrilaterals instead of triangles as fundamental surfaces) and it had poor dev tools. As a result many games didn't look as good on it as on other consoles, even though they could have in theory, and other developers simply gave it a miss.

The PS3 seems to be in a somewhat similar situation, and the remarks from Sony do not bode well for that changing.

Re:Pure Spin

[syousef]

I don't know. The number of times people have insisted that Visual Basic was bad because it was easy and therefore anyone could do it (meaning that incompetents jump in and do a poor job) on this board alone astounds me.

The reality is VB was bad because you could make a real mess of things even if you were a good programmer, and people abused it trying to force it to do things that really required something closer to the machine. It didn't help that it was proprietary and windows only either. The one thing that it and other Rapid Application Development languages like RAD did was get out of the programmers way and make it really easy to do things so that the coder could focus on the problem at hand not puzzle through dozens of APIs and scratch his (or her) head wondering how to get something simple done.

With a simple and easy API a moron will sure make a mess of things, but a GOOD coder will be able to stop focusing on the code grind and rise above to make programming magic.

I develop with J2EE and I absolutely miss and pine for the days when I could prototype a screen in under half an hour. What an over-engineered piece of turd with an extra dollop of XML hell and a heaped serve of Design Pattern madness all those frameworks are.

cell programming

[goombah99]

Multi-core and multi-cpu programming is the future. I include GPUs in this. And programming these using existing tools is sub optimal.

But it's a catch 22. Few people are going to get their fingers wet in GPU programming without bridge tools like CUDA and fortran wrappers that make it less painful to change over hardcore math libraries. Yet at the same time the resulting code is sub optimal. for example the zeroth order in tools in CUDA sweep the matrix multiply back from the GPU to the CPU memory-- which is not what you want if you are dooing two consecutive matrix multiples. But it gets you started. (I note that more advanced, less library bound, cuda programming get's around this, but only a fool would invest the time learn it before trying the simple way).

Cell programming is another knotch up in difficulty. So sub-optimal convestion approaches may not work well. You really need to program for the CELL. No one really is perfectly sure what the best way to exploit these things is.

I suspect SONY wants people to commit to figuring the CELL out rather than giving them tools to simply do ports. This is what he meant I think by "increasing quality".

I also suspect this means that games produced form the CELL wont back port easily since it will be so architecture specific. Which is also good for sony.

In the meantime if they sell half as many units as xbox 360, yet 100% of the game profits rather than say 10% of the came profits go to sony and committed exclusive cell programmers, SONY is coming out ahead.

Re:cell programming

[seebs]

I don't think they'll bother.

Cell was designed when multicore was large and expensive, and GPUs weren't very good.

Now, Cell's going to always have higher development costs than conventional multicore chips, and not much payoff for developers.

Look at the difference between consumer-oriented video games and supercomputing. Supercomputing clusters can cost enough money that their power bill alone vastly exceeds the cost of all the software development ever done for them. Spending a bunch extra on development can pay off hugely if it reduces runtime -- so a hard-to-target architecture pays off.

Now look at video games. Development costs are huge and out of control, and you don't get paid by the polygon anyway, so extra work on performance doesn't necessarily pay off. A console which pushes fewer polygons but is cheaper to develop for makes you more money.

Re:cell programming

[Rayonic]

Games like Drake's Fortune, Ratchet & Clank, Killzone 2 and the Motorstorm games simply aren't being made for other platforms. These games are unparalleled on other systems, and just being ignored by fanboys who think console sales are everything.

Er, those games aren't any more technically advanced than what's shown up on the Xbox 360. Sure they're nice and polished, but there's no one game that you can point to and say "that would be impossible to do on the Xbox 360!"

Compare this to the original Xbox (or Gamecube), which did have a distinct graphical advantage over the PS2, and it showed up in the games from day one.

If the PS3 hasn't pulled ahead graphically by now, then it's just not going to. There's no super hidden power inside. Just a weird CPU and a run-of-the-mill GPU.

Sony still haven't learned

[iregisteredjustforth]

I work for a game developer that makes multi-platform games and our programmers hate coding for the PS3. It always makes me chuckle seeing fanboys shouting console x can do this and console y can't do that - the irony being most multi platform games are essentially clones of each other, so being unable to do something on one console means the other doesn't get it even if it could.

This is another great example of Sony thinking they are better than anyone else because they dominated the last 2 generations of consoles. In reality the PS3 is very similar to the 360 and developers essentialy see them as two sides of the same coin. Nice to see they also haven't learned the lesson of don't let you're ceo's / public figures behave like egotistical dicks yet.

Re:Straight from the OSS fanboi playbook

[aliquis]

lol, it's funny because it's true.

Anyway, this CEOs claim is obviously bullshit or a translation made by the interviewer/whatever. No-one would make it hard to develop for their system on purpose, but it's a fact that people get the hang of it and as a result of that you may see more advanced titles further into the systems life.

He may have meant that they didn't wanted to cripple it for the sake of making it easier to code for since it would be around for a long time and people would get the hang of it sooner or later anyway.

Re:Let darwin decide?

[Jerf]

It puts you on the front line of seeing what decisions people are making and why. It's actually a very important perspective.

I am a developer for a company that sells products and provides in-house phone support. If you asked someone about my product and they piped up and then said at the end "I support this product", you might be tempted to say "Oh, you aren't a developer so you don't know what you're talking about." But the support dude has a better picture of some things than I do, because he's actually there, talking to customers directly, and part of my job is making sure I get that information from him. Because there's just no replacement for that sort of thing; the CEO is even further from customers than I am, my manager tries to keep on top of such things but still doesn't talk directly to customers as much as our support crew.

Of course, I have a better picture than the support dude does of some other things, too, but I'd be a moron if I discounted the support perspective because they're "below" me, or for some other dumb reason.

Running a game store may not qualify you to discuss video game company strategy, and actually Gord tries to sometimes IIRC and at that point I believe he oversteps a bit. But it's the best qualification there is for having a firm grasp on what people are looking for and how people buy, and you ignore that at your own peril... well, "your own peril" if you're a video game company, anyhow, you're probably not in any peril.

You can get this by being an employee too, but A: he did it for a very long time and B: being the business owner and being very, very directly affected by the issues will have a stronger focus on the issues than "somebody who works at Gamestop over Christmas" would.

Re:Let darwin decide?

[Blakey Rat]

I was playing Shadowrun the other day, and I said "mana" when referring to... well, "mana." Someone on my team said that Shadowrun doesn't use the term "mana" it uses "MP" (or something similar.) We got into this whole argument:
* You knew what I meant so why correct me?
* Every game uses "MP" or "Magic" and not the word "Mana" so you should have known that was the wrong term
* Uh, the most popular game on Earth, World of Warcraft, uses the term "Mana" so I think people are going to know what the hell I mean

Then he hit me with the ultimate:

* You should listen to me, man, I work at Gamestop!

This made about half the people on the team just crack up. I had to explain, as gently as possible, that I've never seen a Gamestop employee who had two brain cells to rub together. The thought that he figured "worked at Gamestop" was impressive in some way was simply hilarious.

Anyway, when the competition hits you with "I work at Gamestop!" I generally consider myself winner of the debate.

(BTW, If you care, the "correct" term in Shadowrun is "essence." But say "mana" in case you get that guy on your team, you can piss him off.)

Re:Straight from the OSS fanboi playbook

[HAKdragon]

In regards to the mis-translation idea, Kaz Hirai speaks perfect English (Ridge Racer!). In fact, I've only ever seen him speak English, never Japanese.

Really stupid headline

[tgibbs]

This seems to be a particularly idiotic attempt to "spin" what was actually said. There is nothing at all in the statement about Sony intentionally introducing programming obstacles.

It is quite obvious that Hirai was explaining why Sony chose a powerful, if more difficult to program for, multiprocessor architecture over a simpler, less powerful architecture. Sony wanted a platform that would have enough power to sustain itself for 10 years. So they did not consider it to be a major detriment that developers would not immediately be able to unlock to full power of the architecture, because much of that power was intended to allow the console "room to grow."

Re:Let darwin decide?

[alienw]

Well, he didn't really succeed at it. I think he folded up shop after a couple of years.

Also, I don't understand your attitude. For the most part, owning your own business is harder, less rewarding, and less productive than working for an established company. Unless you are an exceptional businessman, starting a company is difficult, risky, and a ton of work. If you have some new technology you are commercializing, at least there is a chance that someone will buy the company down the road. Otherwise, you are pretty much stuck fighting for a scrap of market share in what is probably an oversaturated market.

As far as freedom goes, you are much better off working for somebody. If you run a company, you will pretty much be putting in 16-hour days 7 days a week with no vacation time, ever. Sure, you could go on vacation, if you don't mind the company collapsing in the meantime.

Anyway, I would suggest you actually talk to some business owners before you decide that it's something you like. Chances are, you won't like it.