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Valve's Newell Thinks PS3 Needs To Be "Open Like a Mac"
Eraesr writes "Apparently Valve boss Gabe Newell thinks the PS3 needs to be more of an open platform, drawing a comparison to Apple's Mac platform. In an interview with 5BY5.TV, he said he would like to see the PS3 be 'open like a Mac' instead of being 'more closed like a Gamecube.' 'Platform investments, like the Mac, are difficult because you have to be aware of what direction that platform is moving,' Newell said, referring to the firm's recent move onto Macs with its titles and distribution service Steam. 'We need to target platforms that do a better job of looking like where we want to be in a few years.'"
Open like a Mac, I get it,
kind of like, Secure like a Windows?
Wait.. what?!
I am the maverick of Slashdot
Sorry, my irony detector is overloading.
"The crows seemed to be calling his name, thought Caw."
open : mac
Gabe : thin
With Linux, of course, you don't have to pay anything, really, and the tools are free. But: To be fair, the developer tools on the Mac are free, unlike Microsoft's developer tools; the "native" language (Objective-C and the Cocoa frameworks) are usable by anybody who wants to learn (and even those who don't), provided that they're using a Mac (which still constitutes open, in the Mac ecosystem). The iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch, by comparison, also of course from Apple, is an entirely closed ecosystem. Just trying point out perhaps how Valve's person might be seeing it.
C'mon. It may be a legitimate comparison on the continuum of platform comparision.
"Sony, you've made the PS3 so closed and restrictive that you make the Mac look like Richard Stallman's promised land."
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Geez, Newell needs to stop hitting the burgers. Who has a neck like that? Seriously dude.
OSX is the most open operating system Steam currently delivers software for. OSX is the most open of the operating systems with a measurable desktop market share. OSX is the most open platform that runs Microsoft Windows. I could make up about 100 other items. The most important item however is this:
OSX is the most open platform any commercial software companies are writing consumer applications for.
While the iPhone may run a derivative of OSX it is not a MAC....
Look at the iPhone.
No, for a change, don't look at the iPhone. Look at what the man in the article is actually talking about: Mac OS X. Can you name one platform that is more open and runs commercial games?
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
Yet he has no trouble putting his games on the 360...
I am fairly certain I can come up with the source for a lot more of OSX than you could for Windows 7...
Open like a Mac? What does that mean? Its not like Apple is anymore open than MS is
Actually, Apple is a lot more open than MS is.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
I'd be surprised if there was any part of the Linux project in OS X.
That's because it is built on *nix.
I am fairly certain you could get Microsoft to share a larger percentage of their system level APIs (by asking, or court order) than you could from Apple.
Judging by the sheer number of responses so far, many people here can't tell the different between iPhone/iPad and Mac. They are both made by Apple. Macs run OS X which is based on BSD. Mac OS X is composed of Darwin sub-system, Aqua GUI, and other libraries. Darwin is open source and is available under a BSD type license. Aqua is proprietary. Mac OS X runs on a lot of open source software such as BIND, bash, openSSH, etc. The Mac versions are available freely at http://www.opensource.apple.com/
The iPhone/iPad uses a variant of OS X. It is not open source and the release of Apps is tightly controlled. Developers are free to release to their own devices but must abide by Apple guidelines if they want to publish in the Apple Store.
Valve is referring to Macs not iPhone/iPad.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Linux? Been playing The Penumbra Trilogy, World of Goo, Aquaria, Gish and Lugaru the last weeks .. and if I feel like it, I'll fire up wine and play some native windows games.
Next question?
"DRM is like the Ford Pinto: it's a smooth ride, right up the point at which it explodes and ruins your day."-C.Doctorow
Linux + Wine
After buying a MacBook Pro I also found that more open but Java updates were slow in coming (I mostly use JoGL OpenGL and Java2D since they're both portable between Linux, Mac, Windows, Solaris and I use all of these). So I gave my PS3 to my nephews - which means Sony loses money since they subsidized the cost of the PS3 but I bought only a few games for it (so they didn't recoup their subsidy). My main graphics development work is now being done on a PC running Ubuntu/Windows7. I not going to buy a PS4 when that comes out and probably won't buy another Mac.
Since they've decided not to allow other operating systems I think the PS3 should be closed, like an anchor.
It's not just Unix-parts that are open sourced by Apple. There's a lot more.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
Valve's Newell needs to tell us when FRICKIN' HALF LIFE TWO EPISODE THREE will be available - that's what he needs to do!
Who paid this guy? (obvious question, my bad)
Good or bad, I won't judge it, but it's certainly not that open. No more than any other OS out there at least.
Why, oh why?
Dilbert RSS feed
Sony (SCEI) is paranoid about security. Everything technical about the PS3 is on a need-to-know basis.
From a marketing / developers point of view, I agree it would be nice to have something like XNA so more developers could write/port their games, but due to the above, that is not going to happen. By keeping the system closed to even authorized developers they are going after the assumption that they will keep the quality of games high. In contrast to the DS which has a ton of "shovelware" games.
Workstation is free and the rest is pretty old. Which of those is a commercial product you paid money for again?
Hey Gabe,
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Damn! That's some GOOD Joker Venom you have there Gabe!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Commercial Games. You see the focus of the article is a guy who makes money selling games..(Selling , like people pay money for them!)
I suppose in the OSS zealot definition maybe it is more open. There is more of the code that is available to the public. Not very much of it overall, certainly not enough to make a compatible system yourself, but whatever.
However in most other respects it is extremely closed. The biggest would be with regards to hardware. To run OS-X legally, you must use Apple's hardware. What's more, they have technical checks in there to try and force that. They do everything they can to close it down and lock you to their platform.
Well that is very different than Windows. It is open to run on any compatible hardware, and adding hardware compatibility is easy. The only thing that can't be added by companies other than MS is processor architectures. However, Windows itself is designed to be portable and indeed did run on Alpha and MIPS back in the day. There is every indication MS would port it to other architectures, given the demand. Regardless, anything else it is easy for third parties to add support for.
So that would be a major difference. You can crow on about the minor bits of OS-X that are open sourced, the OS itself requires Mac hardware. That isn't very open in most people's way of thinking. They aren't concerned with having access to code they don't understand, they are concerned with being able to run on the hardware they want.
The fact that it is built on Unix doesn't matter so much when pretty much all
of the relevant bits that Valve might be interested in are proprietary and
Apple only.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I have kids in the family. Does Linux have notable major-label games that aren't M-rated first-person shooters?
Ubiquitous like a Zune.
Remember the horrible Orange Box port for PS3? That was farmed out to EA, but it was still with Valve's approval. It reflected poorly on Valve, and Newell's been in PS3-bashing mode ever since then. Rather than admit that his company is too small to devote the resources to develop on PS3, he blusters about how crappy it is.
No, Gabe, other developers have been developing on PS3 for years and there are some great games for it. You already develop for Xbox 360, another platform that forces you to have the developer's blessing before you can code. Whining about openness doesn't make sense at this point. Feel free to skip PS3 development. Just don't blame the PS3 for your own company's shortcomings.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Your point being ... ? I paid for them. The fact that some of those are now open sourced (partly thanks to me paying for them) doesn't void the fact that the games are commercial in nature. World Of Goo wasn't open sourced by the way, nor part 2 and 3 of the Penumbra trilogy and you can still BUY them. You see the focus of my post? Commercial Games, one of which incidentally is sold through Steam too. That's like .. people paying money.
Now.. go back to your basement and don't forget to take your pills.
"DRM is like the Ford Pinto: it's a smooth ride, right up the point at which it explodes and ruins your day."-C.Doctorow
But I guess you would accept "Alien Vs. Predator 1", as long as it is sold by Valve through Steam? Shifting your definition of "commercial game" doesn't help in the least. No.. COD4 doesn't run in LInux (maybe in wine... who knows? who cares?), but there are commercial games for Linux. That's Commercial as in "you have to pay for them" and games as in "the point is to play". Whether *YOU* like them or not isn't relevant.
"DRM is like the Ford Pinto: it's a smooth ride, right up the point at which it explodes and ruins your day."-C.Doctorow
Linux.
Here is a list of software I compiled for another mac dummy. This is the list of commercial software I bought in the past couple years for linux.
Quake 4
Doom 3
Vmware Workstation
Nero
UT2004
Postal 2 (will soon be getting Postal 3)
LOL, I have all those too, minus nero, and plus almost all Loki published games after EB liquidated them for $10 a piece. It doesn't change anything about the viability of Linux as a commercial gaming (or desktop software) platform.
Think of it this way: How long has Transgaming(Cider/Cedega/WineX) been around?
How long after developing Cider did _EA_ start publishing games using it, for Mac?
My second point is: Loki. I really wanted them to succeed, and bought many games at full price, prior to the $10 EB firesale.
Maybe someday Linux desktops will change, but the "well, it's free" attitude is only going to take it so far.
Work, every got a copy so I said buy me the linux one. They wanted to make sure the windows users were not pirating disc burning software.
That is news to vmware cause they are selling it. Player is free, not workstation.
http://store.vmware.com/servlet/ControllerServlet?Action=DisplayPage&Env=BASE&Locale=en_US&SiteID=vmware&id=ProductDetailsPage&productID=165311300&resid=S-cN9AoBAkYAAFWtBWkAAAAQ&rests=1274484082312
I bought all those games for real money. Over the past few years sure, but your original comment had no time frame in it. Just deal you were wrong.
The only open mac is the one you have already opened with your screwdriver (or sledgehammer)
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
I love the 'So I gave it to my nephews and they'll never get their subsidy back Buwahahaha!' bit. Rest assured that any and all involved grannies will be instructed in no uncertain terms what games to purchase for Christmas, Easter, Rosh Hashanah and Imbolc, and they'll cough up cold, hard pension cash in the process, undoubtedly ignoring the advisory warnings in the process. All you've done is help the evil console makers and the people who want to corrupt our American youth!
Giving a console to your nephews and rambling about it in public isn't just saying 'I have so much money I use a dollar bill to mop up after a wank', it's actually *helping* the terrorists. Aaargh!
...Valve's Newell Thinks PS3 Needs To Be "Open Like a Man"
There is no possible way that parent post deserves a troll mod, except in Windows-fanboi land. What he says is exactly right: in certain ways -- specifically, code availability, which is exactly the sense in which "open" is most often used on Slashdot -- the Mac is indeed more open than Windows. As another poster points out, hardware-wise Windows is more open, but think about the subject of the story! Sony isn't going to start writing OSs for other companies' game systems any time soon, but more information about the PS3 would help draw developers to the platform. The type of "openness" which Valve is calling on Sony to practice with regards to the PS3 is exactly the type of openness Apple practices with OS X, not that which Microsoft practices with Windows.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Fix Orange Box on the PS3 already. I don't care whose fault it is - YOUR company's logo is on the box and on the game. It reflects poorly on YOU. FIX IT.
planet texture maps and more
Yes. Because it ships with a C/C++/ObjC compiler on the regular OS install DVD, and provides free access to gigabytes of programming information on Apple's website for free without even requiring registration. I'd say that puts it on par with Windows in terms of openness, maybe a little ahead because of Darwin is more open source than the NT kernel, although you can get bits and pieces of either OS under funny semi-open licenses. The hardware for Macs is not very open though compared to PCs, although after the switch to x86 it has improved.
iPhone is less open than a Mac, but still more open than a PS3.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
He has a valid point when you read the context (comparing mac vs. gamecube in terms of game distribution). But a headline like that on a forum like this == serious flamebait.
True, but only the shit parts of OS X are open.
No, it doesn't. There is no warning whatsoever in Disk Utility (at least in Snow Leopard). It's a fully first-class filesystem in Mac OS X.
And I can count the apps that it breaks on one hand. This is only the third I've encountered, and I've been using case-sensitive HFS+ exclusively for a couple of years now.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Open like a Mac? What does that mean? Its not like Apple is anymore open than MS is
Actually, Apple is a lot more open than MS is.
s/is a lot more open than MS is/uses a lot more open software than MS does/
Did you even look at that page you linked to here and above? Apple is only slightly more open than MS, in that they have no shame in using/selling open software. How much of the software on that site has Apple actually written themselves?
You're right. Back in Tiger or maybe it was Panther it had a big yellow exclamation point when you set it to be case-sensitive or selected UFS (which was always case-sensitive). I guess Apple feels it is good enough to use. Although when I ran UFS on my Mac a few years ago so many application I tried to use would have annoying issues with filenames, to the point that I gave up and swore never to use a case sensitive filesystem on a Mac again.
For what it's worth I've found Steam on the Mac to be as good as the Windows version (ie it crashes all the time).
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
This sounds to me like a "waaah" whine:
"Waaaah, we're an x86/Microsoft/DirectX platform dev house we don't want to learn any other architectures or tools."
"Waaah, we want to sell our games via OUR online distribution, not the one Sony has set up for the PS3"
"But we want to make money selling games for the PS3 so Sony should do what we want...waaaah"
Sony is probably thinking:
"Fuck you, Newell, you farmed out the Orange Box port to EA instead of some competent house like Gearbox."
"The PS3 is our sandbox, our rules, it's the same way with the Microsoft's Xbox."
"Tying yourself to Microsoft like you have is a mistake. You can make games without Microsoft Tools and on non-microsoft platforms...if you're not a lazy x86 dev house."
"If the Mac is so open, why did it take you 12 years to release the original Half Life for the platform, Considering that the PS2 version came out in 2001?"
"How long did it take you to do Half-Life 2...six years? Lazy x86/Windows devs! A sequel should only take 2 years or less. How many Final Fantasy games did Square release between 1998 and 2006? Lets see VIII, IX, X, X-2, XI, and XII."
I've noticed a few other Windows centric game houses (like Blizzard, and Wild-Tangent) that talk the same way.
abba
What, like OpenGL? You might need that for video games. Dunno, do video games need to draw things on the screen?
What about sound? OpenAL? Might need that perhaps.
What about writing the Steam app itself. Well, you might need Objective C and C, and compile it with GCC in Xcode. All so proprietary! Whatever to do!
You might also need to be able to write to the Mac filesystem - most use HFS+, because that's all proprietary and closed.... no wait.
Sorry, what parts do Valve need that are Apple-only and proprietary. Specifics please.
ROTFL. I used to run UFS on all my machines back then, but eventually stopped because performance was so incredibly bad. The moment case-sensitive HFS+ came around, I started moving to it, and the experience has been much better.
Lots of apps didn't work eight or ten years ago on case-sensitive (UFS) volumes. The good news is that about 98% of those developers paid attention to those bug reports and actually fixed their software, and the only three apps I've run into over the past two years of case-sensitive HFS+ are:
That's my list. Even other Adobe products work quite well (Lightroom, for example), as do Photoshop alternatives (Pixelmator), and as far as I know, Finale alternatives (Sibelius). Even random open source tools like Hugin work fine. The rarity of problems I've had with it recently is why it was so surprising to see a major software manufacturer get it wrong in this day and age. They're sure going to be unhappy if they ever try to port their games to iPhone (which is case sensitive by design).
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
The iPhone/iPad uses a variant of OS X. It is not open source and the release of Apps is tightly controlled
It's just as open as Mac darwin, on the very page you link to it lists the iPhoneOS downloads.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Sorry, my irony detector is overloading.
You might want to look around for a large ferrous source then, because it's not the Mac setting it off. The Mac is a very open platform. The iPhone is a rather closed platform. Unlike other vendors, you get choice in what degree of openness you prefer when choosing platforms to purchase.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Or delicious like a dog turd
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
There is nothing open about a Mac.. You buy from them, they pwn you. iPad = consumer device. Consume, consume, consume. Buy more now, and be happy. Wake up! Why can't you people get this?
And the Xbox do not need to be open too? Another excuse to not support the PS3?
are you serious? open as in, "make it easy to open with a screwdriver or putty knife?"
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
I wouldn't call the kernel a "shit part."
[quote]he said he would like to see the PS3 be 'open like a Mac' instead of being 'more closed like a Gamecube.'[/quote]
I guess GNU/Linux is too open, then.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
In the end it comes to which platform wins the development effort of relatively small number (thousands) of people who actually *create* the games. Whoever wins the developers, for whatever reason, wins the console wars. Having a more closed platform than your competitors is not a competitive advantage.
Ooops. Forgot to mention that I have another relevant data point. My nephews spend more time playing Counterstrike rather than PS3. The reason, all the mods for Counterstrike made by the community piques their interest. Even better, this costs them nothing. Sony loses from misses sales ('opportunity cost') since the 'network effect' is weakened for their platform.
Looking through the list, it is not stuff which is open sourced by Apple. It is open source which is used by Apple.
I know that Apple do contribute code back to these projects which is great, but I couldn't see anything on the list (I only read it quickly) which had been started by Apple. Webkit is probably the largest piece of open source work they have done and has been changed significantly from the khtml base so this deserves credit.
But even with this, pretty much every user facing application from Apple is closed source.
Sony deliberately cut it in the new firmware release.
Wrong, Sony [...] dropped support from frirmware.
That's what I said.
it counts for showing that Sony does have a counterpart to XNA
No, it counts for showing that Sony used to have a counterpart to XNA. The tense counts.
It's a shame really. I used to have a lot of respect for Gabe Newell way back when his games were ground breaking. Nowadays it seems he'd rather pour vitriol on the PS3 than hire a couple of programmers who actually have experience at PS3 development to get things working. Sadly, the fact is that he's already lost too much face and wouldn't ever want to admit that he was wrong about the PS3. I wouldn't be at all surprised if this was just him taking a chance to troll Sony and jumping on the current otheros-fueled backlash at Sony being closed.
The fact is that all the major consoles are closed platforms. Incredibly so. None better than the others, none worse. In fact, I'd probably say that until a couple of months ago when Sony removed otheros, the PS3 was probably the most open of the consoles.
Indie games != commercial games, though they're good games never the less. (Though Lugaru is ugly and too furry to enjoy IMO)
Ogre Wedding Planners llc.
3. Having profit as a chief aim: a commercial book, not a scholarly tome.
You seriously don't put enough effort in narrowing down your definitions. What you really should have said is that :
A Commercial Game, in this context, is one which will only prove my point, but not yours. It doesn't fucking matter whether I'm using the word in its generally accepted use in this context (see def. further up). No matter what you answer, I'll just tell you that it's not "commercial", and probably will also point out that it's not a game, because I don't happen to like it. Oh, and the sky is green with pink smiley clouds.
Now .. if you had said that right at the start, I wouldn't have bothered with arguments and proofs.As you didn't, I'll just point out how utterly ignorant and stupid your statement is, and let the matter rest.
Btw. Lugaru kicks ass, but only if you don't mind the lack of eye candy and can cope with actual content ... considering your previous comment, I guess that's hoping for too much.
"DRM is like the Ford Pinto: it's a smooth ride, right up the point at which it explodes and ruins your day."-C.Doctorow
Quartz and Cocoa.
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
So pretty much exactly like on Windows then, if you want to draw your app with native widgets.
I guess they could do it with X (which is installed by default in 10.6 now, and optional on 10.5 and below). They are not obligated to use the cocoa framework, although it's obviously beneficial if they do - and they only really need it for the steam UI.
http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/OSX_Technology_Overview/GraphicsTechnologies/GraphicsTechnologies.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40001067-CH273-SW1
For the games themselves though, they can go right into OpenGL.
So the original assertion that "pretty much all" of the things Valves needs are "Apple-only and proprietary" is just nonsense.