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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?
Sorry, my irony detector is overloading.
"The crows seemed to be calling his name, thought Caw."
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.
To be fair, the developer tools on the Mac are free, unlike Microsoft's developer tools...
The Express Editions of Visual Studio are pretty darn usable; they're free. While what you said is not technically incorrect, it's also not being entirely honest IMO.
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.
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.
That's another month for Episode 3.
Thanks a lot buddy! >:|
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.
It's not just Unix-parts that are open sourced by Apple. There's a lot more.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
How do you get to this? How conceivably is OSX more closed then Windows?
Its extensively documented, the full suite of development tools needed to make software on it are provided for free by the vendor, and its *really* cheap to get beta/pre-releases to test against -- seriously, have you *seen* a MSDN license, vs the $99 Apple charges? (Yes, I'm aware of the Express editions MS has been offering)
Yes, the iPhone OS is closed as all hell. Mac != iPhone, even though they share a lot in common.
As a *platform*, the Mac is pretty open. Open as in there are very little barriers for entry for developers. Anyone can write software it, there's no licensing you need to get your software on it, all the tools are available to anyone, with everything documented well.
Windows, by comparison, is more open then iPhone OS, certainly... and of late its documentation is pretty good. But for the fully enabled toolchain and documentation set and access to beta-versions and everything is hundreds to thousands of dollars.
Unless you want to compile native 64-bit binaries. In that case, Visual Studio Express Edition won't be sufficient.
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)
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.
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.
It's really very simple. Apple is a hardware company that also makes software. Microsoft is a software company that also makes hardware.
Apple doesn't care what software you run on a Mac. Microsoft doesn't care what computer you run Windows on.
Apple wants you to buy a Mac. Microsoft wants you to buy Windows.
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