Some info about PS3 ease of development + general Cell info

One thing I see a lot regarding the PS3 is how hard it will be to develop games for it, and specifically for the Cell processor. There’s no doubting that, despite the processing power the PS3/Cell provides, it will take some time and work to really get something special. That said, I want to clear up some things about actually how difficult it will be. While these things will be difficult, it appears as though, unlike what happened with the PS2, Sony, with the help of IBM, Nvidia, and several other companies, is doing a lot to make things as easy as possible for PS3 developers. IOW, western developers won’t have to spend 6 months trying to decipher terrible documentation written only in Japanese.

The following info ranges from “old” news (early January) to fairly recent (past few days).

I'll start with something fairly recent from "Possession and the art of PS3 programming":

I actually wanted to post excerpts from that article/blog, but I thought it was an interesting read, especially for those not familiar with some of the info they covered (OGL, CG, shaders, multi-threading and multi-core development, etc.). I still bolded the more interesting parts though. Besides the ease of development part, I also bolded the part about the PS3's graphical capabilities. Depends on what he meant, but if you read it one way, it almost seems as though RSX would be slightly more powerful than possibly the x1900 (R580) and the G71 coming up from Nvidia...maybe even the R600 and G80, although that might be too much of a stretch. Of course, as I said, that depends on how you read it; on the other hand, it might read as though the whole PS3 (RSX+Cell) is only slightly more powerful than a PC with a 7800GTX. Really wish I had more info on RSX.

Next up, this is a slightly "older" article from Forbes about the Cell processor. It is 3 pages long, so I won't post all of it, but it is a great read IMO:
http://www.forbes.com/free_forbes/2006/0130/076.html

Some excerpts from that article that are more PS3-related:

Bolded that last part since it would be interesting to know what game they're working on. More waiting I guess.

Again, I recommend you read the full article for more info on Cell in general. I was just posting some specific quotes from it for the purpose of this thread (although feel free to discuss the rest of the article here if you want).

Finally, just a small breakdown from Wikipedia on some of the things Sony has done to make things easier:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS3

Check out the Wiki link for more info on those things, like COLLADA, SN Systems, Kynapse, SpeedTree, etc.

So yeah, developers will probably have to work real hard to get something that represents the real power of the PS3 graphically, but compared to the PS2, it looks like that might be a walk-in-the-park relatively speaking. I guess Sony got a little lucky last time by not really helping out developers that much, but I'm not sure if they could have done the same this time around. With the 360, Sony can't afford to wait until late 2007 before a few developers actually start figuring out how to use something other than RSX and the main processor in Cell (the PPE).

Hehe...if they worked that hard on fixing one mistake they had with the PS2, I wonder how they're doing on the other(s) (online plan).

Oh and some more PS3 price speculation:
http://www.maxps3.com/

*runs off*

 

So should I hold off on posting the new ~100MB Oblivion video?

*cough*

I think/hope you'll be able to make your decision before Oblivion comes out. Although I'm starting to get a little worried here lately, February should be the month for finding out more about the PS3. If everything goes as planned, a lot of questions about the PS3 should be answered soon, which should allow you to make your decision. Hopefully.

 

Once, just once, I want to have a conversation with some of these people. I think hilarity would ensue, or I or at least I'd be laughing.

As Miguel noted, you basically have your answer. In fact, FWIW, I believe Cell@4.0GHz and with 8SPE's actually has considerably less power/heat issues than the Xenon processor in the 360.

 

Link?

Not everything I posted was from the PSM article (comments from Guerilla, comments in the Forbes article, list of Sony's efforts to ease development, etc), not to mention I could have probably posted plenty more (maybe some comments from the devs at B3D). And that's assuming that this shouldn't even be believed, which I don't agree with. I always get OPM and PSM mixed up, but I think PSM is pretty reliable IIRC and not as bias as the name implies; IIRC, they even had an interview with J Allard in one of their issues that was pretty good, and I think they even nailed down what the MGS4 trailer was before Kojima showed it. Besides, what was said in the article makes sense given what we know about the PS3.

As for the game's graphics, I do agree with you there. The game isn't very pretty. The article mentions that they've been working with software emulators since they don't have the full PS3 dev kits, so that might kind of explain the game's lack of next-gen graphics. Plus, IIRC, a lot of those screens came from a while back and the game isn't due out until 2007 I believe. Finally, I'm sure you can have a system that's "easy" to develop for and still have a game with current-gen visuals...in fact, I'm sure of that, but I won't name names.

Yeah,you should be able to play all (or almost all) PS1 and PS2 games on the PS3. In fact, I expect there to be some enhancements to the PS2 games, such as some AA and HD resolutions, similar to what MS is doing with the Xbox BC.

 

Anecdotal evidence is always the best.

FWIW, I'm not saying the PS1 and PS2 were the most reliable of systems (Nintendo systems are probably the best, although that comes with some disadvantages IMO). However, I do think this issue is a bit overblown. If, for some reason, a large % of PS1/PS2's turned out to be defective within 3-4 years, and assuming those people replaced those systems with new ones, then the tie-ratios for both systems could have been even MORE impressive. That's saying a lot since the tie-ratios for both systems are extremely impressive, especially for systems that each have a ~100M userbase, a large number of which probably aren't as devoted to gaming as other systems (EX:NGC userbase). I think if you compare the defect numbers for the PS2 versus devices that offered the same features (Xbox, early DVD players, high-end PC's, etc.), they probably aren't that different relatively speaking. It just so happens that there are about a 100M PS2's out there (the first of which were being sold 5-6 years ago), so something like 1% of the PS2 userbase turns outs to be a lot of people, much larger than what you'd find for other products. Might possibly explain why Sony is offering aid to those with PS2 problems (besides what was mentioned in that article).

Until I see something strongly suggesting a serious issue with Sony consoles, I might as well follow my own anecdotal evidence, which suggests the consoles are actually pretty reliable outside of a few quirks which might be easily fixed (haha…still can’t believe changing the position of the system could make so much of a difference). It just seems like this has been some sort of thing that has been overblown, kind of like the “unrealistic” PS2 demos which could never be done on the PS2.

 

Yeah, the stories from chow_yun_fat and Miguel were pretty funny.

 

Beats me. As I said earlier, I'm sure there are a lot of people with PS2 issues (which they might even want to hide), but that may still represent a very small percentage of the PS2 userbase. May just be easier to offer free repairs (which may be pretty simple from the sounds of it if only the DRE issue needs to be fixed) than to have to deal with these lawsuits from like 1%-5% of the userbase (which would be about 1-5 million people). BTW, I'm not sure what a good or bad defect ratio is, just throwing out some examples.

Anecdotal evidence has to be the worst kind of evidence there is. I mean, we both have conflicting anecdotal evidence (basically exact opposites I guess), so that should show how unreliable it is.

Even if not all Playstations were replaced, I imagine a large percentage were. So the higher the defect rate for the Sony systems, the more unreal the tie-ratios would become. Again, I'm not saying they are the most reliable of systems, but I think there is little evidence (other than anecdotal...which is totally unreliable) to suggest that Sony systems are far less reliable than others (outside of maybe Nintendo consoles, but again, there's a reason for that).