It has shown itself to be more than a worthy adversary when it comes to producing both visually stunning and enjoyable games, but the PS3 is still proving itself to be the beast that doesn't wish to be easily tamed. Even EA, who seemed to be able to deliver an equal experience on the Xbox 360 and PS3 with Burnout Paradise, has admitted that they still have much to learn about the console:
"Games where we led development on the PS3 platform, like Burnout, which is doing very well on the market today, we had no issue at all. But in circumstances where we either led with the Xbox 360 or ran parallel production, for the most part, we're still experiencing some delay on the PS3. It's a little bit more of a challenging development environment for us. It's probably only a third of a problem for us as it was [nine months ago]. But there still remains some catching up to do on the engineering side for the PS3."
If you recall, Rockstar partially blamed the delay of Grand Theft Auto 4 on programming challenges with the PS3 as well. Seems like the obvious thing to do with multi-platform releases from this point on is to start out with the PS3. Still, I could've sworn that Infinity Ward developed Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare for both the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 at the same time -- without a lead platform. Perhaps it's just a matter of who has the greater talent on their payroll, and who's confident enough that Sony's console is going to give them the return on their investment that they are looking for. Trust us guys; if the game is equally as good on the PS3, it will sell.
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Contest:
11:33 AM on 02.01.2008
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Little company vs huge Worldwide corp does better games? how?
Games like Nba Live show you exactly why EA has a talentless bunch of people.
And I agree with bruce, developers just aren't trying to code for the PS3, they're trying to code for the 360/PC on the PS3. Bethesda, Naughty Dog, and Insomniac Games have all actually coded for the PS3 with excellent results, there's no reason a company like EA couldn't hire programmers who can't do the same thing. None whatsoever.
"Alright. You guys sit in this room and figure out PS3 shit for us. Cool? Cool."
I'll wager that is the lead reason.
EA's got some 'splaining to do. i like the egghead idea.
Yeah, I don’t understand why everyone is having such a tough time if Naughty Dog and Insomniac have been able to produce amazing games. Then again, you have to realize that as second-party developers, Sony probably gave them carte blanche — as in, an all-access pass and everything they needed to help them create the best games possible. Third parties, even massive corporations like EA and 2K Games, probably don’t have that advantage.
On the other hand, if they figured it out for Burnout Paradise, why can’t they just do that from now on?
It's not that the PS3 is "harder" to develop for, or developers are lazy... it's just that current third-party developers are used to programming on PC based hardware, with PC based software, for standard single core processing.
Normally they would produce one version of a game, and then just optimize it for each consoles strengths, since every recent console was based on standard PC architecture (see every EA game).
With the PS3, there is no "optimizing" code for the Cell, to tap into it's strength the cell requires that the code is written to use the cores simultaneously, essentially having the engine tag for a core the code as it sends it out.
The problem comes when they run the Cell in self-multitasking modes, where the PPE (main core) is forced to assign processes to the SPEs (processing cores) on it's own, that's known as the "cheap port." When the Cell is fed streamed processes to each core, it flies.
This is the same problem PC enthusiasts have been running into for over a year now with SLI/Crossfire and dual/quad-core processors. When games are truly optimized for multiple GPU/CPU cores, games run leaps and bounds better, but if the game isn't made for them, it doesn't perform much better than a single core.
So that means they either start with the PS3 version and simplify it for the PC/360, or they develop concurrent versions, both of which costs more...
Well this is really obvious if one platform is harder to code for than the other and you make the harder one lead then the other system's version gets equally delayed. So the Developing on PS3 as lead is a BandAid solution.
The PS2 got all the love as the main devlopment platform last gen cause it was the most popular hardware. This did mean that cross platform games on xbox and cube in many cases were limited by the limitations of the PS2 (4 MB of texture memory WTH Sony the Dreamcast had more). I personally want to see both versions take advantages of their respective systems strengths but unfortionatly often sacrifices are made for multiplatform releases.
COD4 is a great game on all platforms but they put the best people on the PS3 version so both performed fairly equally but PS3 got larger online play. But at the end of the day the 360 version sold more. So they made the better version for less people, its about like taking a shit on the 360 owners faces just so you can fit it with the PS3 crowd. How much better could the 360 version have been with those same talented people.
I personnaly have no issue if they make a game on the best performing machine and scalling in down on the others. But I have yet to be convinced that the PS3 is that better performing hardware. I also see the merit in hardware being made easier to develop on so that games can be better because they can spend more time on making the game than just trying to get it done. The 360 does have its issues mainly reliability and MS deserves a good ammount of grief for all those issue. I love my PS3 too but It just rubs me the wrong way so people think devs owe Sony something.
It's been well over a year, and EA ain't no slacker. They are Electronic Arts, currently the #1 biggest Video Game Corp of the world.
They have more than enough to make 5 Insomniac studios around the world and develop games for the PS3 or to focus on multi platform on their games. They just don't because they focus more M$ and PC and get lazy on PS3.