Why do people keeping saying developers need time to match the potential

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stevos

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Every review i read keeps saying stuff like the 360 developers have had 12 months over the ps3 ones, and thus give the ps3 12 months and the graphics will be amazing and far exceed the 360.

These comments are clearly not true, okay the ps3 has been out for around 12 months less than the 360, the fact is the developers got the development platforms for both consoles at roughly the same time and so they should be pushing them to an equal degree.

I'm i missing something here?
 
Not only that, if what they say is true, wont the xbox ports always be 12 months ahead of the ps3 ports?
 
Developers themselves are also saying as much.

I think it's because the 360 architecture is very similar to that of normal PC development able to use the same advanced tools for developers to get great stuff out of the hardware now.

The PS3 is a completeley different approach with its 7 separate CPU's speciallising in different things, taking longer for developrs to get to grips with or advanced software tools to appear.

One developer interview I read recently was saying no game currently in development is using much more than 30% of the PS3 potential and compares early PS2 games to those now that use 100% of the PS2 due to advanced utilisation/optimisation analysis software.
 
Developers themselves are also saying as much.

I think it's because the 360 architecture is very similar to that of normal PC development able to use the same advanced tools for developers to get great stuff out of the hardware now.

The PS3 is a completeley different approach with its 7 separate CPU's speciallising in different things, taking longer for developrs to get to grips with or advanced software tools to appear.

One developer interview I read recently was saying no game currently in development is using much more than 30% of the PS3 potential and compares early PS2 games to those now that use 100% of the PS2 due to advanced utilisation/optimisation analysis software.

That is very true. You will see the X360 hitting its limit sooner than PS3 because developers have an easier time optimising thier games. Developers are still finding out new way to do things on both systems. When developers find out exactly what they can do with the PS3 we are going to have some amazing games.

Games developer Factor 5 understand what the X360 can and cant do by the way it is made. They say because the way the PS3 is made, games like Lair will only work on the PS3 and the X360 is unable to cope.
 
Fair enough so how come Gears of War can't / won't work on the PS3?
 
Fair enough so how come Gears of War can't / won't work on the PS3?

Because the game was written for the Xbox 360 and not the PS3?... why doesn't my PS3 game work on my pc ...

But seriously, are you telling us that the PS3 couldn't handle it..? I doubt that was ever considered since it's an Xbox 360 exclusive through & through.
 
It'll be the way it's written. If you develop a game to use the cell processor it's going to be relying on that architecture heavily. In the same way if you develop a game to work with the xbox's architecture it's also going to be relying on that. You can't easily port 'native' stuff like that - it'd need a rewrite.

Cross platform is a tradeoff where you don't really optimise for either platform.
 
Fair enough so how come Gears of War can't / won't work on the PS3?

Well the Unreal engine on which Gears of War is based has also been written for the PS3 so technically there is probably little to stop Gears from being on the PS3. With it being a 360 exclusive and other such marketing matters its probably never going to happen though.
 
I'd be amazed if the PS3 couldn't easily produce an identical or better version of Gears Of War if developers wrote the code specifically for the PS3.

I'm anticipating much better graphics, AI & physics from the PS3 over the next 1-5 years (Motorstorm is just a taster!). IMO the 360 will be maxed out to its potential in 1-2 years time while with the PS3 it may take 2-4 years.

In any case, both will be "crap" compared to PC's within the next 6mth - 1 year but at what cost :eek:
 
Well the Unreal engine on which Gears of War is based has also been written for the PS3 so technically there is probably little to stop Gears from being on the PS3. With it being a 360 exclusive and other such marketing matters its probably never going to happen though.

It will never happen because its developed for microsoft. Its not made by midway like UT is. But that doesnt mean the PS3 cant handle it. In fact I'm 100% sure it would look better on the PS3 if it could be released on it.

another example on why developers need more time is to look at the F1 season. The cars in the F1 season are better at the end than the beginning. This is because the teams research and tweak the cars between each race from the research from the last race. if that makes sense. Compare the first PS2 games to the last. Developers couldnt pull off God of War quality when the PS2 first came out.
 
Here's my opinion (not based on anything but what pops into my head): The PS3 and the 360's architecture are very different. The 360 is a classic setup, developers know what it can do and how to push it. Games will get better on the 360 in terms of visuals and AI and CPU crunching tasks. But the 360 will hit a barrier to its performance sooner than the PS3 will reach its max.
With the PS3, developers will have to take a different approach to designing games. I dont think your going to see PS3 games blowing 360 games out of the water graphically but what the PS3 should be able to do is handle games that require a lot going on at once, games of greater scale.
Games that require lots of AI or lots of processing should shine on the PS3. But the problem is that these types of games will take time to develop, they will come but it may be a while. And at the end of the day the type of games that suck up huge amounts of CPU via AI and processing tasks arent always the best selling games or the most popular.
At the end of the day graphics sell games and I cant see the PS3 blowing the 360 out of the water graphically for a good few years. What you might see is PS3 games having more happening on screen without slow down as apposed to the 360 which has to scale back to make the game playable.
And my final point is can developers justify putting all this extra effort into maxing out the PS3? If games are only using 30% of the PS3 at the moment and looking this good is it worth throwing time and money at a PS3 game to get upto 40% when 30% will do? Sales of PS3 arent high enough to warrant huge investments yet. Developers are here to make money and the PS3 just wont make enough money for developers at the moment so whether the console gets pushed towards max isnt a done deal.
 
It will never happen because its developed for microsoft. Its not made by midway like UT is. But that doesnt mean the PS3 cant handle it. In fact I'm 100% sure it would look better on the PS3 if it could be released on it.

Midway is just a publisher, they are both developed by Epic. But you're right it's just because it has been made for MS and they probably payed a decent chunk of money to Epic to keep it an exclusive.
 
And my final point is can developers justify putting all this extra effort into maxing out the PS3? If games are only using 30% of the PS3 at the moment and looking this good is it worth throwing time and money at a PS3 game to get upto 40% when 30% will do?

It will happen eventually as once the PS3 has a large userbase, more games will come out and then it's a fight to get the public to buy your game over the competiton on the the PS3 let alone whats on other consoles.

If the PS3 doesn't sell in good quantaties, then the limits might not be pushed as quickly.
 
Here's my opinion (not based on anything but what pops into my head): The PS3 and the 360's architecture are very different. The 360 is a classic setup, developers know what it can do and how to push it. Games will get better on the 360 in terms of visuals and AI and CPU crunching tasks. But the 360 will hit a barrier to its performance sooner than the PS3 will reach its max.
With the PS3, developers will have to take a different approach to designing games. I dont think your going to see PS3 games blowing 360 games out of the water graphically but what the PS3 should be able to do is handle games that require a lot going on at once, games of greater scale.
Games that require lots of AI or lots of processing should shine on the PS3. But the problem is that these types of games will take time to develop, they will come but it may be a while. And at the end of the day the type of games that suck up huge amounts of CPU via AI and processing tasks arent always the best selling games or the most popular.
At the end of the day graphics sell games and I cant see the PS3 blowing the 360 out of the water graphically for a good few years. What you might see is PS3 games having more happening on screen without slow down as apposed to the 360 which has to scale back to make the game playable.
And my final point is can developers justify putting all this extra effort into maxing out the PS3? If games are only using 30% of the PS3 at the moment and looking this good is it worth throwing time and money at a PS3 game to get upto 40% when 30% will do? Sales of PS3 arent high enough to warrant huge investments yet. Developers are here to make money and the PS3 just wont make enough money for developers at the moment so whether the console gets pushed towards max isnt a done deal.

I dont 100% agree with you there mate. I'm sure the all of the cross platform games due out this year will look at least equal but prob better than the X360. So far all the cross platform games have been lazy ports. Oblivion for example boasts better graphics than its X360 brother. Lair produces big environments and thousands of enemys and the X360 cant do that. Its def going to be sooner than a year before the PS3 starts showing wat it can do.

Looking what they can already do its amazing what they'll be able to do in a few years.
 
Okay the ps3 has a more complex architecture, but when it comes down to it most games are written at a fairly high level using something like C and opengl/directx. From a programmers perspective, all they need to do is read what extra effects (lens flares etc) are contained within the stl and work out how to use them in their games.

Okay actually coming up with new ideas/uses for new effects takes a bit of time but its been almost 2 years now so surely they should be fairly close. This is of course assuming that the current games weren't designed for the ps3/360 and just ported over to the ps3 without redesign (aka lasyness).
 
It's more complex than that by a long way.. you're thinking of a PC where you write basically for a single CPU and a graphics card. You've got to handle architectural issues.. differences in the GPU (and you don't just use that for graphics, it's used for some interim calculations as well), existence of the SPU on the PS3 and the 3 processor architecture of the xbox. That affects the way you design the code quite fundamentally.

You can just do a lazy port.. it'll then be poor on both architectures. Depends on whether the game producers are interested in producing the best game they can or simply generating money.

Given that the development of a game can easily be 12 months plus it's not surprising that there's not a lot available yet that's designed specifically for the ps3.
 
This is a good read on developing for the PS3/360. And it doesn't look as simple as your portraying.

He indicates that it is more straight forward to develop for the PS3 then port to the 360 while going the other route is very difficult.

He's obviously a bit biased to Sony but thought some good points were made about the need/use of streaming , large storage & realtime calculations only capable with cell SPU's.

http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/2007/04/qa_with_factor_5_chief_julian_eggebrecht.html
 
I don't want to start a vs thread, but we have no proof of this, do we?

Its on the developer interview on gametrailers.com where the director of Factor 5 says that the techniques used for the large invironments in Lair could not be achieved on the X360. This is because only the cell in conjunction with uncompressed textures on the blu ray disk can do something called mesh somethingornothing (i cant remember what they call it). Factor 5 are known for getting the best graphics out of their games.
 
He indicates that it is more straight forward to develop for the PS3 then port to the 360 while going the other route is very difficult.

If true, that sounds a little worrying concerning keeping PS3 games exclusive and seeing many decent 360 games ever appearing on PS3.
 
If true, that sounds a little worrying concerning keeping PS3 games exclusive and seeing many decent 360 games ever appearing on PS3.

Not really, if you read it, the implication is that the developer designs for the highest level then ports across and that porting from PS3 to 360 is much easier.

Depends on the developer, if a PC version is in the pipe & how well each console sells I suppose.

If the PS3 doesn't sell well then there could be a lot of crap ports for the PS3 but as more games are available, the PS3 optimised ones are likely to get the consumers money showing the poor ports will not be acceptable (apart from film Tie-ins as usual).
 
You're probably right, i guess i'm still waiting for that big AAA exclusive to blow me away.
 
You're probably right, i guess i'm still waiting for that big AAA exclusive to blow me away.

It just requires a little patience. If you compare timescales with the X360 the only AAA title was GRAW. It took a year to get GOW. By december we should have plenty of AAA exclusive titles.
 
I just don't see them on the horizon.

Depends what your into I suppose and how far your Horizon stretches :D

I'd be amazed if there arn't any AAA titles before this Christmas.

I'm not that bothered about exclussives only as I don't have a 360 so am keeping an eye on Lair but other games like Assassins Creed etc.
 
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