Sony Answers Critics On PS3 Development Ease Posted by XanTium | 14-6-2007 17:11 EST

From PlayStation.Blog (FYI: Sony owned blog): [QUOTE] Our friends over at GamePro.com have written an interesting article on a topic I get asked about all the time -- Is the PS3 harder to develop for than other systems? I gave them some feedback on this and the reporter, Blake Snow, does a nice job of presenting a well-rounded story. For this piece, I spoke to our PD group and asked them for input on this question and thought you might be interested in reading their full reply: This is an interesting question and hidden within the question is an enormously complex subject! If the game starts life on PS3, then man-hours per feature or costs related to asset production are comparable with industry norms. For that, you can include Xbox 360 and high-end PC games, and exclude PS2 and Wii. However, since PS3's Cell processor allows MORE features - better physics, more complex graphical processing, lighting or sound, etc. -- there is inevitably going to be more cost in supporting those extra features. It's not that PS3 is harder to write for, it's just that you can do more with it. Middleware tools like Havok and other specialist graphics tools are now customized to exploit Cell's SPUs. These mean that developers don't have to reinvent those particular wheels themselves. Also, PlayStation Edge does some very difficult and performance-critical aspects of the graphics pipeline on the SPUs: geometry processing, animation, compression - delivering performance unachievable on other systems. This is available for free to all developers from SCE. So, given that PS3 can draw more on screen, the assets required to fill that capacity go up, too. This can, but not always, require more people - however depending on the game, much of that extra content can be produced automatically - procedurally in software, not by hand. Compared to PS2, the SPUs are much easier to code for. In PS2 we had some custom chips called VU0 and VU1 which were powerful, but tricky to write for. The SPUs use a more standard programming language. [/QUOTE] Full Story: PlayStation.Blog

I wasn't aware that gamepro made games...

that's an interesting and elongated way to say the same thing that has been said since day 1 about the ps3.

no matter how they spin it, the bottom line is its more difficult and expensive to develop for and in the age of wii60 that will always be a liability for sony.

"For that, you can include Xbox 360 and high-end PC games, and exclude PS2 and Wii. However, since PS3's Cell processor allows MORE features [. . .]"

Now my PS3 has just upgraded itself to become MORE powerful than my high-end computer.

"It's not that PS3 is harder to write for, it's just that you can do more with it."

Now that developers are aware of this fact, the process of making games will go 101% times faster.

I think you have been sitting in your room to long telling yourself this rubbish that you really do belief it's true.

I'm sorry to tell you this it is not true.

Wow, thanks for the proof.

That's a little short sighted don't you think? I think you miss-read that statement... It's 'not harder' to write for, it's just that you can 'do more with it'. Meaning, to get more out of it, the development process would have to take on more work and that would actually make a games production longer.

I hope that clears things up for you.