Yahoo! Tech Tuesday looks at the X360 and PS3

[Zanzibar]

This Yahoo! News article (http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ttpcworld/123348&cid=1740&ncid=1729) discusses the upcoming consoles and has some (benign) observations about the differences between the consoles.

What sets the Xbox 360 and PS3 apart from each other? Not as much as you might think. While Sony uses the much-talked-about Cell processor in the PS3, the underlying architecture is actually based on the same PowerPC chip foundation built into the Xbox 360. Still, the innovative design of the Cell processor should offer Sony a technical lead, since the CPU is split into focused subprocessing units that let it tackle many tasks in tandem. By some estimates, the PS3 will be capable of twice the floating-point operations of the Xbox 360.

But Shimpi says title designers are struggling with the new platform. "I have heard nothing but bad things about the Cell processor when it comes to game developers," Shimpi warns. "You can call game developers lazy, unwilling to change, or whatever, but the fact of the matter is that they are building the next generation of games, and I have yet to hear a single one embrace the architecture and say, 'Yes! This is exactly what we've wanted.'"

Because we just haven't had enough flame bait to react to in the last few weeks before the X360 launch. Enjoy!

[Captain Awesome]

I go to Yahoo for game articles like I go to MTV for music.


:rolleyes:

[bapenguin]

To be fair, the article is actually from PC World, Yahoo is just republishing it.

[Captain Awesome]

To be fair, the article is actually from PC World, Yahoo is just republishing it.

I'll just go to PC world then :D

[gojira]

Is it too early to be saying that all us gamers should be hoping for a dead tie, rather than one winner?

It's always better for the consumer if there's competition in the market. I don't really want to think about what we'd all get if one company, either Sony or Microsoft, got some sort of strangle-hold on the console market. :eek:

[JediSanf]

Flamebait flamebait fanboyism hearsay flamebait swearing fanboyism.
Leetspeak.

There that about covers it.

[Mason]

In response to the article, no, you fucking can't call game developers lazy. Building and shipping a well-performing, graphically complex, and bug-free game on well-abstracted hardware is already a huge challenge. Doing it on hardware that lacks the compilers and libraries to abstract the hardware well is just ridiculous.

I don't care much for the 360 design, but by all accounts Microsoft has done a bang-up job on the development tools, so it about breaks even in my book. PS3...I guess we'll hear more about the PS3.

If game programmers are lazy, what does that say about people who have easier jobs than game programmers? Like...virtually everyone?

[if76]

Newsflash: These two consoles are exactly the same right down to the button layout and optional harddrives.

The only thing that will set one apart from the other is integrated services such as Blue-ray support and Xbox Live. And people say that presidential candidates are too much alike.

Personally I'm going with the third party. The one that's actually bringing something new and different to the table. Revolution for me.

[monster1234]

That's bad to hear about game developers not liking it. The games are what makes a system.

[copasetic]

In response to the article, no, you fucking can't call game developers lazy. Building and shipping a well-performing, graphically complex, and bug-free game on well-abstracted hardware is already a huge challenge. Doing it on hardware that lacks the compilers and libraries to abstract the hardware well is just ridiculous.

If game programmers are lazy, what does that say about people who have easier jobs than game programmers? Like...virtually everyone?

Actually, you fucking can call them lazy. Things change and so must they. Industry is never stagnant, and especially not this one. If you don't step up, someone else can, and this goes for just about everything.
You sound a little bitter, but you really have no idea. Your little cubemonkey job is nothing. Not to mention, it is only your deadline hours that even meet those that the iBanking sector faces year round (80-90hrs). This reminds me a little of how all these kids around me complain about school. Well I do an intense sport which restricts my eating as well. Most people just have no idea. Try and tell physicians, soldiers, construction workers, fireman, etc. that you have a more difficult job. You'll hardly garner a laugh.

[Veldrin]

Actually, you fucking can call them lazy. Things change and so must they. Industry is never stagnant, and especially not this one. If you don't step up, someone else can, and this goes for just about everything.
You sound a little bitter, but you really have no idea. Your little cubemonkey job is nothing. Not to mention, it is only your deadline hours that even meet those that the iBanking sector faces year round (80-90hrs). This reminds me a little of how all these kids around me complain about school. Well I do an intense sport which restricts my eating as well. Most people just have no idea. Try and tell physicians, soldiers, construction workers, fireman, etc. that you have a more difficult job. You'll hardly garner a laugh.

You make it sound as if Sony has somehow blessed the industry with the Cell processor... that's simply not true. Why should developers adapt to a new and more convoluted system that, even if better than the competition, is only marginally so? Sony is known for using their market share to bully developers and consumers alike into compliance with their "standards" and this is no different. Fortuntately, this has already backfired on them in some areas. Blizzard has put them in their place in the MMO market with WoW, and I sincerely hope that Nintendo and Microsoft can start to do the same in the console marketplace by making their platforms more developer accessible. The friendlier the platform is to the developer, the better the end result for the consumer will be.

[copasetic]

You make it sound as if Sony has somehow blessed the industry with the Cell processor... that's simply not true. Why should developers adapt to a new and more convoluted system that, even if better than the competition, is only marginally so?

Well I never mentioned Sony and actually tend to agree with you. My post was more in response to mason's arrogant and holier than thou tone. But their cell processor does sound awfully intruiging and they really do need to make it more developer friendly. As you said.
Hell, I'll probly only be getting the Revolution anyways. I can't even keep up with the amount of PC games I need to play. :o

[Wonka]

Actually, you fucking can call them lazy. Things change and so must they. Industry is never stagnant, and especially not this one. If you don't step up, someone else can, and this goes for just about everything.
You sound a little bitter, but you really have no idea. Your little cubemonkey job is nothing. Not to mention, it is only your deadline hours that even meet those that the iBanking sector faces year round (80-90hrs). This reminds me a little of how all these kids around me complain about school. Well I do an intense sport which restricts my eating as well. Most people just have no idea. Try and tell physicians, soldiers, construction workers, fireman, etc. that you have a more difficult job. You'll hardly garner a laugh.

I'm sorry but this argument is some weak sauce. You can ALWAYS find someone who has a worse life than you. But it doesn't mean a DAMN thing...

Game developers work very long hours under a lot of pressure.

That's a simple fact.

They don't need extra difficulties when they are doing their job, and if you give them extra troubles the games will absolutley suffer for the extra hassle that is caused.

That's another fact.

I don't really give a crap if you want to point out that bankers work harder, or that many ethiopians are hungry. It's all completely meaningless and completely unrelated to the point that was made earlier by Mason.

[copasetic]

haha, I'm sorry my argument was "weak sauce" and how dare I mention jobs which refute his statement. Or in the case of the Ethiopians, not mention. While your "facts" confuse me, I'm pretty sure my point was only that people need to stop bitching so much and just do it. Get the job done, they chose it and life isn't easy.

[The Iron Weasel]

Well, the only person that has said anything I've actually listened to was John Carmack, who won't touch the PS3, because of the needless complexity of the Cell processor. Not to say that I wont get a PS3, because I most certainly will. But the fact of the matter is, the PS3, is only marginally more powerfull, then the Xbox 360. And I'm willing to bet that not a whole lot of developers will be able to tap that power, because of its needless complexity.

[NACIONAL]

haha, I'm sorry my argument was "weak sauce" and how dare I mention jobs which refute his statement. Or in the case of the Ethiopians, not mention. While your "facts" confuse me, I'm pretty sure my point was only that people need to stop bitching so much and just do it. Get the job done, they chose it and life isn't easy.

It's not that simple. If the developers need to crack their heads in order to fully adapt to the architecture, and in top of that, thay have to fully implement the designer ideas, well the end result will be more expensive games and of course, far between.

The right tools can make A LOT of difference... its like saying that you must code with Notepad because you have to "get the job done", no mather the conditions, when in the other side you have the visual Studio at hand with all the help incorporated...

well is a weak analogy... but I'm sure that you understood me.

[The Iron Weasel]

Also what exactly is a "floating point operation"?

[Dracula-X]

Also what exactly is a "floating point operation"?
Basically, math involving floating point numbers (mantissa+exponent), and the math could be addition, subtraction, etc. How many float ops you can grind per second is often used as a measure of a platform's power (but it isn't as clear-cut as it may seem)

Regarding Carmack, I really don't recall him saying he would never touch a PS3 :)
As I understand it, his next game is due for PC, 360 and... the PS3. But perhaps I'm mistaken.

[DanAmerson]

Everyone has a habit of getting up in arms about how game developers are lazy and don't want to embrace multithreaded technology. We aren't lazy and we do. I am a graphics engineer on a game engine. I write multithreaded code. The problem isn't that we don't want to or can't. The problem is simply just that it's a larger problem.

I will explain.

On a single processor machine, you had a lot to worry about, logic errors, performance implications, etc., but you could count on things runnign sequentially. Take for example, health power-up code. It grabs your current health and adds 10. So, if your health is 90 and you grab the power up, it adds 10 and you get 100.

Now, imagine a multiprocessor machine with two threads of logic that want to run that health power up code. We have two power-ups so we should add 10 to 90 twice producing 110 for our new health score. They both go to memory and read 90 into their local registers. The both add 10 to their local register and get a result of 100. They both go to write 100 back to memory. What's wrong with this picture? Well, the code itself was fine. Grab the value and add ten. However, if we add 10 to 90 twice, we should get 110 not 100. So now, we have a whole new set of problems that crop up due to multiple concurrent execution.

This is a trivial example, but it illustrates the issue. Any time you take a program from sequential to parallel execution, it gets more difficult. You have all the same issues of sequential programming, but now any shared memory can potentially be changed by an outside process. On top of that, it's often very hard to tell what memory is shared if you don't architect for such considerations from the beginning. Most current Xbox 360 and PS3 work is a port from elsewhere so it's likely not architected that way from the beginning. Game companies can't afford to throw out their last several years of technology development.

We work through it, but it just takes a lot of time to get it right. My two cents.

dba