Sony Made PS3 Hard to Develop For On Purpose

[Emabulator]

CNET is reporting (http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-10173656-17.htm) on comments made by Kaz Hirai, CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment, explaining why the PlayStation 3 is difficult to program for.

In one of the most shocking and bizarre comments ever made by a company chief, Hirai, the brains behind the entire PlayStation empire, explained to the Official PlayStation Magazine (http://www.gamesradar.com/ps3) in its February issue that Sony didn't want to make it easy on developers.

"We don't provide the 'easy to program for' console that (developers) want, because 'easy to program for' means that anybody will be able to take advantage of pretty much what the hardware can do, so then the question is, what do you do for the rest of the nine-and-a-half years?" explained Hirai.

Huh? But his explanation didn't end there.

"So it's a kind of--I wouldn't say a double-edged sword--but it's hard to program for," Hirai continued, "and a lot of people see the negatives of it, but if you flip that around, it means the hardware has a lot more to offer."
Thanks, Slashdot (http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/01/1522259&from=rss).

Update: Kaz Hirai made these comments over a month ago and I missed them at the time. My apologies.

[GraveMatter]

That is just so dumb. Talk about grasping... That just makes ~this~ (http://www.theonion.com/content/video/sony_releases_new_stupid_piece_of) so much more truer to life....

[Johan]

I think all companies should have the same focus. make your product cripplingly difficult to work with for your business partners, so that it has a longer shelf-life and consumers don't get too much good stuff too quickly. :D

:shakes head:

How's that working out for 'em? Hmmm...70% market share to, what...23%? Yeah, that's working out great. Just swimmingly.

[greenapple]

Sounds like a bit of mis-translation of some Sony market-speak.

He's saying the PS3 has more complexity, and thus more depth and potential, but that makes it harder to program to its full potential.

Whether it's true or not, who knows? But it isn't a crazy position to take.

Frankly, I was amazed at what programmers were doing with the PS2 hardware, near the end of its cycle compared to the beginning.

[modeps]

Yeah, I'd hate to have every third party dev making hot games on my console. That'd be shitty.

[AversionFX]

If you flip around a double-edged sword, don't you still have just another edge of a sword?

People should not make analogies if they don't know how to properly use them.

edit: And also, Sony's talking heads should all have their vocal cords removed.

[Whimbrel]

I'll admit that the article looks damning, but I think what he is saying is that there is a correlation between hardware complexity and development difficulty and that they intentionally went with the more abstruse specs because of desired benefits long term. Unfortunately, describing the business strategy for the PS3 is only slightly more difficult than programming a desirable game for the console, so it ends up lose/lose.

[MasterEvilAce]

Hello from January!! Glad to see you made it
http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/56844

[jspeak32]

reading the quote alone, it almost sounds like his plan was to prevent developers from tapping into the limits of the ps3 the first year of release...so we will see a gradual improvement in the graphics over the years until its end of life...that way we wouldn't be "bored" of it if we saw everything that it can do right out the door...

[Furious Wang]

Clearly their cunning plan has worked astoundingly well. Last generation ahead by millions. This generation behind by millions.

[speeder]

Wheelman uses the Unreal engine. Seems like it's a failure of that engine if the developers have to deal with hardware issues.

[Darcydian]

Okay, clear this up, NOT A FAN BOY, don't even own a PS3
But I actually somewhat understand where he's coming from, he just worded it all wrong.

I think the idea he's going for is, It's hard to develope for because we don't want dumbasses turning out shit that gets published on some platforms. We want commited developers who want to learn the system to take full advantage of the hardware.

That's not to say that it's succeeded but i've yet to see a level of shitty game (other than multiplatform ports) that comes out on some of the other platforms. It's just too expensive and tedious for the churn shit out for the sake of churning shit out developers to do.

[Emabulator]

Hello from January!! Glad to see you made it
http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/56844Doh! Missed it back then. :o

[Your Good Twin]

Yeah, I'd hate to have every third party dev making hot games on my console. That'd be shitty.

No joke, I mean look at all the hot games from third party devs on the much easier to program Wii. Yeah. Look at them. So many. So hot. :rolleyes:

[Zeal]

that is, quite possibly, the stupidest thing i have ever heard any professional in the game industry ever say.

[see colon]

You don't need to make life hell for developers to achieve the goal of hardware longevity. Look at what has been done on any console from it's launch untill end of life and you'll see marked improvement. The Genesis is a prime example of this, where launch titles were much like NES games with broader color ranges or highee detailed sprites, and near the end of life high detailed games like Vectorman 2, Super Street Fighter 2, and a few games with simple 3D came out. The GBA is another example. Launch titles looked like SNES games, and a few years later we had DooM, Duke 3D, and a very competant port of Driver 2.

[jakie_chon]

Sounds like a bit of mis-translation of some Sony market-speak.

He's saying the PS3 has more complexity, and thus more depth and potential, but that makes it harder to program to its full potential.

Whether it's true or not, who knows? But it isn't a crazy position to take.

Frankly, I was amazed at what programmers were doing with the PS2 hardware, near the end of its cycle compared to the beginning.

I completely agree with you, also, everyone else on this thread is wrong.

This was sort of a mistranslation. What the guy means is that they decided not to sacrifice hardware potential for ease of programming.

For this kind of hardware those two are almost mutually exclusive, even more so when talking about budget allocation and development time (development of the console I mean). Anyway, maybe he's right, maybe in a few years when Devs really learn to squeeze it, it'll look great.

I guess we'll see. Keep an open mind for what this guy kaz says, he's not crazy as most fanboys would like you to believe.

[Crenor]

... so the plan worked then.
No one can program for the PS3, and no one will try to...

BUT maybe by the time everyone else is on the next gen (Xbox 720, Wii .2) THEN the PS3's full potential will be realized.. maybe... if we feel like telling anyone how to do it.

[Pluvious]

Boy that sure makes me want to rush out and buy a PS3! Even with the rumored $100 off coming soon.. I'm still not going to bite because this company seems to be braindead.

[RMan]

What the guy means is that they decided not to sacrifice hardware potential for ease of programming.
Except I've never seen a case where that is necessary, and I doubt this is that case. Same types of things can be said for using low-level languages over high-level languages, and although low-level languages can technically be faster, in the real world it's just stupid. I would accept very few answers regarding this subject, and the best one is 'we wanted great hardware, and the development side took a back seat'.

From a developer standpoint, that's gotta be one of the dumbest strategies I've ever heard if that was the goal. It's like assuming that a bitchy girlfriend somehow has a heart of gold if you look deep enough; IMO, bitchiness only indicates bitchiness. A hard to program system is not naturally more powerful because of it, the system doesn't have 'more to offer', it just takes developers longer to get to it. I'm sure it's quoted slightly out of context, but I just can't imagine a context where the statements are not stupid.

[lost]

that is, quite possibly, the stupidest thing i have ever heard any professional in the game industry ever say.

Ah come on, it's bad but not the worst.

In all honesty I thought this little demon had gone away, he should have just kept his mouth shut.

[Flatpicker]

HAHAHAHAHA.
Kaz is just a fountain of wonder quotes.

"We don't provide what developers want."
If somebody tried to make this up about Sony this gen, they couldn't.

[Flatpicker]

Ah come on, it's bad but not the worst.

In all honesty I thought this little demon had gone away, he should have just kept his mouth shut.

No,
He's been promoted. Hasn't he?
Now he handles the Vaio line of PC's also.

[Johan]

What the guy means is that they decided not to sacrifice hardware potential for ease of programming.

Except it's already been discussed ad nauseum that the PS3 has bottlenecks that the 360 does not, and the 360 has bottlenecks that the PS3 does not.

They both have strengths and weaknesses in terms of architecture. It does NOT make sense to construct an architecture that is inherently complicated for developers purely for complication's sake. That is an idiotic position to take, unless you are a company that is so self-assured of overwhelming victory that you decide the way to eliminate ports from your console to others (thereby killing your competition) is to make it too difficult to do so, while simultaneously being certain that your overwhelming success from the last generation will naturally make your console the lead console for most developers' games/titles.

Didn't work out that way. Too expensive hardware sold too little, creating too small a base, pushing away developers who knew the cost of developing on a complicated architecture wouldn't be returned in sales, thereby making the PS3 the secondary/ported-to architecture, and turning many of those games into ass as a result of the cost vs. ROI on those titles...or keeping those games off the PS3 entirely, thereby pushing consumers to the only mass-market friendly device, in terms of price, from day-one in this generation. The Wii.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. They gambled, and lost big.

[lost]

I understood that the majority of titles these days were multiplatform and that the minority are exclusives. I don't think that the complexity of the PS3 puts off many developers.

I also understood that many developers pick the PS3 as their lead platform because it can be easier to port PS3 code to 360 rather than vice-versa. As a gamer who picks the PS3 version 90% of the time I'm pretty pleased with the uniformity now found across multi-platform titles.

Fact is that you can make money off a PS3 release. I'm sure most would rather not deal with ports to multiple consoles (360 included) but aren't afforded that luxury.

[Johan]

I don't think that the complexity of the PS3 puts off many developers.

It certainly did for a year or more initially. It still does. See "Valve."

I also understood that many developers pick the PS3 as their lead platform

That was also not true for a year or more.

[lost]

7OR0U87mRsY

Just a good opportunity for Cher :)

Chicken and egg I guess. Sony should have given developers the kit earlier to avoid said delay.

[Flatpicker]

I also understood that many developers pick the PS3 as their lead platform because it can be easier to port PS3 code to 360 rather than vice-versa.



As long as you are aware of the reason for making the Ps3 the lead platform.
The fact that this has to go on should not be a feather in Sony's cap.

BTW- There is no proof that you are making money on a PS3 exclusive yet. The software sales aren't there unless you are looking at MGS levels of marketing. That's why you have to go multiplatform.

[Dracula-X]

It certainly did for a year or more initially. It still does. See "Valve."
A company lead by a former Microsoft developer who made millions during his stint there? You don't say! :)

[lost]

As long as you are aware of the reason for making the Ps3 the lead platform.
The fact that this has to go on should not be a feather in Sony's cap.

BTW- There is no proof that you are making money on a PS3 exclusive yet. The software sales aren't there unless you are looking at MGS levels of marketing. That's why you have to go multiplatform.

Point 1 - Fully aware. Although to expect code to be uniformly acceptable by two separate platforms is a bit unfair.

Point 2 - Cool. I didn't mention exclusives making money but it's all good. I can't imagine anybody would make an exclusive game without being confident they could make a return. Probably the reason FFXIII went multi-platform, RPGs aren't quite mass market enough to rely on the minority of the market to actually buy them.

[Windsong]

Krazy Ken...all NEW and IMPROVED!

[oldjadedgamer]

No,
He's been promoted. Hasn't he?
Now he handles the Vaio line of PC's also.

Yup, now his job involves kissing Microsoft's ass.

I also understood that many developers pick the PS3 as their lead platform because it can be easier to port PS3 code to 360 rather than vice-versa. As a gamer who picks the PS3 version 90% of the time I'm pretty pleased with the uniformity now found across multi-platform titles.

Developers leading with the PS3 and not the 360 is the exception and not the norm. Think about it when you are making your game and you are a programmer and you get a bug. It takes you a full day to fix it on PS3 but only takes you an hour to fix that same bug on 360... which one are you going to make your lead? Sure, in the end when all the code is done and ready to go is it easier to port from PS3 to 360 but the 2 years it takes them to get to that point isn't really worth it to waste time.

The reason you are seeing more on par games from 360/PS3 is that because developers know they are forced to make a PS3 version so they develop their tools early on so that the PS3 doesn't hinder the 360 build and believe it or not, Sony has been making great strides with their internal software to aid in 360-PS3 ports because it's in their best interest to do this if developers are just going to continue to lead with the 360.

Again, you can probably count on one hand the amount of multiplatform games that were developed as the lead for PS3 first.

[speeder]

Lair 2 is going to be awesome!

[JazGalaxy]

I completely agree with you, also, everyone else on this thread is wrong.

This was sort of a mistranslation. What the guy means is that they decided not to sacrifice hardware potential for ease of programming.

For this kind of hardware those two are almost mutually exclusive, even more so when talking about budget allocation and development time (development of the console I mean). Anyway, maybe he's right, maybe in a few years when Devs really learn to squeeze it, it'll look great.

I guess we'll see. Keep an open mind for what this guy kaz says, he's not crazy as most fanboys would like you to believe.

Kaz Hirai speaks english as well as you or I do. He meant what he said.

I don't see the shock in these statements though. He's absolutely right in saying that gamers and devlopers don't want the system that's easy to develop for. I mean, clearly that's the wii and how do you, gamer, feel about that?

[Orz]

Worked for Sega! Why let those sniveling third parties have it so easy?

http://images.businessweek.com/ss/06/10/game_consoles/image/slide9.jpg

[FreezaSama]

I understand what he's saying. But at the same time, I'm having trouble grasping how anyone could be so stupid.

[gzsfrk]

Except I've never seen a case where that is necessary, and I doubt this is that case. Same types of things can be said for using low-level languages over high-level languages, and although low-level languages can technically be faster, in the real world it's just stupid. I would accept very few answers regarding this subject, and the best one is 'we wanted great hardware, and the development side took a back seat'.

From a developer standpoint, that's gotta be one of the dumbest strategies I've ever heard if that was the goal. It's like assuming that a bitchy girlfriend somehow has a heart of gold if you look deep enough; IMO, bitchiness only indicates bitchiness. A hard to program system is not naturally more powerful because of it, the system doesn't have 'more to offer', it just takes developers longer to get to it. I'm sure it's quoted slightly out of context, but I just can't imagine a context where the statements are not stupid.

Thank you for typing exactly what I was thinking.

"Powerful" and "Easy-to-develop-for "are NOT mutually exclusive. Nor are "Complex" and "Powerful" mutually inclusive.

To me, a platform that is difficult to develop for is more indicative of poor design, not necessarily a powerful architecture.

[ResistanceAddict]

Okay, clear this up, NOT A FAN BOY, don't even own a PS3
But I actually somewhat understand where he's coming from, he just worded it all wrong.

I think the idea he's going for is, It's hard to develope for because we don't want dumbasses turning out shit that gets published on some platforms. We want commited developers who want to learn the system to take full advantage of the hardware.

That's not to say that it's succeeded but i've yet to see a level of shitty game (other than multiplatform ports) that comes out on some of the other platforms. It's just too expensive and tedious for the churn shit out for the sake of churning shit out developers to do.

That's a damn good point. Unfortunately, it's not a profitable approach and it's not an approach that we as gamers and CUSTOMERS particularly appreciate. The idea has merit but realistically it's just not a successful one.

[jakie_chon]

Thank you for typing exactly what I was thinking.

"Powerful" and "Easy-to-develop-for "are NOT mutually exclusive. Nor are "Complex" and "Powerful" mutually inclusive.

To me, a platform that is difficult to develop for is more indicative of poor design, not necessarily a powerful architecture.

I am sorry to say, but wrong. Particularly that high level language analogy. Chip design is completely different from software programming. Ease of use has to be designed, implemented and manufactured on every chip on top of the parts that actually do the work.

Of curse "Powerful" and "Easy-to-develop-for "are not mutually exclusive, if you have an almost infinite amount of money. "Complex" and "Powerful" however, ARE mutually inclusive, the question is whether to make the chip even more complex to make it easy to use.

You may feel inclined to call it poor design, but that would be a matter of opinion.

[Greeble]

Wow this is old news. I remember seeing that hard to "develop for on purpose" quote in someones sig for a number of weeks now.

[bobmitch]

This is just a bad case of "It's Not A Bug, It's A Feature!"
Trying to put a positive marketing spin on a technical hurdle.
No real story here.

[kwolf]

He repeats this canard from time to time in the hopes that someone will believe him.

[JazGalaxy]

Worked for Sega! Why let those sniveling third parties have it so easy?

http://images.businessweek.com/ss/06/10/game_consoles/image/slide9.jpg

The saturn wasn't hard to develop for, it was just engineered for 2d processing as opposed to 3d processing and developers all decided they wanted to do 3d which led them to the playstation.

In Japan for nearly a whole year before PSX was released/caught on, everything was made for Saturn.

[Mike Jones]

Slow on news? He said this over a month and a half ago.

[Flatpicker]

The saturn wasn't hard to develop for, it was just engineered for 2d processing as opposed to 3d processing and developers all decided they wanted to do 3d which led them to the playstation.

In Japan for nearly a whole year before PSX was released/caught on, everything was made for Saturn.

I thought that even Suzuki Yu said that the Saturn was hard to develop for?
He had been quoted in a Next Gen mag talking about how the SH2 processors were unbalanced when it came to memory access.

Think it was the one with Sarah from VF on the cover.

[kefka95]

[QUOTE="...anybody will be able to take advantage of pretty much what the hardware can do, so then the question is, what do you do for the rest of the nine-and-a-half years?"[/QUOTE]

Umm, spend time making good games instead of trying to figure out the hardware?

[Orz]

The saturn wasn't hard to develop for, it was just engineered for 2d processing as opposed to 3d processing and developers all decided they wanted to do 3d which led them to the playstation.

In Japan for nearly a whole year before PSX was released/caught on, everything was made for Saturn.

The Saturn was monstrously hard to develop for. The SDK Sega provided to third parties was crippled compared to their own, and a lot of games were written in machine language as a result. Almost all the third-party games only ever used one CPU given the difficulties in using all 3. Add to the fact that the Saturn rendered quadrilaterals when every other 3D system used triangles, and the system was a mess for third parties. It wasn't that it was a 2D-centric system, it's that Sega got greedy and didn't give out a decent SDK because they wanted their own titles to be technically superior.

[JazGalaxy]

I thought that even Suzuki Yu said that the Saturn was hard to develop for?
He had been quoted in a Next Gen mag talking about how the SH2 processors were unbalanced when it came to memory access.

Think it was the one with Sarah from VF on the cover.

In dealing with 3d objects, yeah. Basically they made the saturn thinking some games would be 3d but most would still be 2d. So as a result, it ran 2d games much better than the PSX and the PSX ran 3d games much easier.

[lost]

You almost can't blame them. I think we underestimate what a massive shift 3D games were, to Sega it probably seemed like the most wacky thing ever.

At least they made up for it with the Dreamcast. I think developers would welcome a console like that.

[JazGalaxy]

I know this is a weak source, but it's all I have time to dig up at the moment.

http://www.connectedinternet.co.uk/2008/02/13/remembering-the-sega-saturn/

I'll be back with more later.

[Flatpicker]

You almost can't blame them. I think we underestimate what a massive shift 3D games were, to Sega it probably seemed like the most wacky thing ever.


I don't buy that though.
Sega was developing 3d games for the arcade with the Model 1 and 2 boards. The idea that people would not want the arcade experience at home, from a company that specialized in porting their arcade games to the home, was incredibly short sighted.

The MS and the Genesis were the home for Sega's arcade ports, why would they not consider this going Fwd?

[RMan]

I am sorry to say, but wrong. Particularly that high level language analogy. Chip design is completely different from software programming. Ease of use has to be designed, implemented and manufactured on every chip on top of the parts that actually do the work.
A platform is more than just a chip, and if the things that make it hard can be overcome by good software developers, they can also be abstracted through software so the bulk of developers don't have to worry about it.
Of curse "Powerful" and "Easy-to-develop-for "are not mutually exclusive, if you have an almost infinite amount of money.
So, you're saying they could make it easier if they put more resources into it? Yea, that I'll agree with.
"Complex" and "Powerful" however, ARE mutually inclusive, the question is whether to make the chip even more complex to make it easy to use.
Good luck explaining why a chip has to be more complex for it to be easier for software developers to use.
You may feel inclined to call it poor design, but that would be a matter of opinion.
I wouldn't call the PS3 poor design, but I would call this poor PR, and it's poor strategy if this was their plan from the beginning. I don't think it was, I think they wanted cool hardware, their development went slower than they thought, and then they had to rush the PS3 to market because MS rushed the 360 to market. Now, the PS3's development is compared to the 360's, and same problems that existed with the PS2 vs the Xbox exist now (MS's development pipeline/tools have had much more resources put in over the years). Only now that the PS2 doesn't clearly dominate, these short-comings aren't as easy to overlook.

[JazGalaxy]

I don't buy that though.
Sega was developing 3d games for the arcade with the Model 1 and 2 boards. The idea that people would not want the arcade experience at home, from a company that specialized in porting their arcade games to the home, was incredibly short sighted.

The MS and the Genesis were the home for Sega's arcade ports, why would they not consider this going Fwd?

Well I'd say for the very reason the Saturn was still insanely popular at it's lauch in Japan. Remember, RPGs were still all 2D at this point, with no real understanding of how that could change (this was pre FFVII) and fighting games were also all 2D. Platforming games, which were still insanely popular, were 2D. The only other person who was doing 3D in the arcade scene, really, was Namco, who they were not remotely interested in helping. (And ultimately Namco sided with Sony to spite Sega, which is why the PSX launch was mostly namco titles. (Air Combat, Ridge Racer, Tekken, Cyber Sled, etc.)

[JazGalaxy]

Forgot to add vertical and horizontal shooters which were 2d and insanely popular. All these types of games found homes on the Saturn.

[Testcase]

PS3 vs Wii (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7PhJp3ciRQ)

[Orz]

You almost can't blame them. I think we underestimate what a massive shift 3D games were, to Sega it probably seemed like the most wacky thing ever.

I'd argue, but always making the wrong decision seems to be the founding mission statement behind Sega.

[SpectralWolf]

Think about it when you are making your game and you are a programmer and you get a bug. It takes you a full day to fix it on PS3 but only takes you an hour to fix that same bug on 360... which one are you going to make your lead?

Okay dude. You should not make analogies about programming or any problems dealing with them, not unless you've dealt with similar problems in your programming career.

[SpectralWolf]

Umm, spend time making good games instead of trying to figure out the hardware?

Yeah, sorta like the Wii? Great games on that platform there.

[Sloth]

So who here would want a girlfriend thats the hottest piece of ass in the world, but all you would ever get out of her is a handjob?

[balamoor]

The only thing more retarded than the claim is the SDF fanbois trying to defend it. Face it SONY lost the console war and the PS3 is a 400.00 doorstop.

[riposte101]

The PS2 was hard to develop for also. Bottom line is that Sony expected market domination so they could get away with the same thing again.

[JazGalaxy]

quite true.

You could argue that Sony screwed up this generation, but I would argue that Sony has NEVER done anything right and their screwing up has simply finally caught up with them. They didn't have a bungling Nintendo and Sega putting out crap strategies like Saturn and N64. MS and Nintendo came ready to fight this round and as a result Sony is getting beaten up BADLY.

[shpankey]

This guy... probably should just shut up. lol

[AversionFX]

The only thing more retarded than the claim is the SDF fanbois trying to defend it. Face it SONY lost the console war and the PS3 is a 400.00 doorstop.

Sounds like fanboi speech to me. Foot, meet mouth.

[gzsfrk]

I am sorry to say, but wrong. Particularly that high level language analogy. Chip design is completely different from software programming. Ease of use has to be designed, implemented and manufactured on every chip on top of the parts that actually do the work.

Of curse "Powerful" and "Easy-to-develop-for "are not mutually exclusive, if you have an almost infinite amount of money. "Complex" and "Powerful" however, ARE mutually inclusive, the question is whether to make the chip even more complex to make it easy to use.

You may feel inclined to call it poor design, but that would be a matter of opinion.

Way to miss the point. We're not talking about how complex the hardware is, but rather how complex the development tools are, and whether or not there is necessarily a correlation between the complexity of the development tools and the overall "power" of the system.

[see colon]

Regarding the Saturn, it did have the reputation of being hard to develop for. I am a recovering Sega fanboy, and the Saturn is my favorite Sega hardware (I have roughly 150 games for the system), so I remember many of the comments well. IIRC, a namco employee stated that it took a week to do on Saturn what took him a day on PSX, but I don't remember a source on that. I do, however, have this dany quote:
But one of the real failures that took place was that Sega was in a rush to get this hardware out, and there were no tools. There was no documentation. There was none of the basic stuff that you really need in order to develop something for it, and it wasn't there for a long time. Outside developers were totally left out to lunch. They didn't stand a chance. We had at least the small advantage of being able to pick up the phone and make phone calls to ask questions about things, but we didn't have documentation or anything either. It was very hard to develop for.

Another fundamental problem with Saturn was that it was a fairly complex system by design. It was intended to have a high ceiling above it, in terms of what could ultimately be accomplished. The strategy was that Saturn might be a little harder to work with initially, but with longer-term more and more use and expertise, developers could get more and more out of the Saturn that a comparable PlayStation.

That was the theory. The reality was that it was hard to work with. It took a long time to get there, and without sufficient help and support available, Sega also lost a lot of the ongoing support from the third parties. That was a big deal. Sony was doing an extremely aggressive and good job of being supportive to the third party community out there, and Sega wasn't. I think that really contributed a lot to the tipping of the scales.
source: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3672/a_veteran_with_character_roger_.php?print=1

Notice that the bold statement mirrors the recent comments from Sony's camp. With the exception of PS2, I'm not aware of any console that was notoriously hard to develop for finding any real success. I'm not really sure if the PS2 was difficult on the same level as Saturn, considering it had a pretty industry standard rendering pipeline for it's time, and alot of fill rate and bandwidth as well. It was more an issue of getting the extra stuff to give you better performance and/or features, like VU0 and VU1, and getting used to the idea of the embedded framebuffer. If you look at launch titles for PS2 and compare them to Dreamcast titles, you'll see that many PS2 titles had lower res textures and no progressive scan support, but offered enhanced lighting or higher poly counts. This was because some developers tried to fit the textures and rendered frames in the embedded memory like they would dedicated video memory on the DC or PC, so they were scalling back texture resolution and/or color depth, and rendering frames interlaced (half the resolution=half the memory footprint).

Gah!, I'm babbling.

[lost]

When did fanboy become fanboi?

What was the catalyst for this distinctly gangsta shift.

[see colon]

When did fanboy become fanboi?

What was the catalyst for this distinctly gangsta shift.

I'm not sure. That was after I retired.

[Virtuoso]

When did fanboy become fanboi?

What was the catalyst for this distinctly gangsta shift.

According to Urban Dictionary, boi means:


1. in the lesbian community, a young transgendered/androgynous/masculine person who is biologically female and presents themselves in a young, boyish way; a boidyke; often also identifies as genderqueer.

2. in the gay community, a young gay man;

3. in the BDSM community, someone who presents themselves in a young, boyish way and is usually a bottom/submissive;



So, calling someone a "fanboi" is a double insult.

[TeeCakes]

Thanks to this thread, I've entered "fanboidyke" into my lexicon!