Gabe Newell on multiplatform development.

[brawndolicious]

I first heard about this interview here, but it seems to kind of exaggerate it and make it seem that he wouldn't touch anything that isn't made by microsoft with a 10-foot pole.

The full interview is here so you can see the context of his comments.  The way he explains the way valve does multiplatform development sounds like that they make a framework that works easily with each platform and from there it takes a day to put that framework on each platform.  He says that in the long term PS3 development would work like that but he's is not so sure of the wii (this is obviously because of the huge processing difference.)

he seems to have pretty level-headed ideas throughout the interview.

[Rman]

I appreciate his candor, but he could've used more gentler words.  It just seems that some of his statements are said just to bait fanboys.

[cubicle47b]

Fuck fanboys.  Why bother using gentler words for a small group of internet douchebags?

[Fragamemnon]

To be fair, how many of us, in Gabe's position, would be resist baiting console fanboys? I know that I'd be having an exclusive interview with carefully prepared flamebait every other month or so if I was him-jerking their chain is too much fun.

[brawndolicious]

it's weird how insane people can get over these interviews, some people on beyond3d called him an intel fanboy.

Gabe (while obviously baiting the fanboys) doesn't seem to think that Cell would be the way of the future and so he thinks it's pointless to learn how to program for it.  He did seem to suggest that the PS3 versions will be developed by valve in the future.

[demi]

Gabe's a fatass don't defend him, he's not even a hottie either, he is on the same level as G

[recursivelyenumerable]

The only industry figure whose tech opinions I'd put much stock in would be Tim Sweeney, who really does have a very deep understanding of computer science.  Ability to manage game development moment-to-moment doesn't necessarily give/require insight into where technology needs to go in the future.

[brawndolicious]

The only industry figure whose tech opinions I'd put much stock in would be Tim Sweeney, who really does have a very deep understanding of computer science.  Ability to manage game development moment-to-moment doesn't necessarily give/require insight into where technology needs to go in the future.

do you think computers are going to be more Cell-like in design?  isn't that the more efficient way?

[Van Cruncheon]

The only industry figure whose tech opinions I'd put much stock in would be Tim Sweeney, who really does have a very deep understanding of computer science.  Ability to manage game development moment-to-moment doesn't necessarily give/require insight into where technology needs to go in the future.

do you think computers are going to be more Cell-like in design?  isn't that the more efficient way?

hardware is hardware; it ultimately confers no special properties outside of resources. efficiency is utilzation x output, which is determined by software and algorithm analysis and design, which is determined entirely by humans. when people call hardware "efficient," they are effectively saying "it compensates for my laziness."

or they're talking about power efficiency, which would be a non-sequitur here

[brawndolicious]

hardware is hardware; it ultimately confers no special properties outside of resources. efficiency is utilzation x output, which is determined by software and algorithm analysis and design, which is determined entirely by humans. when people call hardware "efficient," they are effectively saying "it compensates for my laziness."
or they're talking about power efficiency, which would be a non-sequitur here

right, the main reason PC's went multicore is because it would need like freon cooling or something if they kept pushing up to 10 GHz single core.

what I'm wondering is if that the PS3 developer ignored the PPE and just used the SPEs so that it's easier to move homogenous core work across the cores, would it be comparable to developing for the 360?  I would guess going from single core to multi core on PCs is much easier than for consoles because they still use x86.

[recursivelyenumerable]

efficiency is utilzation x output, which is determined by software and algorithm analysis and design, which is determined entirely by humans.

There is also efficiency in the algorithm analysis and design itself,  which depends on languages and tools.  Games aren't going to be written in distinguished mentally-challenged languages like C/C++/Java/C# forever.  See Tim Sweeney's excellent discussions of this topic, e.g http://www.st.cs.uni-sb.de/edu/seminare/2005/advanced-fp/docs/sweeny.pdf .  In Comic Sans, the ONLY font for real programming-language gurus.