Harmonix Devmakes sharp critique of PS3 dev; GAF dies.

[GilloD]

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=202894

read various game forums from time to time, and often see gamers complaining about 'lazy ports' to the ps3. They often mention how the ps3 is the most powerful game console and blame developers working on the console for doing a bad job. Sony has all of these people duped by impressive marketing spin, and I'm often amazed at how potent this type of rhetoric proves to be. For those unaware, I'm going to break it down simply and explain exactly why ports to the ps3 will never be as good as their 360 counter parts, and why most ps3 exclusives will likely continue to suck. First, lets debunk a few common misconceptions:

"The PS3 is more graphically advanced than the 360"

Fill rate is one of the primary ways to measure graphics performance - in essence, it's a number describing how many pixel operations you can perform. The fill rate on the PS3 is significantly slower than on the 360, meaning that games either have to run at lower resolution or use simpler shader effects to achieve the same performance. Additionally, the shader processing on the ps3 is significantly slower than on the 360, which means that a normal map takes more fill rate to draw on the ps3 than it does on the 360. And I'm not talking about small differences here, we're talking roughly half the pixel pushing power.

"Ok, fine, but the cell is like, super powerful"

In theory, sure, but in reality it doesn't work out that way. Game code simply doesn't split well across multiple processors. You can probably find a way to split a few things off fairly easily - put the audio on one processor, animation on another; but generally the breakup is always going to leave several of the SPUs idle or underutilized. On top of that, it's usually not CPU speed that restricts the visuals in games - it's fill rate.

"Uh, Blue Ray!"

Great for watching movies, but not so great for games. Getting data off the blue ray drive takes about twice as long as it does to get the same data off the 360's DVD drive. That translates into longer load times, or god forbid if your streaming from disk, tighter constraints on the amount of data you can stream.

"But it's got a lot more space than DVD"

Ok, you got me there - it does have a lot more space, and there is the potential to use that to do something cool, but thats unlikely to be realized in any useful way. There are tons of compression techniques available for data and I'd personally rather be able to get my data faster than have more of it. Most developers who use the entire Blue Ray drive are doing it to work around other problems with the ps3 such as it's slow loading - for instance, in Resistance: Fall of Man, every art asset is stored on disk once for every level that uses it. So rather than storing one copy of a texture, you're storing it 12 times. If you took that entire game and removed all the duplicate data, it would likely fit on a DVD without any problem. They do this to speed up load times, which, as I pointed out before, are painfully slow on the ps3. So in this case, the extra space is completely wasted.

"Once developers figure out the PS3 they'll maximize the hardware and it will be amazing"

I suspect a small number of PS3 only developers will optimize the hardware to do something cool. However, this will be an exception to the rule, and will likely involved game designs that are specifically designed for the hardware and funded by Sony. If those will prove to be fun or not is another question.

Most of the performance centric research into the PS3 has been around making it easier for developers to get the same level of performance you get out of the 360 naturally. For instance, some developers are using those extra SPU's on the cell to prepare data for the rendering pipeline. Basically, they take the data they would normally send to the graphics chip, send it to an SPU which optimizes it in some manner, then send it to the graphics chip. So, once again we see an 'advantage' in hardware being used to make up for a disadvantage in another area - a common theme with the ps3. And this introduces an extra frame of latency into the equation, making controller response slower.

So, the common theme is this; developers must spend significantly more time and resources getting the PS3 to do what the 360 can already do easily and with a lot less code. Lets look at how this translates into practical realities for a moment:

Why the PS3 version often pails in comparison to the 360 version, and why exclusives often suck:

As outlined above, getting equivalent performance out of the PS3 requires a lot of work unique to the platform, and in many cases, even with all these tricks, you still won't see equivalent performance. Thus, many ps3 games have simplified shaders and run at lower native resolutions than the 360 versions. On top of this, there is shrinking incentive to do this work; the PS3 isn't selling.

The code needed to make the PS3 work is most likely only useful to you on the PS3, as the types of tricks you need to do to make the thing perform are very unique to the platform and unlikely to be useful on any other architecture now or in the future. These issues all stem from unbalanced hardware design, and any future hardware that is this unbalanced will likely be unbalanced in a completely unique way.

Finally, there's the problem of resources. Game Development is, at it's heart, a resource management challenge. Given finite resources, do I have these five engineers work on optimizing the PS3 version to look better, or do I use them to make the game play better and fix bugs? Do I change my design to fit with what the PS3 hardware does well, or simply run the game at a slightly lower resolution on the PS3 to make up for it? Developers striving to push the PS3 hardware have often sacrificed their game in the process.

This post might come across as a lot of Sony bashing, but it's just the reality from the trenches. Sony let their hardware be designed by a comity of business interests rather than a well thought out design that would serve the game development community. They are going to loose hard this round because of it, and I hope that in the next round they take lessons from this round and produce a more balanced and usable machine.



http://jbooth.blogspot.com/2007/10/p...-and-spin.html

The GAF reaction is hilarious. No one respects his opinon and at least one thinks a decent rebuttal can be made in the form of  a Devil May Cry gif.

[MrAngryFace]

Thats an extremely on the level set of responses, something I am not capable of without LOLING cause its all so LOLworthy considering I think myself lucky for owning a console with no games simply because it is the version that has backwards compatibility with the previous console's huge library.

[Himu]

Thats an extremely on the level set of responses, something I am not capable of without LOLING cause its all so LOLworthy considering I think myself lucky for owning a console with no games simply because it is the version that has backwards compatibility with the previous console's huge library.

rub it in, maf rub it in

I want that version sooooo bad

[MrAngryFace]

Its awesome.

[Candyflip]

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=8375760&postcount=3

3rd post

[Sho Nuff]

that thread is a fucking bloodbath

[y2kev]

I am gonna count up the banz

all the fun happens while i'm asleep

[Van Cruncheon]

i been sayin' this for ages. for all practical purposes, 360 hardware >>> ps3 hardware

it must be a bloodbath at hans-age, i shall go check out the jotaro misery

[demi]

Maybe if he didn't make such shitty games there wouldn't be a problem

[demi]

I never liked Guitar Hero and Rock Band in the first place

[Candyflip]

I've never seen so much ad hominem in one thread.

[MrAngryFace]

The proof backing this dev = the number of PS3 games out that are worth a damn.

[Van Cruncheon]

there's a lot of dev blogs bashing the ps3 and saying the exact same thing. on the other hand, i have yet to find a dev blog post condemning the 360 outside of a few complaints about multi-core architecture in general.

[Howard Alan Treesong]

now I'm rethinking getting rock band on PS3 -______-

[Mupepe]

now I'm regretting getting the PS3 -______-

just say what we all know you're thinking

[CajoleJuice]

Why were you gonna get it on PS3 in the first place?

360 WE CAN PLAY TOGETHER

spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'm 21 years old, you can pretend I'm that chick

[close]

[cubicle47b]

Gabe Newell thread pt 2.  The only way GAF would believe the PS3 was a mess of a system was if Kojima and Kutargi held a press conference together to announce it.

[hyp]

great thread, boy are sony fans losing it these days. 

[Eel O'Brian]

Is this why everyone suddenly seems to be hating Rock Band over there now?   There's some major shit-talking going on.

Ha, I wish I could lobotomize people through the internet

[Smooth Groove]

[brawndolicious]

*jumps to hans-age*

why didn't I see this?

[GilloD]

I just love the fact that the only cogent reply GAF has mustered is "BBBBBBBBBBBUT ITS GOOD LOOKING. UNCHARTED!!!!!!!!!"

[hyp]

hey gillod, play psu w/ me again.

[GilloD]

hey gillod, play psu w/ me again.

We played? When? Also, I was supposed to sell my copy to Tiesto, but I kept forgetting

[Oblivion]

I am gonna count up the banz

all the fun happens while i'm asleep

There weren't that many.

Pharmacy
geezer
Dcharlie
blueheim
frequentlyNasty
jmdajr
M3freak
Solomon
Karasu
Crayon Shinchan

I think it was the DMC4 360 thread that was pretty impressive.

I didn't expect to see Dcharlie get banned tho. :/

[Howard Alan Treesong]

I didn't expect to see Dcharlie get banned tho. :/

Well, he IS a troll.

[Smooth Groove]

lol - at least Karass and a few other douche bags came along for the ride.

Not a fair trade, imo.  I've yet to see any post from Karasu that goes beyond juvenile rhetoric about how 360 suks and PS3 is so awesome.  Also, what's up with Xbox cowboy acting like a PS3 cowboy instead?  Only, at Gaf.  lol  It's amusing also how the Sony fans act like it's an irrefutable truth that the PS3 exclusives have the best graphics even though 360 games have consistently been rated equally or higher in the graphics dept.  R&C looks terrific, no doubt, but I strongly doubt that it wouldn't have been possible on the 360.  Even a 2 yr old game like Kameo shows some strenghts over R&C in some technical areas. 

[MrAngryFace]

Ah to be in the prime of my trolling life again...

[Smooth Groove]

Ah to be in the prime of my trolling life again...

Ichirou and Jotaro would argue that you're still doing a pretty good job.   

[MrAngryFace]

They're easy marks, its not the same

[Van Cruncheon]

dcharlie

[Eel O'Brian]

What's PES?

[MCD]

dcharlie 

[MCD]

What's PES?

Winning Eleven/Pro Evolution Soccer.

 

[brawndolicious]

what happened to with PES to make konami "lazy devs"?

[Smooth Groove]

wow at the PES news.

Time to add Konami to the list of "Lazy Ps3 devs"

F@lus didn't notice any framerate problems with the PS3 version.  How surprising. 

[demi]

what happened to with PES to make konami "lazy devs"?

Online is supposed to be really bad, and overall just a rubbish package

[Smooth Groove]

what happened to with PES to make konami "lazy devs"?

Online is supposed to be really bad, and overall just a rubbish package

You don't care about sports anyway, nerd. 

[brawndolicious]

you mean really laggy?  unranked?  I heard they're making a 360 version, is it better?

[demi]

what happened to with PES to make konami "lazy devs"?

Online is supposed to be really bad, and overall just a rubbish package

You don't care about sports anyway, nerd. 

Irrelevant, I read various sites

[Oblivion]

Link to thread, pls.

[Candyflip]

lol - at least Karass and a few other douche bags came along for the ride.

Not a fair trade, imo.  I've yet to see any post from Karasu that goes beyond juvenile rhetoric about how 360 suks and PS3 is so awesome.

If it helps any he comes across as a fucking nutter in OT.