Medellin Posted October 27, 2007 Share Posted October 27, 2007 I 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://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=17934 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
henman888 Posted October 27, 2007 Share Posted October 27, 2007 So what does these difference mean. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
____ Posted October 27, 2007 Share Posted October 27, 2007 Cliffs: Despite the PS3's raw advantages, it's not optimized and therefore results in a worse system than the 360. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
99pulse99 Posted October 27, 2007 Share Posted October 27, 2007 http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=8375961&postcount=65 Gf lazy dev We can breath in space, they just don't want us to escape Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Medellin Posted October 27, 2007 Author Share Posted October 27, 2007 I don't see how that falsifies his statements, nor make him lazy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
99pulse99 Posted October 28, 2007 Share Posted October 28, 2007 I don't see how that falsifies his statements, nor make him lazy. His statement might be true but it is made out of pure hate and hes doing this for his own benefit not ours. Hes lazy cos he can't cope with the demands of the PS3 as it is more of a complex console than a 360. Its quite a common term for devs. We can breath in space, they just don't want us to escape Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
henman888 Posted October 28, 2007 Share Posted October 28, 2007 The only thing in that report was that it still mentions rubbish exclusives. Oh come on its almost one year after launch and there is exclusives on it and many more to come... 1.Resistance will always be the one 2.Warhawk a good online game 3.MGS4(i doubt whether this will remain a PS3 exclusive) 4. Ratchet and Clank: future tools of destruction 5. Lair 6.Folklore 7. Playstation home 8. Gran Turismo 5 Prologe 9.Motorstorm 10. and loads and loads of downloads from the store And more... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nadril Posted October 28, 2007 Share Posted October 28, 2007 ^ Lair sucked majorly, and MGS4 isn't even out yet -- nor is GT5. His point isn't about the quality of the exclusives but the fact that the PS3 will always be weaker to the 360 because of how difficult it is to program on multiple cores (especially 8 like the PS3 has) well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
henman888 Posted October 28, 2007 Share Posted October 28, 2007 oh there is more... And if your talking about games then PS3 has that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nadril Posted October 28, 2007 Share Posted October 28, 2007 oh there is more... And if your talking about games then PS3 has that. i'm not talking about how many games it has, I'm talking purely from a technical standpoint here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
henman888 Posted October 29, 2007 Share Posted October 29, 2007 Wait! I don't get something. So you are trying to say the PS3 is bad compared to the 360 in technical things. :-s I explain how the 360 is... not the best console in reliability. Because of... 1. ring of death 2. Overheating 3. and some discs get damaged :D I wait for your reply... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
____ Posted October 30, 2007 Share Posted October 30, 2007 I'll take the probability of those listed things than having paid almost a grand for a console which performs worse than it should. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
runescapeloser22 Posted October 30, 2007 Share Posted October 30, 2007 GTA5 is PS3 exclusive? wtf? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nadril Posted October 30, 2007 Share Posted October 30, 2007 Wait! I don't get something. So you are trying to say the PS3 is bad compared to the 360 in technical things. :-s I explain how the 360 is... not the best console in reliability. Because of... 1. ring of death 2. Overheating 3. and some discs get damaged :D I wait for your reply... They have fixed that with new models, at least, I heard it a while back. None-the-less its truely a case of the outspoken minority, I and plenty of people I know have not had any problems. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ReapMe Posted October 30, 2007 Share Posted October 30, 2007 Wait! I don't get something. So you are trying to say the PS3 is bad compared to the 360 in technical things. :-s I explain how the 360 is... not the best console in reliability. Because of... 1. ring of death 2. Overheating 3. and some discs get damaged :D I wait for your reply... the numbers were one out of every three 360's would have the red ring prob ps3 is $379 for the 20 gig and $499 for the 80 gig not sure what the 360 is at but i bought the 360 elite for $449 so it isn't much more expensive What? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adam_ross0 Posted October 30, 2007 Share Posted October 30, 2007 Wait! I don't get something. So you are trying to say the PS3 is bad compared to the 360 in technical things. :-s I explain how the 360 is... not the best console in reliability. Because of... 1. ring of death 2. Overheating 3. and some discs get damaged :D I wait for your reply... The Ring of Death is fixed by calling Microsoft for a brand new 360. Free. No charge. Only time. Overheating, I'm not exactly sure but it's probably the same as the RoD. And I'm pretty sure if you don't play 40 hours straight, it won't overheat. As for damaged discs, they're coming closer to fixing this problem. Even then, I think you can still use resurfacing tools to fix it. Even then, I'd rather spend my hard-earned money on a good console, all the while taking a small chance at console failure, than buy a console which doesnt perform near as well as the company claims it can (PS3). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Medellin Posted October 30, 2007 Author Share Posted October 30, 2007 I wait for your reply... 3 Year Warranty Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sycosis5 Posted October 30, 2007 Share Posted October 30, 2007 ^ Lair sucked majorly, and MGS4 isn't even out yet -- nor is GT5. His point isn't about the quality of the exclusives but the fact that the PS3 will always be weaker to the 360 because of how difficult it is to program on multiple cores (especially 8 like the PS3 has) well. Major doesn't begin to describe it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cyco Posted October 31, 2007 Share Posted October 31, 2007 Wait! I don't get something. So you are trying to say the PS3 is bad compared to the 360 in technical things. :-s I explain how the 360 is... not the best console in reliability. Because of... 1. ring of death 2. Overheating 3. and some discs get damaged :D I wait for your reply... They have fixed that with new models, at least, I heard it a while back. None-the-less its truely a case of the outspoken minority, I and plenty of people I know have not had any problems. I bought mine at Launch and haven't had any issues. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
limpbizkit Posted October 31, 2007 Share Posted October 31, 2007 Wait! I don't get something. So you are trying to say the PS3 is bad compared to the 360 in technical things. :-s I explain how the 360 is... not the best console in reliability. Because of... 1. ring of death 2. Overheating 3. and some discs get damaged :D I wait for your reply... ring of death - was due to such a HIGH demand that made them rush it. Overheating is idiots doing it so the fan cant work properly discs damaged is MOVING the console. Tif 360 MGC Leaderboard Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nadril Posted October 31, 2007 Share Posted October 31, 2007 Wait! I don't get something. So you are trying to say the PS3 is bad compared to the 360 in technical things. :-s I explain how the 360 is... not the best console in reliability. Because of... 1. ring of death 2. Overheating 3. and some discs get damaged :D I wait for your reply... They have fixed that with new models, at least, I heard it a while back. None-the-less its truely a case of the outspoken minority, I and plenty of people I know have not had any problems. I bought mine at Launch and haven't had any issues. Likewise I've had mine for a while with no problems. I mean, I don't play it near as much but still. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
henman888 Posted October 31, 2007 Share Posted October 31, 2007 I would want a console that... 1. Has good games 2. Has got good features!!!!! 3. Is basically fun :D Nearly everyone here said that system failure doesn't matter. :? That just proves that you are defending the 360 like i was to the PS3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ugafan_2009 Posted November 1, 2007 Share Posted November 1, 2007 I would want a console that... 1. Has good games 2. Has got good features!!!!! 3. Is basically fun :D Nearly everyone here said that system failure doesn't matter. :? That just proves that you are defending the 360 like i was to the PS3Read it again, of course system failure matters. People would rather just take that small risk and go with the superior console. All three of the things you named go hand in hand with the 360. Quit RS, combat 104, total 1651 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
henman888 Posted November 1, 2007 Share Posted November 1, 2007 I would want a console that... 1. Has good games 2. Has got good features!!!!! 3. Is basically fun :D Nearly everyone here said that system failure doesn't matter. :? That just proves that you are defending the 360 like i was to the PS3Read it again, of course system failure matters. People would rather just take that small risk and go with the superior console. All three of the things you named go hand in hand with the 360. All the things i read go with the PS3 also but... compared with the PS3 the 360 hardly has any good features apart from xbox live. And i will always say and belive the PS3 is better. Because some of you will argue back, don't worry i'll do it for you. 360 person:The PS3 hardly has any good games Its expensive. Me: 1. Actually now it has some really good games 2. Theres been a large price cut so its only a little more than the 360 And for just a little more you got a whole lot more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Medellin Posted November 1, 2007 Author Share Posted November 1, 2007 Ratchet and Clank is the only game worth a **** for the PS3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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