IGN: BioShock Infinite Will Rock on the PS3

IGN:One of the biggest multiplatform games on the horizon, BioShock Infinite, might have PS3 gamers nervous over poor porting. So Irrational Games Lead Technical Designer Chris Kline reached out to fans in a recent forum post to assure PS3 owners that they won't be getting the short end of the stick this time around.

[Black-Helghast]

This is great news for ps3 fans of Bioshock, like me. =]

[Blacktric]

I think Sony also should start helping other multiplatform developers for their games to perform better on PS3. Most of them do perform good of course but some games (like Dragon Age: Origins) performs really bad on the system and I think if first party developers like Naughty Dog or Sucker Punch helped these "poor" folks, it'd be a win-win for everyone. Studios should put some more effort on PS3 versions too of course.

Edit: @Persistantthug

The game "looked" better on PS3 but performed way worse. There are FPS drops in every 10-20 seconds, saving the game takes a lot of time, decreased sound quality, very long loading times, etc. These things are simply stopping me from playing that game on the PS3. Of course all these are because of the poor development skills of Edge Of Reality (who ported the game to consoles).

Edit 2: @Dnied

I highly doubt it, but I hope you're right because I'm thinking about buying it for sometime now. Maybe I'll pick it up for PS3.

[Persistantthug]

From what I remember,
Dragon Age: origins was better on the PS3 than on the 360.

http://www.lensoftruth.com/...

[Dnied]

I purchased the ultimate edition from the EA store and I swear they made some huge graphical improvements or something because it's pretty damn smooth compared to the original one.. no idea

ps3 version btw

[DORMIN]

Anyone on their forums?

Someone needs to keep begging them to get the MLAA code that GoW3, LBP2, KZ3, Infamous 2 use.

[Ju]

"Maybe I'll pick it up for PS3" So, you're saying it performs worse but you haven't played it yet? Hm...

[Blacktric]

I have the "original" game. The normal version which comes with nothing but the game. I do not own the Ultimate Edition, which comes with every DLC and Awakening expansion and Dnied says Ultimate Edition runs better and much smoother than the standart edition.

[Dnied]

Oh well its definately solid on PS3 so I don't think you'd regret that.. whether its better than the ORIGINAL version I'm not 100% sure about that but everything seems so... smooth... like super MLAA or something lol not even kidding.

EA definately didn't say anything about that but it wouldn't surprise me if they just threw some aa overtop of everything as bioware probably knew a few more tricks about the PS3 than they did when it originally came out..

either way, its such a good deal so get the ultimate for sure, no performance issues at all on the PS3.. my choice was PS3 because 1. I hate getting spammed by xbox friends and I knew CoD would be out around the same time.. 2. I prefer trophies and 3. I prefer the DS3 controller =)

[TheLastGuardian]

I don't get where IGN is coming from. Why wouldn't the PS3 version rock? I played Bioshock 1 and 2 on PS3 and I thoroughly enjoyed them both.

[Anon1974]

I'm in the same boat. I played the first one one the 360 when it originally came out but played the second one on the PS3. They were both excellent in my books.

[Motorola]

Treyarch said that they had a separate team for Black ops on PS3...and looked how that turned out :( we will have to see

[hoops]

On the PS3 it was excellent imo.

[zeddy]

once again i'll believe it when i see it.

[Blaze929]

don't developers always say this? Same was said with BioShock 2, Mafia 2, etc....

[BattleAxe]

I tried playing through Bioshock, and I'm about 9 hours in, and I can't seem to understand why people like this game so much. I think the graphics are great and the sound is fantastc, but the gameplay is boring and repetitive. I just can't get excited enough about the game to play any further.

[ssj2gohan83]

Chris Kline is awesome guy. Not only is he an great developer. He also done really awesome video game music covers. Here are a view of my favorites.

Duke Nukem Grabbag cover
http://www.youtube.com/watc...

Lords of Thunder Dezant cover
http://www.youtube.com/watc...

Contra Jungle Theme cover
http://www.youtube.com/watc...

Here's his website. Chris' resume is listed on there.
http://www.vertexguy.com./

[im-12-years-old]

Nice viral marketing!

i kid i kid

[ssj2gohan83]

Nice one. :-D

[NYC_Gamer]

lets hope more studios put more effort

[sofocado]

also lets hope more studios put more money to it.

[AKissFromDaddy]

Awwwwwwwwwwesome

[Reborn]

Good news.

If only this could happen more often.

[KaiokenKid]

just like how that Ubisoft dude said that Brotherhood would be "Identical" on PS3 and 360.... Oh wait, it wasnt. Seriosuly, people, dont listen to devs when they say this, its a bold face lie. Gurantee you when analysis comes out for this game, itll be better on 360.

[Persistantthug]

How can you guarantee it, KaiokenKid?

[KaiokenKid]

well, gurantee might be a strong word, but its more then likely itll still be better on 360.

[Persistantthug]

If they lead the develop the game on the PS3, then I would expect the game to preform equally if not better on the PS3.....

Vanquish particularly comes to mind...especially after the Bayonetta fiasco/issue.

PLATINUM GAMES said the would lead dev. Vanquish on the PS3, and they most certainly delivered.

No offense, but because of that, you are not able to guarantee anything.

[Holeran]

When Bioshock 1 came out on the PS3 it came out after the xbox version by quite some time but they said graphically it was better than the xbox version.

[sp1deynut]

...they lied.

[raztad]

If they are using Deferred Rendering there is no way the PS3 version could be worse. It has been shown over and over PS3 is extremely good at deferred rendering. The list of games (not by chance some of the best looking games released) includes KZ2, UC2, Vanquish, NFS:HP and KZ3 beta.

[Chaos Striker]

The game won't use a total deferred rendering solution. Since it is based on the Unreal Engine 3 (heavily modified) it will retain the baseline structure similar to other UE3 games in the past. However, Irrational has mentioned that they ripped out the UE3's lightning scheme and implemented deferred lightning (utilized in Killzone 2/3 and Crysis 2). Additionally, they have restructured the engine to take advantage of the PS3's architecture (parallel processing I believe, but I'm not tech savvy enough to understand it).
That being said, Irrational is definitely going out of their way to ensure that the engine will work well on the PS3.

[Ju]

This will never happen.

You can start on the PS3 and write specific code on that console and optimize memory.

Most of those optimized modules can be backported to the PC/360 with relative ease. e.g. the SPUs will force you to write very small high efficient code. Obviously, if you do that, such code can be ported back to a scalar (multi) core or even shader with low effort (SPUs you can program in plain C++ code, shaders not so much). Same with memory. If you have a 256+256MB memory layout and are forced to use that, it certainly will perform better in 512MB (unified). Otherwise, you can also fill up 512 and try to squeeze this into PS3 architecture (sure possible, but much more work).

But, to take full advantage of the PS3 this does not go far enough. You'd need a fully deferred render pipeline, requires very specific render/lightning/geometry buffer setups. Or use a HD to stream or dynamic compressed textures. I also would guess, it will be tougher to have a transparent SPU/RSX setup mapped to pure shaders on the 360 (vertex reduction on SPU with different shader setup). While you'd try to compensate the not so optimized geometry on the 360 with greater shader power.

As soon as you do that, you'd have to strip things from the 360 version or will have a hard time to implement it there. This again, is hard if you ignore the 360 in the first place an write PS3 only code and then try to port it down.

I am sure, if you'd try to port UC2, GoW3 or KZ3 to the 360, what I am trying to say would become very apparent. You could possibly achieve a better result re-writing the render pipeline in such a case (and yet I doubt it would look the same). I would think, not even Naughty Dog, Santa Monica or Guerilla would be able to deliver the exact same experience if they'd do it themselves.

[CombineElite]

DAM!! your absolutely correct. As the 360 is inferior to the PS3 because the 360's GPU is weak and it has a low memory interface along with low ram. The 360 is a weak PC with low end specs while the only weakness in the PS3 is that dam RISC graphics accelerator and low Ram but that can be overcome as the Cell does all the work with proper programming techniques. which leaves the low ram as a serious flaw hence the blurry backgrounds or bad grass in many PS3 games.

Yeh even if a Sony studio made a game on the 360 it would look inferior to the PS3 version. Alan Wake was the 360's best graphical effort and it falls short of most PS3 AAA titles.

[StarScream4Ever]

Ohohooo..

Thats great to here, but as I primarily uses my PS3 over my 360 I heard once a while of how the PS3 is the main console development yet the product is not up to their words.

[KaiokenKid]

Exactly, its lies most of the time.

[KotC]

I didn't buy Bioshock 1 or 2 for the PS3 so I don't know. Were they crap ports or somthing like The Orange Box?

[CherryLu-Chan]

I plumped for the PS3 version of Bioshock purely because it had an extra bit at the end over the 360 version and it ran surperbly.

Hence I stuck with PS3 for the sequel and it was gorg.

[Godmars290]

Deliver.

[despair]

wait was enslaved noticeably better on the x360? don't know as I haven't played the retail game.

[saint_john_paul_ii]

the game ran on UE3. it was disgusting on PS3. Ninja Theory should of been embarrassed. They worked on PS3 with Heavenly sword, and that game looked amazing. why the Downgrade?

[SuperStrokey1123]

I is excited for more bioshock!

[M4ndat0ry_1nstall]

When a company/developer feels the need to reassure ONE fanbase that their version will be "Great", is a reason to worry. Like the saying goes "actions speak louder than words".

Not once have I read/heard a developer address "other" fanbase's in the same manner or as much as they do with the PS3. It's almost like their saying "We don't need to reassure the "other" fanbase(s) because we achieved everything we envisioned and set out to do, but on your platform [PS3] we basically achieved most of what we wanted and it looks GREAT!!".

[Masterchef2007]

Cant wait to see the results

[THEONEANDONLY85]

how many times have you heard that though?

[stonedgamer]

thats nice for the people that will purchase it, as for me you lost a loyal customer with the last port.

theres no excuse to dick gamers around just because you can.

screw me once shame on you, screw me twice shame on me.

i wont give you the opportunity to do that way again, what makes me sick Sony took devs like Rockstar to the top on the PS2 platform and they sure show their appreciation by giving PS3 users sub HD versions with screen tearing and full of bugs. with games like Red Dead and GTA4, the 360 gets a version with 720p with anti-aliasing, while PS3 is stuck with 640p and no anti-aliasing.

i didn't pay thousands of dollars for my HDTV to play washed out jaggy games.

you might fool a lot of sheep, but there a lot of gamers just like me and starting to realize we're getting screwed out of 60 bucks for a lesser version of the product.

[NeloAnjelo]

Dude... Well said! My comment below basically sums up what you said... Bubbles for you! And yeah, Capcom, Rockstar and so many others have made their names on the PS2. Now all PS3 gamers get are ports that are below par, lower than the 360 version, while paying the same price. Now that the console is selling more, there're gonna make it perform like the 360... Really? Shouldn't that have been the case anyway?

Yeah guys rejoice... NOT!

[FAGOL]

Wow great news.

[mynd]

So we are celebrating the fact that every other verison is bound to the PS3 version?
Umm. Yay? Nice to see all the fans want the game to be the best it can be on the other platforms.

[RockmanII7]

Good, the console you play on shouldn't effect the quality of the game.

[CombineElite]

Just Great, so in other words the PC version gets gimped? I hope not. I don't think so.

[leonlion]

ill believe it when i see it

[NeloAnjelo]

Thanks for assuring PS3 owners that the game will perform JUST LIKE the 360 version. This should already be standard. They make it sound like PS3 gamers are getting thrown a bone or that it's something extra.

Remember when so many people dimissed the system in it's first year... And all the crap ports... Now they all want to jump on the band wagon because the system is selling? Yeah thanks, but just do your job right and give every system a quality game, with performance. I can understand if a system is limited, but that's not the case with the 360 or the PS3.

[mynd]

You know, the elephant in the room is the fact that it will perform just like the 360 verison becuase the 360 version is being held back by the PS3 verson.
Big elephant, you dont want to hear it, but if it walks like a duck talks like a duck its a duck.
PS3=LCD confrimed.

FFS your all celebrating the fact that the PS3 is being baslined so the other verisons can increase the performance from there. You have to be complete fools to not to relaise what that means. Oh wait a minute its N4G.

[NeloAnjelo]

Dude, the argument isn't about platforms! Its about developers. Games should perform the same on both, becuase gamers are charged the same. Despite the platform. The argument goes both ways for 360 or PS3.

[joeorc]

@mynd

"360 version is being held back by the PS3 verson"

Really?

you want to go with that Claim?

let's put it this way, How is it that the only way some gamers tout the power of their system of choice and try to downplay the other system is only with 3RD party Game developer's?

Why not 1st party?

the fact that your trying to make that claim just shows that 1st party on the xbox360 platform has been done has it not?

and yet the game's from Sony 1st party show the exact point of the PS3 is not a LCD.

it's LCD only for some 3RD party's

NO IT means exactly what it is, they have a game engine for the xbox360 but not one for the PS3. and even then the xbox360 game engine is not optimized even for the xbox360!

how do you like that..A developer using a Game engine not even optimised for even the xbox360, you know why the xbox360 is touted by many 3rd party developer's because they do not have to make very much effort over the current engines they have been using for the PC with little to no near teaks to optimise
for the xbox360 because they feel no need to!

The point is as long as the xbox360 keep's getting rehashed Game engines for the xbox360 platform the result's are going to remain as they are, after 5 year's where is the effort by these 3RD PARTY developer's to make a optimised game Engine for the xbox360?

look at Alan Wake's IP it was made to take advantage of the xbox360's platform strong point's was it?

the point is it's not so cut an dry as your trying to make it out to be. until an effort to make a custom game engine for the xbox360 is made..o'l wait a min

X-Engine. Halo Reach

and people look at it as a great looking game, and it's a custom game engine for the xbox360, but yet many people still see it as no where near overshadowing the ps3 exclusives as your trying to make the ps3 out to be the lessor of the two.

[joeorc]

The creative director of Halo: Reach has confirmed that the game will push the Xbox 360 to the limits of its current processing capabilities.

“We are taking every advantage of everything on the CPU and GPU, and every bit of memory in order to produce the look of Reach beyond anything of Halo 3,” Marcus Lehto told Edge.

“We’re pushing it as far as we can go. With every iteration we understand what more we can exploit with the hardware.”

Meanwhile, community director Brian Jarrard explained that Halo: Reach will feature an improved AI for additional replay value.

“The AI system is super robust, and is taken for granted as a rich simulation. Everything is simulated, nothing is bolted down,” said Jarrard.

“You can throw a grenade in a room and it’s all physically simulated. Even in our giant environments you see films in which someone will throw a grenade and it will send a Warthog flying through the air and it’ll kill someone on the other side of the map.”

http://forum.teamxbox.com/s...

So do you think Bungie pushed the xbox360 to the limit's?

@mynd

is there room for improvement that Bungie could do?

[callahan09]

What is it with games journalists? They always make it out like PS3 ports of multiplatform games are so horrible. They aren't. I played both Bioshock games on PS3 and they were both awesome.

[Darkfiber]

Will look best on PC, just like every other game. 360 and PS3 fanboys can fight over the scraps.

[Rhezin]

yeah I bet, but only if you have enough money for a PC to support that kinda resolution. Which you probably do.......