EA Executive Comments On Developing Games On The PS3

From the article: "GamingBolt: Marvin Donald, gameplay director for Darksiders 2, recently said in an interview that the PS3 “is a pain in the ass to work with.” Have you had any such problems developing for the PS3 or any other specific platform?"

[Inside_out]

.
This is a smart man but he should of just said " no comment " because all his double talk pretty much says the same thing.

Whenever you hear any Dev, executive or CEO say different, they have an agenda to get that information out there.

Ea is a third party pub and is not in the business of exclusives...they would lose to much money...UNLESS somebody pays them too of course. Saying one platform is better than another would be counter productive.

NOW, when you hear 1st party devs sing about how a certain platform has this advantage or that...it's all political.

In REALITY, devs have started using the PS3 as the lead platform in development, not because it's the best, but because it's easier to port onto the 360 than the PS3. Plus, they don't have to deal with all the screaming fanboys when the graphics look better on one platform than the other.

When this gen started, the 360 launched first and games like Bioshock 1 looked great on 360 but then struggled to run on the PS3, requiring some manipulation to run properly. Last years GOTY, RDR, had much the same issues with the 360 version running 720p Vs 640p for the PS3. Mafia 2...many games struggled to be ported to the PS3. At one point, Valve had Ea have another company port Half-life 2 to the PS3 because of the difficulty.

None of that matters now, as they have started using the PS3 as the lead platform as as they say, load the wagon, the mule is blind.

[vyke3]

lol, I never read your comments. I go straight to the disagree.

[blumatt]

While I agree in this instance (that a disagree is necessary), I believe that's one problem with this website. People just look at other people's names and automatically click disagree. Anytime I comment, I can guarantee at least one or two disagrees. Kind of childish, if you as me.

On topic, I'd say if developers haven't taken the time to understand the Cell now that it's been 5+ years they've been exposed to it, it's safe to say that they are in fact lazy. It can't be THAT complicated. lol Plus, I believe the Cell will be continued to be used for the PS4 (More SPUs (32??) and more RAM). Are developers still going to be fussing about the Cell in another 5 years?? Time will tell.

[consolez_FTW]

@ blumatt
you have to make an exception to your rule of disagreeing just because of user names when dealing with such Inside_Out.

[nickjkl]

lol vyke not having him on your ignore list

[vyke3]

okay i do read his comments sometimes, but if i put him in my ignore list how can i disagree with him then?

[wumster]

I thought he handle the question quite well. He has worked on all systems so he would know the intricacies of each systems.

[hiredhelp]

H e was level headed and didnt favor one after the other. witch is how buisness should be handled when you develop for all major consoles. you cant afford to come out with silly remarks that can be taken soo easy out of context.
next thing you know you have a flambait war.
way i see it the guy has a point.
they try to keep the games the same. we know 360 is limited with space we know ps3 got that space. but with that space comes issues with ram and the cell tech. but these devs have been working on these platforms for sometime.
they know what here doing who are we to judge or disagree. unless your a dev yourself?

[xtremegamerage]

Simple 3 cores xbox360.
1 core PS3 + spu's.

Most early titles used a single core while using 2 cores of the 360, gears 1 used 2. halflife used 2, fear used 2. etc.

That's why the rez drop etc or other problems.

[qwertyz]

no thats not the reason ps3 is difcult to code for. both consoles have the same amount of ram although the 360s OS consmes less memory so it has a little more.

1) ppe instruction decode rate bottlenecks the spes. what happens is tis, the ppe uses the spes as execution units and what a core does is that it first decodes the instruction then decides what best to do and tells its execution units(branch, integer alus, vertcor units etc) what to do.

2) weak branch prediction(spus only use static branch prediction which is the most simplistic and crappy form the ppe hs a 3 way branch unit but its not enough to keep up with all the spus)

3) low amount of HIGH latency L2 cache(complete fail)

4) all spes have to be coded for individually

5) spus not being able to access RAM directly(they have to rely on the ppe which is already slow) which is another bottleneck

6) the spus and ppes have different ISAs so when parts of code have to run on the ppe and spu simultaneously programming it to work is a pain in the ass.

7) graphics rendering is done on both the cell and the rsx which can be difficult because both chips use different memory pools so at times processing time is used to copy data back and forth to and from both pools of ram or the same data would have to be copied into both the gddr3 and the xdr which causes memory to go to waste. A unified memory architecture would have made things easier

8) memory bandwidth: the rsx has about 20GB/S bandwidth for the frame buffer, pixel and vertex pipelines, texture streaming, lighting calculations and the rops.The folowing sap alot of bandwidth

* ROPS- which handle alpha effects and transparencies
* framebuffers- render targets (resolution)
* HDR
* MSAA
* lighting effects such as global illumination, differed lighting, dynamic lights and god rays

while on 360 bandwidth intensive operations are carried out on its edram chip which has 256 GB/S bandwidth, because of its 10mb limit it causes games to be sub-hd at times but all alpha effects on 360 are usually rendered at full resolution because the edram bandwidth allows the ROPS run at FULL capacity at ALL times. the edram can also be used to get FREE hdr this was used in crysis 2 and halo reach.

the 360s cpu simply has less bottlenecks because
1)each ppe has its own instruction decode unit(doesn't share it with anything)

2)each core can access memory independently

3) each core has its own dedicated 3 way branch unit

4) coding for xenon is a breeze because all you have to do is code for 1 core and scale across the rest.

5) unified memory architecture allows developers split ram between cpu and gpu how ever the please

[drsnobby]

Sony's next console will be developer friendly,or shall i say 3rd party developer friendly.we all know sony's 1st party developers enjoy using the cell to make games for the PS3 and the proof is in the pudding,but having 3rd party devs making games on the ps3 without being a port is a blessing.sony said that they will make it easier for 3rd party devs to make games on the ps4.remember gamers time is money.

[danthebios]

This means people that made ps3 exclusive games are genius,they never bitch about how hard it is to develope but take pride of their work for the ps3.

[_Aarix_]

Its not hard to develop for but its an absolite pain to port