Saints Row dev couldn't get its head around Cell

Admiratio - 518 days 23 hours ago

"For the sequel Volition has since hired a dedicated PS3 team to tackle the hardware."

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Bubble Buddy - 518 days 23 hours ago

Go call Insomniac and Naughty Dog.

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avacadosnorkel - 518 days 22 hours ago

If all the PS3 has going for it developer-wise is Naughty Dog and Insomniac I for one, would be worried.

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thor - 518 days 22 hours ago

Look even EA are starting to get games out with equivalent versions across the systems; many devs are producing better looking games on PS3, and some exclusive PS3 games are well ahead of any Xbox game out there. So I wouldn't be worried.

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gaffyh - 518 days 22 hours ago

@avacado - Naughty Dog helped develop Edge Tools for PS3 with Sony, so they could easily help any developer. It also shows you why Uncharted looks and feels so great to play. Also Insomniac has openly said that they would be willing to help 3rd party devs that are having problems developing for the PS3.

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FantasyStar - 518 days 20 hours ago

Don't forget to add Insomniac & Guerrilla Games to that list of Edge Tools (formally known as Playstation Edge) contributors.

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thebudgetgamer - 518 days 19 hours ago

who wants to be forward thinking when you can be lazy and keep doing the same thing on the same architecture

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juuken - 518 days 18 hours ago

The help is right there in front of third party developers and yet they use the same excuses over, and over again.

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Bangladesh - 518 days 16 hours ago

While I agree that devs are improving on the Cell. I certainly haven't played or seen any ps3 games that are "well ahead" of everything on 360. And that includes MGS4, Uncharted, and KZ2. Maybe I've just played more games than you have, but I haven't played/seen ANY ps3 game that couldn't graphically be done on the 360 and vice-versa.

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tplarkin7 - 518 days 15 hours ago

The Xbox 360 is forward looking. 3-Core CPU, embedded DRAM, and the first consumer machine to use unified shaders. I think Sony was backward looking since they divided the RAM between GPU and CPU.

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shazam - 518 days 14 hours ago

that was the most ignorant statement i have ever heard. you have no idea what you're talking about.

i posted a big wall of text on here explaining this. i will see if i can dig it up.

edit

her it is:

"The only reason why the Xbox 360 is able to have a unified memory architecture is because of the 10MB of high bandwidth EDRAM for the frame buffer. If it did not have this, the frame buffer would have to be stored on the GDDR3. Xenon (the CPU) has to ask Xenos (the GPU) if it can use some of the RAM. But if the frame buffer was in the GDDR3, there would be no bandwidth left for the CPU. So basically the CPU wouldn't be able to function, which means that the system would be unable to function. The 360 simply wouldn't work without the EDRAM.

So Microsoft chose to add more heat and cost for a 100M transistor daughter die in order to have a slightly more flexible memory architecture. In fact I bet that if the Xbox 360 had a split memory architecture and no EDRAM, there would be no RROD problem right now. Every other modern computing system riht now has a split memory architecture between the CPU and GPU. This includes PS3, PC's, Macs, etc.. I also guarantee that the next Xbox will have split memory."

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Tarasque - 518 days 12 hours ago

Let me get my rain coat the tear's are going to fly....Boohoo....they arn't as good as Naughtydog....Boohoo....Why dont they call insomniac....Boohoo. I don't blame a single dev that doesn't wan't to make game's for the ps3 alot of them don't have the time nor the money to be wasting time learning a new tech, when there is 2 platform's you can make money at in half the time. That would be like someone asking you if you wanted this high paying job in 2 year's or 4 year's what would you pick? But if you pick 2 year's you are more likely to make more money than if you pick 4 year's.

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Dareaver1 - 518 days 11 hours ago

So let me get this right, you are knocking the 360 for its architecture in the GPU. So what if it needs the EDRAM, wasn't that the point. MS paid ATI to develop a GPU that they could utilize in the 360. All it's components are specifically designed for running on the 360. That's a pointless argument, that's just as bad as complaining about the Cell architecture.

Your argument is purely pointless. The PS3's Cell architecture is not conventional and not in common pc's, but it deserves praise; and then the 360's architecture is not conventional and not in current pc's but it should be reverted back to what is conventional. I'm sorry but your argument can't hold water without being seen as a total hypocrisy.

There are plus and minuses to both consoles architecture, but by insinuating ones unconventional setup is great and to knock the others is hypocritical. The Cell (a beast at processing power, but harder to develop for/understand, and we have the 360's (future tech, said to be 2 generations ahead on 360's release, but causes increased heat production); what was your point?

Oh and there were more variables on why the 360 had hardware failures. Where they were assembled, they weren't allowed to use a certain grade soldering. The soldering they wanted to use had higher heat thresholds, but it's impact on the environment made it not useable in the country they were manufactured.
Both consoles use future tech that might or might not be adopted to personal pc's. That's why they are made specifically for consoles.

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thebudgetgamer - 518 days 11 hours ago

its an awesome console capable of amazing games. what I'm talking about is lazy devs that don't want to push themselves and i get that the ps3 is a beast to code on but i think its been proven that devs willing to push themselves they can create awesome software for the big black box

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MorganX - 518 days 1 hour ago

I wouldn't call them Lazy. Development costs money. Everyone isn't EA. Why wouldn't developers use tools that are easier to use and utilize skills that can also be used on other platforms?

Microsoft excels at developer tools and supporting developers. It appears Sony does not. As it becomes more profitable, more developers will invest in learning the PS3 architecture and how to code for it well. Unfortunately, all that investment can only see an ROI once. Sony sales. Whereas development skills on the 360 can potentially provide ROI on the 360, PCs, and XBLA, on top of being easier to learn and having a larger pool of experienced developers.

It's somewhat analagous to Sony's decision to use Bluetooth for its remote. How many peripheral makers are going to make a universal Bluetooth remote for PS3? There are several for 360.

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Leathersoup - 518 days 23 hours ago

Sony's ninjas are too busy trying to get Home to work.

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Action Bastard - 518 days 23 hours ago

Wouldn't "Sony's ninjas are too busy trying to get Home released" be more accurate? Meh. Tomato/Tomaato

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spandexxking - 518 days 23 hours ago

i wanna see what saints 2 is like. sorry but gta4 sucked

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beavis4play - 518 days 22 hours ago

gta4 wasn't nearly as good as vice city or san andreas

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va_bank - 518 days 22 hours ago

yeah. I'm disappointed in GTA as well. That's the only reason I will check out Saints Row this time.

Unless it turns out that they STILL didn't get "their head around PS3".

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25 - 518 days 18 hours ago

sure there was a lot of detail and care put into it. but the game fell short of expectations. i had more fun playing saints row than gta4, so i am looking forward for the sequel.

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Fishy80 - 518 days 17 hours ago

well i didnt like GTA4, not that great.
and i saw some saints row 2 video's it looks like a ps2 game :(

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keops3 - 518 days 12 hours ago

Waiting for L.A.NOIRE and MAFIA 2

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fresco - 518 days 22 hours ago

How about driving a car in GTA4 and it disappears lol

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themyk - 518 days 21 hours ago

are you talking about saints row. or gta4?

because from what i understand. saints row multi player is going to piss all over gta4s multi player.

gta4 wasn't THAT bad of a game. they tried to take it in another direction.

saints row is going to be fun as hell

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TOSgamer - 518 days 23 hours ago

Blaming 3rd parties all the time is getting kind of old. I say this as a PS3 owner. But if you bothered to read the article he says Sony didn't have the support in place to help them when problems arose back in 2k7.

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dachiefsman - 518 days 23 hours ago

come on you should know by now that people here don't read articles.

if an article says something contrary to THEIR system, its defense mode automatically.

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Snukadaman - 518 days 23 hours ago

Bubbles for you man...No one likes to blame sony for most of their problems when in fact sony is guilty for all of them.

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va_bank - 518 days 22 hours ago

Right. Konami, Naughty Dog, Insomniac, Incognito, Infinity Ward, Tecmo, Poliphony Digital even EA (Burnout) all did it, but since Volition couldn't, I'd say it's definately SONY's fault.

</end sarcasm>

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Drekken - 518 days 21 hours ago

Cell is the future. Quit your crying and conform.

We should of just stuck with black and white TV's. We should of stayed with rotary dial phones... or better yet: phones that you tap the phone and ask an operator to connect you. We should of stayed with dial up internet... why lay new cables? We should of stayed with crank engines - who wants to learn how to make something new and BETTER. We should have stayed with computers the size of a room costing thousands of dollars - screw evolution and technological advances... they are costly and time consuming to learn.

The cell is still being tapped into and will evolve just like old tech chipsets have... This is the first gen and it is blowing away quad/dual cores... so you tell me: Why should Sony use old school, played out tech? To make devs life easier? Give me a break.

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FantasyStar - 518 days 20 hours ago

It was the same for PS2 that developers had a hard time with the Emotion Engine as well. I'd give it time- like another year or so. I do blame Sony for the harder architecture leading to crappy ports, but well..that's the price you pay for the advancement of gaming technology.

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Bangladesh - 518 days 16 hours ago

Sony & Toshiba were not trying to make leaps and bounds in computer technology when they paid IBM to engineer the Cell. Sony was looking for a chip that could be used as a CPU/GPU hybrid (just like Emotion Engine) as well as being a powerful video decoder for the blu-ray movie format that they were developing. Toshiba was interested in a powerful video decoder for their HDTV's. The Cell isn't the future of PC boards or gaming. It's a cutting edge video decoder, and a "poor man's" multi-core processor(though the Cell has one core). What some of you are calling the "future of technology", is actually nothing more than two companies that needed a cutting edge video decoder for their HD products.

http://www.afterdawn.com/ne...
http://www.videsignline.com...
http://eetimes.eu/showArtic...

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trikster40 - 518 days 15 hours ago

saying Sony should have gone with a more conventional setup goes against the entire grain of what made the console gaming market great. In other words, they should have made it like PC architecture like the 360? Over the last 2 generations, the Playstation brand is the only brand that constantly evolved and improved over the lifespan of the system. That isn't saying others didn't, but the PS1 and PS2 pulled some $h!t off that no one thought possible, like God of War 2. I am glad Sony thinks outside of the box because it leaves SO much room for learning and evolving the way games are made.

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Bangladesh - 518 days 14 hours ago

From what I see though trickster40, Sony has done gamers a dis service. They built a machine that was over-priced and built entirely around injecting the public with their in-house movie format. Do you honestly believe that they had gaming in mind when they put a chip that not a single developer knew how to use in the beginning. I think it's great that GOD of War has graphics on the same level as Gamecube and Xbox games. But wouldn't it have been nice to have that quality day 1, instead of 6-8 years into the console cycle?

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trikster40 - 518 days 8 hours ago

People always say that the PS3 is only to get their format in...has everyone forgotten about PS1 and CD-rom, then PS@ and DVD-ROM? Can you imagine a game now without at least the DVD format? It is already starting to show that DVD just isn't enough, so what is so wrong with Blu-Ray?

Also, it's not like the PS2 would have looked like God of War 2 from Day 1. The PS2 came out a whole year before the Gamecube and XBox, and it could pump out graphics as well as any of them, and you constantly saw improvement from each generation of games. The same can not be said for the other two systems. What is wrong with pushing the ways developers think? Like any industry, it is those who push the limits that break them.

There is nothing wrong with making your system easy to develop for, but ease can only take you so far. Developers like to push the boundaries, and challenege themselves. Most devs who lead on PS3 really enjoy programming on the cores.

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NMC2007 - 518 days 22 hours ago

I am sooooo sick of this comment, lazy devs, gimmie a break, if they were lazy then this would be on X360 and Wii and not trying to bust their ass to put it on PS3, yeah, lazy.

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elitewh0re - 518 days 22 hours ago

@ above.. yeah i can agree, its easy to throw the lazy card about, but I can see it from the otherside, i'm sure sometimes they develop just to the bare-minium when porting, hence the lack of polish. but in this story, they did ask for help, and none was given.

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Silellak - 518 days 22 hours ago

It's not lazy - it's math.

X - money needed to develop a game for the PS3.
Y - estimated sales of game.

If, due to inexperience with the system, X > Y, the project is going to be canned, because it won't make money. I'm not sure they planned for the Saint's Row port to the PS3 to sell that much, since GTA4 was the much 'bigger' name.

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ReBurn - 518 days 2 hours ago

The "lazy devs" comment is so old. I'm sure that every single person who drops that line has the experience to do it better, right?

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elitewh0re - 518 days 22 hours ago

didnt you read the article..? they did.. sony didnt help...
edit:
so am i.. :S and no need to get derogotive, lighten up fella

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Steven Colbert - 518 days 22 hours ago

@Pimphandhappy Volition made a game called Red Faction.It was the one of the first if not the first game to have destructible environments.It was a fine shooter on the PS2 and Xbox

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deathray - 518 days 14 hours ago

ha ha that's funny. stupid, but also funny in a strictly retarded way.

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Jason 360 - 518 days 17 hours ago

Yeah agree, I'm tired of mutiplatform games on the 360 being held back because of the PS3.

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Jason 360 - 518 days 14 hours ago

GameDev... if you have to advertise that you're a GameDev, means your not a GameDev. Nice try though, naming yourself GameDev to try and establish some elite credit among anonymous internet gaming nerds. Now excuse me while I go rename myself EpicDev so I can "pretend" to be somebody I'm not, maybe more people will like me and believe that it's true. Even if a game developer should come here,(doubtful) how would we know if he didn't work on a POS game like Haze or Lair? It's funny yoy saying "two idiots who their 360 on a daily basis" while your d!ck is stuck in a PS3. Wanna know what the word "hypocrite" means and what it looks like? Just go stand in front of a mirror, and look at the ugly ass face looking back at you.

F**king noob, know how many people have tried that over the past few years this sites been open?

Have a nice day...:)

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IzKyD1331 - 518 days 13 hours ago

you think devs enjoy making games on DVD9 and having to compress everything?

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