Guitar Hero/Rock Band developer discusses PS3's advanced "features"

[Ruined]

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

Hmm, his arguments sound familiar

small snippet:

"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.

And, thus why nearly every multiplatform title has less slowdown or looks better on 360 than PS3.

[MooglePorn]

Same old story, the guy is developing for 360 and PS3 at the same time, of course there are issues. PS3 exclusives show the system can push as much awesome as the 360 if not moreso, so these comments really just make developers look silly.

[Ruined]

Originally Posted by MooglePorn

Same old story, the guy is developing for 360 and PS3 at the same time, of course there are issues. PS3 exclusives show the system can push as much awesome as the 360 if not moreso, so these comments really just make developers look silly.

Gabe Newell (Valve, Half Life/Counterstrike/Portal series)
John Carmack (id Software, Doom/Quake series)
Tim Sweeney (Epic, Unreal series)
Dave Asbell (EA)
Jason Booth (Harmonix, Guitar Hero/Rockband series)

All say that the PS3 is overcomplicated and/or overall an inferior machine to program for than the 360. Yes, if Sony lines the pockets of a dev to waste time programming for their overcomplicated architecture than it can approach the quality of XBOX 360. That doesn't mean a third party dev is going to waste the same time/money doing so.

But I guess you believe that they are all "silly", eh? What do they know anyway, Sony PR has much greater expertise in programming!

[shnikey]

The biggest three names you quoted above are all long time PC developers. The PS3 architecture is different from PC/360 architecture. That is all that this stuff stems from. I don't hear the boys at Insomniac, Sucker Punch, or Naughty Dog complaining. Why is that? Is it because Sony will bring down the hammer on them if they say anything? No, it is because they all worked on the PS2 and are comfortable with the way these Sony consoles work. Take any developer that has been working on similar architecture for 10 years and tell them to work on a completely different system they will bitch about it.

A sloppy port has nothing to do the 360 being better than the PS3. It has to do with the architectures being too different to do a quality port in the time given to the developers. They rush it and it turns out bad.

To actually reference your original post. This guy is just a troll and I don't think he has any credibility:

"...and why most ps3 exclusives will likely continue to suck."

This is just wrong. Resistance, Motorstorm, Heavenly Sword, Lair, and Ratchet all look great. The gripes I have heard about any of these games are all knocks on the gameplay, length, and all things having nothing to do with the tech beind them. You can bash the EA ports and what not, but there is no argument that there are high quality games on the PS3.

There is also this little nugget of info:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost...1&postcount=65

[Ruined]

Originally Posted by shnikey

I don't hear the boys at Insomniac, Sucker Punch, or Naughty Dog complaining. Why is that?

Because Sony is directly paying them to make quality PS3 games, and thus they do not have the freedom to make comments like the above when they would be essentially criticizing the source of their paycheck and probably breaching contract at some level, too.

A sloppy port has nothing to do the 360 being better than the PS3.

We are not talking about a sloppy port. We are talking about nearly every multiplatform game from EA to Ubisoft looking better or running with less slowdown on the 360. That speaks volumes on its own.

[umainebearman]

K heres the deal (say it like Dr. Cox from Scrubs). You play GH 3 on your PS3 and keep an eye strictly on how much better the backgrounds and characters are and post your score. Now I'll play the same song on the 360 while doing what 99.9% of everyone else does while playing GH games... LOOK AT THE NOTE CHART! I bet I win. If the PS 3 camp wants a win in graphical power and wowwie kazowie that bad you know what... you can have it on GH and Rock band!

Congratulations Sony! You sure whipped us this time! MAN I sure feel foolish knowing that Guitar Hero and Rock band look better on your console.

[Wurms]

Originally Posted by umainebearman

K heres the deal (say it like Dr. Cox from Scrubs). You play GH 3 on your PS3 and keep an eye strictly on how much better the backgrounds and characters are and post your score. Now I'll play the same song on the 360 while doing what 99.9% of everyone else does while playing GH games... LOOK AT THE NOTE CHART! I bet I win. If the PS 3 camp wants a win in graphical power and wowwie kazowie that bad you know what... you can have it on GH and Rock band!

Congratulations Sony! You sure whipped us this time! MAN I sure feel foolish knowing that Guitar Hero and Rock band look better on your console.

Maybe try reading the post instead of just the title


I got no problems with PS3 games, and love their exclusives, and blu-ray. Also, I like that my system doesn't overheat, burn up, etc.

[MooglePorn]

Originally Posted by shnikey

The biggest three names you quoted above are all long time PC developers. The PS3 architecture is different from PC/360 architecture. That is all that this stuff stems from. I don't hear the boys at Insomniac, Sucker Punch, or Naughty Dog complaining. Why is that? Is it because Sony will bring down the hammer on them if they say anything? No, it is because they all worked on the PS2 and are comfortable with the way these Sony consoles work. Take any developer that has been working on similar architecture for 10 years and tell them to work on a completely different system they will bitch about it.

Exactly.

Newell even said the PS3 was powerful, it's just much different to program for than a PC/360 and it doesn't have the install-base to make all the extra programming worthwhile, so games come out with worse graphics and/or slowdown.

It's not rocket science.

Jumping in and saying "see the PS3 sucks" is not the way to go though Ruined. Personally I would rather bitch at the publishers for releasing an inferior product... if the PS3 base isn't worth a good port, then don't port the fucking thing. If you're going to deliver a product, deliver it with quality, or I will call you out on it. It's not the PS3's fault these guys want to save money and not develop for its strenghts and weaknesses.

Honestly Ratchet and Clanks Future and Heavenly Sword are two of the best looking games this generation, if not THE BEST LOOKING GAMES THIS GENERATION. They certainly look a lot better than Halo 3... The PS3 has power, a lot of power, and it can be unlocked by those willing to put the effort in to do so.

As posted elsewhere the PS3 sold more this year than the 360... it's Japanese support is gaining and the big games are finally coming out along with a solid price drop. It's on its way to success and more and more developers will thus unlock more and more of its potential. It will in no way surprise me when PS3 games become some of the very best graphical showcases... shit, they already are.

[Ruined]

Originally Posted by MooglePorn

Exactly.

Newell even said the PS3 was powerful, it's just much different to program for than a PC/360 and it doesn't have the install-base to make all the extra programming worthwhile, so games come out with worse graphics and/or slowdown.

It's not rocket science.

No, its not. The PS3 has an overcomplicated, unnecessarily complex design that results in inefficiency and underutilization of the tech on board. That does make it a poor design because the components you put in a machine should be oriented towards what the machine is going to be used for. Put simply, the Cell makes no sense for games and the RSX is specwise not as good as Xenos. That does not mean PS3 is a piece of crap, but it does mean that it was not a smart design compared to what the competition came up with - especially when it ends up costing more money for both developers and the end user!

Jumping in and saying "see the PS3 sucks" is not the way to go though Ruined.

Please link to where I stated this.

Personally I would rather bitch at the publishers for releasing an inferior product... if the PS3 base isn't worth a good port, then don't port the fucking thing. If you're going to deliver a product, deliver it with quality, or I will call you out on it. It's not the PS3's fault these guys want to save money and not develop for its strenghts and weaknesses.

If developers used your mentality, PS3 would have less than 10 games currently. I doubt Sony would have liked that as they would have no games to sell the console with

Honestly Ratchet and Clanks Future and Heavenly Sword are two of the best looking games this generation, if not THE BEST LOOKING GAMES THIS GENERATION. They certainly look a lot better than Halo 3... The PS3 has power, a lot of power, and it can be unlocked by those willing to put the effort in to do so.

Opinion on your part, but yes PS3 does have the power to look good if devs spend the time programming for it. The problem is that time is money and there are 3 consoles to program for it. If XBOX 360 games make 40% of revenue, Wii games 40% of revenue, and PS3 games 20% of revenue, why should devs spend 5x longer programming for PS3 games when their code is worthless aside from PS3? Makes no sense.

First party games look good because Sony paid the developers to make them look good and spend the time to fully utilize the architecture. Third party developers/publishers do not make money in the same way, they make it by selling games - so they have to budget their dev time for each platform.

As posted elsewhere the PS3 sold more this year than the 360... it's Japanese support is gaining and the big games are finally coming out along with a solid price drop. It's on its way to success and more and more developers will thus unlock more and more of its potential. It will in no way surprise me when PS3 games become some of the very best graphical showcases... shit, they already are.

Let's be honest here Moog. The PS3 is getting slaughtered in the US and the 360 is getting slaughtered in Japan. In the US October numbers, there was not a system still in production that sold worse than PS3. But even in Japan, PS3 is losing bigtime to Wii. So in the end, developers are not going to be happy with a console that is a 2nd and 3rd place performer and yet takes far longer to get good results out of than the competing consoles. 360 may not be doing great in Japan, but its kicking butt pretty much everywhere else. Wii is cleaning up around the globe.

[shnikey]

Insomniac games is an independent developer.

Sony is paying them to make games "look good" just like MS paid Epic to make GoW look good and paid Bungie to make Halo 3 look good. What is your point with that? That only first party published games will look good on the PS3? I think games looking good has nothing to do with where the money comes from, but everything to do with the talent making the games. Of course EA's 4th string port team isn't going to make a great looking Madden game.

Is your only point with all this that Sony designed a complex system that isn't built just like an x86 PC?

[MooglePorn]

^Right. And let's be honest here, the ports are not that bad. Yes the 360 versions are better, but really at the end of the day only in small ways few care about. Splinter Cell DA is the only real total crap port I know of, most others just lack AA or have a little slowdown, nothing people really care about. Remember, PS2 won five times over and had the worst versions of multi-plat games.

Exclusives sell systems and the PS3 lacked quality exclusives its first year, that's why it's not selling well. Going up against the Dreamcast people didn't care too much whent he PS2 launched, but with the 360 on the shelf already people wanted more from the PS3 last year than it could deliver. The system is just now entering its second year and the software quality is on a massive rise... Heavenly Sword, Rathchet, Uncharted, Haze and MGS early next year, not to mention a ton of great looking stuff later on.

You can talk as much as you want about the PS3 being slaughtered in the US, but other markets have a huge effect on the industry and more importantly the vast majority of gamers have not gone next-gen yet. When they do the PS3 will be a lot cheaper, have some huge exclusive titles and name recognition... who's to say they won't massively resurge and pull out in front? It could EASILY happen.

This thing is FAR from over.

[umainebearman]

Originally Posted by Wurms

Maybe try reading the post instead of just the title

Why? And ruin my fingers trying to interpret the 2 seconds of info my eyes sent to my(small) brain.

Sorry I hadn't hit my complaining\sarcasm quota for that day.