"360's the better platform" for contemporary games - Carmack

By Tom Bramwell Published 1 August, 2008

But PS3 has theoretical advantages.

Id Software technical director John Carmack has said that it's easier to realise the potential of the Xbox 360 hardware but that the PS3 has certain theoretical advantages, and he speculates that Blu-ray could play a decisive role in the console war in future.

"What you can say really quite clearly and not get into too much argument about it is that the 360 is much easier to develop for, it's easier to get the performance out of it that it can deliver, and the rasterizer, the GPU side is generally faster than what the PS3 has," Carmack told Eurogamer at QuakeCon.

"You could design a game where the PS3 would be the superior platform, but you'd have to go out of your way to do it. If you're doing a game like people just want to do games now, the 360's the better platform."

The debate about the relative strengths of Microsoft and Sony's competing next-generation platforms has raged since well before either hit the market, but Carmack is arguably among the best-placed to judge the hardware given his extensive study of both architectures and his driving role in the design of the id Tech 5 engine.

Asked about their relative strengths, Carmack explained that while the 360 is easier, the PS3 does have untapped potential. "If you were doing a whole lot of simulation, you can in theory get more performance out of the Cell processor than out of the two other dual-thread processors on the 360, but that's a big 'in theory'," he acknowledged.

"But," he added later, "the fact that Blu-ray won the format wars on there is a huge feather in Sony's cap, and then we wind up with cases like what we're seeing right now where having all the extra space on the Blu-ray may be a useful thing for us above the fact that the hardware's not quite as good in terms of what it can do with the processing."

One thing he did want to emphasise about the systems, however, is that they're "both really good". "That's why any time that people make comments one way or the other about the consoles, it's easy to leave aside of the fact that it's the best that it's ever been in any generation in terms of support capabilities and all that."

Carmack's company, id Software, is currently developing Rage for PS3, 360 and PC, although yesterday design lead Tim Willits told Eurogamer "360 is our primary target". "We're developing on the PC, but we have 360 controllers on all the PCs." He also couldn't confirm whether the PS3 version would support keyboard and mouse although - as we share Carmack's view that keyboard/mouse is where it's at for FPS control, we hope to see id's mind made up favourably soon!

Look out for our full John Carmack interview next week.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (76) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • steoc4 #1 4 years ago

    Heh I knew when I read that quote earlier that it was a matter of time before EG would be rushing to make it a headline.

    *falls for bait* And of course they left out the bit where he said his own game currently looks better on PS3, because they're having to reduce texture resolutions to fit it on DVD.

  • JediMasterMalik #2 4 years ago

    He's certainly been proved right the majority of the time, but I think if we look at the best on either console, they're pretty much equal.

    Of course, the PC is the best platform overall, but hey let's not get into that here. ;)

  • zuljin #3 4 years ago

    "You could design a game where the PS3 would be the superior platform, but you'd have to go out of your way to do it. If you're doing a game like people just want to do games now, the 360's the better platform."

    On the very same day he claims the PS3 version of Rage will be better than the 360 version... So does that mean they went out of their way to do so?

    ( http://ps 3.qj.net/Carmack-Rage-to-look-w... )

  • JediMasterMalik #4 4 years ago

    It means he's being diplomatic... I guess.

  • berelain #5 4 years ago

    That makes sense to me. Developers all along have been saying how the 360's architecture is easier to program for, and the PS3's, like the PS2's before it, has plenty of capability but its a lazy bastard when it comes to doing the work. Which explains why both machines have some utterly beautiful games, but multiplatform releases tend to come out on top for the 360, especially if they've been ported to the PS3 hardware and not developed on it then ported across to the 360.

    be interesting to see how the disc format thing plays out, though. I wonder if games developers will move toward optional 'install' discs bundled with 360 versions of multiplatform games that can install stuff like high res textures and video files for those 360 owners who have the hard disc space to spare (and the HDTV capable of showing up the differences...)

  • Zappa #6 4 years ago

    "But," he added later, "the fact that Blu-ray won the format wars on there is a huge feather in Sony's cap, and then we wind up with cases like what we're seeing right now where having all the extra space on the Blu-ray may be a useful thing for us above the fact that the hardware's not quite as good in terms of what it can do with the processing."

    In other words Bluray owns.

  • old_skool #7 4 years ago

    /gAZes into crystal ball

    *shrill voice mode*

    I forseeeeee mandatory installs for the 360heeeeeeeheeeeeeeeeeeeheeeeeeeeeee

  • RazorObsession #8 4 years ago

    I'm just preparing for the inevitable 14 year old fan boy rush of comments who believe they know better than Carmack.

    /baits breath and waits

  • GamerG #9 4 years ago

    @ steoc4

    Carmack actually said because royalties for a 3rd disc are so expensive on 360 he might cut texture quality to fit the game on less discs, however in the past with Assaisians creed, GTA, gears of war etc we have heard this before from devs, ms send their compression ninjas down and the miraculously the game comes out on one disc looking better that their ps3 counterparts.

    Now the 360 will soon allow installs any complaints about multiple discs are mute as the PS3 increasingly requires installs for all games anyway so the advantage of blu ray is nill.

  • Nige #10 4 years ago

    >Heh I knew when I read that quote earlier that it was a matter of time before EG would be rushing to make it a headline.

    Bless Eurogamer for not having sunk to the level I would have by now... stop f*cking whinging and cock waving all the time eh? Nobody (except you select few) cares. Your perceived notion that the world is out to demean your personal choice of consumer electronics is just plain f*cking weird.

    If you aren't careful you'll end up like the dweebs who were extolling Amiga 5+ years after everyone else had wiped their arse on it. It's a box that makes light. Enjoy it while you can, and when it isn't up to the job any more, buy a new one.

  • barrylyndon #11 4 years ago

    @evilfoxhound
    whats so positive about the news for the ps3? At the moment in this game the textures are a bit better. This will be with (from past experience) no anti aliasing and less performance. It seems ridiculous to crow about a console which has been such a huge disappointment (due to sonys lies) and is inferior graphically to a cheaper console.
    Edited by 1 at 02/08/08 @ 01:20

  • fightman7 #12 4 years ago

    carmack is better than that fucking chimp-faced molyneux cunt. i hope molytwat catches cancer, and very fucking soon. if he want to escape that wish, he needs to stop clogging up eurogamer with his bald blatherings asap.

    fightman is here.

  • Capn #13 4 years ago

    Whoa, why the hate on Molyneux? Geez.

    This would make sense as to why Orochi Warriors is being released on PS2 - And 360.

  • Godhather08 #14 4 years ago

    Good to see the PS3 showing it's advantages, these will become more apparent as time goes by.

  • des #15 4 years ago

    So according to Carmack the best PS3 part is blu-ray... lol


  • MGG #16 4 years ago

    @Nige: Woa, woa - don't diss the Amiga man! Its the bee knees and better than any of these kiddy consoles......
















    ;)

  • des #17 4 years ago

    In this interview he is pretty hard on PS3, especially on RSX and memory .The only pros for PS3 is blu-ray,360 wins everything else...

    [link url=http://ww w.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3169112
    ]http://ww w.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3169...[/link]

    EG article is nothing compared to this interview...

  • Chufty #18 4 years ago

    It will be best on PC anyway.

  • FooAtari #19 4 years ago

    Pretty sure I just saw two people claim bias from EG towards two difference consoles from the details mentioned the same article.

    Too funny.

    Both consoles have their pro's and cons as Carmack has pointed out if you read the full interview and not just these snippets. And at the end of the day any differences are usually fairly small, it's not like we are going to end up with what looks like a generations difference between the same game on both consoles. I can't believe the things some people argue about and get worked up over. Sure the technicalities can be interesting, but at the end of the day it's not really that big a deal, you are essentially getting the same game on both machines.

  • Katsumoto #20 4 years ago

    "I fail to understand this logic of bias towards the Ps3 from EG. "

    "Spinning the article to include the 360 good stuff only is just lame... EG still slant it in favour of the 360. "

    lol?

  • Vic #21 4 years ago

    360 is the primary target because most 360 gamers live in the US and love shooters.

  • kingdumpalot #22 4 years ago

    Interesting to see PS3 owners so touchy. ¬_¬

  • GamesConnoisseur #23 4 years ago

    Its given that Blu Ray is giving PS3 a great advantage in term of storage and not having to compress as much as would for bog standard DVD9 format. This is undisputed, but come on we know by now PS3 having problem in term of access time to fetch datas, so HENCE install being pretty much important to overcome that hurdle. Yes programmers are getting to know of various tricks such as placing several clone copies of data in different tracks and so on to compensate.

    Would be interesting to see if Id manages to do away with the need for any install and still be able to fetch large uncompressed textures with nil visible pop up/access time delay, then it would be an almost dead cert for being the better version to X360!

    If PS3 had 4xBlu Ray then the above points would be moot and we would have see much less installations from games onto HDD.

    MS simply need to change their licensing system as multiple DVDs going to be necessary with FFXIII and Rage just to stay even, and of course still has so far the advantage not just with the larger install base, but also winning the majority of multi platform head to head in performance!-)

  • Widge #24 4 years ago

    I think things are swinging more and more in the direction of installs personally, I've read one comment of someone welcoming HDD installs for the 360 to reduce load times and pop up on Mass Effect and Lost Oddessy. If the 360 had a HDD as a guarantee, I expect we would have seen installs there too.

    I do believe that Carmack said that if the game wasn't on multiDVD then it would suffer in visual quality, so I'd guess that Rage is going to be multiDVD. Then you would hope the solution would be to install both DVDs to the HDD and not suffer from any disc swap scenarios.

  • hiddenranbir #25 4 years ago

    And PC has the REAL advantage, woo!

  • deaner #26 4 years ago

    He would say that. His company are developed primarily on IBM PC derivatives. And that's what the XBox is. Durr!

  • MaxiSleep #27 4 years ago

    @deaner

    In case you wernt aware the GPU in the ps3 is basicly a bog standard pc part. And programing shaders etc is a HUGE part of current games. Yet Carmack prefers the non standard ATI part in the 360. Which kinda shoots down your argument.

    Also Carmack launched Doom 3 on a PPC mac - the same architecture as the main CPU on the PS3

  • MaxiSleep #28 4 years ago

    @deaner

    In case you wernt aware the GPU in the ps3 is basicly a bog standard pc part. And programing shaders etc is a HUGE part of current games. Yet Carmack prefers the non standard ATI part in the 360. Which kinda shoots down your argument.

    Also Carmack launched Doom 3 on a PPC mac - the same architecture as the main CPU on the PS3

  • GamerG #29 4 years ago

    Even Sony say that if you make a game on PS3 and port it to 360 its easy but if you port from 360 to PS3 you have problems..

    I mean doesn't that prove the 360 is more powerful??

  • Collymilad #30 4 years ago

    The PS3 has potential that could be tapped, but never will be because it's a pain in the arse to do so, just like the PS2.

    So really, its irrelevant. 360 is the better platform.

    I mean, did MGS4 "tap the potential"? There's a game made from the ground up for PS3 and took years, yet does it look better or play better than any other game (multiplatform or not)? No, it doesn't. MGS4 does not look better than a game like say, gears of war, or ut3. If konami couldn't tap into the extra power, i doubt anyone can.

    It's about time this crap was put to bed. Remember all that stuff that the emotion engine was going to do and never did? Well we're going to see exactly the same thing again. Basically what we have is the two platforms are almost identical in power terms, while the PS3 is much, much harder to develop for. 360 = win.
    Edited by 1 at 02/08/08 @ 12:25

  • JediMasterMalik #31 4 years ago

    @GamerG - If you know nothing about console architecture, sure it does.

  • Collymilad #32 4 years ago

    Ok Jedi, enlighten us?

    I know enough about computers to know that the PS3 will never have a game that lives up the hype generated about the cell and RSX.

    Even at the very end of this console lifecycle, the gap will still be pretty much the same in terms of graphics, feel free to mark my words if you want.

  • Vic #33 4 years ago

    @GamesConnoisseur

    Actually, go and play the likes of Uncharted, Ratchet & Clank, or Resistance and you'll see PS3 games that dont have pre-installs and have hardly any pop-up. Thats one of the benefits of every PS3 having HDD and a Blu-ray drive.

    The idea that PS3 games have to have installs is total bollocks.

    And being able to install games on the 360 HDD is great in theory, but who's gonna want to have to buy a £120 120GB HDD?

  • JediMasterMalik #34 4 years ago

    @collymilad - What gap? The gap in multiplatform titles? When you look at the very best each console has to offer graphically, then the consoles are equal.

    The reason there's a gap in multiplatform titles (most of the time) is because the 360 is a lot easier to program for than the PS3. It has little to do with the actual power of the consoles.

  • dryden555 #35 4 years ago

    if you read between the lines, he is saying that the 360 has superior CPU power that is easier to develop games for.

  • mcbi4kh2 #36 4 years ago

    @MaxiSleep

    In case you wernt aware the GPU in the ps3 is basicly a bog standard pc part. And programing shaders etc is a HUGE part of current games. Yet Carmack prefers the non standard ATI part in the 360. Which kinda shoots down your argument.

    In case you weren't aware the GPU in the PS3 is surrounded by 6 SPU's. Part of developing for the PS3 invloves using the GPU to parcel out jobs to these SPU's. Using it as a standard GPU is not what was intended. (paraphrased from some interview with a Naught Dog dev)

    @Collymaid
    There's a game made from the ground up for PS3 and took years,
    What game doesnt take years?
    If konami couldn't tap into the extra power, i doubt anyone can.
    Yeah because Konami are hardware gods, did you ever play PES08 on either console?

  • MaxiSleep #37 4 years ago

    @mcbi4kh2
    In case you weren't aware the GPU in the PS3 is surrounded by 6 SPU's. Part of developing for the PS3 invloves using the GPU to parcel out jobs to these SPU's. Using it as a standard GPU is not what was intended. (paraphrased from some interview with a Naught Dog dev

    The SPU's have been shown to be pretty much useless for graphics. They are only usefull for physics calcs/ai where (so far) the 360's multi core/multi thread approach seams to work just dandy (or more precicely there has yet to be a real world gaming problem implemented on the Ps3 which the 360 cannot match.) Sony wanted to use the SPU's for graphics and they were not up to the task hence the last minute"OMG stick in a 7800!".

    When it comes down to it the ps3 has a less capable graphics core and there is no evidence that the SPU's can fix this. That is not to say there arnt great stuff for it. Resistance Fall of Man is imo the best shooter of this generation (despite eurogamer's opinion :) ). But it could easily be done on a 360.

  • mcbi4kh2 #38 4 years ago

    When it comes down to it the ps3 has a less capable graphics core

    I completely disagree with you, the proof of the pudding is in the eating as they say. Uncharted and MGS4 are two of the best looking console currently released. If the PS3's graphic core wasnt capable how would these games have been achieved?


    Below is an interesting article (second page is the technical stuff)
    [link url=http ://uk.ps3.ign.com/articles/895/895045p1.html
    ]http://uk .ps3.ign.com/articles/895/89504...[/link]


    @trebell
    Why do people complain about installs? IMO its a great feature. Games load quicker (than both blu-ray and dvd), run quiter and cooler.

  • juuken #39 4 years ago

    Barry, how about fucking off and reading the entire article before you talk shit? How exactly is the PS3 inferior and how did Sony lie? If anything, Microsoft has lied time and time again, covering up the RROD issues, among other things.

    You 360 fanatics make me sick.

  • Ryze #40 4 years ago

    Sounds about right.

    When the PS3 big hitters come along, I can imagine M$ will support 2 DVD games where one is an install disc and the other a play disc.

    That would more than double up on storage (+ compression on install disc), seek times and data transfer times.

    It would put the 360 back in the lead again - incredibly.

    PS3 would be best for epics with tonnes of rich media, and as Carmack says - simulations which require all of that number crunching - providing the code is optimised well.

    This is what I've pretty much said all along. Can't wait to see what him, Jaffe, Houser and Ueda get from the PS3 hardware.

  • Ryze #41 4 years ago

    @berelain

    Hey! I wrote my comment without reference to anything! Great minds think alike...

    The deluxe / limited edition game could be supplied with this disc. The one in the tin case.

    Can't wait...

  • Saltefanden #42 4 years ago

    ... and suddenly the news commentaries stopped!

  • drumbaby #43 4 years ago

    Eurogamer's a bit of a comedy site these days. I mean they can't expect readers to take their anti-PS3 bias seriously can they? It's a schoolboy wind-up, surely?

    Leave out the bits that painted the PS3 in a relatively rosy light, sure, but don't expect to gain any credibility from it.

  • BonzoBanana #44 4 years ago

    I remember how the ps2 was meant to be so much more powerful than the dreamcast and yet the reality was I was playing games like shenmue at vga resolutions with the dreamcast on my projector and they looked amazing. When I played ps2 games they looked terrible. The ps2 became the dominant format and the very best developers in the world were putting maximum effort in and at the end of its life games looked pretty good. I own a ps3 as well as 360 and its pretty obvious the ps3 struggles to perform quite as well as 360 as a general rule. The best games on both systems are about the same technically. Many games on ps3 struggle a bit compared to their 360 versions. I tend to favour buying games on the ps3 though as I'm on my fourth 360 and can be sure with the ps3 that its still working by the time I've reached the end of the game. Both are great consoles and I've had a lot of fun and entertainment out of both.

  • SeesThroughAll #45 4 years ago

    ^ ^ ^
    +1 BonzoBanana

    Gotta love the hypocrites who are referring to the well known programmer's authority only because he says what they want to hear. You can keep your superior GPU, while the rest of us are perfectly happy with the size of our penises, thankyouverymuch.

  • fightman7 #46 4 years ago

    got to say that Peter Molyneux is a fucking chimp-faced cunt.

  • Widge #47 4 years ago

    What?! I had a dreamcast and the games just were not visually a patch on the PS2!

  • timberwolf #48 4 years ago

    xbox 360 and the PC are the same core machine in the development sense, so ofcourse id would say that as they mostly develop for PC.

  • kopykatt #49 4 years ago

    Welcome to lazy developers...again. When the first home consoles arrived they all were diffrent to program for. NES and Master system versions of games were very dirrent as were Megadrive and SNES games. Plus they were completly diffrent from PC's to program for. The PS3 is a powerfull machine but very diffrent to work on then the PC or the PC based 360 which of course gives the 360 a huge advantage because programmers are to too lazy to learn to program things in a diffrent way to make full use of the PS3 capabilities.
    I'm sure someone will quiet happily disagree with me but thats just lazy fanboyism for you.

  • FooAtari #50 4 years ago

    ""What?! I had a dreamcast and the games just were not visually a patch on the PS2!"

    Same here. I think someone is wearing rose-tinted shades LOL "

    Well to be the fair, the DC didn't get a chance to shine. But games like Soul Calibur and Shenmue showed what it was capable of, especially compared to the PS2 in its first couple of years.

  • Widge #51 4 years ago

    Then the big question is that if the DC had a chance to shine, would it have looked as good as games like Ico or God Of War?

    I got a DC to go through some of the classics, but dumped it once I saw that Shenmue II and Panzer Dragoon were on the Xbox.

  • subtlesnake #52 4 years ago

    "Welcome to lazy developers...again. When the first home consoles arrived they all were diffrent to program for. NES and Master system versions of games were very dirrent as were Megadrive and SNES games. Plus they were completly diffrent from PC's to program for. The PS3 is a powerfull machine but very diffrent to work on then the PC or the PC based 360 which of course gives the 360 a huge advantage because programmers are to too lazy to learn to program things in a diffrent way to make full use of the PS3 capabilities. "

    Except that id is putting the in the effort to ensure that both versions run just as well. In fact they specifically hired the lead programmer at Naughty Dog, Jon Olick, who actually helped develop PS3's development tools, so it's hard to argue that they don't know what they're doing.
    Edited by 1 at 03/08/08 @ 16:40

  • m0thr4 #53 4 years ago

    "What?! I had a dreamcast and the games just were not visually a patch on the PS2!"

    Same here. I think someone is wearing rose-tinted shades LOL

    Not me. I've still got my Dreamcast and my PS2 set up on the same TV with RGB SCART leads. Dreamcast games seem to have the sharper graphics than their PS2 counterparts and maintain at a higher framerate (usually 60fps), e.g. Ecco, Rayman, MDK2, Crazy Taxi, Quake III.

  • Rash' #54 4 years ago

    m0thr4, I recall Rez running at half the frames on DC than on the PS2 equivilent...

    And if I remember correctly, then Quake 3 also ran at half the speed of the PS2 version on DC.
    Edited by 1 at 03/08/08 @ 17:38

  • warbo #55 4 years ago

    drumbaby wrote: "Eurogamer's a bit of a comedy site these days. I mean they can't expect readers to take their anti-PS3 bias seriously can they? It's a schoolboy wind-up, surely?

    Leave out the bits that painted the PS3 in a relatively rosy light, sure, but don't expect to gain any credibility from it. "

    They didn't leave anything out. It seems as though your own bias is affecting your judgment here.
    Would Eurogamer really gain credibility by completely ignoring any news that might offend barmy system warriors?
    Edited by 1 at 03/08/08 @ 19:31

  • miiiguel #56 4 years ago

    Funny, how the "oh ok, but he´s american so guns, and stupid and Iraq and shit" covers everything. Then go nuts with Resistance and the 256 war fest...

    Anyway, Sony PS's are like linux kernels the even numbers represent stable versions, odd ones are development releases. Roll on PS4.

  • Rash' #57 4 years ago

    miiguel, I find interesting that it's predominately the Western devs that publicly express their difficulties with the hardware. What, don't the Japanese have the same hurdles to overcome?

  • Vandrius #58 4 years ago

    Who cares.

    PC ftfw.

  • Dizzy #59 4 years ago

    "Welcome to lazy developers...again. When the first home consoles arrived they all were diffrent to program for. NES and Master system versions of games were very dirrent as were Megadrive and SNES games. Plus they were completly diffrent from PC's to program for"

    The difference was that these machines had a few hundred Kb to work with. Manual tweaking was easy and writing your own low level stuff didn't take that much time. Everybody wrote their own SDK so to speak and used it for all games developed on that machine. Also it was all 2D sprite stuff.. not rather complicated 3D engines.

    "What, don't the Japanese have the same hurdles to overcome? "

    They have... and haven't produced anything that Western developers couldn't do on Cell. Also we don't follow the news in Japan ;)

    The problem with cell is that a lot of people are reluctant to invest time in it since the skills they will learn might not transfer to other platforms and might not even transfer to the next generation. I doubt that Sony will use Cell in the PS4 but not all people agree with that ;) Guess we will see in a few years. There are some interesting developments that might totally change the way we work with multi-core architectures (transactional memory for example).

    What this generation of consoles has done is expose the really big problems with multi-core development and hardware people are working hard to solve some of these. And yes.. the original architecture of Cell had some of these ideas but they never managed to include them.

    I think devs should design a game around the strengths of Cell and not try to adopt their libraries for Cell. A game with very heavy focus on physics for example could be awesome. Look how good Cell is at folding... why not use some of those ideas for a game? Maybe *that* is the problem with PS3 development? Maybe they need to think about new game ideas instead of new ways to do conventional games? Of course then it would have to be an exclusive.
    Edited by 6 at 04/08/08 @ 10:17

  • SeesThroughAll #60 4 years ago

    @ Dizzy:
    "I doubt that Sony will use Cell in the PS4 but not all people agree with that ;)"

    Does the fact that Sony sold to Toshiba their share on the Cell production business give us a hint? ;)

  • zuljin #61 4 years ago

    @zerolight
    Ps3.qj is far from a fanboy site. It's like Digg/Reddit/etc for PS3/360/Wii news, its probably one of the best article collections to get games news the fastest together with Neogaf.

  • BobsUncle #62 4 years ago

    @KopyKatt - "programmers are to too lazy to learn to program things in a diffrent way to make full use of the PS3 capabilities."

    You are a fucking prick. Saying a programmer is too lazy to learn is the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard in my entire fucking life. You are such a cock.

    Especially saying that about games programmers, the hardest working programmers on Earth. You really don't get just how fucking wrong you are. You fucking, fucking, moron.

  • kopykatt #63 4 years ago

    @bobs uncle - cheers for that mate, very objective.

    Tell me something, if you learn to drive in the uk and then go to the US do you not adapt to driving on the wrong side of the road and all the highway code? Or maybe more approbiatly if you have spent your life learning to use a P.C. operating system at work and they introduce a new system do you not learn the new system?

    After reading about and listening to various developers since the start of this generation I find it strange that some developers have adapted and found the PS3 incredibly powerfull whilst others are complaining and struggling to get their games working on it.

    If you failed to do a good job in whatever you do you would either being thought of being LAZY or incapable of doing the job. Either way, it wouldn't look good next to the guy/gal who's doing a really great job. Maybe I should have included the word INCAPABLE in my original comment. Again, thanks for the feedback.

  • BobsUncle #64 4 years ago

    Well what reply do you expect to such a stupid comment? I can tell you're not a programmer and don't understand what being a programmer involves, especially a games programmer.

    To say that any professional programmer is too lazy to learn is quite simply the stupidest comment ever made. Especially if you're talking about ID coders, who typically release on pretty much every platform going and even use Linux workstations to develop on.

    If you are developing solely for the PS3 then yes, you will have a much easier time as porting issues don't affect you. If however you are doing a multi platform title then there will always be one format which is easier to use than the other.

    ID haven't failed to do their job, and as people here have commented, Rage actually looks better on PS3 than 360, so where you get your idea that they can't be bothered to learn to code for PS3 I have no idea?

  • Rash' #65 4 years ago

    Dizzy, so the views of devs working at Konami, Sega, Capcom, Namco, and SquareEnix don't hold international interest? I find the hard to believe. Don't marginalize their importance.

    Additionally, my comment wasn't an observation of programming skill, rather the (lack of) fuss demonstrated by different work ethics.
    Edited by 1 at 04/08/08 @ 13:54

  • Ranger101 #66 4 years ago

    Rash, I think the difference, you'll find, is not the skill or tenacity of western/eastern developers, but the culture of vocalising difficulty - it's acceptable in the West.

    Also, KopyKatt is clearly not a coder and really should stop embarrassing him/herself.

    MS utilised their MSDN background in building their console and it paid off - good programming architecture and API. Sony clearly didn't learn from their mistakes with the PS2, which is a damn shame because with the Cell they really did promise different, this time around.

  • kopykatt #67 4 years ago

    @bobs uncle - A far better reply mate. As with any discussion, diffrent people have diffrent points of view and things like Eurogamer are great for this. My comments were made relating to the general discussion in this thread rather then specifically to the article but that was my mistake for not making that clear.
    It just seems strange that despite the huge amount of talent (and I'm not being sarcastic) that many programmers have that they struggle to adapt everytime something new comes along (barring initial teething problems). I mean how would you feel if your still struggling with something 18 months - 2 years after the release when others clearly are not. I.D. are very talented P.C. developers and I get the feeling many of their programmers can see that potential of the PS3 but have struggled to unlock it. At least they can see this and are trying whilst some developers are just saying its to hard to program for.
    It doesn't matter if I agree/disagree with you or vice versa, you seem like a perfectly intelligent, reasonable person who I'd quiet happily have a good constuctive argument with but that first comment you made was beneath you. Made you sound like a one of the many idioctic fanboys you get on here which I believe your not.

  • actionfitz #68 4 years ago

    Carmack's right you know!

    - waits for Blig_merk to 'release the hounds'.
    lol

  • BobsUncle #69 4 years ago

    @KopyKatt

    Apologies, I did go over the top a bit. But from your first comment I did think you was a bit of a typical 'PS3 fanboi' who won't hear anything bad said about the PS3, it just sounded like you was blaming the ID developers for the PS3 being a poor development environment.

    TBH, I kind of expected a similar response back followed by a bit of a slanging match to brighten my afternoon, but you deflated it all by being civilised. Damn you!

  • Darren #70 4 years ago

    This article really does highlight the huge difference between developers and PR people... i.e. one speaks utter shit and the other speaks perfect sense... can you guess which is which? ;)

  • kopykatt #71 4 years ago

    @bobsuncle - I know exactly what you mean. Nothing like a good row with a touchy fanboy to get rid of the Monday blues (maybe we can double team one in the future).
    Edited by 1 at 04/08/08 @ 16:37

  • BobsUncle #72 4 years ago

    Deal.

  • Ryze #73 4 years ago

    I'll be in on that. I am teh baitingest.

  • Zander #74 4 years ago

    bobsuncle and kopykatt - Is this where you have great make up sex?

    You're both raging fanbois of the opposite consoles admit it! It is forbidden love!

    Also Carmack is a ledge and it is Sony's fault the ps3 is so hard to program on (you'd have thought they would have learned from the Emotion Engine -which was know to be tricky to get to grips with). Microsoft made their platform more accessible to develop on by making the architecture similar to a PC (DirectX). On the other hand, as with the emotion engine, maybe devs with slowly unlock more of the ps3's power and we'll get games like God of War 2 and Shadow of the Colossus towards the end of the ps3's life.

    A man can dream...

  • BobsUncle #75 4 years ago

    "Is this where you have great make up sex?"

    I'd buy that for a dollar.

  • BobsUncle #76 4 years ago

    "A man can dream..."

    You mean the finglonger?