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

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.

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. ;)

"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://ps3.qj.net/Carmack-Rage-to-look-w... )

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

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...)

"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.

/gAZes into crystal ball

*shrill voice mode*

I forseeeeee mandatory installs for the 360heeeeeeeheeeeeeeeeeeeheeeeeeeeeee

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

@ 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.

>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.

@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.

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.

Whoa, why the hate on Molyneux? Geez.

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

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

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

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
















;)

I remember a time when EG used to report a news item and not leave stuff out..and its interesting that when ever they do its slanted in one consoles particular favor.

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

Carmacks commentary was fair and balanced towards both consoles, he gave positives and negatives for each. Explaining that the 360 was his preferred platform and that the Sony Devs had built the Ps3 as the "correct"architecture, and he had disagreed that software developers dont work that way, making it harder for them to adapt.

He also went on to say that they were building for the Ps3 and porting to the 360, and that in the Ps3 favor was the guarantee of a minimum hardrive install size and masses of storage on BluRay.

Carmack has already been in lengthy talks with Microsoft over compression in order to fit the game on 1 disc, which both parties believe is impossible. They even floated the idea of streaming the extra game content to 360 over LIVE, which MS didnt like.

Frankly there aren't many people more qualified than Carmack to make comments like this, and he gave pros and cons to each.

Spinning the article to include the 360 good stuff only is just lame. We finally get a dev come out and offer a fair and non-bias opinion of both consoles (both i wish to do well in the future) and EG still slant it in favour of the 360.

Great way to loose readers if you ask me.

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...

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3169...

EG article is nothing compared to this interview...

@zujin. He doesn't say that at all, perhaps you should consider putting less stock in a PS3 only fansite.

"As for the consoles themselves, Carmack discussed some of the technical difficulties involved in porting Rage to consoles, noting that while he preferred the Xbox 360 hardware, Sony’s Blue Ray disks were better suited to containing the massive amount of textures in the game. While he said that the Xbox 360 version of the title would certainly be spread across multiple DVDs, he stated that prohibitive costs associated with using more than two DVDs *might* force id to further compress textures, resulting in poorer graphical fidelity on the Xbox 360 as compared to the Playstation 3."

He says might. He could equally have said that due to the PS3's more limited GPU performance, they *might* have to reduce texture quality, or poly count, in order to keep the framerate.

He has no absolute idea just now because they are still writing the game, they haven't even attempted to polish it all up for each platform, then try to fit it onto DVDs and BluRay. So at this point, in a bit of politics to appease Sony, he's said that whilst the 360 (for the first time) is the lead platform, with the PC and PS3 essentially ports, there's some possibility that the PS3 disc could end up giving it better graphical fidelity. Maybe. Possibly. If you ignore every other PS3 port which has struggled regardless of storage space.

Frankly, given I have all the consoles, I really don't care whether the PS3 or 360 version is best. I'm not even all that sure I care about this game at all. But if it turns out to be really good, I'll buy it on whatever console does it best.

It will be best on PC anyway.

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.

"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?

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

Interesting to see PS3 owners so touchy. ¬_¬

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!-)

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.

And PC has the REAL advantage, woo!

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

@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

@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

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??

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.

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

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.

@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?

@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.

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

@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?

Eurogamer present everything to bait the fanboys don't they. lol. hits = income.

"In other words Bluray owns. "

if you've got a big enough HDD for all the bloody installs due to poor seek speeds?

@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.

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)
http://uk.ps3.ign.com/articles/895/89504...


@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.

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.

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.

@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...

a guy over on gamersyde dug out all the relevant stuff and dumped it into one post. i quote it below, in its entirety...

Watch this interview,lots of dirty secrets,***360 superior hardware*** and
the "real" answer to why he made DVD royalty issue public revealed in first
20 seconds

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3169...

Carmack admitted that he wants hardcore id fans to help influence
Microsoft's business practices
***he believes the 360 is the better hardware over all***, because id is
having to put double the work into the PS3 port.



I asked id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead about that this morning, now that
the comment has had time to sink into gaming forums worldwide.

"Carmack has long said he thinks that the architecture of the Xbox 360 is
better"

The problem with Rage is two fold, Hollenshead tells me. First there is the
economics of spreading a game across multiple discs

***even though we feel the 360 has superior hardware***


Let me be clear, this is an open question, we have these tech issues and we
are working with Microsoft to solve them."

And the issue isn't just about the game being too big, Hollenshead says that
developers lose upwards of 2 gigs of space per a disc because of information
Microsoft requires developers to put on the discs



Ironically, early on Carmack was pretty clear on the fact that he felt the
Playstation 3's cell technology was not the boon it was made out to be to
developers.

"I know that John is pretty much brass tacks on these issues and before the
PS3 was ever released he raised the same issues then as now," Hollenshead
said. Sony "had a bunch of hardware engineers talking about theoretical
power, but (Carmack) said 'yeah, this isn't how software people work' and
they said 'yeah, this is how they should work.'"

To date, Carmack still feels the architecture of the Playstation 3 doesn't
deliver the power promised. But Hollenshead points out that there's no use
crying over spilled milk.

"Complaining about that is sort of a worthless exercise at this point," he
said. "The PS3 is what it is and it's not going to change.

http://kotaku.com/5031985/rage-and-ids-l...



since the ***royalty charge per disc*** is actually surprisingly high, id
hopes that Microsoft will make a concession for Rage, or else the company
may actually have to sacrifice texture and asset quality to get the game to
fit on fewer than THREE discs. The cost of the 3rd DVD alone would cost
millions of dollars with the current royalty rate, says John Carmack.

When comparing the Xbox 360 to the PS3, the more spacious Blu-ray format is
the only thing Carmack likes more about Sony's console. ***Everything else
is better on the 360, he says.***

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/%5Bprim...

... and suddenly the news commentaries stopped!

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.

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.

^ ^ ^
+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.