Harrison pledges Epic support News

wow

They could probably use some Legal Support as well now.

"We have parachuted in some of our SWAT team of super engineers to help them"

glol

I always imagined that The Sony Super Engineers could fly :(

lmao

All in all this is very good news for PS3 owners, since so many next-gen games are utilising this engine, it should mean far less shoddy ports and multiplatform games should perform well on the PS3. It should also allay some of the fears that PS3 development is difficult.

Do they wear their pants outside their stockings?

"Also, Epic isn't a huge company. They don't have unlimited resources. We have parachuted in some of our SWAT team of super engineers to help them. Specifically, to optimise for SPUs (Synergistic Processing Units), which are the point of difference that the Cell Processor has."

Statement entered into Bablefish - spin removal plug-in.

"Epic like most companies, has not got unlimited resources, which you require to get Xbox360 performance out of the PS3. In knowledge of that fact, we have had to send in, the few people in the entire world, that can make sense of the bewildering architecture used, for no good reason, on the PS3. Even with those engineers there, we are still unsure if they can get games running on the PS3 that don’t look terrible in comparison to the 360 which is cheaper, older and beating us hands down."

Glad to see Sony helping Epic

BadBoyBonner > that translation plug-in got it spot on :)

"we have had to send in, the few people in the entire world, that can make sense of the bewildering architecture used, for no good reason, on the PS3"

Strange... our engineers had no problem in figuring out the PS3 hardware in a relatively short space of time.
It sounds almost like you're some sort of fanboy...

@Badboy

*sigh*, didnt take long for positive Sony news to get spun to negativity

Sony have belately waken up to the fact that there are a lot of multi platform games that is showing X360 to be better than PS3, and they urgently need to do more to help out developers to ensure that this trend wont continue.

Good for PS3 owners who are tired of getting their faces rubbed in by delighted X360 owners (who deep down actually expected the reverse to be true!). For multi platform owners like me and others, we can see with our own eyes that even recent games like Darkness, X360 still own the 'better gfx HD lmao' crown but as we knew PS3 still need more time for its game to be properly optmised.

Sony doing something with Epic is a right direction as JMM say earlier.

'It sounds almost like you're some sort of fanboy...'

now whatever made you think that huh? ;)

"Epic isn't a huge company...". The irony.

It's not what was said but the way that they said it that has riled people I think, which is par for the course with Sony.

Well it's a miracle that Rainbow Six Vegas turned out as well as it did on the PS3 then if that was using an unoptimised version of the Unreal Engine 3!

I guess for the forseeable future I'll have to buy all my UE3-based games on the Xbox 360 until Epic have it running properly on the PS3. Does this mean that the forthcoming Unreal Tournament III, which is initially exclusive to the PS3, will be the first game to benefit from this "optimisation"?

@BadBoyBonner

oh dear.

I don't know if it's just me but, 360 fans are starting to sound so desperate these days that I'm beginning feel the need to disassociate myself with 'that' crowd.

'It's not what was said but the way that they said it that has riled people I think, which is par for the course with Sony. '

wow you must be easily offended....

"I don't know if it's just me but, 360 fans are starting to sound so desperate these days that I'm beginning feel the need to disassociate myself with 'that' crowd. "

Might want to read that interview, as other websites are interpreting this in an unreal-engine-doesnt-work-well-on-PS3-so-thats-why-epic-are-
being-sued way:

"GI: I’ve heard from a number of developers that one of the problems with porting a game that’s based on Unreal, or having a multiplatform game that’s based on Unreal, was because Epic didn’t have their tech up to speed and they were waiting for updates. Is this basically saying, “It’s going to get fixed, it’s going to get better?”

Harrison: Yes, I think that’s a fair summary"

"Sony have belately waken up to the fact that there are a lot of multi platform games that is showing X360 to be better than PS3"

Such as? I was under the impression that there's a lot of lazy, late ports out there that make the PS3 look bad, but games released on both platforms at the same time, do no such thing.

"Specifically, to optimise for SPUs (Synergistic Processing Units), which are the point of difference that the Cell Processor has."

That's funny. I could have sworn that the UE3.0 wasn't optimised for multi core cpu's and stuff like that. Isn't epic blazing trumpets about how UE4.0 will do all this?

@Salvia

“Strange... our engineers had no problem in figuring out the PS3 hardware in a relatively short space of time. It sounds almost like you're some sort of fanboy... “

Obviously the implication there is that you are a lot smarter than all the guys at Epic who have produced the UE3 engine. Unsure how they would feel about that.

In addition, the implication is that your teams technical prowess also exceeds John Carmacks, and his opinion of development on PS3.

Perhaps you should take pity on those mentioned above. You could offer some guidance and show them how they could learn to become better developers.

Salvia you will have to forgive my ignorance if you have mentioned it on EG before; what ground breaking engine is it that you and your team are licensing on PS3 to everyone else?

Only seems fair that I know, otherwise it is impossible for anyone to make an informed decision against what you and your team have produced (easily in a short space of time) in comparison to others.

@BadBoyBonner

ROFL

Well I guess PS3 will have a good running version of the Unreal ENgine by XMas 2008 ;)

Xerx3s: UE3 certainly uses the hardware threads on the 360 and Ageia uses any number of threads they want on PC/PS3. Could certainly be better and Havok has a better multithreaded solution.

Dizzy: Unreal Tournament 3 is released in November.

@BadBoyBonner
You do realise many game developers are under NDA?

>Unreal Tournament 3 is released in November

Yeah.. but it might run like shit compared to PC/360 versions?

@onyxbox

oh dear.

I don't know if it's just me but, 360 fans are starting to sound so desperate these days that I'm beginning feel the need to disassociate myself with 'that' crowd.


Hang on a minute, how does that make me a fan boy by saying that Sony are Pissed at how shoddy their games are running in UE3?

You think if it was running better on PS3 than the 360 - that they would be sending engineers in?

What other conclusion is there to be drawn?

If you want my personal view on both machines it is this.

The PS3 is MORE powerful than the 360 - no doubt about it. The trick is that tapping 95% of the 360 power may take exponentially less than getting 95% out of the PS3.

I'd guess it is probably 30% more powerful if the code is flawless (and someone will do something specific on it that looks mind blowing), but for most dev's, the effort required to get at it starts to raise exponentially. Not the fault of the PS3 per se, but obviously Sony's machine is quite different from what everyone else is doing. And if you are not crushing the market share, then there is much less incentive to understand the difficult thing when the easy thing can be produced yielding better sales at a cheaper price.

Hence the current shoddy 360 ports to PS3 that are doing the machine a great disservice.

@zuljin
You do realise many game developers are under NDA?

Well looking at most people details on here, I am unsure how you could identify anyone, that does not want to be identified (no picture, friends games list, game alias etc.)

I could talk big.

Well when me an my mates had a quick shifty at the PS3 we couldn't imagine why anyone was struggling, we coded a few games at the fabled 120Fps while watching the Amir Kahn fight. We can't understand how anyone else is struggling it is so easy, you writethe code an the PS3 just does it, it's awesome.

It's fucking hard work to tap 100% of the processing power of both the PS3 and 360...

Heck, it's fucking hard to tap 50% efficiently.

@BadBoyBonner

Point taken, I took your comments the wrong way.

At least once the middle-ware is fixed/optimised to run correctly on PS3 then tapping 95% on both machines becomes just as easy.

I think Sony are doing the right thing and helping the middle-ware (and probably getting the UT3 timed exclusive deal out it at the same time).

@Disc

Agreed - but all non-biased opinion, of leading industry figures, is that the PS3 is harder to develop for, at the moment.

And lets be honest, if the machines were reversed and the 360 was the PS3 and Microsoft had brought it out a year after the easy to program, market leading PS3. MS would have had the shit ripped out of them. The thing I admire the most is that the arrogance that Sony have shown, is almost shown to be true, hardly affecting sales. It [PS3] came out a year later with games that do not look as good [as the 360], yet Sony are still doing OK. MS would have probably bombed with the same scenario.

@BadBoyBonner
"I could talk big."

Well no shit. In fact anyone could say that despite being on any website. I could meet you in real life and tell you all I know about PS3 hardware and you could still turn round and say "oh but you could've gotten that from Wikipedia".

My point was that if you're going to label him anything for not answering your question, that there is a very good reason for doing so. The only game developer I know of thats revealed what hes working on openly was the guy working on Haze (nekotcha is it?).

"It's fucking hard work to tap 100% of the processing power of both the PS3 and 360...

Heck, it's fucking hard to tap 50% efficiently."

Well its impossible to tap 100% for a real world application. Might be possible to do so for some kind of very specific tech demo (e.g. just streaming or something). Everyone who has ever taken a class in machine architecture knows that theoretical performance stats are BS. And you're sposed to be a dev Disc - shame on you ;).

Big Phil is a fucking legend.

@zuljin

And what label did I use then?

Hmm legend isn't the word I would have chosen...

lambtron: Uh? Did you read what I wrote?

"Hmm legend isn't the word I would have chosen... "

Nor me...talk about someone who’s career was taken into the stratosphere by the success of the Playstation Brand - and he doesn’t seem like the type to be able to breath very well up there – and seemingly slips into delirium now and again.

Overlush: head over to any head to head comparsion in EG or IGN and even Gamespot. They all virtually show that on same day release or later port that X360 edge it graphically. GFX is the most important compasion point especially in HD generation era.

Sure there are some games that you cant tell the difference and need mega HD screen to spot any, but if you check out even in current PSU3 mag issue 12 'from method to multi-platform madness' (one of the better read PS3 mags in my opinion) they berate the fact that X360 is visually better, less slow down in lot of important games to date.

This do not reflect on hardware in my view, but rather not sufficent optmisation and will be quite interesting to see the difference where PS3 is THE lead platform.

"Obviously the implication there is that you are a lot smarter than all the guys at Epic who have produced the UE3 engine. Unsure how they would feel about that.

In addition, the implication is that your teams technical prowess also exceeds John Carmacks, and his opinion of development on PS3. "

Thanks for proving without a doubt you are a grade A idiot.
You took Harrison's statement and twisted into something completely made up. I simply pointed out that your implications are wrong and now I'm supposed to justify what I wrote. Nice moves, fanboy.
Oh and don't bother, you're on ignore (along with so many other 'tards on this site )

Nah it's more problematic than that.

Doesn't matter if the PS3 is the lead platform or not as long as gamers are fooled by framebuffer effects and more texture memory. Sure it may be more capable at physics and it may have more storage but you cant see that in screenshots and screenshots are all we care about.

The 360 may end up looking better throughout this generation.

In addition, the implication is that your teams technical prowess also exceeds John Carmacks, and his opinion of development on PS3. "

Have you heard what he said against Multi-core CPU's in general or was that, that other PC dev that hasn't developed on Console's Gabe Newell?

I'm amazed you've managed to twist this BBB, did you not see the article of Silicon Knights Suing Epic for this exact same reason?

And he's developing on the Xbox 360 exclusively.

Kind of pathetic really. If Sony released decent tools in the first place, then they wouldn't need to 'fly in' their special ops team.

@Jedimastermalik

Er ke? Your logic it a little flawed unless you were being sarcastic (which I would agree with). If even Epic need to have Sony fly in some engineers then you now have proof of what everone developing for it (including me) has been saying all along. The fracking thing is a nightmare.

Epic should never have promised to deliver whe they did as they would have known well in advance of that date that they were in trouble on the PS3 port.

They are not my implications. They are facts, facts that developers (not I) have stated, repeatedly. In support of that fact would also be the information itself - i.e. Sony have sent in engineers due to lack of efficiency in UE3.

Funny that when you have been asked to put your money where your mouth is, you have chosen to offer absolutely no support to your argument; which is what I always suspected.

The pluralistic ignorance you display by putting people on ignore, who are citing informed and articulate opinion, is a character trait you are no doubt fond of.

@penhalion - What was flawed in what I have said? It's OBVIOUS developers have had it tough with PS3 development, with UE3 being so popular Sony helping it out is a good thing for PS3 owners. No sarcasm necesssary. I don't see what logic was flawed, it makes perfect sense.

@Steroyd

"Silicon Knights Suing Epic for this exact same reason?"

Erm, so I guess your a big believer in guilty till proven innocent then?

Instigating legal proceedings means nothing, other than they have proven, to the trier of fact, the reception of an evidential issue when taken at it’s HIGHEST, COULD lead to a judgement in their favour.

disc: It may be that X360 will likely be visually better throughout the generation give or take few games, though assurance that being lead platform would not make any difference graphically may not be correct. As I am seeing rumours of the new PES taking big advantage of Blu ray storage and storing up to 18 GB of textures and X360 would have to make do with compressed textures?

I would agree to date X360 handle textures better than PS3 due to hardware memory setup, but there will come a tipping point where optical storage space for storing more uncompressed textures may be an advantage? Especially if PES thing is true.

Like I said the other day, this is exactly the sort of stuff Sony needs to be doing instead of moaning that 3rd partys can't cut it.

Fortunate Sony has a few parachutes lying around ;-)