PS3 'in better place for launch' than 360 - Mark Rein News

"So Sony's actually maybe in a better place vis-a-vis Microsoft in relation to launch."

So that better place would be shops then?

One man's opinion. Watch how some people will take this as gospel.

In terms og game development, then he's definately right (IMO).
However that doesn't matter now. When potential buyers are in the shop, they aren't gonna compare the ps3 to the 360 last year, are they?

they'll see a much cheaper 360 running games just as good as, if not better than, the PS3. Your average Joe Public parent is not going to pay £425 when they can get away with £280.

He actually said vis-a-vis...

Didn't think Joe publics parents would be buying it anyway... thought Sony are aiming for the 8% of the market that have HDTV's. :p

everybody I know who can afford a HDTV has already got a 360

Is this the "big" GoW announcement?

I thought the recent "Shakycam video" of the whole of the first level of GoW was pretty damn special (the "CNN Cam" view rocks !) and I'm jaded from FPS overkill.

If that WAS running only a single threaded engine, compared with the final multi-version, then phew.....I'll shall buy a fresh set of trousers ready for launch as I'll be spoiling the ones I'm wearing at the time..... ;o)

Didn't think Joe publics parents would be buying it anyway... thought Sony are aiming for the 8% of the market that have HDTV's. :p

Those are the parents who buy their children consoles. >:\

/childhood issues ;p

The final game's built on it, it gives us better frame rates and more fluidity

Aren't they the same thing, or does he mean more fluidy? (aka more water globules, falling snow, etc.)

@Machiavel

I think you can think of frame rate and fludity as two different things. For instance fludity can refer to how many steps you have in an animation. you might only have 3 steps to say pull a gun but those 3 steps could be shown at 60 FPS.
Now if you have 30 steps in your animation showing at 60 FPS then obviously that will look far better.

I could be talking crap but this makes sense to me.

So this better place would be why developers are dropping their PS3 line-ups then. Something about the final kit being just as much of a pain to work on as the beta kits....

@penhalion presumably you can provide links to back up that steaming load?

> I could be talking crap

Given that game animations are keyframed and blended between, yes you are.

Let the obvious negative comments begin!! Let everyone be on a downer anytime anyone mentions how well the PS3 devs are doing!!!

Oh, you have already. Carry on.

Yes, but up until a few week before E3, wasn't the PS3 due to be launched in the "Spring" (in Japan at least). You would bloody hope some developer kits were ready by then!

Or were Sony lying (to keep their stock up) when they dogmatically stated "as far as we are concerned we will still be launching in the spring")?

@Triggerhappytel
"One man's opinion. Watch how some people will take this as gospel."

Yeah cos there is no way you can have a positive PS3 news story ... what has he said that you disagree with here exactly? There are the facts about final dev kits, and the opinion that his guys are getting some great results out of the hardware. Where is the problem?

What he is saying is not actually all that contentious is it? MS position at E3 last year was looking very poor. Since that point they did a great job of turning it around and had a decent launch.

One man's opinion. Watch how some people will take this as gospel.

Which opinion? His opinion that GoW is looking damn good, or that the Sony don't suck as much as certain fanbois would like to believe?

This is one helluva tough call. Do the xbots respect this devs opinions - he is, after all, saying great things about GoW for 360 - or do they lambaste him for even hinting Sony have done something right - a positive slant on the console and company that keeps them up all night, frothing at the mouth with venomous hatred?

The rule maybe this: believe everything he says about GoW, but with the understanding he is talking a bribe when he talks about PS3. Yeah, that follows the True Gamer(tm) code of conduct.

@Machiavel RE: Fluidity and Frame Rate ...

You could think of it this way. A frame rate of 23fps on a 60Hz display would look less fluid than a steady frame rate of 20fps, as the first would keep dropping frames. 60/20 is a nice whole number. If improvements in the engine can give higher and more consistent frame rates then it also improves fluidity.

Back when I was a yorkshire tot, in't the Mill, we had to get up at 4 in the morning, play on a dusty abacus for 3 minutes, then work for 1/2 a penny per day mining uranium from crocodile eggs!

NthSimulachum, you describe my very own childhood! Until the advent of the ZX Spectrum, that is. Like a ray of colour into our dull little existence...

I'd also like to say that Sony have really only got this right because they're launching in November and not Spring like the kept on promising. I can't imagine Mr Epic Games being quite so flattering if they'd done that!

I think it's single/multi-threaded "renderer" rather than "rendered".

DrDamn, most developers wouldn't dare bitch about PS3 after the fiasco with PS2. That system clearly demonstrated the arrogant attidute most developers had about developing new games. PS2 came along and shook all that and if it wasn't for Microsoft's arrival with a more powerful system, then most devcos today would concede they were wrong to question the power of the PS2. The fact of the matter is that PS3 is a continuation of the philosophy Sony started with PS2, that is: there must be a better way to create games for a dedicated games machines. The games most are seeing for PS3 at the moment are the beginnings of the unveiling of what te system can truly deliver. To understand what I mean, compare the graphics of games at the beginning of the PS2 life cycle to the games coming off the production line today. It could be argued in some cases that they appear to be from completely different formats. I'll wager that by this time next year the gap in graphical strength between 360 and PS3 will start to become more visible.

Nothing to do with the big Sony contract Epic landed then...

Mark Rein in "praising company he has sold a very expensive UE3 license to" shocker!

yorkiebar, Sony were aiming for a Spring release. This wasn't announced as an official release date for the system. So technically, the reason "Sony have really only got this right " is because they understood what they could deliver and when.

Rein is a f***** twat. How can the playstation 3 be in better position when it costs $200 more than that it's nearest equivalent rival, is lumbered with an expensive, unnecessary media format, and according to comments from all non-biased developers is an absolute nightmare program for. Oh, I forgot $ony is one Epic's major customers...

@Rash'

I disagree. A spring launch was "confirmed" last September ( http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_pag... ) and it wasn't until March this year serious doubts were acknowledged ( http://www.cnet.com.au/games/0,39029232,... ) with Sony themselves commenting that a Spring launch was still planned.

Oddly, they were saying this until the end of their financial year, even though, obviously by March they would have known otherwise. A "no comment" would have been appropriate. I thought it was illegal to willfully mislead shareholders...

Only thing I've ever heard devs say is it's not as easy to program as the 360, not that it's hard.

In fact most people that have commented on it have said it's far easier than the PS2 was, and that didn't do too badly, and that was actually a nightmare to program.

Rash'- "The fact of the matter is that PS3 is a continuation of the philosophy Sony started with PS2, that is: there must be a better way to create games for a dedicated games machines"

You're kidding right? Pretty much every developer has stated what a bitch the PS2 has been to develop for whilst unanimously praising Microsoft's dev tools and support.

So Sony's ongoing philosophy is- "to make it as tricky as possible to access the true power of PlayStation" ?

Rein is a f***** twat. How can the playstation 3 be in better position when it costs $200 more than that it's nearest equivalent rival, is lumbered with an expensive, unnecessary media format, and according to comments from all non-biased developers is an absolute nightmare program for. Oh, I forgot $ony is one Epic's major customers...

and they all come out to play.

you do know he said "better" for dev kits being launched as in a "better" position MS was shipping out dev kits exactly 12 months before.

and i'd love for you to give me proof to these unbiased developers saying the PS3 was a nightmare to program for, from my understanding they're saying it's more complex (no brainer double the number of cores to the closest multi-core processor).

Gabe Newell and John Carmack are the only developers i've seen to moan about the PS3's architecture... oh wait they're PC hardcore.

I'll wager that by this time next year the gap in graphical strength between 360 and PS3 will start to become more visible.

As in: the ps3 will have the better graphics? lol?

2099net, the first link states "..according to a german site..." which just sounds like "we can't confirm this ourselves". The second link proves more interesting, but my point still stands that it was never an official announcement. My thinking is if it's true then more than one site will cover it (sites of respectable stature), and I can't think of many that covered Spring as an announced release date for PS3. Either way it appears as though you're conceding that Sony are doing things "right".

Mark is merely talking about being in a "better place" from a development point of view - with final kits being available to developers a lot earlier than the 360 kits were. There's nothing contentious there, it's just the truth. I do still think that personally I'd be happier with the 360 beta hardware than a final PS3 kit anyway from an ease-of-development point of view, but hey.

Lukus, one simple point: why develop a games console with general purpose hardware when the system isn't likely to operator on general purpose applications? Over the past two generations Sony have created systems which removed this old fashion approach. The approach is unheard of and unorthodox, but clearly it has delivered. It's the developer that have bitched about this in the previous generation that are the arrogant developers I speak of. Those that are prepared to stay in a rut to keep life easy rather than move forward and think about progress.

The 360 and PS3 will never be far apart when it comes to graphics. This has nothing to do with the development environment but the fact both GPU's are very similar in capabilities. The GPU's are really developed off of the back of the PC GPU's from both ATI and Nvidia and as anyone knows that follows the PC side to this there is very little to seperate the two these days. Nvidia might have the flagship GPU for 6 months and then ATI leap frog them on their next GPU. It's been like this for years.

Neither has some magical advatange that is suddenly going to rear its head now we are in the world of consoles. Neither is going to pluck some magical graphical effect out of their arse that the other is not capable of doing.

No, Spring was what they said, but they knew they couldnt make it, they wanted gamers to hold off from buying a 360 and then come spring, "oh you will have to wait a little longer, you might aswell now hey?".

The main reasons why they couldnt get it ready in time?
a) The Blue-ray drive wasn't nearly ready back then.
b) They are still apparently having more yeild problems than expected for the Cell CPU, maybe they will have to ship with 5 instead of 8 active SPEs in retail PS3s.

Rash': I think you're in for a very long wait if you think the PS3 games are going to have better visuals at any point the way things are looking. If anything it could be 360 that comes out ontop its comparable in raw performance, has a much better balanced architecture(all the components where designed from ground up to work in tandem, for a games console architecture too), is more efficient and more advanced in some of the key areas(where it matters, blue-ray and cell - the two most expensive parts of the PS3, arent a big advancement for game code IMO).

http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/ne/p/2006/c...

glaeken: Xenos isn't a PC GPU shoehorned into a console architecture, its a custom GPU(more importantly a Console GPU), theres going to be things you can compare in it to the PC space, but alot of the decisions made when designing it, where for the 360 alone. Nvidia doesn't do that, they optimised and shoehorned it to fit with the
PS3, lets not forget NVidia GPUs have always worked best with the x86 architecture, so how will it fare with Cell?.

look at all the anti Sony trolls surface. heh.

Most. Ironic. Post. Ever.

@Calgon point b)

You got substantiated proof of that. First off it was only ever meant to be 7 (one has always been accounted for with redundancy). Second off, could they really ship with just 5 if devs have already been developing for 7? The games wouldn't work properly would they?

@Rash'

Well lots of sites did report "Spring" as a Japanese launch date. And Sony's own PR did confirm it at several times leading upto the global release annoucement (see http://www.gamespot.com/news/6140996.html "An unnamed Sony spokesman is cited in the article as saying that the company is still targeting the release window it officially announced in May at the Electronics Entertainment Expo." )

But that's all by the by. What I'm saying it we'd all be shocked if Sony didn't have development kits shipped out by E3. As for comments at E3 about games looking "more complete" than similar titles for the 360 the year before, they'd better have - Sony really only showcased Japanese titles, or titles to be launched in Japan as far as I know and all the developers were still being told there was to be a Spring launch until a few weeks before the event!

Microsoft could have sat on the 360 launch, sent out more development kits, perhaps fine tuned a few of the launch titles. But would doing that have put them "in a better place"? If Sony really wants to wow everyone with their PS3, they could wait until a developer actually has used the Blu-Ray drive to its full potential - which could be years. Would that put them in a "better place"?

The fact is, the price of the PS3 and - while you may disagree with my next assessment - general indifference to the machine means that dev kits or not, I don't think this Christmas will have Sony in a "better place". For all their software disappointments, hardware shortages etc the 360 IS the fastest selling console to date. It has built up a following. Developers are getting to grips with it.

I think if the first PS3 games simply match the 2nd generation 360 games (which seems likely based on all we know) the PS3 isn't in a "better place" for launch. It's fighting with a machine which appears just as capable, readily available and cheaper.

Oh, and I'm still waiting for some decent Blu-Ray discs to be announced! Where's the Ultimate James Bond collection? Spider-Man 1 and 2? Rocky? Raging Bull? The Final Fantasy Movie? All Sony properties. If Sony want to convince people how good their hardware is, they need to come out fighting, not just repeatedly talking about it at events and on paper (in a slightly offensive manner too).

glaeken, this may be true, but the reason so many Sony fanboys go on about Cell is because the PS3 CPU can play an active role in graphical output on the system. It appears as though the two units (GPU & CPU) complement each other and it is because of this architecture that many believe PS3 will surpass the 360.

@2099net
"I think if the first PS3 games simply match the 2nd generation 360 games (which seems likely based on all we know) the PS3 isn't in a "better place" for launch. It's fighting with a machine which appears just as capable, readily available and cheaper."

If PS3 launches with games which match 2nd generation 360 games - at least on a technical level - doesn't that imply that the machine itself is more capable? Either that or that it is easy to develop for?

Personally I don't see much between the two systems. This appears to be backed up by a number of developer comments. If the above is true though, then one of the two reasons I gave seems to hold. Just an observation.

DrDamn I'll have a look around to see if I can find some of the articles, it may have been a roumer, but thats not something that any company would announce is it?

5 was just a guess but if they are still having yeild troubles, they could well disable one(most likely) or two(possible if its a major problem) further SPUs(thats why they do it, to improve yeilds). I dont think the games would cease to function, they would have to change how the code is handled a bit though yes. I doubt they are using all of them anyway and they arent doing anything spectacular, afterall they are only custom DSPs which although usefull for streaming(and make your specs look a bit better on paper, like Nvidias usual inflated specs) and the like, they arent all that new and arent the second coming as Sony fanboys like to beleive.

edit: No, there are games that look almost on par with 2nd generation 360 games but, like the article says 360 developers got theirs much later, PS3 developers have had more time so its not an apples to apples comparison with first gen software. Also Sony WILL definately try and play the "untapped potential" card again, but every machine has that... PS3 fanboys will fall for it hok line and sinker as always though, others will actually look whats infront of them and whats on the horizon, not something they hope will happen(which it wont).

Calgon, Your link doesn't work. But as for 360 surpassing PS3, well that's a big ask. Equal pegging is an arguement worth having but yours in groundless. In terms of raw power for instance, RSX is more powerful. However Xenos is a more efficient beast. Most are aware that PS3 CPU is far in advance of Xenon. And both RSX and Cell are understood to operator well in tandem to deliver very powerful results. Because not enough is know about this power the overzealous are jumping forward to offer their thoughts, which is valid, but commons sense and history suggests PS3 will be the more powerful. I my opinion by some margin.

Lukus, one simple point: why develop a games console with general purpose hardware when the system isn't likely to operator on general purpose applications?

eh? GP > FP when it comes to games. Fact. Unless the bulk of your games only exist out of prerenderd films of course.

It appears as though the two units (GPU & CPU) complement each other and it is because of this architecture that many believe PS3 will surpass the 360.

Yes and no other system does this. ....

And 'many'? Care to link to that?

Rash that only makes sense if you are perhaps referring to the cell doing the physics on objects and their movement. That might help out the GPU a bit and give it a bit of extra grunt. It's also been said one of the 360 cores could also help out in the same manor though.

Ultimately I don't believe the hardware will separate itself at all in power and cross platform development of most next generation games will mean developers will produce for the lowest common denominator anyway meaning whichever turns out to be the lower powered will set the bar for both of them.

@DrDamn

"If PS3 launches with games which match 2nd generation 360 games - at least on a technical level - doesn't that imply that the machine itself is more capable? Either that or that it is easy to develop for?"

Well, yes and no. To me it implies developers were working to an earlier release schedule and have had longer to polish their code subsequently. I'm pretty sure most of the "absolutely stunning" games in development started their development round about the same time as the first wave of 360 titles, even if only on PC hardware at the time.

To the average person on the street, it probably doesn't imply anything "They look about the same". People with an affiliation to the PS2 may think the PS3 is better, and some casual gamers may also come to that conclusion. But they'll also come to the conclusion the PS3 costs more, with little extra "spice" to show.

2099net, in terms of fighting, lets wait for TGS for that. As for only Jap games at E3: Heavenly Sword and Resistance: Fall of Man are the most obvious that spring to mind in contradiction to your remarks. The indifference you speak of is the dedicated gaming press and market. The mass market is fickle and so can't be guaranteed to have the same response. So yes for the time being I do disagree with you on that. That's just some of the issues I felt I should address. I think you're over reading it. My point, as someone all ready has stated here, is that Sony are doing it "right" because they know what they are doing. And as someone else also pointed out the Spring date may have been a smoke screen to divert would be 360 purchases. Whatever the case they clearly appear to be very aware of the situation they are in.

Rash' thats complete unfounded nonsense though, you didnt actually make any sound technical bases like I did for that opinion... but you are entitled to it I guess.

...And no RSX isnt more powerfull than Xenos OVERALL in any fair comparisson Xenos has so far come out ontop and many seem to agree with that(along with it being more advanced and efficient.. I bet all you know about is USA, not the country ;) ), there are a few things that go in RSXs favour like raw pixel processing speed(but there are differences in the way this is handled on the two GPUs, theres other things that shouldnt be ignored like the Smart e-Dram and how the framebuffers are handled too) and a 50mhz faster clock speed(but Xenos can do more per clock cycle). Cell you have a point with but again not overall, game code isnt always about streaming infact there could be many instances where Xenon could be doing more than the PS3 could handle, Xenon was made by IBM and MS at a time where they knew what Sony were aiming for already, this isnt an off the shelf part either, theres things not found in the cell in it... like dot product instruction(which can prove mighty usefull for devs, sony devs will have to emulate this with multiple instructions) and branch prediction. Nothing we've seen so far or read (aside from hype spread by sony)supports that the PS3 will be more powerfull by some margin(so where is this common sense you speak of?)

edit: I fixed that link btw.. just some component prices(just to point out where the cost comes from and question will this extra cost result in better games? I'll give that a big fat NO!).