A Q&A With Factor 5: "Easier to Port From PS3 To 360"

Here is the most interesting quoted segement from a Q&A with Lair dev Factor 5 about how he views the PS3 in terms of limitations and developement.

Quote:

Q: How soon did you figure out what the PlayStation 3 could do?

A: Will we ever? (laughs). The baseline isn't hard to figure out. Yes, it's a harder ramp.

Everybody acknowledges that compared to the 360 and the Wii. It's not all that bad. It's not like

the PS 2 ramp was at the very beginning. The interesting question becomes "oh boy, we could go on

forever optimizing for the PlayStation 3." The PS 3 has more of the situation where you could go

another six months easily and forever. You can get so much more power. RSX is a known quantity. But

Cell is pretty limitless at this point.

Q: How do you look back at this point on the differences between the PS 3 and the Xbox 360?
A: You'll have a hard time if you port without having a PS 3 game in mind when you created the 360

version. That is where a lot of complaints are coming from. They created the 360 engine with a

unified memory architecture in mind, with the embedded frame buffer with its advantages and

disadvantages, and not thinking too much in early stages about multicore. If you try to get that

over to the PS 3, you're in for a bad surprise. The PS 3 is all about streamlining about the two

different memory pools. They are separate. You don't have to do tiling because you don't have an

embedded frame buffer. All of these advantages of the PS 3 turn into disadvantages if you don't

start making your game on the PS 3. Hence the griping. If you create first on the PS 3, it is

pretty easy to port it to the 360. A lot of companies coming on board now will probably start on

the PS 3 and move to the 360. The lucky thing for us is we didn't have to think about the 360 at

all."

[power of Green]

LOL.

[power of Green]

I have a couple of games this guy made on the 360. J/K.

[SimmoUK]

Glad some NDA's have been lifted from the looks of it so people can speak out, to sum up the CELL is a beast for graphics and physics and Blu-Ray helps to create huge detailed enviroments, this is a must read...

I would of gone with the title "CELL is limitless at this point" though.

But good to see some of the porting is being cleared up as well...

[Sevir04]

this is cool. and he validated why Gears looks so good. the engine is made for Streaming... as a matter of fact. i think it was the first game in the 360 life of a year that supported streaming. and in that recent things about 10 reasons the ps3 will win from insomniacs Chiep concept and art director... he stated that the reason gears looked much better than resistance is that gears supported HDR and streaming while resistance being a launch title and the ps3 full library was only finalized 4 t0 5 months prior to the game being released. there for supporing streaming would be like scrapping the game and starting over... So thats why Ratchet is looking even better than resistance and looks that good because it supports the HDR and Streaming engine that they created for that game... man and resistance for a launch game looked amazing to say the least. better that just about most of the 360 titles for that year. only being topped by gears and Rainbow six. which both looks outstanding. which is why i think that HS will definately be the game to dupe gear visually. and MGS4 at it's release will probably match hS or even dupe it... lair is gonna be freaking awesome... developers need to take hints from devs like team ninja and insomniac and factor five and most definately evolution and ninja theory. cool. now we know more about the hurdles that the ps3 has and how devs work around it. and reasons why gears looked so good.

[JsonHenry]

The Devs knew what they were doing.

Also - the ATI card is more powerful than the 7800GTX in the PS3.

The funny thing is - both Nvidia AND ATI have more powerful video cards than the 360 and PS3 have in them out already. While everyone is talking about how great the Cell and X360 video cards are - the PC is already light years beyond the consoles!

Just do a search for Crysis!

[Lucidmantra]

problem with your comment... The Xbox 360...

3.2 GHz PPC Tri-Core Xenon

oops... its triple core CPU and quite fast.

Just to get the facts straight.

[SimmoUK]

That Gears is a Linear limited experience because of not having enough space and that the Unreal Engine is basically just that, no wonder Microsoft is trying to use it to keep up with PS3, glad to hear even more confirmation of the power of CELL as well...

[Theo1130]

Are you Ken Kutaragi?

[Bebedora]

...Whom are you to question? (lets the paranoia continue)

[JsonHenry]

Blu_ray has NOTHING to do with creating a "huge detailed enviroment"!! It is just a storage medium! Idiot.

And what I take from this is - If we made it for the PS3, then lets port it to the 360 for the extra sells and turn a dollar. If it was made for the 360 first, unless it is a blockbuster title lets not spend the money on porting.

Also - This could be why the PS3 is losing a lot of its major Exclusive titles.

However, it is good to hear that the CELL is not a total flop. But one thing ALL of the developers have said - a Dual Core AMD or Intel chip would have been more powerful than ANY current Generations CPU - CELL included.

[techie]

Please find me where any developer has said that. All I've heard is Cell is hard to crack, but it's power is undeniable. Ie. those dual core chips are easy to use, but the Cell is more powerful...they worked on the cell for years at Intel and they know it's power. So you're wrong.

You want to know a fact about it? This is not a prediction, it is a fact.

In Heavenly Sword you can fight an army of 2400 (going up to 3000 with optimisation). "oh ok" you say....

Well each member of that 2400 has seperate AI...every member can be blown up for ragdoll physics, can run and charge at you...seperate AI, as well as group AI for army commands. "oh ok" you say....So wow the cell can do 2400 AI characters...great.

But no that is not the end. All 2400 AI are parsed by one SPU, yes ONE SPU. That's how powerful they are.

"Oh but the ps3 is limitted in memory"...oh but wait, that 2400 running on the SPU uses ZERO main RAM...ZERO Main ram. It all uses the on built memory of the SPU.

Each SPU has on built memory? Yes. Each SPU has on board memory. One SPU runs 2400 (3000 to come) AI characters parsing it with on board memory, not even touching main memory.

That is how you make the Cell sing.

(Indeed fender...but it is gold. ;)

[fenderputty]

Remember yesterday when I told you I was gonna have to hear this crap 1000 times. This is #1.

[bobbybrown]

'However, it is good to hear that the CELL is not a total flop. But one thing ALL of the developers have said - a Dual Core AMD or Intel chip would have been more powerful than ANY current Generations CPU - CELL included.'

i'm not so sure about that but to have a computer that is better than the ps3(or 360) costs a LOT of money, and they're better off making games for "cheap" consoles than >2000$ computers that are only owned by hardcore PC gamers, people who have a lot of money, or people that don't know computers so they buy expensive ones. I mean you don't need such computers except if you work on 3d programs and stuff like that or
new PC games.

The price of the ps3 seems more and more justified with all these games in the ps3's early life(span?) my english is bad 8(. I really wasn't a guy that likes dragon fights and stuff but after seeing the alpha, as a game designer, Lair is a must buy

[VirtualGamer]

Wow dude did you even read the article or is your comprehension just that bad?

JsonHenry - Blu_ray has NOTHING to do with creating a "huge detailed enviroment"!! It is just a storage medium! Idiot.

Lets see Lair is a world 32 kilometers by 32 kilometers that gives you a 20,000 feet view as well as the one meter level view at pretty much the same detail level. Lair streams its geometry and its textures. If you have got enough assets which are streaming, the 512 megabytes are adequate. And if you have a large enough media to store those textures."

It would appear to me that Blu-ray very much is a big part of allowing Factor 5 to create this type of detailed world since he states "if you have a large enough media to store those textures."

JsonHenry - And what I take from this is - If we made it for the PS3, then lets port it to the 360 for the extra sells and turn a dollar. If it was made for the 360 first, unless it is a blockbuster title lets not spend the money on porting.

Also - This could be why the PS3 is losing a lot of its major Exclusive titles.

No he said if your going to make a game for both systems you better have it designed with the PS3 in mind because if you design it for the 360 and then try to port it over your in for a rude awakening. Pretty much all 3rd party developers are making games for both consoles because there is not enough of an install base to recoupe the money on just one system especially since its costing so much more money to develop games for both the 360 and the PS3.

JsonHenry - However, it is good to hear that the CELL is not a total flop. But one thing ALL of the developers have said - a Dual Core AMD or Intel chip would have been more powerful than ANY current Generations CPU - CELL included.

Yeah the Cell is not a total flop..it hasn't been a flop at all but don't let facts get in your way.

[CAPS LOCK]

gears did look good and had an alright storyline, but only had like 4 people on screen at once and plus the enemies the maximum player would be 8 on screen at once. i played the game at my friend's house and on the second day he had the game he was on the last level(chapter 8 i think)i was surprised because he had always been a noob at shooters and football games. so if he could finish gears in 2 days (and he doesnt have online) that what about other people. and gears didnt have alot of things going on at once like resistance. i am also pissed that devs are charging us extra for maps that couldnt fit on the dvd in the first place, is it so hard to use another dvd?

jsonHenry you know nothing about the cell so dont even compare it to a dual core intel or AMD. and who are "ALL of the developers" please provide a link or just state that as your own opinion.

[VirtualGamer]

I found the following very interesting when comparing how the PS3 works differently then the 360.

Q: How do you look back at this point on the differences between the PS 3 and the Xbox 360?

A: You’ll have a hard time if you port without having a PS 3 game in mind when you created the 360 version. That is where a lot of complaints are coming from. They created the 360 engine with a unified memory architecture in mind, with the embedded frame buffer with its advantages and disadvantages, and not thinking too much in early stages about multicore. If you try to get that over to the PS 3, you’re in for a bad surprise. The PS 3 is all about streamlining about the two different memory pools. They are separate. You don’t have to do tiling because you don’t have an embedded frame buffer. All of these advantages of the PS 3 turn into disadvantages if you don’t start making your game on the PS 3. Hence the griping. If you create first on the PS 3, it is pretty easy to port it to the 360. A lot of companies coming on board now will probably start on the PS 3 and move to the 360. The lucky thing for us is we didn’t have to think about the 360 at all.

Q: Some of the things I’ve heard are that there is a big limitation on this generation is the amount of total memory in the system. The 512 megabytes is just not close to the 2 gigabytes you can have on a PC.

A: Yeah, but didn’t we have this conversation eight years ago and five years ago? Honestly, yes we spent the last four or six weeks going through hell getting Lair into memory. But then again, we were doing the same thing on Rebel Strike. You always complain you don’t have enough memory. I think it would have been a crucial mistake if either Sony or Microsoft had only 256 megabytes. I somehow have the hunch that both of them would have loved to. Tim Sweeney was very outspoken in the early days in the Microsoft circle. The 512 is probably the sweet spot. You have to figure out how to stream. Lair streams its geometry and its textures. If you have got enough assets which are streaming, the 512 megabytes are adequate. And if you have a large enough media to store those textures."

To me after reading this it appears the PS3 handles things very differently then the 360, it does not use an embedded frame buffer and thus has to use streaming and if your using streaming you have to have larger storage media for that kind of thing. Hence why it looks like for the PS3 that Blu-ray was a definate must have.

[Maddens Raiders]

let the insanity begin!

Ahh...when will we all just acknowledge the very simple fact that the PS3 has a harder learning curve to grasp than those for the 360 and the wii, and that only those devs that spend the time [doing their jobs] extracting the power of the Cell:BBE will reap the benefits from critics and gamers alike. Just stop drawing comparisons and telling war stories and get to work people [devs]! I've got games to play dammit!

Cheers =]

[Lucidmantra]

Agreed everyone should take a big can of STFU and game... all the consoles are out why must we be subjected to another 5 years of my Schlongg is bigger than yours... Hell the biggest one didn't win last generation. Play the games or dev the games and STFU.

Even Barbie Horsie Adventures sells copies so maybe it just doen't matter whos is bigger or better. Its what the people like. Not the fastest, cutest, blah blah...

[Maddens Raiders]

Lucid. I definitely agree w/ that notion. I'm just so sick of all the daily comparisons & overscrutinized screensshots of this little ticky blah tack blah lighting, zig - zag, blah choppy BS --aagghhh!

I can't take this Sh1t any more. Ok so there's diffences between the two systems. Are you friggin' Serious!? Everyone's gone into this quasi - "Dengue Fever" of nex-gen comaparisons.

I mean let's compare things like new exclusives, more user driven content comparisons as it unfolds richer and deeper onto the three competitiors. Let's take a look at how maybe we might be able to play our friends on a 360 fom the confines of our PS3 home and visa-versa....oh...oh yeah and this thing called "New Games" -- not just warmed over sequels, prequels, and refried horsesh1t that we all take in year after year in stride. I must admit that I can be a stubborn pig-headed fool sometimes when it comes to brand loyalty, trends, comparisons, etc..., but these are the things I think about daily and would love to see more people talk about. Good Luck, right!?lol

Cheers =]

[BigE]

It makes you question whether what Epic said about Gears of War NOT being possible on the PS3. Honestly, in my opinion, if you look at the gameplay videos out now, or the screenshots, Lair looks just as good as Gears of War - If not better. And all this being done with 256mb RAM from the RSX (with additional 'Cell' power). Dont get me wrong, no fanboyism here what so ever,i think Gears of War is a great game, but if you asked me, because Epic has a contract with MS for Gears of War, they would be inclined to bad mouth the PS3.

[TheMART]

Oh yeah right, Epic would do that, also because they make a certain game called Unreal Tournament 3 for the PC, 360 and... PS3.

That's why they badmouth it. Duh.

[CAPS LOCK]

i couldnt agrre more with your statement. i also think that sony or whoever thought to use blu ray had the same things in mind and new it was almost limitless because of blu ray and the standard hard drive wich they could cahe from.

[SimmoUK]

Your full of crap...

It's just a storage medium?

What just like cartridge then Sony firstly pushing CD, check out the history of Sony if you don't believe me, then pushing Blu-Ray in games.

Because you can fit more information including bigger detailed enviroments and more level's on a Blu-Ray disc while Microsoft will milk you with downloadable content take Gears for example. Gears is a short game get over it with small enviroments, you've obviously never played Resistance or Motorstorm for example because one thing you would know about is huge enviroments, it's all there to see with the future games as well.

CELL is a monster that's why everyone's using it instead of the chips that you seem to be singing about as a super computer...

[Lucidmantra]

No actually... YOU ARE WRONG...

The Bluray DVD is a storage medium... it has more space to store more items that leads to all the things you go on to say. Please consider this in the future. The rest is a good arguement it is just that you don't have an idea what storage medium/devices are.

[Silver360]

And since gears is the biggest thing out now he is taking shots at epic. No big deal. I just hope what he says about the graphics looking just as good is true when you are moving fast or slow. In the air or on the ground. But then again by the time it comes out people will just be happy to play it, so who cares.

[techie]

A: In Gears of War there is no way you could actually go above the city and then basically go seamlessly from air to ground. Unreal Engine in the end just provides for corridor and corridor being more a metaphor here in terms of design. Our engine is always designed in a huge world bubble and that can be 32 kilometers by 32 kilometers. You can go anywhere at extreme speeds. Unreal Engine is dependent on the fact that you go relatively slowly through your world. With us, you can go through the world fast or slowly. If you are in night mode, or you are on the ground, you get all of the detail that Unreal Engine provides. But there is no way you can get the macro.

Good point I guess.

[Lucidmantra]

I think that those might be more based on design choices in Gears Of War and not on what the Unreal Engine can do. Because Iremember past interations on the unreal engine spawning games with rapid movement across a open area.

I think he is just trying to brag about his engine and because Unreal is the biggest one out there he wants to pick on the kind of the block. Mostly to hype (The Game vs. 50 cent...same thing) about buy our game because theirs really sucks and ours is uber cool and women will wants to make love stains on your leg if you play it..

[techie]

Indeed...that's another take. But I think the thing about micro and macro is true...but of course there aren't many games that need that, but it is certainly an advantage.

[SimmoUK]

That's the quote i'm talking about above...

[ALIEN]

I think MGS4, HS and Killzone 2 will look better than everything right now. So like he said "If you create first on the PS3, it is pretty easy to port it to the 360. A lot of companies coming on board now will probably start on the PS3 and move to the 360". The CELL is amazing and Blue-Ray provides alot of space, so dev can make their games bigger. I think SONY did a great job with the PS3. It seems like dev are learning how to use the power of the ps3. I think if dev star their games on the ps3 and then port it to the 360, the ps3 version could look better than the 360 version.

[techie]

"Q: The Sixaxis — this is your first crack at that. How is it?
A: Yes. That waggle. Sixaxis. For me, I am not in the rumble camp. I am in the motion control camp. Give me the choice any day and I will choose it as the next logical evolution. You get more disk space with Blu-ray. You get more CPU power with Cell. The pixel shaders with RSX. What changes about the controller? That’s my one gripe with the 360. It is very nicely done. Don’t get me wrong. On the controls, nothing changed. Sony and Nintendo went the extra mile."

Damn you GaMr! You could make ten articles out of this interview...it's quite frankly Gold.

[SimmoUK]

I told you you'd like it once some NDA's had lifted :)

[hamburgerhill]

good read!

[Eternal E 808]

factor 5 had time to develop on the 360 thats why there comparing,(sarcasm)

[bobbybrown]

you are the ugliest xbot i know.

[Eternal E 808]

wat?.....an idiot sony drone

[ElementX]

I don't think you're ugly! But i'm a gaymer ;) *smooch*

[bobbybrown]

no, i am a realistic guy saying your face looks horrible, please delete that picture. and shave that mustache lol!

[PS360PCROCKS]

Haha I didn't read thw whole article but I get the gist of it from what you all have posted. Atleast this guy seems to sound smart, which is nice and he respects the 360 and doesn't say anything stupid. From what I saw in your comments though their is definetly alot of information here.

[techie]

Eternal: Factor 5 like to choose what they think is the best...they chose the Gamecube last gen. They knew the specs of the 360, but they felt the ps3 had more for them (for them). So I wouldn't question them, don't belittle a developer, just like we wouldnt belittle Epic for going to the 360 (or the 360 coming to them)

Dude. That is what I read in the interview. They talk about why they went for the PS3. I'm not making this sh*t up. As I said "That's what they think"...I have no idea because I'm not a developer or techie. I was just saying that they did their research on the consoles. And as I said don't question Epic for choosing the 360.

[Lucidmantra]

I dont understand your thought process... They pick the best system and develop for it...

BUT... Last gen they picked the Gamecube because we ALL KNOW what a massive powerstation pixelcrunching, mega graphics machine that system was right??? Sorry friend I just don't see what you are on about because your argument contradicts itself.

[Boink]

and the comments haven't turned completely flammable.

although I think the comment about companies wanting to make it on the ps3 first and then porting to the 360 is wrong.

that's how this company is doing it, but most companies will think profit first, and develop for the system that is cheapest to develop for first, and then try and port it to save $$$$. so unless sony comes up with a way that makes it easier to develop for than the 360, they are going to continuously suffer from sub-par ports, or later release dates.

[JIN KAZAMA]

"You guys know I like PS3 more than the 360, but I am going to go out here and say that BOTH consoles will have some killer APPS. I never got into the whole HALO thing, but that doesnt mean it wont be a KILLER APP, it will be amazing, i am sure it will. I am giving these developers major props no matter what side of the fence they are on. Also, Sony will have some major killer apps too. Mass Effect, Halo 3, BioShock, etc...I am sure will be great, and if they are not, that would be a shame, because we NEED another competitor out there for Sony. The worst thing that can happen is there would be a monopoly by one company, that would be really bad. So I hope MS does great, i hope it gets equal % of the marketshare as Sony. Its no skin off my back if it does, its not gonna make me ANY richer if Sony dominates this time around also. So, as a Sony fan and supporter, I thank MS for doing everyhting that THEY THINK IS right, to make Sony work even harder than last GEN, and vice versa. I may not agree with MS's position, but i certainly respect it. Its funny, cuz I used to HATE SONY, i was the biggest ANTI-SONY Pro GAMECUBE fanboy out there. But anyways, thanks MS and Sony for trying to give us gamers the best experience as possible. But we are not dumb gamers, its not because you love us, its because you love whats in our wallets, and no, not the condom.
Later.

[PS3n360]

if everyone was open minded and honest then this would be a better place.

[hamburgerhill]

That comment deserves a bubble for sure! It's good to see that a lot of people are just getting tired of all of this war crap and giving credit were it is due on either console! If I get a PS3 plus my 360 then I'm going to really have a great year of non stop gaming entertainment!

[PS360PCROCKS]

wow just wow very well written and for the first time I 100% agree and respect one of your comments. Bubbles for you

[CrazzyMan]

so there is really unlimited power of cell, that`s cool. =)
and if other developers will start making first ps3 games, and then xbox360, then the situation with SC:DA or F.e.a.r. won`t repeat. =)

Well, only positive news, cool. =)

[PS3n360]

i am not buying it. I was shocked to see how bad the wings look on the dragons its all very stiff. The gameplay looks repetitive and uninteresting, maybe I just dont get it but there are way better games for Ps3 to spend my money on. Great article though and it does help clear up the reasons for the combination of componants that went into the ps3, suddenly the bluray doesnt seem much like a trojan horse since it is apparently neccessary to stream large amounts of data to work with the cell/rsx capabilities. Cool.

[fenderputty]

the game play that you've seen is ALPHA? I guess that doesn't change whether or not you like it but, I think it will look a good amount better then what we're seeing. What I'm seeing looks great already.

[PS3n360]

I didnt realize that was alpha. I will take back the comment on how it looks. I thought it was much closer to completion. Its like the halo 3 alpha videos look pretty bad too so I suppose they will both look much better. BTW I like your avatar I surf as well, goin to La Ticla Mexico shortly since i am sick of wearing a 6 mil wetsuit in Canada. Spent My PS3 money on the trip so now I gotta wait another month to get my sony game on.

[BIadestarX]

I said it before and I got flamed for it. 1st party developer have it easy, they even recognize that "The lucky thing for us is we didn’t have to think about the 360 at all.". So, it's not that 3rd party developers are lazy, is that the PS3 is not a great console to port games to.

"A lot of companies coming on board now will probably start on the PS 3 and move to the 360" Though that may make lots of sense when it comes to the technical level it's not always the case in the financially... 3rd party developers usually need to make games for the console with the larger installbase in order to make the most profits.

This also proves what developers have being saying... it's easier to make games for the 360 due to the unified memory architecture and the fact that developer don't have to be doing things like streaming data from the disk -> memory.

I guess, it seems as not having blu-ray on the PS3 was not a choice. I guess we can give it a rest by saying blu-ray required for games on the PS3 due to cell + memory architecture. Now, this does not apply for the 360 since it has a completely different architecture which as proven with todays games work just fine with DVD9.

[fenderputty]

Blu Dragon.

[ALIEN]

dude! Did you even read the article?, i think you didn't even read it. your trynna change what he said.

[ElementX]

Because anything the PS3 can do graphically, the 360 can do better ;) Look at all the 360 to PS3 ports, they're SH!T!

[fenderputty]

Or you have the reading comprehension of a 3 year old. Which is it?

[ElementX]

Factor 5 isn't developing for 360. How would they know? They give this technical mumbo jumbo about unified memory and what-not. They develop games for the PS3, so they're going to say it's "easier and more powerful". MOST other developers think the 360 is easier. I'm not sure about graphical power, but from what I've read, the 360 is better in that department.

No i'm not a hater. I ordered a PSP and I have a DS. I'm waiting for PS3 price to come down.

[Raist]

Well, even if they haven't developped on the 360, I guess game developpers have enough knowledge to be able to tell how hardware works right ? Especially when this hardware is very PC like.

Besides, I don't see any reason for him to say "yeah port from PS3 to 360 is easier" if it isn't true. What exactly would be the reason for lying about this ?

[Jay da 2KBalla]

Have you noticed that the only devs with anything positive to say for the ps3 are the ones making exclusive games for the system? Carmack, arguably the smartest man in the industry says they are equal as does pretty much everyone else while devs like factor 5 and insomniac say all this crazy ass bs about how the ps3 is o so super powerful. Um no. And then every multiplatform dev in the industry including EA who is the king of porting says its easier to port from 360 to ps3. Just because the ports on the ps3 look subpar the 360 version doesnt mean its easier to port from ps3 to 360. It just means sony devs are tired of all these games lookin like crap on ps3 and are trying to come up with an excuse for it.

And then Sony devs have the nerve to try belittle Gears of War just because they are jealous that it won around 20 or 30 awards and is the highly regarded next gen game as of now and they mad cuz gears sold 3 million plus in 3 months. Sony devs need to stop hating on Gears of War. And so what if the game uses streaming? And your point is? It still looks better than anything on ps3 so maybe ps3 devs need to start streaming. And I think sony and all its little gang of sony devs need to shut up about all this potential the ps3 has. Until the games start showing it sony needs to shut the hell up because Gears is the best looking game on the next gen market and best selling game and most praised game and if the ps3 is so much more powerful why would Epic say that ps3 isnt even capable of running gears of war due to its insuficient split memory? Just because the ps3 is more complex doesnt make it more powerful as is said here by epic:

http://xbox360.ign.com/arti...

To conclude, the fact of the matter is both consoles are roughly equal but 360 has better development tools and a one year head start.

[GeneYus]

Comments where Sony Devs have talked bad about Gears. I have seen nothing but praise for that game from consumer and developer alike. Saying that there is no place in Gears where you can go from ground to flying around the city is not bad mouthing. Its stating a fact that anyone who has played through Gears can confirm.

[BIadestarX]

Interesting isn't? Why aren't 3rd party developers doing the same? Ohh wait they are too bussy being flamed and accude of being lazzy. I wonder if praicing the console is part of the job requirement now in days for 1st party developers... You can hate me for saying this all you want... but we get at least one article a day from 1st party developers praicing the PS3... Why? What's the point? The game can speak on their own can't they? Let's see which first party developer working for Sony will talk about the PS3 tomorrow as if the console needs saving. I don't see 1st party developer for the 360 or the wii sweating their consoles on daily basis. Maybe they just don't need to.

[VirtualGamer]

First off Factor 5 is not a 1st party developer for Sony neither is Insomniac. See they are independately owned and operated studios that choose to only work on the PS3, so that makes them second party developers not first. Much the same as Team Ninja was a second party developer for MS until they decided to make games for the PS3 as well so now they are considered a third party developer. Even they (Team Ninja) have had good things to say about the PS3. So its just not Sony owned developers saying good things now is it so stop with the hate.

Also don't seem to have any issues with Epic giving interviews and answering technical questions about their game or Epic making comments that the PS3 can't even run Gears of War (according to Jay da 2KBalla) but if this guys makes comments about how their game engine design is different then UE3 and you get all offended like its a personal attack on you. I saw nothing in this interview that belittles what Epic has done. He was asked about Gears and he explained how their engine was different in scope then theirs. He never said it was bad or worse it just had a different focus.

Between you and Jay da 2KBalla who makes this comment

"Sony devs need to stop hating on Gears of War. And so what if the game uses streaming? And your point is? It still looks better than anything on PS3 so maybe PS3 devs need to start streaming."

which means he never even read the article since they do use streaming. But hey why actually read and try and understand what the guy is saying instead its more fun to act like two rabid fanboys who can't stand the fact that someone is saying good things about what the PS3 can do so your in attack mode to counter the good news.

[kewlkat007]

"Its funny, cuz I used to HATE SONY, i was the biggest ANTI-SONY Pro GAMECUBE fanboy out there."

Jin if you were pro gamecube rather than Sony Playstion one/two, then you don't know gaming. I like nintendo, but gamecube didn't have sh!t for games. Now you must be talking out your @ss, either that or you don't know video games. which one?

The only games I had for the Cube was Super Smash Bros, Soul Caliber 2, Mario Sunshine, and Mario Kart. The Playstaion had a great list of games, tha tmade their way to the PS2.

Should I take this guy serious, picking gamecube over PSone/two at one point? comeee-ooonnnn

This guy know what he is talking about as it sounds, and what I got was,
"All of these advantages of the PS3 turn into disadvantages if you don’t start making your game on the PS3"

So if a game is made on the Xbox 360, it can be Often "Imitated", but Never "Duplicated". Vice verca on the PS3 though..just look at the ports really.

[freeza]

so this is why valv an ubisoft assed up ther games cause they tried to port from the 360

[ben hates you]

i do think this is sony bullcrap but it may be so porting a ps3 game to a 360 may be easier but which game is easier{360} to make, which is the greater factor? i don't think its the ps3 since the lbp designers have never made a 360 game so they are not at place to say

[Skumuvite]

i all :)
i really dont think this game is something special.. it lots a normal game... nothing special and i agree with him... its better do the hard work first and then the easy... hes giving reason to that ppl who said" on the ps3 its really had to know how to use the processor... how can we get really great games... if the software houses... cant understand what they are doing.... its easier to play on the xbox360 a good game... then on the ps3... o the ps3 can really achieve great power games... when they can understand it...

and by the way sorry for my really bad bad bad spealling... im portuguese

[xfrgtr]

Where is TheMart?He should learn a good lesson form this interview about "porting"

[Skumuvite]

i just forget something...

isnt the ps3 the most powerfull next gen console??? "at least is what they say"

and isnt the xbox360 the lower one??? "repeat quote"

so in theory it would be easier to make a game on the lower (xbox360) and then... just get better on ther powerfull one (PS3)????

so this guy is telling us ... " is easy to make on the powerfull and then just get low and more mediore on the 360....

Amazing ... like someone just said .... "its only the makers of exclusive games that are really talking good about the ps3"

i have the 2 consoles but im tired of this entire &#%&"#$%"&am p;
they can coexist the two of them...

PS3 and XBoX 360 fan

[VirtualGamer]

Its not a case of power its case of design. From my understanding if you create your game engine where it uses the split mem on the PS3 its easy to modify the engine afterwords to run on the 360 unified memory but if you try and take your game engine which is designed to use unified memory and then make it run using the PS3 split memory your in for a world of pain.

Most games that come out on multiple system rarely ever are the ones that push the hardware like exclusives do anyways so I think your concerns are unfounded.

[kewlkat007]

The game looks great thanks to Sony's machine. Flying around might be the best amusment this game might have, with the breath taking scenaries. Flying around gets boring real fast.(unlike StarFox 64, great game)

Wait till SEGA makes a comeback with Panzar Dragoon Next-Gen(It has more credibility)...

So if a game is made "first" on the Xbox 360, it can be Often "Imitated", but Never "Duplicated".

[Skumuvite]

lol and a ps3 can never be duplicated but only imitated... its the same thing... they are diferent consoles ... 2 diferent ways of make games... but 2 great consoles

ppl need to stop comparing them....

[JIN KAZAMA]

I was a nintendo fanboy over Sony, because I grew up on Nintendo, and I felt loyal to that system because I felt they were gonna come thru that time. I gave them so many chances to come out with something sweet on the cube, and the only game I liked was WaveRace. Gamecube was a major dissapointment and by then, the PS2 had great games, which I finally realized and shifted over. Nintendo alienated themselves with the cube. I tried to hold on to the past of NES, but i had to let go. There is nothing wrong with that. Now the PS3 is here, and you might say, well, history might repeat itself like it did for NINTENDO. Thats not the case for PS3. It offers a lot, from hardware to software. Motorstorm and RFOM and NBA Street and the demo's and Tekken DR is more than enough to hold me over for the killer exclusives.
So you may think I dont know what i am tlaking about, but we grew up on NINTENDO and I wanted to give it another chance, but NINTENDO didnt grow up with us.

[kewlkat007]

I grew up with Nintendo too, I 've had all Consoles, even when Playstion was slaughtering Nintendo's arse. I'm a nostalgic gamer, Gaming for 17+ years. Yes waverace was great on the N64, especially the realism water physics in that game, and the waves and such.

Ofcourse Sony had all the good games. It stole all the "Exclusives" from Nintendo, thats when I knew there was a new king in town. Nintendo stayed afloat with Gameboy advance(Pokemon craze), and Golden-Eye(hence my name) did very well for the N64 with Zelda Ocarina of Time. The gamecube was a joke, besdies the games I had for it.

Now do you know what console is stealing Exclusives? Thats right. Sony should watch its cards. I currently have Xbox, PS2, Xbox360, and jsut got the Wii. PS3 is not worth it yet for me. Besdies sony's arrogance, I'm holding out till FFVII:remake is announced. Come on SONY we seen that CGI Tech Demo(what else is new) at that show I know it's coming.

I move with the times. I'm a gamer. Wherever the HOT games go I will be there, well just not as soon as I used to be, no rush here, the 360 is fine right now.

To the guy below if your gonna quote a great developer post the facts or something.
"but infact mark reign, vp of epic, saidthe ps3 is a better peice of hardware and gears would have been very possible on the ps3"

[NikV3]

reading some comment i saw people say that epic said it wasnt, but infact mark reign, vp of epic, saidthe ps3 is a better peice of hardware and gears would have been very possible on the ps3 if it wasnt published by ms, so i dont see where comments like that fall into this debate

[Scrumptious]

http://dpad.gotfrag.com/por...

This article expalians the hardware details of both systems. It states while the CPU's of the 360 and PS3 look great on paper, they still are not as powerful as a desktop CPU's due to lack of out-of-order exectuion and a few other factors.

And to whoever steted the PC GPU's were more powerfull than the PS3 and 360, you are half correct. The PS3 GPU (7800GTX) has been on the market since 2005. The ATI card based on the 360 (R600) will be released in a month or two. So the 360 still has the most powerful GPU on the market right now, PC or console. The article above states the superiority of the GPU.

[bobbybrown]

unfortunately it's not all about the gpu :O

[Raist]

People still bring this article ?

It's a complete piece of crap, full of mistakes and personnale interpretations :/

[SnakeCL]

http://www.nvidia.com/page/...

Xenos has been obsolete for quite a while now.

[power of Green]

If that were true there would have been a 3 to 4 hundred post thread IF Mark said the opisite of what Cliffy.b said; i have yet to find what you're talking about. lol

The Xbox 360 was designed around the needs that GoW needed, its why the 360 has so much Memory/RAM. Epic Told MS to make the 360 a monster for their game. FACT!, read about it before you make such claims.

#43 is correct alot of Xbox fans and even more PS3 fans missunderstand Blu-ray. You can have 50 gigs worth of game, textures etc. in a game but the PS3 will not allow the same amount of detail etc displayed at any given time as the 360. Not as much at any given time, do you understand?.

[GeneYus]

but far more polygons, effects, etc.

How detailed do textures need to be before they look real?

[Bebedora]

JsonHenry - Blu_ray has NOTHING to do with creating a "huge detailed enviroment"!! It is just a storage medium! Idiot.

[Bebedora]

An applause to DEEPbrown for the telling of the power of SPU if true. Sounds amazing at least. But I was thinking, maybe in a year or two devs would touch on maximizing the power of over four of them together....

Anyways. My "feel" has been 1080p equals 2,2 times the amount of GRAPHICS data only...and Blu-Ray comes to mind, then we have Cell, the beast that seems to me be the size of an ancient dragon...*cough* blue dragon *cough* still it seems like it will do the math and equations necessary to make me happy for another six...make a math for that pc rig of yours, and come back telling me the PS3 is a hyped mega piece of crap...in six years from now.

[CrazzyMan]

just watched Developer Walkthrough Pt. 1 and 2.

Those are AWESOME!!! Really AWESOME!!! and in this video also speaking about cell power and some stuff from this interview. :)

p.s. good people, give me positive feedback, need bubles.. thnx. =)

p.p.s. more and more cell power:

Split screen is a difficult problem from a performance point of view and it is certainly more difficult from an engineering point of view than rendering 1920×1080. Both together, no doubt, requires a serious engineering effort but it’s not impossible... In the limited development time frame of a launch game there were bigger battles to fight but it’s certainly possible and you will see split screen games running at 1080. For Resistance: Fall of Man, split screen with co-op play simply brought more to the table so 1080 support had to wait.

[Firewire]

Guys if you wanna talk about the facts on memory or porting read this post taken from a guy (Some of us think he is a designer, but we can't get confirmation) on the forums of another site.
This guy knows his stuff!, and there are confirmed designers on this site that agree as well.
I know a little about this stuff, but these guys floor me, they realy no their stuff! But many will refuse to tell you if their designers or not. anyways.....

"PS3 never had any memory problem, the only thing that has problem is 3rd party's ability to adapte.
In a game the most memory consuming process is graphic.
Tranditionaly we process graphic by doing the following.
1) Loading data from South Bridge to system RAM,
2) CPU load comand and data from system RAM and store GPU command and result back to system RAM,
3) CPU copy the GPU command and result data to video RAM,
4) GPU process the GPU command and result to build up the graphic and output it.
When you look at this Unify memory has an advantange of saving a move,
which is copy data from system memory to video memory, since system RAM is Video RAM.

However you don't have to do so with PS3, since Cell is so dam fast we can do JIT instead by buffering.
So the process becomes the following instead.
1) CPU load command directly into SPU and data to system RAM,
2) GPU command and Result generated from SPU got directly copy into video RAM,
3) GPU process the GPU command and result to build up the graphic and output it.
If you look at this carefully you will find this is a even faster process then unify RAM.
Since command are copy directly into SPU, so time for copy CPU command to system RAM,
and time for caching the command in CPU is totally out of the picture in PS3.

The fact is 3rd parties have no idea on programming PS3,
and direct port of 360 codec not only makes PS3 to do extra unrequired read and write,
it also fill PS3's memory with unrequired data over 3 times,
not to mention the parallel processing method is totally not for PS3 whcih half Cell's processing power.
The fact is under good practice programming PS3 should feel like
programming 360 with at least double the memory or maybe tripple.
Not to mention due to BD on board, there is no need to compress texture.
Which save both processing power and memory usage."

Many people say he sums it up 100%!

[Bebedora]

You try too hard. The ram issue I can see is speed. GDDR3 is fast, but the ram speed between RXD and its 256MB and Cell is five fold if not more than the GDDR3 is ....?
The issue as I see it stands on Cell and it's dependency alone. What can it do?

>> The fact is 3rd parties have no idea on programming PS3,

This cant be true if you look at NGS...1080p at 60fps for one.

[zonetrooper5]

I thought Factor 5 worked for Sony ? or am i wrong. As for Blu-Ray, HD-DVD i still think they are not needed for this generation of consoles and yes i know i will get flamed and wow Jin your comments have changed, i never knew you were a nintendo fanyboy.

[Bebedora]

How can that be, if GoW 1 was short and as GeoW 1 was? Where do you plan to take next-gen without the storage for it? Compress it? Well Blu-Ray is slower than the DVD in XB360, so we have to have it compressed even better than in the xbox...so I think the compression is not the key to the holy grail of next gen, but better possiblities to express this sexy graphics in overwhelming en masse only possible in HD-DVD or Blu-Ray....

@Firewire: Yeah that person stated the cell for being so d@mn fast. This makes me tingle. But in laymans terms this kind of straightforwardness makes more sense to me. Plus that the GDDR3 ram (the unified RAM in 360) is so much slower than the video ram in the PS3...I find this a very big advantage in graphic output.

[Firewire]

Bebedora:

Sorry but I'm still trying to wrap my head around what I posted! It just floors me and leaves me behind. As for 3rd party, he did not meen all, he was refering to some 3rd party devs that complained about deving for the PS3 as being to hard tackle, and how some devs that ported games did it the wrong way.

I am now where near this guys level, but many others (some confirmed devs) agree with him 100%

[StrongerCypher]

If this game lives up to the hype I will certainly be buying a PS3. That certainly looks good and just raised and eye brow. I do not think I have seen any thing on the 360 that impressive. I like this developer and what he is saying. I love my 360 but this game has impressed me more than Mass Effect and I thought that was good. If I am wrong some please some show me something on the 360 that is comparable. Both consoles will certainly be good but I am seeing tha the PS3 is not going down with out a fight.

[FeralPhoenix]

I think this was a good read.....obviously he's "hyping" his game just as ALL dev's do when making a game. I'm not going to nit-pick everything he said but there's just a few things that come to mind from reading the interview and its not just his comments its some of the perceptions that I've noticed.

Gears is obviously a great game, its out and gamers are enjoying it....lets leave it at that, I don't understand why Sony dev's think that saying it looks better because of "this or that", sounds like anything other than an excuse....yes, their reason may be valid but thats doesn't change the facts, and the reality is talking about making a better looking game; and making a better looking game are two different animals....until we see the results, everything is just speculation. -Yes reputation can be considered, we know some dev's will deliver but even then....final judgement can only be made when we have the final product.

The other question that comes to mind is; why do people assume that complexity equals more powerfull?, don't get me wrong I think its evident that the Cell is very powerfull and maybe "unlimited", but does that translate into "games" that will "blow away" the competition.....power has to be efficient for its intended purpose, anything beyond what's needed is just "extra". Its about the hardware architecture, design, efficiency, setup..etc. not just "raw power". I know this is not what he said but I'm just pointing out the "overall aspect" of a gaming console.

[freeza]

he had some interesting things to say in this vid from gt as well

http://www.gametrailers.com...

[Funky Town_TX]

Just show me the games. You guys can talk about specs all day. Games will look good when dev are good and have the money and reasources to dev a good game. I don't care what system the game is being made for. They are good looking 360 games and good looking PS3 games. Can we stop now sh8t.

[Violater]

if we stop fighting what fun is there.......
Ohhhhhhh thats right the Games.
Geniusss!

[Says you]

Dumbass the RSX graphics is more powerful than 2 6800 graphics cards combined and the Xenon graphics card isnt so stop lieing and making up the facts JsonHenry you dumbass. to bad it isnt true just get over it the PS3 has better CPU and better GPU the Xenon graphics isnt powerful as the RSX graphics and plus ATI didnt announce that there graphics card is more powerful than 2 6800 graphics card which the Xenon isnt. and by the way 2 of those websites didnt exactely take me to the websites that there suppose to considering 2 of those websites didnt say anything in what you said.

[JsonHenry]

The ATI card in the 360 is MORE powerful than the 7800GTX. Plain and simple. The only thing propping the PS3 up is the dedicated memory for the 7800GTX which edges out the 360 slightly in memory bandwidth.

Go to Anandtech.com, Hardocp.com, or any hardware review site and they will tell you the same thing. The graphics card in the PS3 is nothing but a 7800GTX... which is now pushing a generation and a refresh OLD. My 8800GTS only needs an underpowered CPU added to it and it would be faster than an entire PS3/Xbox360. (oh yeah, and have more/faster memory!!)

[EZCheez]

Kind of explains why Kojima said he needed the "theater" experience for MGS4.

[Silver360]

It will only run at 30 frames/sec and right now it drops to single digits. Good news it looks good and is in 1080p.

[BubblesDAVERAGE]

They knew this but it will be about two years before they implement it. Well I heard EA will do it next year.

[weekapaugh]

Lets face it people, its always easier to dum things down...

[Sevir04]

JsonHenry - and Lucid360 , the both of you are idiots. how quickly you two get offended and bent out of shape because you think that a dev or someone is saying that gears is was bad.... idiots... Factor 5 can speak about the Unreal engine simply because he's developer. the UE3 uses it's streams it stuff which is why it looks good... then again the 360 limited what it could have done... i think that Gears would have been the best game for this year had it been longer... all that graphics and high detailed levels and streaming and programming really ate away at the space thats why the Epic cut the game when it was short.... and another thing if Gears of war wasn't Technologically possible then why have the engine liscend by so many deves who are using it to build games for that system that cant run Gears... wasn't Gears of war built on the UE3. in all honesty. that just sounds like Bias to me... you say gears can be run on ps3 but you have Unreal Tournamant 3 running on ps3 and pc first and then using the very engine your first next gen game made popular. what the F***. if gears wasn't possible on the ps3 then the engine it was made on couldn't be supported on the ps3 either... utter bullish. simply put and you know what you rabid fan boys believe it so blindly without seeing the damn facts.... i'm done with this Topic , i read and understood what i needed to and that Lairs engine is great at doing the same thing the UE3 can do and that they are doing it well. all the Technical issues of porting is made easier if you build with the ps3 architect in mind. no twisting and no fanboy lines of hate added... pure simple facts from a developer who worked with MS, nintendo and Sony, who evaluated there choices and chose to develop for a platform exclusively so they can maximize the every potential of that system.. and not give us the consumers some half assed port.

fan bois... the nerve of these raving idiots

[tk]

Simply because all the abstraction and specific methods used for the different architectures will be handled by the engine.

It will be like porting a SQL script from SQL server on Intel to Oracle on Sun with SPARC. Two vastly different architectures running different platforms, yet the result will be similar.

At the beginning of the cycle - yeah - the Cell is difficult, it will take quite a bit longer to get it working better, and these techniques will be taken up by the engine developers. The engines will not be single code base - because that will defeat the point. But it will mature enough to play to the strengths of the underlying platforms. The prudent among the engine developers will ensure that the performance is the same - even if the one could do better - if only to ensure that porting will result in nearly identical builds for the different platforms.

The game engines made for specific architectures are the ones that will really show the difference and strengths of each platform.

[achira]

some ppl say this game looks as good as geow. i must say they are blind and brainwashed. this game does not only look 100 times better, it is 1000 times larger, has 1000 times better physics and effects. this ppl are a definition of ignorance and brainwashed.
the RSX is not a 7800GTX, and even if it would be so, how can you know that, there are no OFFICIAL specifications about the RSX, and the old one from e3 2005 are in favor to the rsx. the rsx is a mystery and if it is 2 times as fast as a 6800GT, there is no chance that the gpu of the xbox360 is comparable. the xenos is not a R600! its a different architecture, it has different clockings, it does not support dx10, the only similarity is the unified shader. and the unified shader is not a strong optimization as many thing, because they dont understand what it is. its even questionable if it is an advantage. to sum up, you cannot say what gpu is better, but i am sure the future will show that the RSX is far stronger.

[GaMr-]

So Epic asked Microsoft to Redesign or Beef up the 360 just so it can run Gears of War.

-So my question is when PS3 games start dropping and they look better than Gears of War without Sony being told to rebuild the PS3. Then what?

[Dareaver1]

Gears was in development when the 360 was being developed, you don't thing that a lot of developers influenced the ps3's architecture. The development of all consoles is exactly the same. They use the feedback from the developers to make a better console, because in the end it is the developers opinions that really matter. you want to keep them happy, because they will be the ones to make or break the console. I hate spin comments, taken out of context just insights flaming. It is also ridiculous to compare gears engine to factor 5's engine, gears is a close quarter game, it's whole premise is using cover and outflanking your enemy, factor 5's game is about being in the open, dumb comparison and not even needed. Really, since gears is on top right now everyone is gonna take their jabs at the champ. It's called "king of the hill" syndrome. Unreal's engine is licensed out to 1st make themselves a hell of a lot of cash, and to make it easier for smaller developers that don't have the finances to develop their own engine. Both consoles are extremely powerful, they both have different types of architectures so they will have different strengths, they both are gonna pump out great games. Saying that one is more powerful than the other is ridiculous at this point because the third console, which doesn't get acknowledged much is performing extremely well, and it's not yet stated that it's more powerful. And i'm sorry but sony is the only console manufacturer to be beating on it's chest saying how powerful it is, MS and Nintendo are using a different tactic to gaining gamers, and simply put it's about the games. Yelling out that it's the most powerful, is like it's screaming out for attention. Sony needs to just push games and that's it enough with the tech demos, enough with the will be's, enough with the investing for the future, and future proof nonsense. We are gamers, and if we were really into investing, we wouldn't buy games or consoles, seeing that they have the most deplorable depreciation values. Just give us games, all these consoles need to just give us games, no more hype, no more bull, just games and more games. If all these great games do eventually come out, we will be some broke-ass gamers. It's gonna be great.

[MoonDust]

Hate hate hate. I'm done.

[FordGTGuy]

If they don't develop on the Xbox 360 how would they know its easier to port from one to the other? Unless they are porting something to the Xbox 360 and have it under veil.

[VirtualGamer]

Because they looked at the Xbox 360 as a possible platform for this gen of consoles before going with the PS3. Also as everyone has been pointing out for sometime now, the 360 is very similar to programing like a PC. He knows the 360 uses unified memory and an embedded frame buffer, which sounds like what developers are more use to developing with. The only thing that's different for the 360 is the multicore but the memory and embedded frame buffers are stuff prior consoles and PC's have used so he has experience designing games on that type of system.

The PS3 does not use either of those 2 things and its his opinion that it would be easier to make your game based on the PS3 design and then modding to the 360 then the other way around. Is he right or wrong? From what we have seen in delays from companies porting over 360 games to the PS3 it would appear that his assement that they are in for a bad suprise was in fact the case. Add to this the framerate issues and some of the graphical glitches and it would appear those are from having problems porting the game over as games developed directly for the PS3 do not seem to have these kinds of problems at all and push the hardware alot more.

A prime example of this Team Ninja who are use to working on the Xbox and Xbox 360 making a killer game right off the bat for the PS3. Ninga Gaiden Sigman will be 1080p @60fps with full selfshadowing. So knowing this its apparent that the issues the ports from the 360 to PS3 where experiencing are not because of hardware limitations but because of difficulty porting from the 360 to the PS3 because of how different the PS3 works compared to the more conventional 360.

[freeza]

they allready talked with m$&nintendo before they made there game

[FordGTGuy]

Makes you an expert on their hardware.

[THAMMER1]

Cool.

[Monchichi025]

Why oh why do you guys make stuff so damn complicated!!!

It's not about what system is better or what fanboys think that will determine this generation.

It's all comes down to economics!!!

Facts:
Best selling systems right now are

1: PS2
2: Nintendo Wii
3: Xbox 360
4: PS3

And what is the order from cheapest to most expensive?

1: PS2
2: Nintendo Wii
3: Xbox 360
4: PS3

Anybody else see a pattern???
You see, fanboys can only dictate so much, it now comes down to the affordability of the systems for eveyone else. If you can get outside of your own ideology you will realize that most people in this world don't value videogames as we do. They will buy what fits within their own budget, and considering more then half the worlds yearly income cannot afford to spend over $400 on a system you will begin to understand which system will win out.

It's that SIMPLE!!!! Get over it!!!

[VirtualGamer]

Ahh cool I get it. So console manufactures of the world..don't push your hardware specs the secret to being successful is to create the cheapest console...graphics don't matter, games don't matter it simply comes down to which is cheapest. Makes you wonder then why MS decided to come out with a 3rd SKU thats even more expensive then the core or premium 360 doesn't?

I wonder what precentage of core 360 system have sold compared to the more expensive premium?

[PSN Starfleets]

Interesting interview but i got a sense he was just bias in alot of parts of it. Lair looks good but you're all making it seem like it allows real-life time travel for goodness sake.

I'm not interested in the game personally though, so maybe im a little bias in that ;)

[Dragonopolis]

I love my xbox 360 but I can not believe how ignorant some Xbox 360 fansare with hardware specs.

First of all the Xenos has always been quoted together with its daughter die for total of transistors. The parent die only has 232 million transistor and 105 million on the daughter die. The Xenos is heavily related to the R520 to the point that it is like a distance cousin, but still part of the family. For those idiots that try to compare a 500 transistor r600 GPU to a Xenos are going to be in for a shock. If it wasn't for the daughter die and extra pipelines we xbox 360 fans would be in for a world of hurt. Still, if we wanted a fair comparison we would pit parent die with parent die - the RSX blows away the Parent die of the Xenos.

If you subtract parent die transistors rsx 300 mil from Xenos 232 mil The RSX would have 68 million more transistors that are on the parent die vs Xenos.

I don't care how much you gripe and complain - Transistors on the Parent die are faster and more efficient than trying to access them from a Daughter die - no matter how much bandwidth is between the two. Microsoft and ATI Knew this that is why the EDRAM was formed which gave the Crummy ATI GPU some extra kick. The Xenos is faster at communicating between the Xenos and the EDRAM vs the RSX and the Cell's SPEs however..............

The daughter die is very limited in the types of calculations it can do compared to the Cell's SPEs plus RSX has 6 - 7 of them to play with. Thus the RSX can dump more work on to the Cell's SPEs compared to Xenos which would have to rely on the Triple Core general processors more which are no where near as efficient in processing the types of data that GPU/EDRAM/SPEs are designed for.

RSX doesn't have EDRAM but it does have the SPE's to work with. What concerned developers was whether the bandwidth between the SPEs and the RSX could handle all that information. Its still to soon to tell but from a look at games that are taking actual advantage of the system's hardware (like Heavenly Sword) it doesn't look like it is going to be a problem.

Lets try to make this picture easier for you to understand

If you were to take two Dragsters and trailers full of weight, then race them, they would not be as fast as without the trailers. Each team gets a few people to quickly dump as much weight out of the trailers before the light turns green and the race begins. The RSX has a hell of a lot more people dumping stuff out of its trailer than Xenos......

Now I not disagreeing with you totally - I believe the Xenos has an edge over the RSX. However, With the EDRAM the Xenos is more powerful than the RSX " only in " calculations that are EDRAM specific. Non EDRAM functions and calculations the RSX has the Xenos parent die beat hands down............

You see no matter how much faster one dragster is over the other if the faster dragster has less people dumping weight out of the trailer than the other it will have more weight to pull thus slowing it down.

It is my belief that the processing advantage the Xenos has over the RSX is not enough to overcome the fact that the RSX has a lot more extra outside processing to "lighten the load so to speak"

Basically the RSX has a lot more breathing room than the Xenos.

The PS3 is more powerful overall than the Xbox 360. It is also a very complex piece of hardware. At first people were not confident that programmers/developers would take up the challenge presented to them by Sony. But as we can see there is always someone to fill the shoes when demand is high. There are a lot of PS fans and the demand will be high

Unfortunately, sometimes people don't like to change and the games we wanted for our new shiny console don't come out or fall from Triple A status. However, the PS3 does give new Developers a Chance to take a spot in PS fans hearts. Multiplatform Developers who rely on sales from all platforms might lose out. If they take the road that Companies like EA are doing and telling their fan base not to buy because they don't want to "Change". Another problem these multiplatform companies will have is when they do change and do get a handle they will discover that there is a noticable different in graphic power between the Xbox 360 and the PS3 - in favor of the PS3.

Problem is how do you create a game that is nuetral, technology wise, but keep face with the console fan that will eventually have enough games out for that system that takes advantage of the power? You can't

This is where EA stands right now. They could make a balance Madden game but because of the lack of talent combined with the fact that the PS3 and Xbox 360 are two totally different ways of performing some of the sames things - they going on a pick one console and trash other game.

I frankly can't wait to see these 1.5 generation games when they surface for the PS3. I was planning to wait till 2008 to get my PS3 but if these games are moving and playing as good as the screen shots are hyping these games up to be - I'll be a poor man come Thanksgiving/Christmas 2007.

I think we are all just a little upset because we as gamers want it all but quite frankly competition between the Console makers is making it really hard to own multiple consoles + games. So Xbox 360 fanatics try to justify their cost by coming up with ridiculous comparisons to the R600 GPU or try to make it seem that the numbers of processors indicates speed. In that case PS3 would one of the fastest computers in the world when its not. Intel dual core processors blow the Xenos away in overall computational power - not even comparable.

Just stop justifying your machine and enjoy the games while it last. The statement that the PS3 is easier to port from - as far as multiplatform is concerned, is true. That is because Developers already have a pretty good understanding of how things are done on an Xbox 360 - were as for the PS3 many do not........... yet

[Zhoutai]

Factor 5 does know what they are talking about. Its a very complicated thing going from 3 cored Multi-Threaded processors to 8 Single-Threaded SPE's , ATI Graphics to Nvidia Graphics. Each have their strengths and weaknesses and it would be easier going from 8 SPE's to 3 Cores. Does that make the Cell stronger, not necessarily all I'm saying is that it would be easier. After all, that does explain why the ports are crap for the PS3, simply because the games first came out on 360 and they spent a frantic 3 months making a PS3 ports and got sloppy. The PS3's GPU is fine, its the developers.

[Sidherich]

I personally have a hard time trusting a non-programmers talk about console specs. Especially if he makes a non true statement in the process.

"The PS 3 is all about streamlining about the two different memory pools. They are separate. You don’t have to do tiling because you don’t have an embedded frame buffer."

That last sentence is wrong. The tiling process is completely transparent from the developer. All he is advised to do is to make a Z-Only pass before rendering the actual scene. That howewer gives a speed boost for PS3 and Xbox 360 alike because it will prevent the console to do expensive shader code on geometry that is actually occluded by other objects.

those 32x32km terrain is actually a rather interesting number. Thats a typical number you stumble upon when using a heighmap for terrains. From the looks of it it seem to be some implementation of Thatcher Ulrich's Chunked LOD algorith ( http://tulrich.com/geekstuf... The fun thing is that it actually is a very fast algorithm ... a 32kx32k object ( lets say that 1 pixel equals one meter and we get our 32x32km ) renders on a pentium with 1 Ghz and a gefore 2 with about 30 frames per second.
The big drawback of that technique is the huge amount of data the engine needs to stream in and out of system ram. If you would be stupid enough to save the heightmap as an uncompressed 16 bit greyscale map then the level would be 2Gb. ( 32768 pixel * 32768 pixel * 2 byte = 2147483648 byte = 2097152 Kb = 2048Mb = 2Gb ) And that is for height alone. I guess they dont use a unique texture for the whole sceene but rather a blended approach with a detail map so that texture isnt that huge as the heightmap. And yes you can compress that alot. My suggestion would be about 100-200Mb for one 32x32km terrain. Problem is that you can't stream that from a DVD drive (Oblivion does a similar technique(maybe the same) and sometimes stops to get the terrain updated). You need a Hard Drive to cache that. A hard drive that isn't standard on the 360 (hey maybe i just found the reason why Factor 5 says it isnt doable on 360 ;))

Comparing the EDRAM to the SPE's is not a pretty good comparison for one simple reason. The SPE's are there to make computations faster while the EDRAM is there to lighten the burden on the bus between graphics chip and video ram.

I love to talk about specs :) evidently. And i always seem to try and write a few sentences and always end up with lots of text hardly anyone will read anyway :D