Valve's Gabe Newell Speaks on Console Development 529
A user writes "Gabe Newell, of Valve fame, criticizes Microsoft and Sony on how difficult it will be for next-gen developers to produce games on their upcoming hardware. He is especially critical of Sony's model, where code written to run on Cell will be very hard to port to other systems, and vice versa. Will this bring upon a new era of PC Game superiority? Only time will tell. In the meantime, Newell says he believes that Steam-like systems will be extremely helpful for developers on the new consoles due to their ability to provide updates and new content."
Pots and Kettles (Score:3, Informative)
You mean the one that forces you to "update" before you can play its game? This system is making a player's life difficult too.
It's worth noting, however, that Valve is historically a PC games developer and has only made two console games thus far--Counter-Strike and Half-Life 2, both for Xbox.
I think this line says it all - Valve is inexperienced in cross-platform console game development, and it's whinging about it. Kind of reminds me of Alternative Browsers Impede Investigations [slashdot.org]
Actually (Score:4, Informative)
In the case of the PS3 and Cell, it is different enough in design from "traditional" architecture that cross platform development for it is going to be a nightmare.
Video Interview (Score:5, Informative)
There's the actual video interview.
I spoke to some people at Microsoft, and as I said, I can't point to a single feature in Vista that I care about that solves problems for us.
I can't see a single feature in Vista that solves any problems I've had with Windows on the consumer's side either.
And I totally see why Sony wants people to write code that runs on seven SPEs and a central processing unit, because that code is never going to run well anywhere else
You can say the same about DirectX. You can never run DirectX on anything but Windows. (WINE doesn't count). This is common practice, it happens with proprietary formats, why wouldn't it happen with game consoles?
Re:Can the PC make a comeback? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Actually (Score:5, Informative)
It's only a pain if developers want to use the hard drive as more than a glorified memory card. Otherwise, there's no problem. Developers have said that Microsoft has been telling them for a while now to design their games to work without the a hard drive. If developers choose to ignore that advice (and it's questionable whether that's just advice or if it's part of the certification program required to release a game for the platform), they have no one to blame but themselves. Consumers have every right to feel screwed by Microsoft making the hard drive optional, but developers have no right to complain. Besides, doubling the RAM from 256MB to 512MB is a much more useful change for developers than a standard hard drive, so they can't complain that Microsoft isn't listening to their feedback either.
The PS2 is "different enough" as well, and yet that hasn't stopped anybody from building cross-platform games. Frameworks that abstract out the underlying implementation details will pop up soon enough. The real question is whether or not Sony is going to provide a good SDK to get new developers started. They didn't do that with the PS2, which really hurt their launch line-up and had the effect of removing smaller developers from the market because they couldn't afford to take the time to build their own framework or to buy one from someone else. Microsoft has always been very developer-friendly, and one would expect that to continue with the 360. With the next gen consoles being relatively equal in power, providing a good SDK and developer support will be a key factor in getting good games on the new platforms and in winning exclusive third-party games for their respective consoles.
Re:c'mon (Score:4, Informative)
These consoles are taking the idea of multithreading to the max, and both are taking very different approaches. Porting between the consoles was hard enough this gen (xbox getting good pc ports as it pretty much was a pc, the gcn being a ppc and the ps2 being made by sony, who can never make anything easy to develop for, and required alot of assembly code and hand vectorization to get a game working well on the already slower hardware) but now we've got not just different architectures to support, but completly and totally different programming models to support.
Re:What's so special (Score:2, Informative)
Systems that provide update features have big advantages over a download by yourself one.
-The user don't need to know what he needs to update. If you stop updating... and a month later you try the game again you don't bother seeking and verifying the last 8 updates on the site. Not everyone is a linux user.
-Updates can be released more often, since the system manages the updates needed.
-Security. It's harder to crack the game. You may not mind it, but for a software selling company this is very important.
-Communication and news. It's way more pleasant to view news when you login into a game system than recieving not always welcome mail.
There is probably others I forgot to mention here.
Re:Video Interview (Score:3, Informative)
There is a big difference between API calls and writing code to run on a cell processor-based system. APIs can be thunked or emulated. Processor specific code, or processor feature specific code is a totally different matter. It may take gobs of assembly to implement cell processors which would be a major fsck to port.
Re:Pots and Kettles (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Actually (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Pots and Kettles (Score:3, Informative)
I seem to recall a little option for each Steam game, oh what was it called? Oh yeah.. Do Not Automatically Update This Game.. It's available under Properties (right-click) of any game in Steam. And online games probably should have Automatic updating on, but if you don't like new models and features and bug fixes, then turn it off for your single-player games.
Re:Pots and Kettles (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Oh, like me? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Pots and Kettles (Score:3, Informative)
Remember the Atari Jaguar (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Actually (Score:3, Informative)
Heck, PC games require the developer to be very aware of the architecture; that's how they tune for performance; consoles just tend not to look quite like a PC, and thinking of them as PCs is just asking to produce (technically) poor games.
Frankly, I'd be extatic if more PC programmers paid attention to the changes in architecture that have been happenning in the last few years: memory bandwidth is now king, much more so than processor speed. But few optimize their code for the bus...
Re:Pots and Kettles (Score:4, Informative)
Decryption didn't take that long, I remember it being 30 minutes or something like that. Who cares? Also, you do not need an internet connection to play single player-- there is "Offline Mode", read up on SteamPowered.com's FAQs.
Not Valve's fault-- the publisher's fault. You could have just bought the Steam version..
You should do a survey to see how often people really do this, especially with games of this quality-- don't we all still have our Doom and Duke3d boxes? Even Wolf3d?
This gets brought up all the time-- if Valve/Steam went "belly up", I'm sure they would release an official fix, or some bright individual out there will figure one out. Sheesh. Your problems at the LAN probably stemmed from not reading SteamPowered.com's guide on running in offline mode.
You can choose in a game's properties to NOT keep it up to date, and patches will not be automatically downloaded. Half-Life2's box says it recommends a highspeed internet connection, and so does SteamPowered.com's "Get Steam Now!" page.
This is like the "iTunes" of online games-- I legally bought HL2 (the gold package) and have never had a problem playing the game, getting updates, or getting the new games when they come out (HL2 Multiplayer, Blue Shift.. and soon Lost Coast and DOD:S) I'd say it's a success for paying users. The copies you're taling about (pirated ones) suffer from no auto updates, no Steam interface, little/no mod support, and you certainly can't play online. Pfft.
Sounds like you've got hardware problems-- check the SteamPowered.com forums for other people having similiar issues, and you might want to fill out a support ticket, that's what they are for.
Re:Pots and Kettles (Score:5, Informative)
It did. If you don't believe me, check out the http://steampowered.com/ [steampowered.com] forums. People that did complain were told to look again at their retail boxes. Guess what they found?
Re:c'mon (Score:2, Informative)