Orange Box Dysfunctional on the PS3?

Via Next Generation, a preview of the PS3 version of the Orange Box . 1up is the site running the piece, and it's notable because it's so incredibly negative. PS3 fans may have some frustrations in store when the game pack releases soon: "After spending a significant amount of time with a near final version of the PS3 game, it's apparent that this version suffers from a number of technical flaws, which at best merely hinder game play and at worst make the experience downright unplayable. Framerate is a consistent issue throughout the Half-Life series of games included in The Orange Box. One moment you'll be cruising through the game at 30 frames per second and the next you'll be enjoying a slideshow of series protagonist Gordon Freeman cruising down the river. "

Why are the graphics so shit?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was playing games like that on my PCs over five years ago! They're far worse than what I have on the PS3 and those I've seen on friends' 360s.

Re:I wonder why...

[Sockatume]

Specifically, EA UK. From Wikipedia, their resume:

*Burnout Legends
*Burnout Dominator
*Catwoman
*Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
*Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
*Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
*Untitled DICE Project
*PS3 port of Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Portal and Team Fortress 2

Re:Depressing

[fistfullast33l]

Somebody else has already pointed out that it was EA's fault, not really Valve's which is true. But it's also true that Infinity Ward did what other developers haven't - developed from scratch for the PS3. You can't port 360/PC code well to the PS3 platform. It's the painful truth. I love my PS3 but I fear that this kind of lack of portability really may hurt the platform.

On the other hand, porting from the PS3 to the 360 has had some success to my knowledge. Maybe that's the way these developers should go?

Re:PRE-RELEASE

[seebs]

Er, no. The PS3 has 256MB of RAM -- VRAM doesn't count. However, the OS chews up about 72MB of that, leaving you with less, and you need extra space for SPE buffers. The 360's crappy unified architecture, in practice, gives you a lot closer to a real full 256MB of RAM -- with only about 32 taken away by the OS.

The decision to cut back from 512MB of XDR to 256MB was a crappy decision.

Yeah, lots of companies, developing specifically for PS3, are able to work around the memory limitations -- but some games are built around the assumption of at least 200MB available for the actual game engine.

There's no defenders of the memory shortage who are actual PS3 programmers. There's some apologists who will admit that it's an issue, but argue that it can be worked around, but the people who claim it's not an issue are, curiously, never actually people who have developed for the target.

Re:Depressing

[DDLKermit007]

Yeah just like how a game like Assassin's Creed was on the PS3 first, ported to the 360, and the PS3 version is the one that ended up with frame-rate issues XD