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Businesses Entertainment Games

Sony Says PS3 Will Be Developer Friendly 59

Posted by Zonk from the huggable dept.
The next Playstation console has been designed with ease of development in mind, according to a story on GamesIndustry.biz. The PS3 an its relationship to the development community was discussed in depth at a GDC session earlier this week. From the article: "The PlayStation Portable's comprehensive set of tools and APIs has largely been well-received by developers, but for PlayStation 3, the company plans to go even further - adopting a number of familiar industry standard systems that will give game creators a running start on the platform."
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Sony Says PS3 Will Be Developer Friendly More

Sony Says PS3 Will Be Developer Friendly

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  • However, Sony has at least pledged that the chip will be easy to control with C code, rather than requiring the hand-coding of large blocks of low-level assembler - one of the major difficulties of PlayStation 2 development, which tripped many projects up in the early days of the platform before coders began to specialise in that field.

    The compilers aren't that good yet.

  • Suuure it will (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 10, 2005 @04:24PM (#11904005)
    What I've heard about the cell is pretty revolutionary, and promises incredible performance, but also looks like a nightmare to code for.

    No out of order execution, 2 different kinds of SIMD, with 8 independent vector processing cores to keep running, programer controlled memories instead of caches in the conventional sense? Yikes.

    Unless they're *WAY* ahead of the rest of the world on complier design and technologies, it is going to be very hard to get the most out of the Cell.

  • In other news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rick the Red ( 307103 ) <Rick,The,Red&gmail,com> on Thursday March 10, 2005 @04:39PM (#11904208) Journal
    Sony says the Xbox2 will be a bitch to program.

  • Well, we all know.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by rylin ( 688457 ) on Thursday March 10, 2005 @04:40PM (#11904218)
    .. Sony Said PS2 Will Be Able To Render ToyStory In RealTime. . .

    • Well, technically it can, but it would look like the best PS2 games do. Basically, good textures covering up low poly-count models, with obvious compromises to put more detail in characters' faces sacrificing detail elsewhere.
    • ".. Sony Said PS2 Will Be Able To Render ToyStory In RealTime. . ."

      Then they'll demo it by putting the Toy Story DVD into the machine.

      (Note: Unless the phrase '66 million polygons per second' rings a bell, you probably won't find this very funny.)
    • Oh god, not the Toy Story thing again... Here you go: http://news.com.com/2100-1040-250632.html?legacy= c net " "One of the basic premises of the Xbox is to put the power in the hands of the artist," Blackley said, which is why Xbox developers "are achieving a level of visual detail you really get in 'Toy Story.' " Or even better this: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,40970, 00.html?tw=wn_story_related "Gates said the 3-D chips in the Xbox would be three times faster than anything on the
      • Microsoft's lies don't negate Sony lies... and Sony's lies were MUCH, MUCH louder.
        • So a quote from Bill Gates himself saying the Xbox could do Toy Story 2 is not loud enough for you? Riiiight.
          • Except Sony NEVER claimed PS2 would render Toy Story quality, their exact words were CG quality, and their proof was a tech demo of FF8's FMV being rendered real time
          • uh. gates never said "xbox could do toystory 2". He said "techonology" is "approaching" the level of quality seen in toy story 2. There's a pretty noticable difference between the two statements. Is it gates' fault that you guys can't read?
          • "You say Sony lies are louder than Microsoft lies, but look, here's a Microsoft lie. Haha, that disproves your point!"

            Back to logic school, Rousterfarian. You disproved the assertion that Microsoft doesn't lie at all, which is not only not one I made, but logically contradicts what I did say anyhow.

            Needless to say, you've failed to convince me.
    • Oh god, not the Toy Story thing again... Here you go: http://news.com.com/2100-1040-250632.html?legacy=c net/ [com.com]

      "One of the basic premises of the Xbox is to put the power in the hands of the artist," Blackley said, which is why Xbox developers "are achieving a level of visual detail you really get in 'Toy Story.'

      Or even better this: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,40970, 00.html?tw=wn_story_related/ [wired.com]

      "Gates said the 3-D chips in the Xbox would be three times faster than anything on the

  • Couldn't be much worse (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kamalot ( 674654 ) on Thursday March 10, 2005 @04:40PM (#11904220)
    I think they HAVE to say these kinds of things to keep developers from fleeing. Lip Service. With how different the cell is looking and how stodgy Sony has been with providing development support, is anyone shocked developers are worried? Costs of development are going up. Nintendo's Gamecube was very easy to develop for. Revolution will be equally friendly. Microsoft's unified development environment is looking very good for dev teams everywhere. Sony better make life VERY easy or developers won't wait around.
  • The PS2's gonna be developer friendly? Does this mean they're gonna do away with absorbant licencing fees????

  • Insider Info... and Comments (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MBCook ( 132727 ) <foobarsoft@foobarsoft.com> on Thursday March 10, 2005 @04:51PM (#11904345) Homepage
    OK, I have some insider info. The following are just a FEW of the standards they will use to make life easier:
    • Processor(s)
    • RAM
    • TCP/IP
    • and more!

    OK, in all seriousness, this sounds good. The PS2 had a hard time at the start of it's life cycle because it was tought to develop for since there were little in the way of libraries for it.

    That said, I hope Sony pushes things like OpenGL (I guess they couldn't do Direct3D), SDL, OpenAL, and other such things. Truely open standards.

    The number and (seeming) quality of PSP games seems to show that Sony learned its lesson, so it should be interesting to see how well they do (from a developer standpoint) with the PS3. I wonder if they went as far as to develop some basic game engines (a 3D platformer, a racer, a FPS, etc) that (when modified quite a bit) would produce good games but give developers a good launching pad. I doubt it, but that would probably be very good (especially for the little guys who, unlike EA, can't afford to put 100 guys and 12 months into just the engine).

    On a side note, I think it would be very cool if they exposed the functionality to hackers more. Make it so you can load games into system memory and execute them so the homebrew people have something to play with, just cut them off from mass storage (no HD no CD/DVD) so you wouldn't be able to pirate things. Give people C++, a few libraries, and OpenGL and they could get some cool stuff (I know I'd love to try it). Basically a Net Yahorzee/PS2 Linux without having to buy special hardware (yeah, I bet I spelled that wrong). Plus if you give that to the tinkerer community, they have less of a reason to go figure out a way to force it to do that since it's provided (if they provide a functional version).

    • "On a side note, I think it would be very cool if they exposed the functionality to hackers more."

      So do I! But I seriously doubt we will see something like that. They make the money off of the game licensing so they have no real interest in selling systems (at a loss) which will be used to run non-licensed software.

  • OpenGL - interesting. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by wowbagger ( 69688 ) on Thursday March 10, 2005 @05:05PM (#11904500) Homepage Journal
    That Sony is going toward a (albeit stripped down) version of OpenGL as their graphics library is interesting.

    We already know that Linux runs on several Sony platforms. We know that Sony isn't really all that comfortable with the idea of doing business with Microsoft, especially now that MS is a competitor with them in the gaming front.

    Sony also has pretty good manufacturing and distribution capacity.

    So, consider the following scenario:

    Sony releases a PCI-Express version of their latest graphics chipset for their games, along with Windows drivers, and releases full programming specs to X.org to enable writing a Free Driver.

    Sony releases video boards based upon said chip.

    Sony says to developers, "OK, you can develop for Direct-X, and run on Windows and X-Box. Or you can develop for OpenGL and SDL, and run on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Playstation. Your choice."

    Discuss.
    • Or they ship Mac based DevKits.

      Because, you know, Apple's already done all the hard work in designing the workstation, vetting the video vendor, creating the OpenGL libraries, and releasing free developer tools.
    • The graphic processor of the PS3 is provided by nvidia. They are also providing the tools to take fully advantage of its capabilities.

      So, is it really a surprise that they will support OpenGL?
  • I would have loved to make games for PS2, but they never released the SDK to the public. I'm not saying my games would have been too cool though.

  • Could the ps3 be running linux? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by incom ( 570967 ) on Thursday March 10, 2005 @06:11PM (#11905099)
    http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/03/09/news_61201 23.html - Reading this article makes it seem like a decent possibility. First, IBM already has linux running on cell in their labs, and there are rumours that sony does too. Then there was a previous article that hinted that the compiler toolchain used for ps3 is open source, GCC maybe? Then, the article above talks about opengl and nvidia's CG, both excel in linux. And it also says that it uses an operating system to help manage the cell. I think it's alteast very good odds that the ps3 will have a custom linux backend.
  • SWEET! Where can I d/l the SDK?
  • This is the kind of place where companies should be competeing. Instead of FUD slinging make superior technology. If one platform is easier than another to code for, programmers will adopt it. If the games are more plentiful and of higher quailty then gamers will come. This idea is good business. Hopefully it's true.

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