Valve's Orange Box For PS3 Delayed, Not Console Related

Eurogamer is reporting that the package of Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episodes One and Two, Portal, and Team Fortress 2 known as the Orange Box will have a delayed release on the PlayStation 3. The 360 and PC versions are still slated for retail release on October 9th, with the PS3 version coming two-to-three weeks later. But, Valve was quick to point out, it's not because of the console: "The reason for the PS3 build's late arrival, marketing director Doug Lombardi told Eurogamer, is simply that the EA UK team handling [the PS3 Orange Box's] development are on the other side of the ocean and are necessarily a bit behind the core Valve team's development. 'We weren't going to hold up PC and 360 for PS3,' Lombardi told us."

Gabe Newell is poisoning his own well

[DrXym]

His constant bitching about the PS3 must be severely dampening interest in the Orange Box on that platform. I expect most of his complaints stem from the PS3's outright impudence of not being a Microsoft platform and not using Microsoft APIs. Even so, when the head of Valve slags off a platform, what confidence does it instill in games they're making for it? Apparently they're so allergic to this strange and terrifying console that they've shoved the port onto some EA team. Perhaps the game will end up being great on the PS3 but at the moment I have no confidence at all that it will be. Mr Newell needs to shut up or say something positive. Worse is that I just know that if the port does turn out to be poor or sales are a flop that he'll blame the console rather than acknowledge his own hand in the outcome.

Re:So they couldn't

[DrXym]

I still don't believe this 'they won't hit the limits of the PS3 for years' crap, though. The thing simply doesn't have enough RAM. It's sick to have that massive processing power and a tiny little bit of RAM. I can't imagine what they were thinking.

The PS3 has exactly the same amount of RAM as the 360. It has been partitioned so that CPU & GPU have optimized access to their own halves. But there is nothing to stop a game from storing data in graphics memory if it wants to. Conversely the 360 has unified memory for CPU and GPU. Both strategies have advantages and disadvantages.

The significant difference in memory is that the PS3 reserves more memory for the system in anticipation of features it might add to the firmware (e.g. Home). Initially it reserved 96Mb but it's already dropped [innerbits.com] by 24Mb. It's bound to drop further as they figure out exactly what they do and do not need.

I doubt memory has anything to do at all with problems in Dynasty Warriors. You'll have to ask the team why it runs at 1080p on a 360 and not on the PS3. Lots of reasons could be behind it.

Re:Gabe Newell is poisoning his own well

[revengebomber]

Mod parent up. This is a prime example of the advantages of cross-platform (and likely, open source as well) libraries and APIs. Had they developed on an SDL-OGL-OAL system in the first place, porting the game would boil down to nothing more than re-doing the online features. As it is, however, they likely have to scrap and rebuild the entirety of the graphics, sound, and input code, before they can even think about the PS3 (which they're not even doing [maxconsole.net]).

Re:Gabe Newell is poisoning his own well

[WhiteWolf666]

Huh?

Where did that come from?

The PSP, PS2, PS3, N64, GC, Wii, and DS all use OpenGL. Graphics on the PS3 are at least equivalent to the 360 (and I say this as a 360 owner who doesn't own a PS3). The architecture might be more difficult to program for (crazy CPU, etc . . . )) but how does that demonstrate that OpenGL is inferior?