Sony Attacks Microsoft's Publishing Policies 203
winston18 writes "Sony's vice president of publisher relations has gone on record as saying that Microsoft is protecting an inferior technology with their policies regarding content on Xbox Live Arcade and multiplatform titles. The comments stem from Microsoft's admission that they reserve the right to deny titles on Xbox Live if they launch on the PlayStation Network first."
Holy Crapping Crap!!! (Score:2, Informative)
As a former console developer I would like to know what that Sony asshat is smoking.
The SPUs, which have considerable processing power, do not make up for the rest of the crappy architecture of the PS3.
The OS is crap, the GPU is crap, the APIs are crap (except for gcm) and the security is crap. I was the guy who wrote the graphics engines and a lot of the SPU code (for the devloper I worked for) and I can tell you that the PS3 is a boat anchor for cross platform developers.
Here's an example; The SPUs seem very fast at 3.2GHz compared to the VUs from the PS2 at 300MHz. That is until you actually try to do anything like multiply a vector by a matrix. PS2 could do it in 4 cycles dispatch, and 3 additional cycles latency. So you could do vector times matrix every 4 cycles in a tight loop. PS3 needs at least 10 cycles dispatch with a total latency over 50 cycles. If you really bust your ass interleaving loops you can get down to 15 cycles or so per vertex because Sony forgot both masked writes and broadcast math in the SPU architecture. Idiots, it was there in the PS2! Where you high when you signed off on the SPU design?
I could spend hours ragging on the design of the PS3 but I'll just say Sony really dropped the ball on the PS3 design as a whole. While it stomps the 360 on total CPU power it's much easier getting the games where you want them on the 360.Why should anyone develop for the PS3 when it costs at least double for the same finished quality?
I'm glad I don't have to deal with their shit any more.
It's fairly normal in retail (Score:4, Informative)
If you go and tell Target that you'll sell them something exclusively for awhile before you sell to other retailers, you may well find that Walmart, Best Buy and so on blacklist you. They don't like you trying to give a competitor an advantage so they'll say "Ok you want to go exclusive with them, you do that, but it is a permanent thing. We aren't going to let you give them a boost, and then give yourself a sales boost by using our store space."
Same shit with pricing. You generally can't give highly preferential pricing to one retailer or the others will retaliate.
Remember: It is 100% your right to determine who you do and do not wish to sell to. However it is 100% the stores' right to determine what they do and do not wish to stock. If you do something that they believe hurts them, they are within their rights to tell you to fuck off.
Similar deal here. If Sony bribes you to release your content first on PSN, ok that is their right, and your right to accept the deal. Nobody is going to say you can't. However MS is not then interested in carrying your product. They don't want you trying to boost Sony's platform by releasing there first, and then to improve your sales by going to MS's market later.