Sony claims PS3 was made deliberately difficult to program for.

Doug

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Apr 23, 2008
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bad rider said:
Doug said:
johnman said:
bad rider said:

Pretty much sums it up.
Oh my god a chart!!! It must be true!!!
Wait, its Metacritic...nevermind ;)
Hey if you ignore user reviews their site isn't bad, in fact whats wrong with it. All it does is get a mean score of what people say to show an "unbiased" score.
It assumes all reviewers are equally strict about their range of scores - i.e. most reviewers go from 7-10, whereas some use the whole range.

As for metacritic's user review scores, the amount of fanboy "attacks" renders any well known game's rating as ineffective.

Add to that, the graph hides 1 important fact - according to wikipedia at least, the PS3 has about 450 games available for it. The XBox 360 has about 900. The PC has...well, a hell of alot. So, yes, there is more crap on average on XBox, but the amount of games is higher, hence the amount of gold on it is higher too.


In fact, lets have a look at another graph:



IsoNeko said:
Is nobody seeing the point here?

Graphics =/= Gameplay.

Sure, Game X The Sequel, might look as pretty as the Prom Queen during her orgasm, but that doesn't mean the games going to be great. For all we know, the game itself could be about as sexually appealing as Columbo in Borats famous Mankini.
Quoted for Truth. And unsettling imaginery.
 

bad rider

The prodigal son of a goat boy
Dec 23, 2007
2,252
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Doug said:
bad rider said:
Doug said:
johnman said:
bad rider said:

Pretty much sums it up.
Oh my god a chart!!! It must be true!!!
Wait, its Metacritic...nevermind ;)
Hey if you ignore user reviews their site isn't bad, in fact whats wrong with it. All it does is get a mean score of what people say to show an "unbiased" score.
It assumes all reviewers are equally strict about their range of scores - i.e. most reviewers go from 7-10, whereas some use the whole range.

As for metacritic's user review scores, the amount of fanboy "attacks" renders any well known game's rating as ineffective.

Add to that, the graph hides 1 important fact - according to wikipedia at least, the PS3 has about 450 games available for it. The XBox 360 has about 900. The PC has...well, a hell of alot. So, yes, there is more crap on average on XBox, but the amount of games is higher, hence the amount of gold on it is higher too.


In fact, lets have a look at another graph:

Ok I get that, the correlation graph isn't the greatest indication, good point. (Great graph but it turns up everywhere) Now can you list sites that use different scoring system so i can check to see if it's relevant. Now the graph dosen't hide the fact there are 450 games for the ps3, because this is for 2008. Thanks for reading the graph properly. Yes your right it's more than likely games have slipped through the net, but it is still a large and varied sample for the consoles, whereas on a Pc with the amount of games meta critic is likely to have only taken reviews from good games/big brand name games, as the rest are pointless reviewing..

So well done you pointed out correlation graphs aren't great unless you can prove there is a link between the two. In this case Quality of games and difficulty of programing tend to be a bit more linked than pirates and global warming. (Yes i get it that graph was funny years ago when it was produced, hilarious, now let it die.)
 

midpipps

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Feb 23, 2009
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Rezfon said:
how many people who defend his comment on being difficult to program are actually programmers here? I am and I think what he is saying is stupid.
I am a programmer by trade while like the way it was worded I have tried to look at it from many perspectives. To simplify my answer a little more then it really should be I looked at it this way it is the difference between programming in VB Compared to C++ or C or even assembly. Yes VB make it enormously easy to program a working system with less bugs and less development time but the amount of performance hit you take from using these systems is higher. Write a program in VB with full GUI and such then do the same program in C++ sure you may end up with longer development times and alot more code to test but the C++ application can be programmed more specifically to do what it needs to do and only what you need it to do. Where as VB has a ton of background procedures that you have to either circumvent or just let do their things and hope it doesn't slow the program down to a crawl. Yes it is faster for creating in vb but you are not squeezing the performance enhancements that could be if you were using c++.

Now if they were actually saying that they literally just created the system to be hard to develop for so they can extend the life of it. Then that is absolutely an idiotic move and whoever made that decision should be flogged. Wonder if Kaz Listens to himself as he speaks??
 

Rezfon

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Feb 25, 2008
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midpipps said:
Rezfon said:
how many people who defend his comment on being difficult to program are actually programmers here? I am and I think what he is saying is stupid.
I am a programmer by trade while like the way it was worded I have tried to look at it from many perspectives. To simplify my answer a little more then it really should be I looked at it this way it is the difference between programming in VB Compared to C++ or C or even assembly. Yes VB make it enormously easy to program a working system with less bugs and less development time but the amount of performance hit you take from using these systems is higher. Write a program in VB with full GUI and such then do the same program in C++ sure you may end up with longer development times and alot more code to test but the C++ application can be programmed more specifically to do what it needs to do and only what you need it to do. Where as VB has a ton of background procedures that you have to either circumvent or just let do their things and hope it doesn't slow the program down to a crawl. Yes it is faster for creating in vb but you are not squeezing the performance enhancements that could be if you were using c++.

Now if they were actually saying that they literally just created the system to be hard to develop for so they can extend the life of it. Then that is absolutely an idiotic move and whoever made that decision should be flogged. Wonder if Kaz Listens to himself as he speaks??
yeah VB isn't very good in my opinion, but that's down to BASIC. It is however a good language to introduce people to programming as it is very simplified. Currently learning C# at the moment.
 

BubbleGumSnareDrum

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Dec 24, 2008
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Mr.Switchblade said:
Impressive, once again the Japanese continue to prove that they just don't get the rest of the world
And by "the Japanese," you of course mean Sony, right?

Japan is a huge center of technology and commerce. They may not be militarily powerful, but in terms of personal technology they're ten years ahead of anybody else.
 

oktalist

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Feb 16, 2009
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According to Mr. Hirai, Sony chose not to "provide the 'easy to program for' console that (developers) want, because 'easy to program for' means that anybody will be able to take advantage of pretty much what the hardware can do, so then the question is, what do you do for the rest of the nine-and-a-half years?".
I call this the Windows Vista strategy.
 

FISHFINGERS

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Indigo_Dingo said:
Grumman said:
Gee, I wonder what a game company, in the business of making games, could do with their time if they don't need to waste nine-and-a-half years learning to use the new hardware to its full potential?

I know! They could use their time to learn to make better games!
Except they can't - they already unlocked the full potential of the system in half a year, so all their games will look the same and there will be no discernable advancements.
In my opinion the most important things about a game are the games controls and mechanics. And guess what unless a game feels right, I'm not going to want to play it.

If games look similar, guess what I don't care, Graphics is just the icing on the cake, and nobody is going to buy a cake that tastes like old socks just because it has great icing.

Indigo_Dingo said:
Booze Zombie said:
Okay, so you make guns harder to produce and maintain so they're higher quality, right? RIGHT?

I mean, look at the complicated AK-47... wait, no. The fanciful M4... no. The ultra-high maintenance Barret 50.cal sniper rifle... Damn it.
The harder something is to use, the less you want to use it. The weapons industry understands this, why can't a mega company get it?
The A-Bomb was really simple, wasn't it?
The A bomb is a terrible weapon as the shear amount of devastation it produced meant that it was only effective at destroying the civilian population rather than any military targets.

Secondly it raises the background levels of radiation. Increasing the risk of cancers in the surrounding area for decades after the conflict has ended.

The A Bomb... killing innocent people long after the war is over.
 

Liverandbacon

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I make cookies that are as hard as rocks. That way, people can only manage to bite little crumbs off of it at a time, and it will last far longer than a normal cookie.
 

Doug

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Apr 23, 2008
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bad rider said:
Doug said:
bad rider said:
Doug said:
johnman said:
bad rider said:

Pretty much sums it up.
Oh my god a chart!!! It must be true!!!
Wait, its Metacritic...nevermind ;)
Hey if you ignore user reviews their site isn't bad, in fact whats wrong with it. All it does is get a mean score of what people say to show an "unbiased" score.
It assumes all reviewers are equally strict about their range of scores - i.e. most reviewers go from 7-10, whereas some use the whole range.

As for metacritic's user review scores, the amount of fanboy "attacks" renders any well known game's rating as ineffective.

Add to that, the graph hides 1 important fact - according to wikipedia at least, the PS3 has about 450 games available for it. The XBox 360 has about 900. The PC has...well, a hell of alot. So, yes, there is more crap on average on XBox, but the amount of games is higher, hence the amount of gold on it is higher too.


In fact, lets have a look at another graph:

Ok I get that, the correlation graph isn't the greatest indication, good point. (Great graph but it turns up everywhere) Now can you list sites that use different scoring system so i can check to see if it's relevant. Now the graph dosen't hide the fact there are 450 games for the ps3, because this is for 2008. Thanks for reading the graph properly. Yes your right it's more than likely games have slipped through the net, but it is still a large and varied sample for the consoles, whereas on a Pc with the amount of games meta critic is likely to have only taken reviews from good games/big brand name games, as the rest are pointless reviewing..

So well done you pointed out correlation graphs aren't great unless you can prove there is a link between the two. In this case Quality of games and difficulty of programing tend to be a bit more linked than pirates and global warming. (Yes i get it that graph was funny years ago when it was produced, hilarious, now let it die.)
Erm, HOW? World of Goo, simple game, uses mid-ware throughout, result, great fun game. This idea that "difficult programming == quality" is plainly ridiculous. The correlation simply implies that PS3 games are better than XBox 360 games. What difficult programming does is make developers spend more time dealing with basic programming than on stuff, like oh, I don't know, Gameplay, Graphics, plot, or simply releasing it earlier.

And if its simply the one's released in 2008, thats not really valid then. You're trying to say that, because PS3 games happened to beat XBox 360 games in 2008, that automatically makes "hard programming == good games"?

midpipps said:
Rezfon said:
how many people who defend his comment on being difficult to program are actually programmers here? I am and I think what he is saying is stupid.
I am a programmer by trade while like the way it was worded I have tried to look at it from many perspectives. To simplify my answer a little more then it really should be I looked at it this way it is the difference between programming in VB Compared to C++ or C or even assembly. Yes VB make it enormously easy to program a working system with less bugs and less development time but the amount of performance hit you take from using these systems is higher. Write a program in VB with full GUI and such then do the same program in C++ sure you may end up with longer development times and alot more code to test but the C++ application can be programmed more specifically to do what it needs to do and only what you need it to do. Where as VB has a ton of background procedures that you have to either circumvent or just let do their things and hope it doesn't slow the program down to a crawl. Yes it is faster for creating in vb but you are not squeezing the performance enhancements that could be if you were using c++.

Now if they were actually saying that they literally just created the system to be hard to develop for so they can extend the life of it. Then that is absolutely an idiotic move and whoever made that decision should be flogged. Wonder if Kaz Listens to himself as he speaks??
Agreed (and yeah, I am a programmer by trade too), but I disagree that situation applies here. Unless PS3 programmers are REALLY going to sit down and code in assembly (which I doubt to the extreme), they'll use the same high-level languages as the XBox 360.
 

nova18

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Indigo_Dingo said:
You're once again missing the context. The difference is between making something thats easy to develop for, is already known inside and out, and hits a low brick wall within 3 years, or having something that can be pushed to actually exceed the boundaries and make continual advancements.
Plus, if it was easy to develop for, we would have a lot of WiiShovelware instead of games that take genuine effort to make.

I suppose when dev teams learn how to develop for it (they have a few years yet), they will appreciate the extra power thats been lumped in.
 

midpipps

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Feb 23, 2009
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Rezfon said:
yeah VB isn't very good in my opinion, but that's down to BASIC. It is however a good language to introduce people to programming as it is very simplified. Currently learning C# at the moment.
ROFL love the BASIC comment. I am also in the midst of getting a little more knowledgeable in C# it is probably my worst language right now but it is what XNA uses predominately. I would like to see Sony do something like XBox XNA just to be able to get a feeling for the system and make my own decisions on it.

Hopefully VB analogy kind of got my point across I am sure some will still call me a fanboy for sticking up for sony and some will agree and some will just agree to disagree. But I do think if you give people to many easy tools can cause the long run to fail. Bye making them complacent with what is given to them instead of creating their own tools and building upon them.

Just go to almost any college and see how many people think VB is the best language ever and that they are leet programmers cause they can make VB programs (Even if they do take 30 minutes to load XD)

Doug said:
Agreed (and yeah, I am a programmer by trade too), but I disagree that situation applies here. Unless PS3 programmers are REALLY going to sit down and code in assembly (which I doubt to the extreme), they'll use the same high-level languages as the XBox 360.
It was more of an analogy then anything. But lets take a look at say square when they use the unreal engine their games usually take huge frame rate and texture pops and such but when they make their own engine it usually runs smooth as butter. same thing as epic using the unreal engine it runs smooth as butter because they created it. So yes developers may need to work harder to get what they want but when they are done with it it will be their baby and they will know the ins and outs. when it comes to pushing it farther they will know where they need to change things

Just my 2 Cents
 

bad rider

The prodigal son of a goat boy
Dec 23, 2007
2,252
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Doug said:
bad rider said:
Doug said:
bad rider said:
Doug said:
johnman said:
bad rider said:

Pretty much sums it up.
Oh my god a chart!!! It must be true!!!
Wait, its Metacritic...nevermind ;)
Hey if you ignore user reviews their site isn't bad, in fact whats wrong with it. All it does is get a mean score of what people say to show an "unbiased" score.
It assumes all reviewers are equally strict about their range of scores - i.e. most reviewers go from 7-10, whereas some use the whole range.

As for metacritic's user review scores, the amount of fanboy "attacks" renders any well known game's rating as ineffective.

Add to that, the graph hides 1 important fact - according to wikipedia at least, the PS3 has about 450 games available for it. The XBox 360 has about 900. The PC has...well, a hell of alot. So, yes, there is more crap on average on XBox, but the amount of games is higher, hence the amount of gold on it is higher too.


In fact, lets have a look at another graph:

Ok I get that, the correlation graph isn't the greatest indication, good point. (Great graph but it turns up everywhere) Now can you list sites that use different scoring system so i can check to see if it's relevant. Now the graph dosen't hide the fact there are 450 games for the ps3, because this is for 2008. Thanks for reading the graph properly. Yes your right it's more than likely games have slipped through the net, but it is still a large and varied sample for the consoles, whereas on a Pc with the amount of games meta critic is likely to have only taken reviews from good games/big brand name games, as the rest are pointless reviewing..

So well done you pointed out correlation graphs aren't great unless you can prove there is a link between the two. In this case Quality of games and difficulty of programing tend to be a bit more linked than pirates and global warming. (Yes i get it that graph was funny years ago when it was produced, hilarious, now let it die.)
Erm, HOW? World of Goo, simple game, uses mid-ware throughout, result, great fun game. This idea that "difficult programming == quality" is plainly ridiculous. The correlation simply implies that PS3 games are better than XBox 360 games. What difficult programming does is make developers spend more time dealing with basic programming than on stuff, like oh, I don't know, Gameplay, Graphics, plot, or simply releasing it earlier.

And if its simply the one's released in 2008, thats not really valid then. You're trying to say that, because PS3 games happened to beat XBox 360 games in 2008, that automatically makes "hard programming == good games"?
Ok lets take a step back here, there are two extremes to this super hard programming, that no-one will touch and so basic it only allows you to walk up and down. Yes there will be fuckk all games produced on the extremely hard to use one but a dedicated developer will use that to make a stunning game with as much implemented as the system can hold. Whereas on the simple one you can get a hundreds of games that even a child could produce, however all of these will be crap. So yes there will be games with good and bad concepts, but if you put programming down as a factor the harder tends to = better quality in 8/10 cases. Yes there will always be sparks like world of goo thats creative and funny, but there are a lot more halo 3's and kill zone 2's.
 

Doug

New member
Apr 23, 2008
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nova18 said:
Indigo_Dingo said:
You're once again missing the context. The difference is between making something thats easy to develop for, is already known inside and out, and hits a low brick wall within 3 years, or having something that can be pushed to actually exceed the boundaries and make continual advancements.
Plus, if it was easy to develop for, we would have a lot of WiiShovelware instead of games that take genuine effort to make.

I suppose when dev teams learn how to develop for it (they have a few years yet), they will appreciate the extra power thats been lumped in.
Shovelware doesn't reduce the amount of Primeware (unless the company get 'Sonic disease'). And I'll repeat - the "extra power" didn't require a convoluted programming style, AS THE OP SAID. Its artificial added difficultly, not necessary for hardware difficultly.
 

Doug

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Apr 23, 2008
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bad rider said:
Doug said:
bad rider said:
Doug said:
bad rider said:
Doug said:
johnman said:
bad rider said:

Pretty much sums it up.
Oh my god a chart!!! It must be true!!!
Wait, its Metacritic...nevermind ;)
Hey if you ignore user reviews their site isn't bad, in fact whats wrong with it. All it does is get a mean score of what people say to show an "unbiased" score.
It assumes all reviewers are equally strict about their range of scores - i.e. most reviewers go from 7-10, whereas some use the whole range.

As for metacritic's user review scores, the amount of fanboy "attacks" renders any well known game's rating as ineffective.

Add to that, the graph hides 1 important fact - according to wikipedia at least, the PS3 has about 450 games available for it. The XBox 360 has about 900. The PC has...well, a hell of alot. So, yes, there is more crap on average on XBox, but the amount of games is higher, hence the amount of gold on it is higher too.


In fact, lets have a look at another graph:

Ok I get that, the correlation graph isn't the greatest indication, good point. (Great graph but it turns up everywhere) Now can you list sites that use different scoring system so i can check to see if it's relevant. Now the graph dosen't hide the fact there are 450 games for the ps3, because this is for 2008. Thanks for reading the graph properly. Yes your right it's more than likely games have slipped through the net, but it is still a large and varied sample for the consoles, whereas on a Pc with the amount of games meta critic is likely to have only taken reviews from good games/big brand name games, as the rest are pointless reviewing..

So well done you pointed out correlation graphs aren't great unless you can prove there is a link between the two. In this case Quality of games and difficulty of programing tend to be a bit more linked than pirates and global warming. (Yes i get it that graph was funny years ago when it was produced, hilarious, now let it die.)
Erm, HOW? World of Goo, simple game, uses mid-ware throughout, result, great fun game. This idea that "difficult programming == quality" is plainly ridiculous. The correlation simply implies that PS3 games are better than XBox 360 games. What difficult programming does is make developers spend more time dealing with basic programming than on stuff, like oh, I don't know, Gameplay, Graphics, plot, or simply releasing it earlier.

And if its simply the one's released in 2008, thats not really valid then. You're trying to say that, because PS3 games happened to beat XBox 360 games in 2008, that automatically makes "hard programming == good games"?
Ok lets take a step back here, there are two extremes to this super hard programming, that no-one will touch and so basic it only allows you to walk up and down. Yes there will be fuckk all games produced on the extremely hard to use one but a dedicated developer will use that to make a stunning game with as much implemented as the system can hold. Whereas on the simple one you can get a hundreds of games that even a child could produce, however all of these will be crap. So yes there will be games with good and bad concepts, but if you put programming down as a factor the harder tends to = better quality in 8/10 cases. Yes there will always be sparks like world of goo thats creative and funny, but there are a lot more halo 3's and kill zone 2's.
You seem to be confusing "graphical quality" and "framerate" with "Game quality". The game quality is wholy a mix of gameplay, story, interface, and yeah, presentation (sound and graphics).

And bluntly, harder language == more bugs == poorer quality. But none of this matters, as as I've said before they all use the same high-level languages.
 

bad rider

The prodigal son of a goat boy
Dec 23, 2007
2,252
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0
Doug said:
bad rider said:
Doug said:
bad rider said:
Doug said:
bad rider said:
Doug said:
johnman said:
bad rider said:

Pretty much sums it up.
Oh my god a chart!!! It must be true!!!
Wait, its Metacritic...nevermind ;)
Hey if you ignore user reviews their site isn't bad, in fact whats wrong with it. All it does is get a mean score of what people say to show an "unbiased" score.
It assumes all reviewers are equally strict about their range of scores - i.e. most reviewers go from 7-10, whereas some use the whole range.

As for metacritic's user review scores, the amount of fanboy "attacks" renders any well known game's rating as ineffective.

Add to that, the graph hides 1 important fact - according to wikipedia at least, the PS3 has about 450 games available for it. The XBox 360 has about 900. The PC has...well, a hell of alot. So, yes, there is more crap on average on XBox, but the amount of games is higher, hence the amount of gold on it is higher too.


In fact, lets have a look at another graph:

Ok I get that, the correlation graph isn't the greatest indication, good point. (Great graph but it turns up everywhere) Now can you list sites that use different scoring system so i can check to see if it's relevant. Now the graph dosen't hide the fact there are 450 games for the ps3, because this is for 2008. Thanks for reading the graph properly. Yes your right it's more than likely games have slipped through the net, but it is still a large and varied sample for the consoles, whereas on a Pc with the amount of games meta critic is likely to have only taken reviews from good games/big brand name games, as the rest are pointless reviewing..

So well done you pointed out correlation graphs aren't great unless you can prove there is a link between the two. In this case Quality of games and difficulty of programing tend to be a bit more linked than pirates and global warming. (Yes i get it that graph was funny years ago when it was produced, hilarious, now let it die.)
Erm, HOW? World of Goo, simple game, uses mid-ware throughout, result, great fun game. This idea that "difficult programming == quality" is plainly ridiculous. The correlation simply implies that PS3 games are better than XBox 360 games. What difficult programming does is make developers spend more time dealing with basic programming than on stuff, like oh, I don't know, Gameplay, Graphics, plot, or simply releasing it earlier.

And if its simply the one's released in 2008, thats not really valid then. You're trying to say that, because PS3 games happened to beat XBox 360 games in 2008, that automatically makes "hard programming == good games"?
Ok lets take a step back here, there are two extremes to this super hard programming, that no-one will touch and so basic it only allows you to walk up and down. Yes there will be fuckk all games produced on the extremely hard to use one but a dedicated developer will use that to make a stunning game with as much implemented as the system can hold. Whereas on the simple one you can get a hundreds of games that even a child could produce, however all of these will be crap. So yes there will be games with good and bad concepts, but if you put programming down as a factor the harder tends to = better quality in 8/10 cases. Yes there will always be sparks like world of goo thats creative and funny, but there are a lot more halo 3's and kill zone 2's.
You seem to be confusing "graphical quality" and "framerate" with "Game quality". The game quality is wholy a mix of gameplay, story, interface, and yeah, presentation (sound and graphics).

And bluntly, harder language == more bugs == poorer quality. But none of this matters, as as I've said before they all use the same high-level languages.
Didn't really confuse them, just tended towards reducing it as much as possible to reduce the amount I had to write. But you see my point?
Edit: Actually I'll rephrase what i have been saying, harder programing = better oppertunity for game developement.
 

NickCaligo42

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Oct 7, 2007
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Brotherofwill said:
Why are you saying unfortunatly if you like your PS3 and the games?
Because I ended up with the non-backwards-compatible only-two-USB-ports doesn't-come-with-an-HDMI-cable-but-has-the-port 80 Gig model after betting on exactly the wrong horse and Sony is able to continue being a pack of self-promoting idiots. Meanwhile the rest of the gaming world has suffered the consequences of their botched plan with the PS3 STILL being strong enough to merit a substantial cross-platforming movement, which is, thanks to the PS3 hardware's demanding development costs, dragging back the quality of games everywhere.

Brotherofwill said:
Not really, it could have worked a lot better.
That's what I just said. "Could have worked a lot better" isn't the same as "didn't work at all." I bought their console for exactly the reasons they wanted me to buy their console. Maybe the rest of the world didn't, but if it worked on one or more gamers, it worked to some extent.

Brotherofwill said:
I'm with you here.
Glad to hear I'm not alone. :)
 

midpipps

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Feb 23, 2009
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I think the main problem with this thread is no one that is actually a programmer for the ps3 has said exactly what they find harder about it. Alot just say the standard it is harder[ other then like insomniac who seems to really like it from what I have heard(But they also make their own engines and tools for most everything)]. I would really like to attend a conference on the exact things that they find so difficult to program for where are they running into problems how much are they changing to use the cores. I have not found any really good white papers on this subject. which is saddening. This would actually be a good project for a masters paper.