I kind of understand where Hirai is coming from. Easy to program for is a somewhat relative term, what he probably does not mean is that they purposely had crappy devkits etc. What he is trying to get at and was unable to, is that the PS3 was not made simply to cater to the lowest common denominator. They made a console that was very different from all of the others and required the use of techniques that are not yet seen even in the desktop PC arena. Like with everything else people do need to think somewhat differently when dealing with a different beast. You think if they had the quality of devkits that a software company like Microsoft has people would have complained as much?
That difference when understood allows the developer to pull off some neat tricks that while perhaps possible on other systems may actually be more difficult to achieve.
Midpipps the one thing I can find that developers consistently complain about is the memory management aspect. Epic games did say that the PS3 is easier to understand if you have experience doing high end PC game development. Heck it seems that game developers do not even do code sharing as standard practice, Insomniac along with Sony has been doing stuff to help facillitate that practice.
That difference when understood allows the developer to pull off some neat tricks that while perhaps possible on other systems may actually be more difficult to achieve.
Midpipps the one thing I can find that developers consistently complain about is the memory management aspect. Epic games did say that the PS3 is easier to understand if you have experience doing high end PC game development. Heck it seems that game developers do not even do code sharing as standard practice, Insomniac along with Sony has been doing stuff to help facillitate that practice.