Stolen Pixels #71: PS3 Exclusive Interview

[Ancientgamer]

This sold me Bluray, this animation? 80's. It really shows with Animation.

I have to always wonder - what is it with the Japanese and humanised mechs with melee weapons?

you're shitting me right?

Okay Okay, well in Gundam, Minovsky Particles screws with Radio, Radar and Targeting systems. hence firing from afar is NOT accurate, but mostly it's because if the enemy gets up close you REALLY need something to defend youself with.

As you can see, USUALLY it's a single beam saber thats stored on the Recharge Backpack. usually they use Beam Rifles and Bazooka's.

the other reason is because it's COOL!

*shrugs* how would I know? I'm not into anime at all. Add to that, I think guns are cooler (in fiction at least) that swords and so forth.

There also happens to be an artical on the main page right now that looks at it fairly in depth.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_192/5831-Bushido-and-Beamsabers

 

[Doug]

Just to be clear: I pick on Sony a lot because I think they have made some missteps, but I wouldn't call the Xbox "better" than the PS3. A lot of it depends on what you need, which model you get, and how much you have to spend.

I look forward to your Xbox 360 and Wii comic strip. Please post if they already exist. Surely, all three deserve this mocking treatment not just the PS3?

If Microsoft come forward and say they intentionally made the Xbox 360 hard to program, like the Sony guy did, I'd expect him to do so.

No, they said they intentionally made their console with a high failure rate, remember? They said they released without doing the neccesary quality testing.

When? Source?

EDIT:
Also, technically, that isn't intentionally making a low reliablity console. Still stupid, but still

And this isn't intentionally making it hard to develop for - its giving it great potential while at the same time giving it a different coding method.

And if you honestly need them to come out and say "we shipped this thing early, and thats why it has the worst reliability of any console in history"......

I think they DID say that Indigo, it's in the news room, but yeah, it does kinda go without saying.

As I said in that previous thread, it was clearly stated by the Sony boss that it was intentionally done without him stating it was necessary to the hardware performance. If he's not a native English speaker, and doesn't speak the language well, fair enough, he might have made a mistake.

And thats nice, they were not ASKING for what you said, they were asking for a source, a link. Words can be interpreted many ways after all.

.........? Who was asking for a source apart from me? Regardless, the link is in the note for this comic!

 

[Doug]

Just to be clear: I pick on Sony a lot because I think they have made some missteps, but I wouldn't call the Xbox "better" than the PS3. A lot of it depends on what you need, which model you get, and how much you have to spend.

I look forward to your Xbox 360 and Wii comic strip. Please post if they already exist. Surely, all three deserve this mocking treatment not just the PS3?

If Microsoft come forward and say they intentionally made the Xbox 360 hard to program, like the Sony guy did, I'd expect him to do so.

No, they said they intentionally made their console with a high failure rate, remember? They said they released without doing the neccesary quality testing.

When? Source?

EDIT:
Also, technically, that isn't intentionally making a low reliablity console. Still stupid, but still

And this isn't intentionally making it hard to develop for - its giving it great potential while at the same time giving it a different coding method.

And if you honestly need them to come out and say "we shipped this thing early, and thats why it has the worst reliability of any console in history"......

I think they DID say that Indigo, it's in the news room, but yeah, it does kinda go without saying.

As I said in that previous thread, it was clearly stated by the Sony boss that it was intentionally done without him stating it was necessary to the hardware performance. If he's not a native English speaker, and doesn't speak the language well, fair enough, he might have made a mistake.

Or if he thought that it honestly didn't need saying, as I do. He actually said he didn't want the games to have no advancement for a 10 year period, I would have thought it was obvious then what he meant. Somehow, someone had an ear filter on and interpretted this as "we screwed up the development process on purpose" as opposed to "we designed it with longevity in mind".

Erm, why would it be obvious? If someone says "Hey, my design is very hard to program for" you would expect a justification. Ok, he might not be a marketing guy, but you would expect him to figure that people might take it the wrong way.

And "we designed with longevity in mind" could easily mean "we screwed up the development process on purpose" as developers could take the whole 10 years to get the programming right.

 

[Credge]

I'm not really sure where this 'most expensive console' thing came from. It's not the most expensive console ever. Consoles this gen are relatively cheap. The Atari 2600, if released today, would cost about $720 dollars.

Even further, if you want to ignore inflation and just go with straight price I can ignore the boundaries between console and personal computer and win with a Commodore 64. Even then, that would make more sense anyway as the PS3 isn't JUST a gaming platform just like the Commodore 64 isn't JUST a personal computer.

The rest though, I agree with.

But, really, it's not the developers fault or the consoles fault for developers not wanting to make a bunch of games on it. This gen, while graphically sound, has been pretty terrible and bland thus far. Very few gems worth playing, many big titles being multiplatform and not meeting my expectations coupled with some of the worst exclusives we as gamers have ever seen in our lives...

I don't feel like this gen has actually done anything useful. It's really just two band dorks fighting over second flute seat while the rich principles daughter takes the first seat, not because she's actually any better than the others but because she's the prettiest to look at.

Yeah, the fighting is keeping things 'fresh' and 'interesting', but it's not getting anything done. Neither console is doing anything interesting with the games and are instead putting that focus on unimportant things, like Free Realms/Home, or Wii Channels, or nothing like the 360 seems to be doing.

I guess what I'm saying is that this gen is a pretty big flop so far. Why not put those funds in to making an MGS4, a Gears of War 2, or a Mario Galaxy? Make it a Microsoft game, a Sony game, or a Nintendo game without outsourcing to another company. Don't just publish it, develop it. This fluff crap isn't cutting it and it's showing with the plethora of games we pay $60 for, play for two weeks, and never pick up again for more than a day when we get that weird craving to attempt to experience what we thought was fun when we bought the average game.

Yeah, I'm a bit upset about my Fallout 3 purchase. Beating the game in less than 24 hours... ON ACCIDENT even. Doing every quest in 2 weeks without actually meaning to... sigh.

 

[Doug]

Just to be clear: I pick on Sony a lot because I think they have made some missteps, but I wouldn't call the Xbox "better" than the PS3. A lot of it depends on what you need, which model you get, and how much you have to spend.

I look forward to your Xbox 360 and Wii comic strip. Please post if they already exist. Surely, all three deserve this mocking treatment not just the PS3?

If Microsoft come forward and say they intentionally made the Xbox 360 hard to program, like the Sony guy did, I'd expect him to do so.

No, they said they intentionally made their console with a high failure rate, remember? They said they released without doing the neccesary quality testing.

When? Source?

EDIT:
Also, technically, that isn't intentionally making a low reliablity console. Still stupid, but still

And this isn't intentionally making it hard to develop for - its giving it great potential while at the same time giving it a different coding method.

And if you honestly need them to come out and say "we shipped this thing early, and thats why it has the worst reliability of any console in history"......

I think they DID say that Indigo, it's in the news room, but yeah, it does kinda go without saying.

As I said in that previous thread, it was clearly stated by the Sony boss that it was intentionally done without him stating it was necessary to the hardware performance. If he's not a native English speaker, and doesn't speak the language well, fair enough, he might have made a mistake.

And thats nice, they were not ASKING for what you said, they were asking for a source, a link. Words can be interpreted many ways after all.

.........? Who was asking for a source apart from me? Regardless, the link is in the note for this comic!

Ahh crap got mixed up in the bulk of quoting, my mistake.

Ah... ok then. No worries.

 

[Doug]

But, really, it's not the developers fault or the consoles fault for developers not wanting to make a bunch of games on it. This gen, while graphically sound, has been pretty terrible and bland thus far. Very few gems worth playing, many big titles being multiplatform and not meeting my expectations coupled with some of the worst exclusives we as gamers have ever seen in our lives...

I don't feel like this gen has actually done anything useful. It's really just two band dorks fighting over second flute seat while the rich principles daughter takes the first seat, not because she's actually any better than the others but because she's the prettiest to look at.

Yeah, the fighting is keeping things 'fresh' and 'interesting', but it's not getting anything done. Neither console is doing anything interesting with the games and are instead putting that focus on unimportant things, like Free Realms/Home, or Wii Channels, or nothing like the 360 seems to be doing.

I guess what I'm saying is that this gen is a pretty big flop so far. Why not put those funds in to making an MGS4, a Gears of War 2, or a Mario Galaxy? Make it a Microsoft game, a Sony game, or a Nintendo game without outsourcing to another company. Don't just publish it, develop it. This fluff crap isn't cutting it and it's showing with the plethora of games we pay $60 for, play for two weeks, and never pick up again for more than a day when we get that weird craving to attempt to experience what we thought was fun when we bought the average game.

Yeah, I'm a bit upset about my Fallout 3 purchase. Beating the game in less than 24 hours... ON ACCIDENT even. Doing every quest in 2 weeks without actually meaning to... sigh.

Quoted for truth! (Although I actually liked Fallout 3, aside from the ending, and MSG 4 is more a movie that you have to play play every half hour)

Basically, they focus too much on Graphics over gameplay. Also, sequels! Ok, there are good sequels (Half Life 2) but what about the rest of them? Seriously, what happened to all the new ideas? And what happened to innovation in gameplay and story telling? (And no, I'm not allowing MSG as very very very long cutscenes aren't new)

 

[Doug]

-Rant and quoted rant about lack of freshness and newness in current "gen" games

I swear Tomino and Kojima when they were sick of their respective franchises (Gundam and MetalGear)

I just imagine them walking up to a poster of the latest game/anime and saying in hilarious Engrish "I WISH I KNEW HOW TO QUIT YOU!"

You know... that is a strangely compelling imagine.

 

[Doug]

Just to be clear: I pick on Sony a lot because I think they have made some missteps, but I wouldn't call the Xbox "better" than the PS3. A lot of it depends on what you need, which model you get, and how much you have to spend.

I look forward to your Xbox 360 and Wii comic strip. Please post if they already exist. Surely, all three deserve this mocking treatment not just the PS3?

If Microsoft come forward and say they intentionally made the Xbox 360 hard to program, like the Sony guy did, I'd expect him to do so.

No, they said they intentionally made their console with a high failure rate, remember? They said they released without doing the neccesary quality testing.

When? Source?

EDIT:
Also, technically, that isn't intentionally making a low reliablity console. Still stupid, but still

And this isn't intentionally making it hard to develop for - its giving it great potential while at the same time giving it a different coding method.

And if you honestly need them to come out and say "we shipped this thing early, and thats why it has the worst reliability of any console in history"......

I think they DID say that Indigo, it's in the news room, but yeah, it does kinda go without saying.

As I said in that previous thread, it was clearly stated by the Sony boss that it was intentionally done without him stating it was necessary to the hardware performance. If he's not a native English speaker, and doesn't speak the language well, fair enough, he might have made a mistake.

Or if he thought that it honestly didn't need saying, as I do. He actually said he didn't want the games to have no advancement for a 10 year period, I would have thought it was obvious then what he meant. Somehow, someone had an ear filter on and interpretted this as "we screwed up the development process on purpose" as opposed to "we designed it with longevity in mind".

Erm, why would it be obvious? If someone says "Hey, my design is very hard to program for" you would expect a justification. Ok, he might not be a marketing guy, but you would expect him to figure that people might take it the wrong way.

And "we designed with longevity in mind" could easily mean "we screwed up the development process on purpose" as developers could take the whole 10 years to get the programming right.

We've already established that the Ps3 is simply far and away more powerful than the 360 - developers using half the Ps3's potential far outstrip in terms of quality developers who use 100% of the potential the 360 has - so we've therefore established that the effort used in working with the system itself has huge payoffs. He said that when faced with a familiar structure that would yield no signifigant advances over the consoles lifetime, and one that uses an unfamiliar structure but would yield greater advancements over its lifetime to end up far ahead of the former, they chose the one that ended on a higher level of quality. What you keep doing is purposefully looking for the interpretation that sounds silly - saying that the coding structure has no benefits, and was picked solely because it was difficult - factoring out the improvement idea.

Er, no, we didn't establish anything. I recall you stating it was so, but you've not shown it to be true.

 

[Doug]

Just to be clear: I pick on Sony a lot because I think they have made some missteps, but I wouldn't call the Xbox "better" than the PS3. A lot of it depends on what you need, which model you get, and how much you have to spend.

I look forward to your Xbox 360 and Wii comic strip. Please post if they already exist. Surely, all three deserve this mocking treatment not just the PS3?

If Microsoft come forward and say they intentionally made the Xbox 360 hard to program, like the Sony guy did, I'd expect him to do so.

No, they said they intentionally made their console with a high failure rate, remember? They said they released without doing the neccesary quality testing.

When? Source?

EDIT:
Also, technically, that isn't intentionally making a low reliablity console. Still stupid, but still

And this isn't intentionally making it hard to develop for - its giving it great potential while at the same time giving it a different coding method.

And if you honestly need them to come out and say "we shipped this thing early, and thats why it has the worst reliability of any console in history"......

I think they DID say that Indigo, it's in the news room, but yeah, it does kinda go without saying.

As I said in that previous thread, it was clearly stated by the Sony boss that it was intentionally done without him stating it was necessary to the hardware performance. If he's not a native English speaker, and doesn't speak the language well, fair enough, he might have made a mistake.

Or if he thought that it honestly didn't need saying, as I do. He actually said he didn't want the games to have no advancement for a 10 year period, I would have thought it was obvious then what he meant. Somehow, someone had an ear filter on and interpretted this as "we screwed up the development process on purpose" as opposed to "we designed it with longevity in mind".

Erm, why would it be obvious? If someone says "Hey, my design is very hard to program for" you would expect a justification. Ok, he might not be a marketing guy, but you would expect him to figure that people might take it the wrong way.

And "we designed with longevity in mind" could easily mean "we screwed up the development process on purpose" as developers could take the whole 10 years to get the programming right.

We've already established that the Ps3 is simply far and away more powerful than the 360 - developers using half the Ps3's potential far outstrip in terms of quality developers who use 100% of the potential the 360 has - so we've therefore established that the effort used in working with the system itself has huge payoffs. He said that when faced with a familiar structure that would yield no signifigant advances over the consoles lifetime, and one that uses an unfamiliar structure but would yield greater advancements over its lifetime to end up far ahead of the former, they chose the one that ended on a higher level of quality. What you keep doing is purposefully looking for the interpretation that sounds silly - saying that the coding structure has no benefits, and was picked solely because it was difficult - factoring out the improvement idea.

Er, no, we didn't establish anything. I recall you stating it was so, but you've not shown it to be true.

Ok, maybe I should be clearer - reality has confirmed them.

Yeah, thats a real winning argument. However, I should ask "Why do you assume PS3 == great quality" when there hasn't actually been anything new on it? Oh, Killzone 2 is probably better looking than Gears of War 2, but I suspect the gameplay is about the same. Graphical quality != Game quality. Basically, if the PS3 ever manages to run Empire Total war, I might consider it a worth while competitor to a PC, but as it stands, the XBox 360 is about the same as the PS3 in from my point of view. Ok, the PS3 doesn't piss itself and die as much as the XBox, but I don't see what the huge improvement is the PS3 has over it. About the only games on either that even remotely spark interest in me are the FPS, and unless the PS3 has a magical 'make the FPS better' button beyond making it shinnier, well...meh. Oh, and LittleBigPlanet does look like a lot of fun, given the moderation and the fact that, after awhile, it'll just be another platformer to me, its not really worth a whole PS3 to me.

 

[Break]

We've already established that the Ps3 is simply far and away more powerful than the 360 - developers using half the Ps3's potential far outstrip in terms of quality developers who use 100% of the potential the 360 has - so we've therefore established that the effort used in working with the system itself has huge payoffs. He said that when faced with a familiar structure that would yield no signifigant advances over the consoles lifetime, and one that uses an unfamiliar structure but would yield greater advancements over its lifetime to end up far ahead of the former, they chose the one that ended on a higher level of quality. What you keep doing is purposefully looking for the interpretation that sounds silly - saying that the coding structure has no benefits, and was picked solely because it was difficult - factoring out the improvement idea.

No, look, you've... If you listen to people that aren't Kaz Hirai, you might see where everyone else is coming from. The PS3 is capable of much greater things than the 360, yes, but this isn't thanks to the cumbersome coding language or troublesome architecture. Any number of programmers will gladly tell you that the PS3 is unnecessarily difficult to write for, and makes it much harder than it actually needs to be. You talk about putting negative spin on the Hirai's words to come up with a silly interpretation, when all you're doing is hearing the words of a man who's obviously going to be biased towards the console, and taking them in a positive way.

You can get high-end PCs that are capable of better things than the PS3, that don't have developers tearing their hair out in exasperation. There's such a thing as an "accessible structure that can yield high levels of quality consistently".

 

[Doug]

We've already established that the Ps3 is simply far and away more powerful than the 360 - developers using half the Ps3's potential far outstrip in terms of quality developers who use 100% of the potential the 360 has - so we've therefore established that the effort used in working with the system itself has huge payoffs. He said that when faced with a familiar structure that would yield no signifigant advances over the consoles lifetime, and one that uses an unfamiliar structure but would yield greater advancements over its lifetime to end up far ahead of the former, they chose the one that ended on a higher level of quality. What you keep doing is purposefully looking for the interpretation that sounds silly - saying that the coding structure has no benefits, and was picked solely because it was difficult - factoring out the improvement idea.

No, look, you've... If you listen to people that aren't Kaz Hirai, you might see where everyone else is coming from. The PS3 is capable of much greater things than the 360, yes, but this isn't thanks to the cumbersome coding language or troublesome architecture. Any number of programmers will gladly tell you that the PS3 is unnecessarily difficult to write for, and makes it much harder than it actually needs to be. You talk about putting negative spin on the Hirai's words to come up with a silly interpretation, when all you're doing is hearing the words of a man who's obviously going to be biased towards the console, and taking them in a positive way.

You can get high-end PCs that are capable of better things than the PS3, that don't have developers tearing their hair out in exasperation. There's such a thing as an "accessible structure that can yield high levels of quality consistently".

Thanks for the backup.

And in all probably, the PS3 won't achieve 'everything it can' BECAUSE of that cucumbersominess. Bugs and inefficiences won't be ironed out and fixed, so the software will hold it back - this is a common theme in any computer platform, but the strength of its impact depends on the level of transparency in the coding. Remember, KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid.

 

[Shamus Young]

Caution: Wall of text.

The power of the PS3 is a double-edged sword. It's there, but it takes time and money to exploit, which is a huge help if the console is in the lead and a huge liability if the console is behind, sales-wise.

If the PS3 is in the lead, developers will target it FIRST. They might take the time to go after that extra power. When they're done they'll have a game that simply can't be ported to the other platforms because the other platforms don't have the power. Result: More exclusives for the PS3.

But if the PS3 isn't in the lead (or worse, it trails the others by a large margin) then exclusives are more of a risk for developers. They'll want their game to be cross-platform, which means the extra PS3 power will go untapped.

That extra power is still part of the purchase price of the unit, so Playstation 3 users have paid for a lot of muscle they can't use just yet.

This landscape could change in the next couple of years. If Sony's plan pays off, their console will still be "young" and healthy because of the untapped power, while the other ones begin to push up against their limits. It all depends on how bad the economy is (which is something Sony couldn't have planned for) and how much graphics are driving development. (Which is something nobody can plan for. Graphics aren't going to improve FOREVER, and it's hard to gauge when people will step off the upgrade treadmill, happy with what they have now.)

People usually look for PC's to move ahead as a console generation comes to a close, since PC's have been getting replaced and upgraded. But the market rejection of Vista is making a mess of that. The PS3 might be able to step into the "bleeding edge" role usually occupied by the PC.

But no matter what happens, I can be confident that I'll some someone to make fun of.

 

[Break]

But no matter what happens, I can be confident that I'll some someone to make fun of.

Which is, naturally, the most important thing in all of this.

 

[Jumplion]

I'll look at this from a few perspectives.

Fanboy Perspecitve: This is all bullshit! Read the rest of the thread with the rest of the PS3 fanboys to know why, so I don't need to reiterate!

Regular bystandard Perspective: Hehe, this is pretty good.

Comedic Critiq Perspective (with a hint of Fanboy in there): We've seen this joke so many times, it's pretty stale.

(the rest is going to be critique on this particular comic)

I get it, PS3 is expensive for most people and it has a reputation of not having the "latest and greatest" games, but it isn't 2006 anymore. Long has it passed for the time of "Giant Enemy Crab" and "RIIIIIDGE RACERRR!".

Shamus, while I don't read most of your comics, from the others i've read they're pretty funny. But this one is just an tired and old joke that I see get used over and over again. It's not funny anymore. Granted, I'm the #2 PS3 Fanboy here, but I've seen this joke get used so many times that it just wears away. Try to keep your jokes up to date instead of relying on the past.

Make fun of Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo all you want, whatever, but try to keep it relatively new instead of relying on past memes.

That is, if you decided to take this into account that is. Do what you want with your comic.