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Dave Karraker: Porting games from Xbox 360 to PS3 means additional effort

Posted Jun 13, 2007 at 9:46PM EST by QJ Staff

Listed in: PS3 Tags: Havok, Sony

An article on Doctor Dobb's Programming Journal looks at the many advantages and disadvantages of programming for the Cell processor. After all of the tech talk and the analysis were done, the conclusion is such:

....The Cell offers an impressive potential for performance. However, due to its architecture and limited support offered by the compiler, you can't expect to exploit this potential by just recompiling your current applications. Applications must be radically redesigned in terms of computation and data transfers.

Of course, this caveat of "radically redesigning" applications for the Cell only means that game developers will have to spend some more if they want their multiplatform game to show up on the Sony PlayStation 3.

What's amusing about this is that Sony seems to agree. GamePro reports that Sony Senior Director of Corporate Communications, Dave Karraker, had this to say in his blog:

If your game starts on Xbox 360 you will have to re-engineer aspects of the game to run properly on PS3. This means additional effort. Some developers have been complaining about this but I donÂ’t believe we can solve that.

Now this doesn't directly mean that Sony is leaving the developers to figure things out for themselves. Karraker does hint that they're doing what they can to help developers along. While talking about online capabilities, Karakker said: "XBL provides more and better standard libraries for online gaming to developers. For the same features on PS3, developers have to do some extra work. WeÂ’re catching up, but there is a difference."

Also, thanks to Sony we already know that starting games on the PS3 is just as costly as starting games on other platforms. "If a game starts life on PS3, then man-hours per feature or costs related to asset production are comparable with industry norms," or so says Sony officials to GamePro.

But what about multiplatform games? How long do we have to wait for the PS3 to be friendly to porting? Karraker says they've already done some steps. He says that this is what the SCE offered to devs so far:

Middleware tools like Havok and other specialist graphics tools are now customized to exploit CellÂ’s SPUs. These mean that developers donÂ’t have to reinvent those particular wheels themselves. Also, PlayStation Edge does some very difficult and performance-critical aspects of the graphics pipeline on the SPUs: geometry processing, animation, compression - delivering performance unachievable on other systems. This is available for free to all developers from SCE.

Sony better get more of those tools out. More tools only mean more potential games on the system, and that's what we all want, right?

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They should invest more in offering development tools to developers

i,m interested in the playstation edge,its utilized in killzone 2,is it allready available to developers and when we will start to see actual benefits

easier development and and a more afforadable price,together with with better software and service is the key to succes

# but... — Guest 2007-06-13 23:36

I heard that it is easier to make the games for the PS3 first and then port it to the 360 rather than the other way.

# It has nothing to do with being lazy. — Guest 2007-06-14 01:42

Saying devs are lazy is a tired and worn out arguement, and 99% of the time, unfair.

Developing games on the 360 and PS3 is *very* hard work, and many gamers seem to forget that. Things are better on the 360 because it is easier compared to the PS3 (note: easier, not easy).

This means it requires much more work on the PS3 to achieve the desired goals, but failure to reach that goal is not usually due to laziness, just as failure for YOU to reach your own goals despite putting in 110% is not due to laziness on your part.

The greater the difficulty, the more likely you are to fail, therefore things will not change until developers learn more about the PS3 and until Sony and middleware products makes the PS3 as 'easy' to develop for as the 360.

# yes — Guest 2007-06-14 04:55

that is correct

the problem when porting is the architectural diferences, the diference of memory(distribu ted or not) if the code will split to run in diferente cores

the dev are lazy in most of the cases and they just want recompile instead of use anothers much more system specific api's

# I feel somewhat depressed, but oh well... — Guest 2007-06-14 07:27

The video games of today usually seem to be viewed by devs as just a way to bring in money and nothing more. Only a few seem to actually use video games as an art form where they try to impress the video game community, rather than their own wallets. Of course, devs NEED to REALLY mean it when they say that they're trying to make a larger audience of people happy (rather than say so but later betray one of the companies by shoving them out of the big - or game, that is).

# but — Guest 2007-06-14 10:54

but when u make a multi platform game shouldnt it be released on the same console at the same time?

so if the made the game on the ps3 it would be the same as makeing it on the 360 1st except its easyer to port a ps3 game to the 360 than the other way round

it cost the same and it takes the same to make a game for the ps3 as it would for the 360 so y not go for the ps3 1st then?

i only bought a ps3 for the exclusives like gt, socom, mgs ect so i dont care anyway lol

# Duh!!! — Guest 2007-06-14 14:59

They have been saying this from the start, that the PS3 is march harder to program for then the 360 because of the way the Cell Processor operates. Thats also why some 3rd party developers such as Valve have down right said we will not program for this architecture. It has more capabilities then the 360 (not much mind you, the only reason the ps3 games that look better then 360 games are because of the Blue ray) but it also takes twice as long to program the same thing on the ps3. Nowadays company's just care bout money if they can save money by excluding the ps3 they will.

# your a DUMARSE LAWL — Guest 2007-06-14 15:56

do you know how many lines of codes devs have to look at to port something from one framework to the other? millions and millions... its just not that easy... why do you R6 have been delayed so many times for the PS3? because they have to make sure they did not forget to put a semicolon on the end of one line.

think before you talk BIZNITCH

# First? — Folding Junkie! 2007-06-14 16:27

What a waste of a post, moron!

# common sense+pwned — Guest 2007-06-14 17:19

code's right

# Lame — Guest 2007-06-14 19:24

That's what you call an oxygen thief.

# Don't promote the 360 — Guest 2007-06-14 19:33

My 360 is piece of poo it did the 3ROD (3 Redlights Of Death) on me, I think sony have got the hardware right, it doesn't overheat and the fan and optical drive noise is acceptable (Except for the random noisey ones). Microsoft deserve to fail this round, they've broken this 360 fanboy's back anyway. Wanted to charge me $200AUD to repair my 360 after it gave me 3ROD, told them to shove it and went and fixed it for $30AUD by redoing the heatsyncs properly. They've now released a new heatsync that sits in front of where the air goes into the CPU to cool the GPU because they stuck the DVD drive on top of it, still deny deny deny though. 4-5% failure raite my 4rse, whatever bull Moore says.

# hm.... — Guest 2007-06-15 04:48

I heard somewhere that some dev's start off on the ps3 then go to xbox360 then wii and finally pc

# idoit — Guest 2007-06-15 06:02

the graohics are not better because of bluray, that just gives more space, and maybe textures but i garntee ir u run a vector test, or a shader run, ps3 will come out on top because of RSX and the cell, not the god damn blu ray.

# Oblivion — Guest 2007-06-15 10:02

Bethesda was able to port the 360 version over to the PS3 with no problems whatsoever... Most probably because they've taken the time to research about the PS3's Architecture. It also might be because they are a big company...

Developers need to take their time researching about the PS3, if they're ever going to start developing PS3 games let alone porting them...

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