A game developers inside insight on difficulties of PS3 game programming

[edkwon]

This is an interesting write up by an actual 3rd party software developer, his views on why the PS3 is a much more difficult platform to program games from a software and hardware viewpoint. Plus why multi platform games end up looking better on the 360 vs the PS3, and why the PS3 exclusive hit game library is so pathetically small compared to the 360's library

I read various game forums from time to time, and often see gamers complaining about 'lazy ports' to the ps3. They often mention how the ps3 is the most powerful game console and blame developers working on the console for doing a bad job. Sony has all of these people duped by impressive marketing spin, and I'm often amazed at how potent this type of rhetoric proves to be. For those unaware, I'm going to break it down simply and explain exactly why ports to the ps3 will never be as good as their 360 counter parts, and why most ps3 exclusives will likely continue to suck. First, lets debunk a few common misconceptions:

"The PS3 is more graphically advanced than the 360"

Fill rate is one of the primary ways to measure graphics performance - in essence, it's a number describing how many pixel operations you can perform. The fill rate on the PS3 is significantly slower than on the 360, meaning that games either have to run at lower resolution or use simpler shader effects to achieve the same performance. Additionally, the shader processing on the ps3 is significantly slower than on the 360, which means that a normal map takes more fill rate to draw on the ps3 than it does on the 360. And I'm not talking about small differences here, we're talking roughly half the pixel pushing power.

"Ok, fine, but the cell is like, super powerful"

In theory, sure, but in reality it doesn't work out that way. Game code simply doesn't split well across multiple processors. You can probably find a way to split a few things off fairly easily - put the audio on one processor, animation on another; but generally the breakup is always going to leave several of the SPUs idle or underutilized. On top of that, it's usually not CPU speed that restricts the visuals in games - it's fill rate.

"Uh, Blue Ray!"

Great for watching movies, but not so great for games. Getting data off the blue ray drive takes about twice as long as it does to get the same data off the 360's DVD drive. That translates into longer load times, or god forbid if your streaming from disk, tighter constraints on the amount of data you can stream.

"But it's got a lot more space than DVD"

Ok, you got me there - it does have a lot more space, and there is the potential to use that to do something cool, but thats unlikely to be realized in any useful way. There are tons of compression techniques available for data and I'd personally rather be able to get my data faster than have more of it. Most developers who use the entire Blue Ray drive are doing it to work around other problems with the ps3 such as it's slow loading - for instance, in Resistance: Fall of Man, every art asset is stored on disk once for every level that uses it. So rather than storing one copy of a texture, you're storing it 12 times. If you took that entire game and removed all the duplicate data, it would likely fit on a DVD without any problem. They do this to speed up load times, which, as I pointed out before, are painfully slow on the ps3. So in this case, the extra space is completely wasted.

"Once developers figure out the PS3 they'll maximize the hardware and it will be amazing"

I suspect a small number of PS3 only developers will optimize the hardware to do something cool. However, this will be an exception to the rule, and will likely involved game designs that are specifically designed for the hardware and funded by Sony. If those will prove to be fun or not is another question.

Most of the performance centric research into the PS3 has been around making it easier for developers to get the same level of performance you get out of the 360 naturally. For instance, some developers are using those extra SPU's on the cell to prepare data for the rendering pipeline. Basically, they take the data they would normally send to the graphics chip, send it to an SPU which optimizes it in some manner, then send it to the graphics chip. So, once again we see an 'advantage' in hardware being used to make up for a disadvantage in another area - a common theme with the ps3. And this introduces an extra frame of latency into the equation, making controller response slower.

So, the common theme is this; developers must spend significantly more time and resources getting the PS3 to do what the 360 can already do easily and with a lot less code. Lets look at how this translates into practical realities for a moment:

Why the PS3 version often pails in comparison to the 360 version, and why exclusives often suck:

As outlined above, getting equivalent performance out of the PS3 requires a lot of work unique to the platform, and in many cases, even with all these tricks, you still won't see equivalent performance. Thus, many ps3 games have simplified shaders and run at lower native resolutions than the 360 versions. On top of this, there is shrinking incentive to do this work; the PS3 isn't selling.

The code needed to make the PS3 work is most likely only useful to you on the PS3, as the types of tricks you need to do to make the thing perform are very unique to the platform and unlikely to be useful on any other architecture now or in the future. These issues all stem from unbalanced hardware design, and any future hardware that is this unbalanced will likely be unbalanced in a completely unique way.

Finally, there's the problem of resources. Game Development is, at it's heart, a resource management challenge. Given finite resources, do I have these five engineers work on optimizing the PS3 version to look better, or do I use them to make the game play better and fix bugs? Do I change my design to fit with what the PS3 hardware does well, or simply run the game at a slightly lower resolution on the PS3 to make up for it? Developers striving to push the PS3 hardware have often sacrificed their game in the process.

This post might come across as a lot of Sony bashing, but it's just the reality from the trenches. Sony let their hardware be designed by a comity of business interests rather than a well thought out design that would serve the game development community. They are going to loose hard this round because of it, and I hope that in the next round they take lessons from this round and produce a more balanced and usable machine.

[edkwon]

Of course this essay was followed by the responses of a lot of pissed off PS3 users. lol

[Ilpav]

I always knew that the PS3 wasn't gonna be as good as the X360. Hopefully the PS4 will have the same glory as the PSX/PS2.

[db2450]

The thing is that, we will never know if this is another "lazy developer". ;0

[Redliner]

Don't care. GT5 + Top Gear= shitload of sales.

[Hidden_Hunter]

Originally Posted by db2450

The thing is that, we will never know if this is another "lazy developer". ;0

A few other developers have mentioned similar things I beleive.

[Viper007Bond]

Originally Posted by Hidden_Hunter

A few other developers have mentioned similar things I beleive.

Gabe Newell being one of them. He utterly hates developing for the PS3.

[db2450]

The fact that Microsoft=$$$$ may make developers to have these feelings to...

[edkwon]

Originally Posted by db2450

The fact that Microsoft=$$$$ may make developers to have these feelings to...

Stop being so defensive, this thread is not an attack on the PS3, its a discussion on why some developers don't like making games for the system and therefore a reason why software development for the console may lag behind its rival consoles.

[Vltros]

Originally Posted by Redliner

Don't care. GT5 + Top Gear= shitload of sales.

X10.0000

The thing is...

With the PS2 they said exactly the same. "It is too difficult to program games for it"
blah blah blah!!!

And it always be the eternal discussion so....

[lilblackdemon]

As a budding software developer, I can really see his complaints, specifically about getting the most out of the specific hardware.

Every developer b*tches and moans that hardware is hard to develop for, because it is. There is no magical DoStuff() function or method that can be run (I wish there was), and developing is very hard work. Even a small utility program can take a month or two to develop and test, and here we're talking about a complex 3D engine that must iterate at least 30 times a second. The idea of easily developing something is simply absurd.

I also understand his complaint about how the multiple cores don't help games at all. This is right on the money. Multiple CPU cores help the most when you have a large set of data, or are multitasking. Games can be made to multithread, but when multithreading is brought into play the internal complexity of the code increases by several hundred, if not thousand, times. Games are best as thought of as sequentially, because the next frame of action will be determined by the player's input. As such, the processing that can be split across the cores is relatively minor. On something like Folding@Home (which I believe has a PS3 client), a Cell architecture is perfect, since it's given a large set of data, and is using a processor that at its base (PowerPC base, if I remember correctly) is designed for computing large sets of data like F@H provides.

The other issue is that Sony has traditionally been very poor at providing developer support for their systems. Microsoft is preferred by developers because they are willing to work very closely with A, AA, and AAA game devs to make sure everything runs fine. If you want an example of this, just look at this year's Madden. the X360 version ran at 60fps, but the PS3 at 30fps. Getting the speed boost is all about understanding the complexities of the hardware, and only the platform designer can know enough at this early stage.

The one thing he's wrong about is that there will eventually be enough PS3 systems sold to make developing worthwhile. Once it's worthwhile, people will spend the time to learn the complexities of the hardware, and the games will run faster and look better. Also, after each project a dev team can apply what they learned previously and build on that to further improve the engine. This is why Bully looked so much better than GTA3, although both were on the PS2.

[awdrifter]

I agree with most of the article's points, but shouldn't the PS3 and X360's GPU be neck and neck in terms of performance? (It's basically like a 1950XTX vs 7900GTX) The only reason the X360 version of the game gets higher frame rate is probably because it runs at 720p while the PS3 version runs at 1080i. And BRD loads slower than DVD? I thought BRD has higher transfer rates than DVDs.

I do agree with his other points though, especially about the 7 SPE cpu, even Crysis which claims to be designed for multi-cores doesn't seem any benefit from going dual to quad. Going from tri-core to 7 would almost be impossible (at least not in a cost effective way). Sony really should've just grabbed a C2Q for it's PS3 and call it a day. Then it would've have lower cost and more developers porting games on it.

But all of it doesn't really matter to me, I'm getting the cheapest version PS3 when GT5 comes out.

[lilblackdemon]

Originally Posted by awdrifter

And BRD loads slower than DVD? I thought BRD has higher transfer rates than DVDs.

BRD has a higher data throughput, but the PS3 spins the disk slowly and so the actual data rate is lower than a X360's DVD9.

[Hauton]

Originally Posted by Viper007Bond

Gabe Newell being one of them. He utterly hates developing for the PS3.

Gabe Newell said the 360 was going to crash and burn as well. He's a big fat liar, in more ways than one. Lets face it, he just doesn't want to cop up to the fact that Orange Box PS3 was outsourced to some no-name E3 port team rather than Valve and suffered as a result, so he blames the PS3 for Orange Box sucking on PS3 instead.

I don't see Carmack and the boys over at iD complaining. Rage engine runs immaculately on all hardware. And it looks glorious. It's not a reflection of the PS3 when Valve can't get the decrepit Source engine to run when amazing games have come and are coming for the PS3.

Look at Killzone 2, look at Ratchet & Clank Future, look at the JAWDROPPING recently-released Gran Turismo 5 Prologue demo. Then tell me that PS3 is weak.

This guy sounds like

A) A troll
B) Not really a developer
C) If he's a dev, he's probably a low-rung guy working for some thankless port studio who whines because he's a fresh graduate of those garbage "game development" academies. Yeah, the same that advertise on TV with two airheads going "WOW I CAN'T BELIEVE WE'RE BEING PAID TO PLAY GAMES".

EDIT: It's bleeding hilarious too how he says Sony will lose specifically because of the complexity of development. PS2 was the hardest to develop last generation by a country mile, and I heard that did pretty well. By all accounts, working with the PS3 is orders of magnitude easier than the PS2, especially with the amount of effort Sony has been putting into helping out devs.

[db2450]

Well from as far as I can tell (got this from a 360 fanboy site, getting link soon) the 360 reads DVDs at 12x (16x is about 22 megabytes/sec or at least thats what I remember) the PS3's BD drive is 2x and from what the PS3 says when you look at the info/display when watching BD movies, they are at 50+ megabytes/sec for video and 4.6/6.4 megabytes/sec for audio (uncompressed LPCM audio via HDMI).
Now please, someone correct me if I am wrong, I don't pretend to be a computer wiz and I know there are so many people here that know more about this then me, so please explain .

It's bleeding hilarious too how he says Sony will lose specifically because of the complexity of development. PS2 was the hardest to develop last generation by a country mile, and I heard that did pretty well. By all accounts, working with the PS3 is orders of magnitude easier than the PS2, especially with the amount of effort Sony has been putting into helping out devs.

The PS2 is the best selling, non-portable console to date. Seems like the Wii has a chance to beat it though.

[zenkidori]

Interesting read, but I would put more faith in it if it wasn't just some random, "3rd party developer" and maybe someone more noteworthy who has made great games. There are tons of little pissant dev studios these days, developing crap games and blaming other people for the lack of experience and education their $5000 online school left them with.

[awdrifter]

The Wii will probably beat the PS3 in sales, just becasue it's cheaper. People who bought a PS3 can probably afford to buy a Wii as a second console if there's a game on the Wii they want. But people who bough a Wii probably won't spend money on a PS3 because it's so expensive.

[db2450]

Originally Posted by awdrifter

The Wii will probably beat the PS3 in sales, just becasue it's cheaper. People who bought a PS3 can probably afford to buy a Wii as a second console if there's a game on the Wii they want. But people who bough a Wii probably won't spend money on a PS3 because it's so expensive.

I know, I have a PS3 (you could probably tell that from my previous posts ) and I am hoping I can save up for a Wii before Super Smash Bros brawl comes out.

[lilblackdemon]

Originally Posted by zenkidori

Interesting read, but I would put more faith in it if it wasn't just some random, "3rd party developer" and maybe someone more noteworthy who has made great games. There are tons of little pissant dev studios these days, developing crap games and blaming other people for the lack of experience and education their $5000 online school left them with.

Gabe Newell is the head of Valve Software, the guys behind the Half-Life series, one of the premier PC FPS's. For an idea of how good the HL series is, look at MetaCritic PC. Of the top five PC spots, three are held by Valve, including the top two.

Also, a bunch of other top developers have commented on how the multi-core Cell chip is over the top, something that makes total sense if you read the above few posts.

[zenkidori]

that's fantastic, but unless I've missed something, Gabe Newell didn't write the quoted bit in the OP.