Well that is what I mean about that everyone has an agenda.  It makes sense to say good things about what your working on especially when there is millions of dollars involved.  Honestly it may not be "hard" to progam for the PS3 but when games are taking forever to be released or are being delayed compared to the 360 version it gives off that perception which is pretty strong.  If someone goes out to buy the Orange Box right now and sees it is not yet available for the PS3 they have to wonder why.  These are people who may not be on the forums or probably online getting all the latest details about what is going on in the video game industry.  They might have seen the advertising or review from a magazine etc and decide to pick up the game but for some reason is not available. 

To most people is not about which one is harder or easier to develop for but what games are being delivered. Hopefully the PS3 will soon start pumping games out in a timely fashion and all this will be a non-issue.  Again people can quote all they want but in the end is when you get play the games is that really matters.  As long as that game is fun for you it does not matter how long it took or what the hell they did to make it a fun game for you.

Gabey-poo has a history of complaining about new technology.  For example, before the current generation of consoles were even out, he was complaining about the fact that they were multi-cored:

 "Technologically, I think every game developer should be terrified of the next generation of processors. Your existing code, you can just throw it away."

You don't have to throw the old code away, but it certainly won't be as fast as code that's optimized.  This is how new technology works. 

He goes on to say that multi-core implementations are all doctoral theses and not practical.  You can tell just by looking at what software is out and optimized for multi-core systems that this is a load of crap.  The fact that he was complaining about it before he was even able to try and program for them further detracts from his credibility.  It should also be noted that, since porting Orange Box was outsourced(to EA, I believe), he probably doesn't actually have experience programming on the PS3.

Just because Valve puts out quality games like Half Life doesn't mean that their founder is bright.  He probably hires bright people to do the work for him.  As further evidence of this, please recall the keylogger/HL2 source leak fiasco.  This sort of thing never happens to the likes of actually great programmers like John Carmack.

Hey I don't know the guy but he seems pretty bright if his running a succesful company.  You make it sound like  bosses are idiots that hire smart people to do the work for them to make them seem smart.  In the end he is just sharing his opinion like any forum poster but since we know who is unlike a forum poster I take it more seriously.

But didn't John Carmack make a crappy game called Dikatana or something like that? I don't think John Carmack does any programming anymore.

I say you CAN throw your existing code away (look at my longer post above). It's not just not as fast as optimized code, it's slow as hell and thus unusable.

Just boot a Yellow Dog linux on your PS3 and experience the slowness of unoptimized code. Even on a Pentium II it will boot and run programs faster.

@elnino:

I think you're perfectly right, the consumer is only interested in when a game is released and nothing else. But this thread is apparently being read by quite a number of software developers and for them it's an interesting topic.

Check your history there bub.  That was John Romero.  He left iD to form Ion Storm, and Daikatana was their famous crappy game.  They went under.

John Carmack does most of the programming for all of iD's engines. 

In order of the links you posted:

1- Starts by saying programming for the PS3 is easier than for the PS2, which is not a great compliment. One guy then says that it's not massively different from programming on the PC, but then another one complains about the small SPE memory on the Cell. Not very convincing as a proof that PS3 programming is easy.

2- I didn't read what the link says because it's a huge forum topic, but it's from the developers of Killzone, who have done nothing but PS3 programming for years on a huge team which will surely be more expensive than the revenue from the game? Not very convincing either, sorry... If there's some striking quote that you've read there, please point me to it.

3- Again, what is said here is that programming for the PS3 is easier than for the PS2 (again, not a great compliment). And notice that it comes from the developers of Lair, which as I've read has framerate issues. Hardly convincing!

None of those links really convinces me that  PS3 programming is easy, say, compared to the Xbox 360.

@lingLing

Good point. Let the techies have their discussion though most of it to me seems like personal opinions which is what I been mainly responding to.

na I don't need to do any research. I just wait for people to reply back to me. I still didn't think he did any real programming anymore and was more of a head figure.

Woah man, you are lucky this isn't a PC forum or you would have gotten yourself lynched. John Romero made Diakatana. John Carmack makes some of the best 3D engines in gaming today. Thats why his opinions are so highly valued. John Romero got famous behind Doom along with John Carmack. The difference is that Romero hasn't done anything of worth playing since he left id Software. Whether are not you like his games Carmack still produces top notch 3D engines. Id, like Epic probably makes more revenue off of their game engines than their games.