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thermal7 on 14 August 2007
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Re all the developers are lazy statements:

As a developer (not a games one although I have dabbled) this is a stupid and blanket statement to make. Making games is about making money. What people are describing as putting the effort in to tap the power of the cell architecture is not a question of laziness. This implies that there are no extra costs to tapping this power and it is just a question of being bothered, which is ridiculous. Time is money and the more time they spend tapping the power of the cell, the greater the development costs and the less money they make. Further more the more tricky a console is to program for the harder it is to estimate end dates. This is the nature of the business and thus it is valid to complain that a console is hard to program for, especially when they can compare it directly to the other consoles of the generation.

It is completely nonsensical to say the developers are lazy without any evidence. Games developers are under a lot of pressure and do some serious overtime. Lazy is not a word that springs to mind.

Re the Cell architecture:

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2007/06/13/is-the-ps3-really-harder-to-develop-for/

This is an article on the playstation blog which links an article that is written by an in house Sony developer. Its of questionably bias but anyway, it has a good quote that seems to be repeated by Sony supporters in one form or another:

This is an interesting question and hidden within the question is an enormously complex subject! If the game starts life on PS3, then man-hours per feature or costs related to asset production are comparable with industry norms. For that, you can include Xbox 360 and high-end PC games, and exclude PS2 and Wii. However, since PS3’s Cell processor allows MORE features - better physics, more complex graphical processing, lighting or sound, etc. — there is inevitably going to be more cost in supporting those extra features. It’s not that PS3 is harder to write for, it’s just that you can do more with it.

Whilst it is true that utilizing more cores (CPUs) means more work for the developers but greater potential there is so much more to the architecture than just the number of cores. It is possible that Sony (or Nintendo or Microsoft) have made bad calls which are hurting the developers or just plain limiting. On top of this there are the developer tools, the documentation, the support Sony offer, debugging and analysis tools, etc. I am not saying that the PS3 sucks in all these, just saying that it is entirely possible that they are sub-par and none are related to potential.

So please don't just say the developers are lazy and the PS3 is just really powerful unless you have anything to base it on. It is entirely possible the PS3 is needlessly hard and thus costly to develop for and also possible that it is inferior to the Xbox 360 in some ways.

Anyway, I find it interesting that a Ubisoft developer has made this comment. A huge publisher like Ubisoft is not going to casually allow a developer to say something like this. I do believe it is true, however I think they have allowed it to be said as it helps their interests. Ubisoft has really sided with Nintendo this generation. I think they are saying this to try and hurt the PS3 and cause damage to EA who have only recently shifted focus.