360 CPU and Cell are fairly equal according to Dave Shippy

[Procrastinato]

NJ5 said:

@Procastinato: So now most engine programmers are newbs? That's like the "developers are lazy" argument, it completely ignores one of the most important matters of game development - cost. Time equals money, the Cell equals more invested time in engine programming, which equals more money spent.

It's not that developers are lazy or stupid, it's that they have limited time and budget. Sony needs to learn that lesson and make developer-friendly consoles.

 

Kids like game programming -- meaning fresh outta college.  They come cheap, too.  Enthusiasm goes a long way toward reducing the paycheck, because inevitably there's going to be someone crazy enough, and just skilled enough (and no family, etc.) who will take the job for the price.  The games industry is also really stressful, because of the budget/deadline thing... 50-60 hour workweeks are commonplace, and people don't tend to last long under those conditions.

Sony has a truckload of badass developers under their hood, so I can see how it may have made sense to them, but I would tend to agree with you, in that, in this day and age, which is really just before the "age of parallelism" really hits mainstream, the Xenon's ease-of-use makes it much more attractive from a budget standpoint.  The PS3 is lucky that its specs are so close to the 360, and ports are easy, IMO.

Honestly, most devs don't hardly use the entire Xenon either... another advantage for the PS3 for easy ports, actually.  Using the Cell, or all three cores of the Xenon, to maximum potential isn't necessary for a great game.  Lots of middleware already uses it (although its taken some time), and the extra Xenon cores, so in a sense, its becoming easier to wield that horsepower than it used to be (and it shows in recent 3rd party games).

At the beginning of the generation, the 360 had not only a year head start, but this ease-of-use advantage, which has resulted in the current situation.  So yeah, I think Sony may have jumped the gun with the Cell.

In the next generation, however, using the Cell in this gen may have turned out to be a huge boon -- parallelism is the way of the future, whether devs want to embrace it or not.  Sony is already there, despite the fact that it has cost them dearly.  If they can hold on, they may very well have set themselves up for some serious advantages in the future.