Crytek: CryEngine 3 will run slightly better on PS3

[MikeB]

I have always stated that I thought Crytek are very competent game engine developers, if they continue to optimise their game engine as much as possible they will probably see a lot more gains in the future on the PS3 as well. As the Cell's SPEs provide endless oppertunities for optimisation.

Most complaints from developers in the past actually regarded the state of cross-platform middleware solutions on the PS3 (most low-level developers actually hailed its abilities), the Cell being so different compared to legacy CPUs requires more modern approaches and more specific care (this will count for many more modern multi-core/multi-CPU architectures in the future, game engines will gain enormously from the advances developers took to take advantage of the Cell). But the potential end results can be far beyond anything what's possible to achieve on current rival consoles.

Hopefully they will be successful and this pushes more 3rd parties to adopt their gaming engine, which in turn may well push other middleware game engine providers like Epic to become more competitive and go all the way with optimising for and moving over functions to the Cell's SPEs. Epic has shown to be unwilling with regard to this in the past (equality on PS3 and 360 was their aim, but not beyond this they suggested, maybe due to dealing with Microsoft so much).

However if Crytek fully delivers, it may well make sense for using their game engine to develop games for the PS3 exclusively. As developers will be able to have far more freedom while taking advantage of this engine. For example you can't have one version of your game with twice the amount of activity than another version or for example improved artificial intelligence, as this would directly effect game design and dynamics. In addition developers can also rely fully on the space benefits of Blu-Ray disc, combined with a default harddrive for more optimal streaming (in addition to other assumptions like default internet functionality for anyone with internet access, motion control option, etc).