MikeB said:
slowmo said:
MikeB said:
@ slowmo
I'm sure the PS3 isn't as hard to maximise performance as the PS2 or Saturn but it is more difficult than its 2 main rivals it would seem.
IMO "maximise" would be much harder on the PS3 to achieve, as it is a lot more advanced than the PS2 was. Like it will be much easier still to get the most out of a c64, as the amount of resources and potential are rather limited in comparison. On a modern multi-core PC it would be similar hard to achieve, in reality those systems have a lot more potential than especially Windows/Direct X (and most modern gaming engines) allow (apart from the horribly inefficient bulky host OS, also ever changing configurations play an important factor here).
We are far from the point at which developers will feel the need to hand optimise everything on the PS3, as with the code they have moved to the SPUs so far they still have a lot of headroom. But there are endless oppertunities to optimise for the Cell's SPUs, which of course would take an endless amount of time.
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I'll disagree on the grounds we will not see developers going to assembly code anywhere near as much this generation to achieve performance increases. Also the Saturn was a parrallel processing system with extremely poor dev tools so I'd say given the hardware available at the time it was one of the most hideous platforms to develop for, perhaps ever. At the end of the day until it happens on the PS3 we will not know.
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IMO it won't happen, except for the most time and performance dependent parts of PS3 gaming engines. That was my point actually, the PS3 will never really be maxed out completely, there will always be additional oppertunities to optimise.
But I think half a decade from now it will probably require more and more time and work to generate significant gains for top gaming engine developers, but the gaming engines will likely become far more optimised than for PC games as this is a console and while knowing exactly the non-changing hardware, optimising as much as you can achieve within a given development time makes good sense.
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I'll conceed on the PS2 point a little, but not the Saturn which technically was a complete mess.
