Squilliam said:
Destroyer_of_knights said:
you know, I don't think Valve is as great as they once use to be, I mean saying that he didn't get into the industry to code on exotic hardware, but rather that he got into the industry to make compelling games...all this is negated by the fact that they created their own high end graphics engine which they've been using and upgrading for years now.
Now it's all well and good to say that they got into the industry to concentrate on gameplay and story and all, and one would assume that it would be in their best interest to simply license an engine so that nearly 90% of the time is spent on game content and gameplay things....but no, oh no, they went a head and built a highly modular graphics engine which is constantly being upgraded, so to say they didn't get into the industry to program high level code is a load of Bullshit.
Their capable of building a proper multiplatform engine no doubt about, the problem is that they missed the boat when the decided to skip the PS3, and further made it worse when Gabe spoke out that the PS3 was essentially shit and worthless.
To say the least it hurt their image some what, and at the end of the day the one thing they really hated about the PS3 was CELL, it's not that the CELL is hard per se, but that they have to essentially change their way of thinking when coding for the PS3, essentially a paradigm shift from sequential processing to parallel processing, which means the engine has to be programed from scratch with this concept in mind, as this is how CELL was designed, and how it can attain a high level of performance, otherwhise the developer is punished with crap performace. The 360 on the other hand doesn't require as much new thinking as the PS3, so they fell more comfortable because they are in the safe with the familiar, but this doesn't mean they are maximising all the available CPU performance of the 360, which is why some developers have said that if they take the time to learn how to efficiently code on the CELL, then they'll see the same benefits on the 360.
The whole Industry is headed that way either way, with intel already planing the release scheduale of 6 - 8 core processors, so designing engines with this new method of thinking will be crucial, and it's hard which is why most if not all developers if given the choice would prefer CPU's to be single core but a with a higher clock frequency, but CPU tech has hit a road block with frequencies because of the heat limitations of Silicon, so multicore is the only way to go in order to increase performance, and as such a new way of programming is required to extract that performance.
Now Valve are fucked, if they try to make a PS3 game, but fail to understand CELL since they have no prior experience, and their game cold turns out crap, not only will their image of a quality game developer be tarnished, but they'll lose mind share as well....and that is something Valve does not want to risk at this stage in the generations life.
But you know what, Valve deserve to be in this fucked up situation, they put them selves there in the 1st place, and I bet you they regret their decisions even if not made public. PS3 24Million install base isn't something they can ignore easily as it would have easily been more profits coming there way if they had made a PS3 game them selves, but ignore it they must in order to maintain their image.
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They don't expect to see a heterogeneous processor in their bread and butter PC operations, so no I doubt that they have any real need to learn anything from the Cell. Explicit DMA? I don't see that as a requirement for a multi-core X86 processor.
Their calling is in developing rather innovative games in the FPS realm, they used a generic engine in their first game but I doubt we would have seen anything of the likes of Portal without them developing an engine. I also doubt they could support the mod community as well if they didn't have anything to offer them (for free).
Missing the PS3 isn't a great shame at this point. The Xbox 360 can support 3-4 big shooter games in a year but the PS3 cannot. We saw how Gears of War 2 and Left 4 Dead thrived alongside Call of Duty whereas Resistance 2 suffered for coming out next to Call of Duty: World at War. Also at this point they can spend more time making the game more fun than worrying about getting a PS3 SKU up to speed.
Finally, I doubt that Valve are really feeling down at themselves or anything. Its like Epic games really, I mean Epic and Valve are so regretful... The sales for their games have been dreadful or not. I doubt they could have released L4D 2 within a year if they had a PS3 SKU for example.
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