MikeB's past predictions

[MikeB]

@ Kynes

Innovative new technology does have the habbit of becoming increasingly more complex. For example when the Amiga launched developers suddenly had the option to worry about pre-emptive multitasking/sheduling, extensive interactions between programs (like copy & paste, shared libraries, support for datatypes allowing ancient programs to take advantage not yet developed new formats like PNG for an ancient program before even GIF existed, etc) vs only dumb and blind single tasking on the PC/Mac, 4096 color pallete vs 2 colors on the PC/Mac, stereo sound vs beeping or soundless PC/Mac, etc, etc. Usually due to the huge technology gap many developers decided to rewrite their software from scratch.

Developing from scratch is nowadays harder because many companies have invested many years or even decades into developing their legacy game engines and middleware. Developing from scratch the PS3 isn't much harder to develop for for competent programmers (there are endless quotes from low-level developers on this subject).

Creating game engines and middleware on modern consoles nowadays isn't a one man show like you could still write for simpler embedded or PSN games. There are too many aspects to topnotch modern gaming engines, it would take far too long for a single programmer to redevelop from scratch.

Middleware is designed to take away low-level complexity for the high level developers, like with the Amiga over the years developing software using 3rd party tools PS3 software development has become much simpler. There's now a great selection of PS3 optimised free tools available, also Epic's Unreal engine has advanced a lot making it no harder to develop for that middleware on the PS3 than it is on the 360. But creating your own game engine you have the option to go beyond what is possible for rivals picking 3rd party middleware.