MikeB on 02 December 2007
@ Final-Fan
I'm not a programmer but from what I understand most of the complaints about PS3 vs. 360 architecture stem from the fact that the 360 has a very PC-like processor, while the PS3's Cell is an entirely new and rather complicated beast. It's true that it has taken a lot of effort for developers to get truly superior performance out of the PS3, and those efforts have been expensive. But once the groundwork has been laid, it should become easier to get that performance out of the PS3, right?
One problem is the general design of legacy game engines (not designed for parallel processing, which is achieved by multi-threading, Amiga and especially BeOS later pioneered in this area), especially if they use too much of Microsoft's closed technologies. Porting games from DirectX/Win32 over to other platforms has always been a hurdle for developers, it can be done like some developers I know well have ported high profile commercial Win32/DirectX based games over to Mac, Linux and AmigaOS, but this takes a lot more effort and they rewrote and adapted some of their middleware/3D driver systems to simplify the process.
The Cell is very easy to develop for if you don't use the SPEs at all, but like with almost everything which is more advanced (such as the introduction of multitasking operation systems, you shouldn't assume your program is the only one running and you may want to allow interaction with these programs) when the system becomes smarter and more feature rich there are usually more things to take into consideration when developing software. Having said that many PS3 developers are eager to learn and love to explore what the Cell can achieve and they are.
The Cell and the PS3 in general isn't really that hard to develop for, in fact all developers I know of said it's actually quite a bit easier to develop for than was the case with regard to the PS2. If you know anything about programming I recommend to look at IBM's website for some nice Linux related tutorials.
