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kitler53 on 08 July 2010
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Gnizmo said:
kitler53 said:


you have argued in this thread that the ps3 was an engineering problem and to that point you are wrong.  the ps3 is an amazing peice of engineering and it only take one look at it's games library coupled with the fact its the only device on the market that can't be hack to realize this.

the part you are trying to argue is that the best solution isn't always the best solution (something that doesn't come up in 1st year engineering btw.  i got it only starting in the 4th year during my design course).  a good solution has three parts: the technology, the people, and the process.  sony's consession was that they focused too much on the technology and people but not enough on the process.


That is not actually accurate. I have argued that a core concept behind its design philopsophy was flawed. The machine itself I have not commented on. As an engineer you should be able to respect the point I am making if I can make it clear enough, which perhaps I am not.

The PS3, as machine in the wild, I have no comments on. I haven't really studied it. The PS3, as a game machine, has a serious design flaw at its core in that it was not built to play games specifically. This is not a problem with the technology, or machinery. It is a problem with its creators.

Let me illustrate with an example. Lets say your are building an electronic keyboard. One of your partners suggest using this great and awesome new computer that you can shrink down and force into it. With enough work you can force the computer to make the required sounds, but it isn't exactly meant to do what you want. Another student says you should instead get the basic components of the keyboard which are meant to do precisely what you want them to. The first student is building the PS3. The second is building the PS4.

@Solid
I have no idea what you just typed out in that mess. Make it readable and I will respond.

there you go making the same statement that i both agree and disagree with.

when you say, "..has a serious design flaw at its core in that it was not built to play games specifically" i disagree, the ps3 was designed  with games in mind.  it's just that the only part of games they kept in mind was maximizing performance.  what they forgot was with this amazing new performance came a shift in how things need to be programed in order to leverage this performance increase.

I work for a software company and our software is quite the resource hog.  we got to the point that running on a "standard" processor was just not enough due to the cost of equipment and in order to keep cost in line we tasked ourself with doing pretty much exactly what the cell does - spread our programming out over several smaller computers instead of one large one.  we actually had to fire a good portion of our staff because they weren't willing to work in such a manner replacing them with programers who were willing to be more open minded.

i tell you this story just to illustrate the point - the hardware is a great solution to today's challenges but it's the people that are resisting the changes and it's the people that sony forget to consider NOT the design of the ps3.

but yeah, as an overall i still agree with your general gist.  i'm mostly nit picking.