Carmack: "PS3 Better Than Anything... Except 360"

[binary solo]

The only place I think he went a bit wrong was here "in theory you can do a lot more, but that's where you come to the difference between theory and practice. And given an infinite amount of development time on there, you can craft a program that's gonna work more efficiently on the cells there than on two additional processors on the 360."

Now I'm no programming expert but I gotta figure that's a little hyperbolic. No one so far has managed to do on 360 what Naughty Dog, Guerilla and Santa Monica Studios have done on PS3. And, well, unless those guys have invented worm holes or time travel they seem to have achieved what Carmack suggested would take an infinite (or to put it more mildly an unreasonably long) development time. So ND getting 3 games out in the lifetime of the PS3 each improving on the last, and Guerilla getting 2 games, again the latter improving on the former suggests the developers with the right tools aren't finding PS3 to be a major struggle.

Like anything, what you're used to you find easy to work with. What's new and different takes effort and determination to get to grips with. It's all down to how much you want to try something new. Sounds to me like Carmack is giving PS3 development a good shake and in doing so might make a product on PS3 that's as good or slightly better (because of the Blu-ray being able to fit more stuff on it) than what gets put out on 360. That proves the guy has integrity and takes pride in his work, wanting to get the best out of each machine as possible. And if he does a second project on PS3 then the blood sweat and tears he put into Rage will mean the next game will be a breeze to work on because he will already have tamed the beast, and he might actually have a bit of fun with it.

Now if he comes out and says PS3 is theoretically capable of putting out a game as good as a current (or even 2008) high end gaming PC but it's just too damned hard to do it. Then I'd accept his infinite development time comment with more credulity. But does anyone seriously think PS3 can put out high end gaming PC products?

It will be really interesting to see what id produce for the consoles. If Carmack pushes 360 beyond what has been achieved on PS3 to date then it'll really be something, especially if the Blu-ray advantage with PS3 means he pushes PS3 ever so slightly more. And it will be exciting to see such a result.

If 360 clearly took the graphics crown with Rage then it would serve to really push the Sony's 1st party guys to squeeze more juice out of the PS3, and with Santa Monica and Guerilla both possibly looking at new franchise IP's it could really be something to anticipate. It's about time a 3rd party started challenging the Sony 1st parties.