PS3: 'Still a Pain in the Ass' for Developers

[Final-Fan]

Cypher1980 said:

Final-Fan said:

I think you are overstating the constraints.  Instead of 512 unified it's 256 and 256, it's not like NONE of the 360's 512 is going to the CPU.  I'd guess (and I admit it's a guess) it only feels like a "straitjacket" to those who carelessly wrote for the 360 without even considering that they would have to port it to the PS3 later.  Cry moar, I'm sure there are some problems if people do the opposite as well. 

Anyway, back when this debate was raging originally, I'd gotten the impression that the Cell processor (with its kind-of-independent SPUs) was the biggest problem going from 360 to PS3.  Not so, or not anymore? 

I believe that most of the learning curve regarding the Cell has been understood and adopted into Modern Game Engines. Its still a bit of a pain and its hard to extract every last bit of power but the Cell is powerful enough to match strides with the more conventional architectures.

The big problem now is indeed the memory constraints on the PS3. 256 MB is simply way too small for graphics nowadays. Imagine being a multiplat developer applying textures to your game on the PC dev kit (They nearly all are for multiplat) and constantly having a PS3 Texture limit reached warning crop up.

I honestly think the PS3 is a great machine held back by some terrible design choices. I expect the PS4 to have all these problems rectified.

OK, but how much of the 360's memory (over 256) can really be counted on?  (Honest question -- I'm curious and don't know.)  It's not like the CPU doesn't take any.  Definitely there is advantage to the 360 there, but it's not like the 360's memory is impressive compared to PC memory either.