Is the X86 architecture good?

[baloofarsan]

the-pi-guy said:

baloofarsan said:
Michael Denny, vice president of Sony’s Worldwide Studios.: "[That] is just a massive win for developers in terms of the sort of games they can create, and the ease of game development," he said. http://www.tomshardware.com/news/PlayStation-Cell-x86-Michael-Denny-Architecture,21479.html

Easy imply faster - faster imply cheaper.
Easy imply easy to plan development - less delays - better time managemet.

That's not how this works.  Video games are gigantic pieces of software that depend on a lot of parts:

-Design

-Programming

-Art

-Sound

That's just scratching the surface.  Which of these aspects do you think are affected by the architecture?  For the most part just this one -programming

For the programmers, it is likely to make their job substantially easier, because x86 is a standard architecture.  It's what your PC uses.  People know it.  It's not some weird piece of architecture where they pretty much spend all their time just figuring it out.  They can just get straight into things.  It makes the programmer's job easier.  

With better hardware, what do you think is happening to the other categories?  The answer is that the other categories are getting inflated.  Art for example, is getting ridiculous.  

Games need more artists and more time, because the newer hardware means that they can do more.  More polygons, more effects, larger maps, more NPCs.  Games are getting bigger, and vastly more detailed.  That means more time.  Those things were going to happen regardless of what the architecture was.  

Making your game stand out takes more time than ever, because supermassive teams are putting years into their games.  

I am not a fan of it but the fact that it is a well-known standard architecture means that much of the work can be outsourced to low cost programmers. This will give you fast, predictable and cheaper development.