Hey guys. As we all know, the PS3 has been out for about 3 and a half years now. That's great. Especially since it has the amazing Cell processor which means we PS3 owners should be getting the benefit of having a large library of AAA games to play!! Wrong, only now have we seen game developers actually harness the power of the Cell processor. Like Naughty Dog, Santa Monica studios, and Polyphony Digital.

Now I know that the Cell processor isn't an easy thing to crack but three and a half years?! really? Does it really take that long for game developers to actually offload everything from the graphics card to the Cell processor. The benefits of doing so can be seen in games such as Uncharted 2 and that only took a 1+ year to build. 

So Forum, what are your thoughts? Do you thing that other game developers have been too lazy to understand the Cell, or is it because of something else? 

it's very difficult to make a game ,and as optimized as U2 is near impossible :)


try to make a street fighter like snes in c/c++ (in 2 or 3M data size ) ,and you'll understand ^^

Actually its about 4.5->5 years for the Sony first party developers because development started before this generation began.

Edit: hmm 2010 vs early 2004 (May) for sampling which means being conservative they've had early chips on boards and developing with them since late 2004 which means at release Naughty Dog would have probably spent a little over 5 years on the Cell CPU.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/128078-28-sony-samples-cell-processor

So yeah, its taken half a decade of work to get 70% of the potential out of the CPU. The remaining 30% is in using it more efficiently.

I do think other developers are lazy, Like Valve only in it for quick easy money, Now one thing is on 3rd party games , most are a port from 360, so the way you dev for 360 vs PS3 is very different, developers are not taking the time to take that code and make the correct changes to the cell to really make the best of these games, A lot of it is due to this whole equality crap with 3rd party titles, where they want everybody to have the same experience, if that is the case why does PS3 always get the crap port and crap part of the stick. As soon as they make the best game per console they can PS3 will really sore. I do thinkk its starting to change with titles like , FF, and Badcompany, You really see the difference in Sonys First party developers, them taking time , also taking pride in there work, major difference there, hopfully the rest get a clue soon, better late then never.

There is no answer to the question that will not cause offence to the pro Sony camp on this site. I will be subtle and say simply its the not the developers fault that Sony released a console with a overly complex architecture with very poor development toolset in comparison to their opposition.

The Cell has been understood since day one its just not worth the time and effort for most developers to master it, its not like they're ND getting big paychecks from Sony to paint the PS3 in a better light.

Depends on where the developers starts. If, for example, you were centric to PC then it's a real slog I'd say, which is why I think Valve have been reluctant to touch PS3 and Epic's Unreal engine initially struggled on PS3 more than 360.

If you're coming from PS2 it's still a big slog, too. On Uncharted (number 1) there's some good ND 'making of' stuff where they explain all the stuff they had to learn just in the jump in graphical techniques never mind then learning the cell.

So, while it seems long, it's not really. As some devs would have been learning the spending maybe 18 months to 2 years getting their first title out (if not longer).

SONY's first party has been producing pretty impressive games none stop since Fall 07.

Not sure what you're talking about.

Reason is simple: cheaper consoles = better sales = better chance of profit = developers flock around it....

BUT on a positive note, starting last year especially, Developers have been getting it right on PS3 programming and the results are showing....games like UC2, KZ2 and even te upcoming GOW3 has shown that once you treat da C3ll properly, the outcomes are unmatched :) and it will only get better in the future

I'm talking about Game Developers harnessing the power of the Cell processor. 

You can't compare sequel of the game on the same console. U2 used same game engine as U1 (altered but it is still the same engine) and they probably reused or just tweaked a lot of textures, animations and characters. They didn't create everything from scratch, a lot of code was just tweaked from last game. So, they didn't actually make the game in 1+ year because a lot was done BEFORE they even started doing U2.

PS3 is very complex and programmers are still learning multi-core programming. Most PC programs and games still can't use quad-core CPU's properly and even dual-core support have come to games quite late. And Cell is much more complicated than quad-core CPU.