Non exclusives make more money. If you use all of PS3's power your game is not compatible with 360 for example.

That is why most games do not realise the potential of PS3. The new Final Fantasy will be the best example of this.

Im gonna wait for Joeorc to come in here, he will take care of explaining lol.

Arguably the PS2 centric developers would have had it easier as well because they're used to programming graphics effects in software on the PS2 in a more CPU like fashion. It was stated that it was easier than developing on the PS2 however in the PS2s case there was no convenient and easier Xbox variant at the time of release for most titles and the PS2 had greater time on market before the Xbox even released. Many PS3 exclusives shared the flaws of the multiplatform games but there was no convenient Xbox 360 version to compare against. In this generation multiplatform developers had to struggle to get their games up to speed and this accelerated forced learning curve is likely the major source of the complaints.

I'm basing my comments on video docs from Naughty Dog on moving from PS2 and PS3, and they made it sound like a slog to me!  From what I've read it sounds 50/50 to me.  Developers coming from a PC background would be far more familiar with advanced graphical techniques but would find the console architecture weird while developers coming from a PS2 background would probably find the basic architecture less of a pain but would have to learn a whole heap of new techniques.

Mind you, having watched the docus on ND, played Uncharted (which was very solid but had some obvious screen tearing, etc) then looking at Uncharted 2 I have to admit ND are clearly very, very good developers in terms of what they ramped up on, building a whole new engine and set of tools from scratch in the process.

I was under the impression this was common? Wasnt the best looking PS2 game God of War II, and that came out 6-7 years after the launch of the PS2. I just figured this was a natural progression in learning a new machine. Kinda how 360 games now look many times better than launch titles.

Remember Naughty Dog would have had access to the Cell CPU since late to very late 2004, they were amongst the pioneers on the CPU architecture. They broke ground before most people, so you would expect that for any architecture paradigm shift the early birds would bear the brunt of the load and problems.

Developers on the PC make a game which has a completely different look and feel to a game made say for the PS2. The PS2 games were in technical terms a lot more complicated even if they were not as technologically sound as the PC games. One start example is the contrast ratio. PC games tend to be bright and have quite a wide contrast between different colours, light and dark and this can show off the aliasing. They tend to look a little clinical whereas console games tend to by stylised, dimmer and lower contrast to hide the aliasing.

The difference between the two fields convergence is that there are tools and engines to help utilise shaders and other effects however changing the programming model to suit the consoles does infact require a lot of work. Shaders work like a pair of gloves in many cases, you just slip them in. However the programming model is something which has to be learnt and relearnt over the course of the generation.

for some yes indeed It can take that long, because Some developer's are still learning. It Take's Time and Experience to get Multi-Core processing not just in engine, but other way's to harness the Hardware, what work's best, what can be tweaked. etc. that's the main draw back of memory managment processor's.

They indeed Take Time to get the Best you can out of them, but It does Show one only has to look at the result's. now for Some , many may say there is not enough software yet. but on the same token if the developer's have not has much Time to learn the Hardware than you would need more time.

Ratchet & Clank TOD (2007), Heavenly Sword (2007), Motorstorm (2007) Gran Turismo 5: Prologue (2008) MGS4 (2008) Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (2007), Resistance 2 (2008), Killzone 2 (Feb. 2009) are just some examples of exclusive games that make a very good use of the Cell. Some of them are more expensive than others, sure, but what the hell 3.5 years you're talking about?

There are plenty of games that's given us a very good taste of what the PS3 is about since year 1. Of course you'll see games with a bigger BUDGET (KZ2, GT5, GOW3) and TIME (KZ2, GT5, GOW3) and EXPERIENCED staff (Uncharted 2, Resistance, Ratchet) doing better and more amazing things, but that's has nothing on the first batch of exclusive games we got in the within the first 18-20 months of the PS3's existance.

Ok, sorry im taking the PS3 side for most of this one...

Well, look at the competition and the turnaround times there, probably the biggest game graphics wise for the 360 that is actually supposed to compete with UC2 or KZ2, Alan Wake, has been in development since before the PS3 was released... Outside of that and nifty CG scenes no other games really come close. So I don't think it really has much of anything to do with understanding the cell processor. I'm not sure i'm following the 3 and a half years either... KZ2 was released a year ago, which means the understanding behind how make what im assuming you are implying as mind blowing games came far before that. Realistically from the developer's perspective,at the very most you could probably get off saying a year and a half or less. But even games like Uncharted: Drake's Fortune at the time it was released blew anything else out of the water. The bar has not been getting raised by the 360, sorry folks, it just aint true, its ps3 exclusives that you can thank for all the awesome looking games that are starting to show up, even bungie admits that KZ2 was a wakeup call that they need to step things up and now look how much better halo:reach looks.  

I own both consoles, and I have to say that graphics wise pretty much all the 360 games up till recently were about as appealing as dirty butt... who knows some of you may like that i dont know... Now, the 360 is finally stepping up its game with splinter cell : conviction, alan wake(finally), and halo:reach. 

Anyway, if we are going to discuss something, lets discuss why the heck the 360 games sucked for so long and are JUST NOW matching what we have been seeing for PS3 exclusives.

because many Game engine's were not optimized for the xbox360.

the majority was not even taylored to the XBOX360's hardware. they were made for PC because many of the same game's on the xbox360 were also going to be released on the PC. not to say every last one of them, No it just mean's the developer's for the xbox360 are mainly PC software developer's the majority are mainly PC centric. So their game's were geared toward that hardware dynamic. just look at unreal engine it's crossplatform in it's design but not taylored made to one specific hardware. where as most of the Game's made for the PS3 are designed for it's hardware.

Now more developer's are going to optimize their game engine's to xbox360, but know this, when the developer does that the game may not come out as fast because with memory managment processor's like what's in both the PS3 and the XBOX360 it has quite a bit under the hood , but take's time to take advantage of said hardware.