there fixed it for you.

I wanted to get people's opinions on why it took so long for the developers to be able to use a large percentage of the Cell processor's power. I created this thread for that purpose because it has been bugging me for the last couple of days. No flaming intended, nor do I want flaming to occur in this thread. But that is impossible because this is the internet. 

Oh thanks dude, I didn't catch that earlier. My bad :p

Poorly designed and thought out console, lack of decent dev tools, expensive and time consuming development and no real reason to improve. Basically the shitty PS3 ports still sell fine, and making them look better can't be justified when those incremental improvements would cost so much more, and add development time that may cost a game to miss its marketing window.

And I wouldn't be surprised if Sony was withholding the documentation and techniques that their studios have access to from third party developers - its what Nintendo did with the 64.

The Cell's unique architecture ensures it won't be utilized very much by multiplatform developers. Just look at God of War III. Sony Santa Monica have somehow managed to get even anti-aliasing running on the Cell. This is pretty much impossible with a multiplatform engine.

The Cell is just fine, if not great, for game development, so long as developers can focus entirely on its strengths.

The issue is that only first parties will actually do this. Even when FFXIII was still exclusive, and they were developing it with exclusivity in mind, they were still developing it on an engine that was designed to be multiplatform.  Crazy ideas like running AA entirely on the CPU (or the entire lighting engine, as is the case with Killzone 2) just aren't going to work.

So long as third parties are unable to make use of the ps3's biggest asset, multiplatform games will continue to look equal on both platforms at best, save a few certain areas (and aside from the rare exceptions like FFXIII).

Btw, here's a quote from Sony Santa Monica's Tim Moss on the God of War forums:

I must live in a completely different universe, because I was under the impression that I have been playing ground breaking PS3 games since 2007... I guess in this world Uncharted only released in September of last year.

False. The difference is that only Sony developers tell people outright their SPE useage as some kind of bragging platform. X% use of SPEs have at you! Its obvious that multiplatform developers have been making use of the systems on both systems but they are just a little behind exclusive developers. Edit: Based off the progression of multiplatform titles over time and comments made by multiplatform developers.

the Metal gear solid 4 team figured it out pretty quickly...but most quality games of this era are going to take longer and longer to come out due to more complicated processors and the time it takes to put together HD graphics.

@untamoi, actually watching the devs videos U1 and U2 engines are entirely different, U1 used a proprietary engine, U2 used a very very modified vers of the unreal engine

I somewhat doubt multiplatform developers are willing to jump through hoops to get some rather unique (to say the least) results out of the Cell when the same could not be easily replicated on other platforms.  Hell, that's the reason so many PC devs aren't supporting the ps3 at all (Valve, Piranha Bytes, Gas Powered Games).  They just can't be bothered to do things in a new or different way.

If the engines for the three platforms began diverging that much (having functions being run on the Cell being completely rewritten to run on the Xenos/Radeon/GeForce), it wouldn't be a multiplatform engine so much as one game being built on two engines (ps3 vs pc/360) that happen to share a similar basic structure.  Though I suppose you could still consider it one single engine - a very versatile engine, to say the least.

The only time I've really seen a multiplat developer brag about their Cell usage were Pandemic after completing the Saboteur, and the only difference between the two versions of the game that I know of was the implementation of AA.  Meanwhile, first parties are getting AA, lighting, and various post-processing effects all running on the Cell in their games.

Getting the CPU to fill in for the GPU is simply something that is not easily replicated on other platforms, and its not economical to do things an entirely different way on one platform vs another.  Instead of doing a port you're building a game from the ground up for both systems, and this will lead to major differences between each version of the game (and thus an inevitable backlash from one or both camps), while also adding to the cost of developing the game.

It just doesn't make sense for devs to go down that road, though more power to them if the try.