The basic 360 design is more similar to multi-core PCs and share very similar dev tools as available for Windows. There is less of a learning curve involved.

The PS3's Cell processor is a radically new design offering much more potential but requires legacy game engines to be redesigned. The rest of the system isn't that different as compared to PC development. Developing for the Cell processor requires a little more planning and well designed code.

It's not that difficult according to developers, but if you have a big badly designed game engine a lot of work needs to be done to redesign the legacy engine to get the most out of the platform. Windows/360 development encourage far less well designed game engines (which is crucial for tapping the PS3's potential), with regard to Windows it's easier for devs to expect you to upgrade your system with more memory and higher clocked CPU instead of optimising their game engine that much. Some game engines aren't yet (well) multi-threaded, those devs will need to redesign as all modern game platforms have gone multi-core / multi-CPU including PCs.

Also for example note that according to for instance Epic WindowsXP is horribly inefficient itself, already draining up 50% of available CPU cycles from single-core systems, when the system you are developing is this horribly inefficient it doesn't really encourage devs to get the most out of the remaining resources.

Basically devs can easily understand the PS3 architecture, some not so ambiteous devs however may feel discouraged looking at the redesigns required for their legacy engines. But the processing potential is better than for the highest specced consumer PCs. The Cell doesn't only provide higher theoretical specs in this regard, the chip can also function far more efficiently to get near its theorectical peak. The key is really the SPUs being 'systems on a chip' rather than just an ordinary multi-core CPU design.

MikeB said: The basic 360 design is more similar with multi-core PCs and share very similar dev tools as available for Windows. There is less of a learning curve involved. The PS3's Cell processor is a radically new design offering much more potential but requires legacy game engines to be redesigned. The rest of the system isn't that different as compared to PC development. Developing for the Cell processor requires a little more planning and well designed code. It's not that difficult according to developers, but if you have a big badly designed game engine a lot of work needs to be done to redesign the legacy engine to get the most out of the platform. The Windows/360 development encourage less well designed game engines, with regard to Windows it's easier for devs for you to upgrade your system with more memory and higher clocked CPU instead of optimising the game engine themselves. Also for example note that according to for instance Epic WindowsXP is horribly inefficient itself, already draining up 50% of available CPU cycles from single-core systems, when the system you are developing is this horribly inefficient it doesn't really encourage devs to get the most out of the remaining resources. Basically devs can easily understand the PS3 architecture, some not so ambiteous devs however may feel discouraged looking at the redesigns required for their legacy engines. But the processing potential is better than for the highest specced consumer PCs. The Cell doesn't only provide higher theoretical specs in this regard, the chip can also function far more efficiently to get near its theorectical peak. The key is really the SPUs being 'systems on a chip' rather than just an ordinary multi-core CPU design.

Interesting , my main problem is the whole "theoretical" thing , it's all good and well being the most powerful so and so but if that power is hard to utilise then what does it matter...

 I hope Sony's putting more resources into helping the developers not only for 1st party titles but the 3rd party developer aswell. The only problem with multi-platform titles is that I don't think they'll feel the need to make it superior to 360 titles.

 

@ Million

It's not difficult, researchers already demonstrated near 100% efficiency with regard to tapping this potential. The 360 design is much harder to tap the CPU potential (for example due to shared L2 cache between all three cores, shared GPU/CPU bandwidth to the main RAM, much higher RAM latencies, etc).

The problem is the legacy game engines, they will need to be adapted step by step and moved over to the SPUs, ideally nearly the whole game engine runs on the Cell SPUs which results into enormous performance gains.

Well, Sony just released that new engine to help developers.
XPhyre, or PhyreEngine, I forgot the name.

BottledSpringWater said: Well, Sony just released that new engine to help developers. XPhyre, or PhyreEngine, I forgot the name.

 +1 For me , PSTrizzle Baby. 

 

for the most part i think they got the hang of it.

dont forget, the playstation 2 was impossible when it first came out,
now look where it is

And yes, Square-Enix wants the graphics in FF13 to match FF7: Advent Children.

The problem with the PS3 is the cell processor. It is very hard to write applications that are going to take full advantage of 9 processors. I think right now developers are just starting to tap into the full power of the cell as they learn how to delegate different jobs to each processor.

 even the biggest idiots now understand the PS3 and know how to get results.  But reality is like in everything only a small minority can achive true greatness, no matter the $$$ the fools at EA would never be able to achive what a Insomnaics or Naughty Dog will do on the PS3

Top devs got it figured out they are embracing it to get results, Insomniacs can be said was the first to do so.

 

 

Million said: Snesboy said: Well, developers never understood the GameCube so why should we care about PS3?  I don't understand how the first part of your statement relates to the second part.

+1

 

what the hell,lol,,,honestly I am laughing out loud after I just read your comment