Any decent internet discussion on here about the PS3 revolves around how hard it is to program for the cell. Now where have I heard this before... oh yeah, the PS2. The PS2 was supposed to be a system incredibly hard to program for and look at where we are around 2000 games later. The PS2 has the biggest games library ever. Now i must ask: Is The PS3 so difficult to program for or are developers scared of new ideas?

PS2 programing difficulty source 1st paragraph:  http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/ps2vspc.ars

All else being equal, the difficulty of programming the PS3 would not bring it down. But all else is not equal.

No, the PS3 actually is difficult to program for. You think people made poor games for a year on it because they were scared?

What made programming on the PS2 very hard was the fact that to really take advantage of the hardware, programmers had to use assembly language, which is basically machine language, and this of course is hard to learn which is what made the PS2 a bitch to program.

Now the PS3 can be programmed with C/C++ languages which developers and programmers in general are very familiar with and to boot it can be used to attain a high performce out of the hardware in order to take advantage of it What makes the PS3 hard to program for, is the fact that developers now have to structure their data so that everything works efficiently as well as needing two programing models, one for the PPU and another for the SPU's, and this is in order to take advantage of the hardware. This of course means that developers will have to change the way they think when it comes to tackling a programming problem, and some simply aren't willing to do that a.k.a Valve.

Anyways, given time, developers learn and as they do they'll find that the PS3 isn't as hard to program for as once thought, it's really just another way of thinking.

If a system is as popular as the PS2 was, developers will stick with it and be drawn to it regardless of how complex or difficult it is. On the other hand, if a systems isn't selling too well and is very complex to develop for, developers will be hesitant to put in the time/money needed for fear of not making a profit. An example of this is the Saturn. The Saturn was extremely complex when compared to the N64 and PS1, and when it didn't sell, developers jumped ship like crazy.

I'm not trying to imply anything about the PS3 or its future. I'm just saying the difficulty of development is indeed a factor, but it's a factor that becomes less important as sales go up (more potential costumers = better chance of good investment returns), as was the case with the PS2, and more important when sales are low, as with the Saturn. Likely the PS3 will land somewhere in between since it doesn't look to be as doomed as the Saturn nor nearly as popular as the PS2.

Well since you asked.

 John Romero (designer of Doom and Quake) hates the next-gen consoles, he really hated the PS2, and he absolutely abhors the PS3. 7 SPUs and a Cell processor equals one huge pain in the butt. Even Gabe Newell from Vavle ranted on the PS3, for the same reasons Romero did. Gabe didn’t do it as a Sony hater, flamer or MS fanboy, but as a designer, creator and developer.

 The boys over at Gearbox even said – in a very nice way – that they aren’t maxing the PS3's capabilities in BIA: Hell’s Highway due to the complexity of the multithreaded programming. In which, I might add, the Gearbox guys have middleware support just for the multithreaded game design aspects for Brothers In Arms on the PS3.

One thing people seem to fail to understand is that in order to “deliver” Sony needs a developmental foundation for software, software components, and affordable platform tools. But anything development related for the PS3 cost an arm and a leg (i.e., I’m being nice, but try $500,000 on up.) They’ve shown little interest in indie development and even turned away a couple of indie offers because of lacking exclusivity. William Usher Blend Games

To accomplish the (rendering high definition anti aliased back buffers)effect on PS3 is prohibitively expensive. For this reason I think many games will have no choice but to run in non-HD resolutions on the PS3 version, use a lower quality anti aliasing technique, or do back buffer upscaling. The end result in all cases is going to be noticeably worse image quality.

Fill rate is one of the primary ways to measure graphics performance - in essence, it's a number describing how many pixel operations you can perform. The fill rate on the PS3 is significantly slower than on the 360, meaning that games either have to run at lower resolution or use simpler shader effects to achieve the same performance. Additionally, the shader processing on the ps3 is significantly slower than on the 360, which means that a normal map take.......

Like you really know any programing languages or skills you fracking troll.

Yea, even when I was at EA the guy told us it was very difficult to understand, but they are getting a lot better with it and it has lots of potential.

From what I've read, the ps3 is actually easier to figure out than the ps2 was back in the day. However, developers have far less incentive to figure out how the ps3 works, hence why there's been so much crap on the system so far.

The ps2 was the king of it's generation. It was either figure out the hardware or don't sell any (well, very many) games. The ps3 isn't in that situation.

"I’d say, even at this late date, they should just cancel it and do a ‘do over’."

lol wut? This is nonsense, it would have utterly destroyed Sony and anyone with a brain ought to have known it.