twesterm should be on this thread--he is developing Ghostbusters--a 360 and PS3 title.

Is not that easy to develop HD games on the PS3

Sony intended to make the most graphic capable console ever conceived, and if you look at the specs, they actually did it. with they SPE's designed for floating point calculations, the system is more capable of real time rendering than any computer concieved back then (can't affort a today's computer with the max specs to compare :P). And that was the plan from the begining. Yes, the PS3 is far more capable than the 360 in terms of graphics and real time rendering. I can tell you all details on how is possible, but that is not important. but you can see some exclusives that are proof of that.

The real problem lies in game development. Unfortunately, they design the system to be so graphic capable that it seems they lost in one little aspect: Graphics are not what a game is all about.... Don't attacke me just yet, for I will explain the reasons technically

When you develop a game you have to respect a certain cycle to keep everything in order. Here's one (not totally accurate, but an example):

1. You have the current game screen.
2. Obtain the current 3D objects positions as well as the game characte's current startes
3. take all data to the game logic (physics, AI, etc.)
4. Obtain the new positions as well as the new state for the game characters
5. Put the graphical data into the buffer and do the final touches
6. Draw the new game screen.

This not-so-precise workflow explains the cycle for each of the frames that are dysplayed for you to see. in step 1 there is virtualy no processing work, but the others are a different story.

step 5 is where the SPE's from cell can shine on all their glory, it's where the graphics are being prepared before being displayed on screen. And they can help a REALLY little bit in step 3 but nothing really groundbreaking. The thing is that general purpose CPUs are required to process and control steps 2-5 in some degree. Unfortunately the PS3 CPU has only one general purpose core. So the poor little guy has to do almost all the hardwork by himself. Sure the SPE's can help, but they are next to useless in game logic, function branching and most basic calculations that are very very common in game development.

This causes the GPU to actually sit there and wait for the CPU to finish all the calculations longer than usual. That wait can be relflected in a crappy framereate and buggy moments where certains conditions are met. And before you say that the 3GHz can conpensate, let me tell you that the PS3 and 360 CPU's are far less capable than any current low end computer.

The developers are being very creative in order todeliver good quality games: lower sesilution and then upscaling, liberating some work to the SPE's, using the GPU's memory. but compared to simple share to another general purpose CPU that is just not going to work as good as developing with the 360 CPU. that's the PS3's bottle neck at this time. Many developers don't want to fight too much on things that are a lot easirer on PC and 360.

Of course is a lot easier for a mutliplatform game to start on the PS3, not because it will look great, but because porting it to PC and 360 is a bliss compared to doing it backwards what can be true hell.

PS3 will eventually have great games. But this bottleneck will never dissapear, no matter the engine 

I think it's worrisome that the cost of developing for an HD console is going up *far* faster than what is healthy.  It seems the PS3 is more costly due to the complexity of the hardware, and the depth of the graphics needed.  It's harder to maintain a business on this model as a developer or publisher.