They Should start to develop games on the Ps3 first then port them over to the 360...that way they can take full advantage of the system...not only that but they said it was easier than doing the opposite 360 to Ps3....I say get the hardwork out the way first and leave the easy work for last :p

VGC's BHR-3 is also hoping sony can figure it out

but honestly EA shouldnt be hoping for anything they should be at work trying to make a good sequel to NFS most wanted or making other good games

or adding new elements to there FPS COD like a cover system with roll/dives from cover to cover and blind fire instead of just making a sequel to COD 4 with just new guns and vehicles

@Procrastinato:

Its a lot more complicated than that. By leading on the PS3 you make it harder to port to the PC which is an important consideration for 3 platform games. Furthermore just because working on the PS3 forces you to parrellise immediately from the beginning, doesn't mean anything really as any good design would take advantage of all three cores anyway and any bad design on the PS3 would still use one core just like on the Xbox 360 and switching lead platforms isn't going to change anything.

Furthermore of the two games which were developed relatively seperately that I know of, Call of Duty IV and Grand Theft Auto IV ran extremely well on the Xbox 360 without needing to port from the PS3.

You're going to have to elaborate on why you think having a multi-threaded, asynchronous engine design would be something that's hard to port to a PC.

As far as leading on the 360 goes -- there's really only one thing stopping devs from just making good parallel architectures from the start on the 360 -- they're not used to it.  That was my point -- the PS3 screams "make the engine parallel!" to the engineers, and this just yields better results when both platforms are considered.  I'm not saying that good games cannot start on the 360 and be ported to the PS3 -- I'm saying that EA, and other devs, are making the right decision in choosing the PS3 as a base dev platform -- oddly because the 360 is so easy to use, and so familiar.  The 360 makes a great receptacle for the awesomeness of an async engine developed on the PS3, as well as a great console to develop exclusives on.  

The PS3, in its high-performance crazyness is demanding, and like it or not, demanding requirements yield impressive technology, in the end.  I know that's kinda lame, considering the 360's thoughtful, engineering-friendly design and excellent development environment... but its the truth, and that's what it boils down to, in the end.  Cost-to-develop, performance, review scores and press, ultimate yield.

EA chose to dev on the PS3 first because of the 360's ease of use, and amenable design.  There are some bonus performance gains to the strategy as well, but... irony at its finest, I agree.

One of the many reasons why its harder to port PS3 -> PC is because the PS3 CPU and GPU work much closer together, and that arrangement doesn't work on the PC architecture. The PC architecture lacks the floating point performance on the CPU to run the same functions there and thus much of the code to run the graphics subsystem has to be rewritten for a start. Furthermore there is far less bandwidth and far more latency between the CPU/GPU on the PC architecture than on the PS3. The Xbox 360 still does some calls to the CPU for rendering as well, but it isn't nearly as significant and it can be changed quite a lot easier. Farcry 2 from the PC to 360 used 2-3 programmers, to the PS3 it used 14 programmers to illistrate the difference.

If a developer doesn't want to push either system heavily, theres still no incentive to go PS3 -> 360 when the Xbox 360 SDK is far easier to use. If the developer wants to push both systems heavily theres still a requirement to nail down the memory management on the CPU and use the VMX units which both translate to good performance on the PS3 as well. SPE -> VMX or VMX -> SPE it really doesn't matter which way it goes AFAIK.

From what I can tell, a hybrid approach is also very popular. For example, leading on the 360 with most code and giving the PS3 seperate attention where it counts such using the RSX and SPEs together to give relatively equal performance.

I'll have to agree with nj5 that schofields comments seem more directed at the overall ability for Sony to remain in the console market.

Keep in mind that bigger and better positioned companies than sony will fail during this recession.

tr>

I agree with you, with regards to rendering pipelines -- the PS3 stands to gain a great deal from utilizing its SPEs to assist the RSX, whereas the X360 and PC GPUs don't really benefit from their CPUs.  The PS3 rendering pipeline needs to be much different, in this regard.

The rendering pipeline, however, needs to be different no matter what architecture you start on, and it is far from comprising the entire game engine.  Far from.  I was trying to put forth that the "non-rendering" portions of the game loop -- the CPU centric stuff -- stand to benefit a great deal from asynchronous design, and that this is the reason the PS3 makes the most sense as a starting platform.

The part I bolded, about the X360 SDK being somehow superior to the PS3, is just plain wrong.  They are 6-of-one, half-dozen of the the other.  It has nothing to do with the SDK, and everything to do with the underlying engine architecture.  Asynchronous engines are more complex -- the PS3 SDKs are not more difficult to use.  Both systems have excellent debugging and profiling tools, compilers, etc.  Both systems have some issues, and both parties are constantly working to improve these conditions.  Microsoft's tools are cleaner looking, but honestly, they are not more functional or useful, and frankly, they can be, like many MS apps, resource intensive and bloated, whereas the Sony tools, while often not so shiny, also lack the bloat of their MS counterparts.

The point of my post above, where I illustrated some sample engine schemes, was to demonstrate that there is an "easy road" ont he X360, that is not available on the PS3 (the middling 2nd case), whereas the PS3 has only 2 of the three options available -- the 1st (slow), and the 3rd (really fast).  The 360 also benefits from the 3rd case, and thus, my standpoint, and I believe EA's standpoint as well.

@heruamon,

By porting the game to PS3 u get also more sales since u can sell the game to PS3 userbase : that is my point !

So if want to make more money, they should continue supporting the PS3 : it is really worth the value !

If we are talking about ROI, why not going back to PS2 and port on PS3 ? ... ok I'm out ->

Why did Dead Space look inferior on the PS3 then.

I'm not so sure I can believe the statement above. Although I do agree that leading on the PS3 and porting produces multiplats that are near identical.

Leading on the Xbox then porting to PS3 looks so bad it makes me wonder why they bother.

Oh wait its a commercial enterprise.$$$$$