Did you get that from reading the article?  I may not be as tech savvy as some of our fellow VGchartz posters,  but it seemed to me that while Mr. Newell was once critical of multi-core processors, he is now warming up to them:

Gabe Newell said: ... At that point we said, we understand we have to make these investments in multi-core. We have to worry about not just two cores, but 64 threads; 512 threads – how are we going to reorganise it? What does that look like? But the more we look at it, the more excited we get. This current era is one of heterogeneous computing: you’ve got this one big chunk of code doing physics and AI, character animation and facial systems talking through this strange interface called DirectX to another chunk of your code which you write to run on GPUs. That’s just going to go away. And either Nvidia or Intel is going to win the battle for whose array of cores is taken up.

Rest assured there are plenty of competent developers. The PS3 isn't really hard to develop for at all they tell me. It's just that the XBox 360 and PC don't have these uber cool SPEs to their disposal.

It takes some time to redesign legacy game engines to gain access to exponential more performance (the SPEs are more suitable to facilitate many types of code than the PPE, resulting in more gains compared to if there were 8 PPE instead of 1 PPE + 7 SPEs) . IMO Gabe doesn't like innovation, he rather would see we all owned PCs and consoles which don't really distinguish themselves from the bulk of other available products. Maybe his Utopia would be we all owned an uniform PC for our gaming experience, like the original XBox was.

Yes developing for the Nintendo Wii motion controls currently won't benefit the versions for the other platforms, yes using the shader flexibility won't benefit other versions as also the latest and most powerful PCs all use GPUs with powerful (non-flexible) dedicated shaders. But I like distinguishing features, as this provides consumer choice.

With regard to the Cell processor, note many other Cell based products are to follow. So IMO take anything Gabe says with a grain of salt.

@MikeB: could you please provide some sources of devs that say PS3 is easy to develop for?

@NJ5: I totally agree with your statements.
ALL Developers (Not just the game-ones) prefer to develop for non-parallel architectures. It's just so much easier to do so. Parallel processing brings heaps of new complex problems to developers (like race conditions, load balancing, debugging becomes a lot more difficult etc.)
I don't deny that it will be the future.

BUT: programming for parallel architecture is a paradigm shift and these take time, even in a fast paced industry as the IT-business is.

It's probably the greatest paradigm shift in software development ever so far (the last one being the shift from procedural to object-orientated design).
Most software developers build their own code libraries which contain all their experiences and knowledge, so they can reuse and adapt previously written code when they encounter a similar problem in the future.
Now imagine you have been building such a library for maybe ten years and now suddenly you can throw it all in the rubbish bin because its all unusable on parallel architecture... I bet you'd be frustrated.

So don't bash developers for moaning about the PS3 architecture (Leo) and try coding for it yourself.

My guess is, that if the PS3 fails, it will be because their architecture is TOO advanced. It'll take another 5-10 years until parallel programming is everyday coding standard.

OK, so does anyone here write software for a living? I happen to design software myself and I don't like to use multiple threads, in my opinion its "too hard to follow". However, I design business software, my degree is not in Computer Science it is in Information Technology. Gabe probably has a degree in Computer Science and therefore is much more savvy to the ins and outs of programming. The fact is this, it is cool to bash the PS3 right now. Gabe and others like him would be eating the Cell up if the PS3 was in front right now. Also, how is 5 million users a "very-small" user base? I'm sure when the Wii was at 5 mil it's user base wasn't considered "very-small". I believe that IF that one killer app (FFXIII?) comes out that blows away the 360 in terms of visuals that its all over and Gabe will be eating his own words.

Gabe Newells words are a waste of everybodys time .

We know the fat fanboy hates the console already ,just stop showing it each time you open the mouth guy you are showing to be very unprofesional and fanboy .

We know you dont like to learn new arquitechtures and programming skills but you arent (PS3 version has been outsourced ) so stop complaining that you have to move your fat butt because you actually arent .

Next month's EDGE issue:

EDGE : What do you think of yourself, Gabe?

Gabe: I think I'm everybody's total waste of time. I'm very difficult to please and I moan about everything all the time. I blame others all the time for me being incompenent.

What you said was just gibberish ...

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "video wrapper file per graphics line" but (generally speaking) graphics are handled by OpenGL or Direct3D (or both, often interfaced through a combination of an adapter pattern and a bridge pattern) where features of several generations of graphics cards and graphics venders (Geforce 6000, Geforce 7000, Geforce 8000, Radeon x800, Radeon x1800, intel extreme graphics, etc.) are handled through extensions in these APIs (arb extensions in the case of OpenGL).

Most PC games are now being developed as multi-threaded applications and must support multiple lines of processors (Single Core, Dual Core, Quad Core, with each of these hyperthreaded for each manufacturer).

On top of this you have to give options on display settings, input, sound and dozens of other settings which make testing a nightmare and make it dramatically more likely that they're going to have serious bugs.

Still, people were unhappy with the PS2 but were forced to deal with it because of its massive userbase; by the end of the generation they were able to get a level of performance which should have been available from the start with a better architecture. This generation is different, as sales continue along this slow path few developers will see any real benefit from spending the time to fight with the PS3 to gain performance.

me too