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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Why does the Playstation 3 continue to receive poor ports?

darkknightkryta on 24 December 2009
disolitude said:
darkknightkryta said:
@disolute, even though your right about understanding cell for game development, that's not the real issue at hand or even early ports. Biggest problem is the ram allocation. I mean, even in current multiplatform games, BOTH CPUs are going underutilized; both Xenos and Cell. Ram is the underlying problem which if you just developed the game on the PS3 first wouldn't be a problem. And it isn't much of a problem now as even developing on the 360 first, just take into consideration the ram set up for the PS3 and the game will run fine. I mean why do you think Capcom doesn't have these problems outside of the one game that was developed for the 360 a good year before its port? They solved the ram problem with their 5 gig installs. And the minor differences you see now is mostly due to the sophistication of the game's engine. E.g. the unreal engine, it's gonna be better on the 360 cause Epic hasn't done a full update to the PS3's engine since Unreal 3 and the engine got an update on the 360 for Gears of War 2. And with all the bloom missing from PS3 games I'm guessing Microsoft updated their "bloom" lighting engine in direct x.

I agree with everything you said.

I was just trying to be funny in my post hence I kept it basic :)

And it was very funny.



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d21lewis on 24 December 2009

Same reason Gamecube got shitty ports: Sometimes, "good enough" is good enough.



Andysw on 24 December 2009

Developers' lack of understanding with the playstation 3 hardware.

Not every multiplatform looks worse on the playstation 3. Developers just need the time to work with the hardware properly.



c0rd on 24 December 2009
TRios_Zen said:

While I am SURE there are lazy developers out there just looking to make a quick buck, the majority I would guess are much more ethical folk who take pride in there work...a fact that very few VGChartz folks would admit (anyone who summarily dismisses Valve is ridiculous IMO).  This is not aimed at you specifically, but the lazy developers excuse is handed out like candy at halloween here.

As a happy PS3 owner though I wonder why so many people give Sony a pass here...far as I am concerned they are as much to blame for the difficulty of their hardware as any developer who uses it is.  If I owned only a PS3 and had to pass up games I wanted because of this, I'd hold them equally accountable for this problem.

Probably not a popular comment here, but oh well.

Plenty of people have brought this up, actually. The problem is, nobody wants to put any blame on their favorite company.

It's not so different from Nintendo's lack of 3rd party support, and everyone yelling at third parties for it. I mean, I'm annoyed about it as well, but let's be honest, here...

Also, I agree with what you said about "lazy developers." This is seen at its worst in the case of Valve, but people in general don't give devs the respect they deserve. As gamers we only get to see the final product, we have no idea what sort of work it took to get there.



XGamer0611 on 24 December 2009

Easily the developers. Most lead develop for the 360 and then port it and since most games are released on the same day they rush to make sure that the will meet the release date. What happened to waiting to release the PS3 version to make sure the port is equal to the 360 or better? I remember games like Stranglehold and other were released later then there 360 counterpart.



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CommonMan on 24 December 2009
TRios_Zen said:
nordlead said:

1) The console is the hardest to develop for. This doesn't mean the software has to suck, but it does mean developers need to put in more effort than the minimum amount possible.

2) It isn't the lead console, so developers may not feel that they should invest as much money into making the game up to standards (see point 1, they need to do more work than absolute minimum)

3) developers are lazy and/or running out of money. With all the losses being posted, they may be under strict orders not to go over budget. This would prevent them from fixing problems that go above and beyond point 1.

@question tacked on end

It is best to design first on the most limited system and then port to the more capable system. This however is very hard to figure out in this situation. You have less cores (therfore less threading) on the X360, so from that standpoint, it makes sense to develope on the system with less threads, and less complexity and then port up. However, the X360 is more advanced in other areas (flexible memory) so it would make sense to start on the PS3. Obviously I don't know enough about both peices of hardware to make an educated decision, but the general rule of thumb is start on the limited hardware and port up. Also, there may be other factors like dev software quality that factors into which system to start on.

While I think the vast majority of what you have said here is true, I wonder (@ bolded specifically); what fault, if any, should Sony shoulder here?

While I am SURE there are lazy developers out there just looking to make a quick buck, the majority I would guess are much more ethical folk who take pride in there work...a fact that very few VGChartz folks would admit (anyone who summarily dismisses Valve is ridiculous IMO).  This is not aimed at you specifically, but the lazy developers excuse is handed out like candy at halloween here.

As a happy PS3 owner though I wonder why so many people give Sony a pass here...far as I am concerned they are as much to blame for the difficulty of their hardware as any developer who uses it is.  If I owned only a PS3 and had to pass up games I wanted because of this, I'd hold them equally accountable for this problem.

Probably not a popular comment here, but oh well.

I am also a happy PS3 owner that posed this very same question, and was ripped up one side and down the other for it. I was told in no uncertain terms that it's 80% lazyness on the developers and 20% lack of understanding of the hardware. In no way can we dare hold Sony in any way responsible. Yeck. . . I wash my hands of this.



No one in the world ever gets what they want, and that is beautiful.

darkknightkryta on 24 December 2009
CommonMan said:
TRios_Zen said:
nordlead said:

1) The console is the hardest to develop for. This doesn't mean the software has to suck, but it does mean developers need to put in more effort than the minimum amount possible.

2) It isn't the lead console, so developers may not feel that they should invest as much money into making the game up to standards (see point 1, they need to do more work than absolute minimum)

3) developers are lazy and/or running out of money. With all the losses being posted, they may be under strict orders not to go over budget. This would prevent them from fixing problems that go above and beyond point 1.

@question tacked on end

It is best to design first on the most limited system and then port to the more capable system. This however is very hard to figure out in this situation. You have less cores (therfore less threading) on the X360, so from that standpoint, it makes sense to develope on the system with less threads, and less complexity and then port up. However, the X360 is more advanced in other areas (flexible memory) so it would make sense to start on the PS3. Obviously I don't know enough about both peices of hardware to make an educated decision, but the general rule of thumb is start on the limited hardware and port up. Also, there may be other factors like dev software quality that factors into which system to start on.

While I think the vast majority of what you have said here is true, I wonder (@ bolded specifically); what fault, if any, should Sony shoulder here?

While I am SURE there are lazy developers out there just looking to make a quick buck, the majority I would guess are much more ethical folk who take pride in there work...a fact that very few VGChartz folks would admit (anyone who summarily dismisses Valve is ridiculous IMO).  This is not aimed at you specifically, but the lazy developers excuse is handed out like candy at halloween here.

As a happy PS3 owner though I wonder why so many people give Sony a pass here...far as I am concerned they are as much to blame for the difficulty of their hardware as any developer who uses it is.  If I owned only a PS3 and had to pass up games I wanted because of this, I'd hold them equally accountable for this problem.

Probably not a popular comment here, but oh well.

I am also a happy PS3 owner that posed this very same question, and was ripped up one side and down the other for it. I was told in no uncertain terms that it's 80% lazyness on the developers and 20% lack of understanding of the hardware. In no way can we dare hold Sony in any way responsible. Yeck. . . I wash my hands of this.

I'll go on a limb here and blame the devs.  Why?  Cause Sony told them time and time again, make the game on the PS3 first with the 360 in mind you'll have no problems porting it over.  What do they do?  Make it on the 360 and run into problems when they make their PS3 version.  I myself would figure devs would have finished up their games in the pipeline that programmed on the 360 first, but I guess not, or they in a sense are lazy and program on the 360 first to get it out of the way and run into problems on the PS3 later.  Like, I know before you could chalk up Sony cause of the CPU they put in, but ultimately, the CPU wasn't he biggest problem early on, it was the unified shader/ram vs dedicated shaders/ram.  Going from dedicated to unified works, going unified to dedicated doesn't.  But at this point in the game, there's no reason why ANY dev is starting a multiplatform game on the 360 unless Microsoft is paying for it (Fallout 3 for instance, though I recall reading this on the interwebs, could be false). 



heruamon on 24 December 2009

L4D2 is about to overtake Uncharted 2 on the sales chart, and it's DEFINITELY overtaken it on the PC/360 sales numbers...so...maybe this is why Valve isn't bothering. When the most vaunted game on the PS3 can only manage these sales numbers, and an "expansion" like Halo ODST topped 4 million this week...what buisness sense if there to dedicate effort to develop for the PS3 from scratch?



"...You can't kill ideas with a sword, and you can't sink belief structures with a broadside. You defeat them by making them change..."

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perpride on 24 December 2009

You do understand that what you are referring to as "poor ports" are extremely small differences in 90% of the cases, that's IF there's a difference to begin with?

And half the time they are so small no body cares.



Rob6021 on 24 December 2009
Alic0004 said:

Bayonetta shouldn't even have been released on PS3. In my understanding, it was made by a pretty small team (Clover) that only had the resources to make it for one system. Has Clover made a PS3 game yet? I don't think they have.

So you can either see Sega and Sony porting the game as a favor to action fans, or as a mistake. But ports are almost never as good when they're made by a separate team. And in this case, they were rushing to get the game ready for a simultaneous release.

There are also games that work better on PS3, though up until this point in the generation most of them are games released after the 360 version. It takes a whole new approach to program for the PS3, so the one-sidedness of the situation so far will probably continue to shift as ways to use the technology become more standard.

This is Clover (Platinum Game's) first HD game, and they were not big enough or prepared to make a PS3 version.  These guys are just learning, and they developed on the easier to develop console first, and left out a PS3 version, which was later handled by Sega.  It is true that they should have been working on the PS3 version from the getgo, as it's a lot easier to port PS3->360, especially if you handle the ram allocation wrong on 360.  I'm sure after bayonetta's success they will have the funding to be doing that on their next game.  This is why the PS3 get's poor ports, it's largely due to budget - you don't see problems in bigger budget games. Any thing that isn't re-engeneered to work on the PS3 that was developed on the 360/PC without much consideration for the PS3, will always turn out like this, you can't simply port those games and get a good result.

I think this 'crappy port' stuff is blown way out of proportion. The game (Bayonetta) is just as playable as the 360 one, and shouldn't have that big of a difference in scores like IGN did.  If orange box wouldn't have been blown way out of proportion like it was (Although i believe their biggest mistake there was not delaying the other versions) - Valve might not have taken a deal with MS, and we'd have LFD1/2 on PS3.    A bad port is far better than no port. Though honestly they should sell the weaker one for 5 bucks less.