It's the dev tools that were the problem. These days _I_ should be able to create a game myself, using the modern dev kits, with moderate success at using the power of any given console. The problem for the PS3 is that was not the case in the early days and probably still isn't.

Over time this corrects itself as studios build up their own tools sets to go above and beyond what the dev kits provide, but it did hinder things out of the gate. If we do see a full 10 year life cycle I expect the last 5 years of the PS3 to be its most profitable, and perhaps make the first 5 years worth it.

Of course you are correct.

An example old comment from me, before Naughty Dog proved the point with their Uncharted games:

"IMO much more relevant is that the PS3 can move around data much faster and comes supplied with a harddrive by default, which can be used to cache large amounts of data if needed, like virtual memory on a PC. In addition technically speaking the Blu-Ray drive is more suitable to stream data when needed due to sustained reading speeds (easily predictable)."

http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/post.php?post=156838&page=1&postnum=8

Both have proven beneficial for obvious reasons. Some notes...

A common misconception is that the Cell was a high-priced component of the PS3 during it's launchtime. That's not true at all. The RSX and the XDR RAM were both more expensive than the Cell by quite a margin. Ironically, these more expensive parts are responsible for the bulk of PS3's architecture bottleneck (very low RAM avaliable and dedicated shaders).

Second, the Blu-ray. That's a bit tricky and I'm not so sure on calling it beneficial. It is the main reason PS3 launch was delayed on Europe and it made the PS3 considerably more expensive (production cost up ~$250 from a normal DVD reader). In the other side, it helped to hold piracy at bay, offered a massive increase on storage size, and it triggered blu-ray's victory over HD-DVD.

Cell more than bluray.. bluray doesnt get that much use, unless its ps3 exclusive.. since the 360 is DVD9... I guess if MS had used HD DVD the blu ray would have got a huge push out of it...

What is the point of this, MikeB? Sure they have proven beneficial now. And no one ever said they were stupid moves. They were just expensive and had a long learning curve.

I think you are trying to make some sort of story where there was none as no one ever came out and said that Blu-Ray and the Cell were useless or not beneficial to gaming.

MikeB said: @ nordlead maybe something with similar design style as the X360, only more powerful? I don't think that would be a good idea. The Cell is far more efficient and far more powerful/flexible with regard to what it can do. Some claim they would have wanted the PS3 to be like a Wii, I think that would have been very bad for consumer choice. The PS3 being so different, introduces challenges as well as oppertunities, but I think being too similar would be very bad for consumer choice. Has the Cell's good exclusives outweighted the other harm it has caused? Are said exclusives really that much better than X360 or PC exclusives? The PC has more and more become a non factor as a gaming platform, its most successful games are also some of the least technically demanding. And yes from a technical perspective PS3 games have IMO proven to be on a different level already vs 360 exclusives and there's still so much exciting potential available to developers.

You miss your own point. You ask if he thinks the Cell was beneficial towards PS3 and he advise you that as far as he can tell, the result says no. The staggering number of poor early ports and the occassional outbreak of 'oh god what have I done to deserve this' type game points to the fact even if the Cell is a more effecient and better CPU, developer were simply not ready to accept it.

Games like Uncharted 2 and Killzone 2 might only be 'possible' on the Cell according to the developer but do you really think if given hardware similiar to the 360 (but probably more advance since the PS3 was one year later in the market) Naughty Dog would not have produce something on par?

So bottom line is, by sticking with a more traditional architecture for the PS3, consumer would have enjoyed significantly better early ports, eliminate horror story such as Bayonetta, made equal various games that with slightly inferior PS3 version (usually due to lak of AA and more screen tears such as AC2 or SFIV) and STILL enjoy games made by first party who would work with what they've got regardless.

@HappySqurriel

I sort of agree with you on the year later, and more expensive side. However, had Sony released the PS3 with a 3 core processor and a DVD drive and launched day and date with the 360 would the system be that much more awsome to you? Sure if they had done that and launched at $299 with the strength of the PS brand at the time we would have the PS3 sitting above the Wii right now, but at what cost to us consumers? In this case we could have seen much lower quality titles, and they would have stayed exclusive to the PS brand. Games like GTA4, DMC4, FFXIII, and Assasins Creed may have stayed only on Playstation, but they would have been nothing like they turned out as we know them today.

So yeah, from a financial perspective a $299 PS3 with of the self componets would have been great, and probably would have put the indusrty on better footing. But, the stuff we have seen from Killzone 2, Uncharted 1 & 2, Little Big Planet, Resistance 2, and many upcoming games would still be years away, even not possible tell next gen. Fianlly, FFXIII would not even be close to what it is today. Had it not be for the space of Blu-ray this game would have been greatly reduced in size and scope.

As for the best of the PS3 already in the past, that is some major news. I guess MAG, Heavy Rain, God of War 3, Gran Turismo 5, Agent, and The Last Gaurdian are going to be worse than the 5 games listed in the above paragragh?

The above can also be applied to Sirromon.

@nightsurge

Plenty of people said Cell and Blu-ray would add nothing to gaming back in 06 - 07.

@hduser

There are a couple examples of Cells adition to gameplay. Killzone 2's partical effects are only possible because of the Cell (of course high end PC's can run it better, but as far as consoles are concerned you get the point). Because Cell can push so much data it allowed Gurrilia to create the most intense war sets ever created in a game. The bridge level in Killzone 2 is the one that comes to mind. Their are so many particals, and so much smoke that at times you can't even see the enemies. This has been achived to an extent in other games by predetemined events, but in K2 it is done by rockets, gernades, exploding barrels, and other user actions. This happens throughout the game, and it greatly effects the gameplay.

Uncharted 2 puts you in 3 differant scenarios that really show off Cell, and on shows off Blu-ray. The first is the building falling scence. In that scence they pushed the processor hard. What makjes this event so special is the pure amount of stuff happening. All of the physics, sound, animation, collision, and particals come together to create a cinematic experiance while you are still in control of you charicter. The second scence is the trian. Here they showed off the constant stream of Blu-ray, along with great physics (curtisy of tech learned from Killzone 2's train level), and animation. Third we have the decent into the final area of the game which puts both of these two scence together for an awsome experiance that Cell and Blu-ray make possible.

As to my above post. These are scence that would have looked worse, and been cutscence had PS3 launched with these two techs.

Blu-ray's great for having more storage space, but the drive in the PS3 is unfortunately a bit slow.

The Cell, on the other hand, contrary to Sony's marketing, really isn't all that special.

KGB - If you honestly believe the RSX is more powerful than Xenos by now then you seriously need help.


Mike you can coat it anyway you like it but the 360 DVD drive will still stream data quicker than the PS3, the difference is it doesn't need to constantly stream to a cache file on the HDD to keep performance up. Stop spinning a slight weakness of the older Bluray technology as some sort of benefit and stick to what the technology does actually bring properly as a positive. I swear you spread more FUD on here than anybody else.

@pitzy272 - FFXIII will be on 3 disks. Many Blurays that use up so much data on the PS3 use a lot of duplicated data to lower seek times for data across the disk so they aren't using as much capacity as you think for most game data. Uncharted 2 would almost certainly fit on 2 DVD's imo if it was actually possible on the 360 (not even going down that route of conversation).