I bought my ps3 for blueray and the rare gems like LBP.  While I think blueray may not have been the best addition for the ps3, my arguments are too speculative so I'll get to my real problems with the console.

The cell is a total joke from the perspective of any programmer who isn't funded by sony to put up with the complexity of programming for it. Parallel programming is hard enough to optimize. But the ps3 (xbox too in fairness) used in order execution cores that require the developers to determine how to order the instruction calls to optimize their games. While determining how best to split it up among 6 SPUs. Whenever I hear "lazy devs" I think "moronic design."

Know what else had multiple processors developers never used? The atari jaguar. And so most games on it ran on the processor intended to sync all the others and it looked like a slightly improved SNES or Sega. Just like how the complexity of parallel programming has most multiplat games on ps3 using a couple SPUs.  But it gets better: the ps3 had a 3dO price tag at launch. It's like Sony wanted to emulate the failure of 2 advanced consoles against the much weaker SNES by combining their flaws into a powerhouse of fail.

Whenever I hear a ps3 fan insult valve I get furious. Gabe may be fat, but he needs those calories to power his big brain. What dev chooses the losing platform to develop on if it costs MORE and takes top talent to optimize? Uncharted 2 looks incredible, I admit. It's an amazing game. And it's simply not possible without Sony tossing money at Naughty Dog to fund the increased development time and complexity caused by their moronic design choices.

There's an issue of phrack where they talk about programming the Cell. Link: http://phrack.com/issues.html?issue=66&id=13#article

A choice quote that reveals one of many poor design choices in designing the cell and the half-assed attempt at parallelism (though different from what I previously discussed):

"------[ 3 - Exploiting Software Vulnerabilities on Cell SPE

I love the architecture manuals and the engineers and the way they talk
about really dumb design choices:

"The SPU Local Store has no memory protection, and memory access wraps
from the end of the Local Store back to the beginning. An SPU program is
free to write anywhere in the Local Store including its own instruction
space. A common problem in SPU programming is the corruption of the SPU
program text when the stack area overflows into the program area. This
problem typically does not become apparent until some later point in the
program execution when the program attempts to execute code in area that
was corrupted, which typically results in illegal instruction exception.
Even with a debugger it can be difficult to track down this type of
problem because the cause and effect can occur far apart in the program
execution. Adding printf's just moves failure point around"."

Hilarity.

With ports in mind, they should have implemented it with at least two general purpose PPE cores, sacrificing a pair of SPE's, if necessary.

Raw numbers concerned, it is by quite a margin.

But the Xenos has more and better memory, better architecture, better overall perf and it is smaller and cheaper to produce.

@haxxiy
Thank you.

@slowmo

As I said, and haxxiy put more clearly, RSX has more raw power than the 360. The biggest advantage the Xenos has is the 10MB of super fast RAM on chip. That allows it to cut down a lot of badwidth needed when accessing the system RAM. This is very necisary in the 360 because the system shares its memory between the CPU, and GPU which gives both chips less badwidth to work with. Good devs had remedied the lack of on chip memory in the PS3 by using the Cell to perform the frame buffering which the Xenos does in its super fast RAM. This leaves the RSX to focus on doing more of the things it is good at, making the chip much more effective.

Another advantage of the Xenos is the pipeline tech. It is not split like the RSX between shader, and geometry pipes. The Xenos pipes can do both, and depending on the needs you could run 40/8, or 8/40 ratios. This type of tech is much easier to program for and, it in turn is much easier to pull close to peak performance. In PC's this is great because devs can't dedicate to one exact GPU, but on consoles this becomes less of an advantage. Since devs are getting to spend years on the RSX, they are able to reach deeper and deeper into it and pull out the porformance the chip is capable of.

One more thing I have to mention, because many people don't realize it, is that RSX has access to as much memory in the PS3 as it wants. Many people think it only can access its 256MB, but it has direct access to the 256MB of XDR also. This gives the RSX about three times the external bandwidth of the Xenos. The Cell can not access the RSX's memory though.

Blue ray questionably beneficial but the cell has proven to be a non starter as many gaming companies have complained about it and by Sony themselves who are likely to drop it in favor of a different processor

@ KBG29

You know, the PS3 may be stronger on paper and has certainly shown its worth in a handful of exclusives. But in terms of multiplat games, they are at best on par between the PS3 and 360, with the PS3 version usually being slightly worse than the 360 version. And when comparing exclusives, games like Uncharted 2 and Killzone 2 do settle at the top, but there is not a huge difference between them and 360 exclusives.

That is why I believe that neither the cell or blu-ray have shown real benefits to gaming this generation. If the 360 hadn't been leading the way for HD consoles, things might have been different, but they are not. In the current state of affairs, saying that the benefits to the cell and blu-ray in the PS3 do not outweigh the drawbacks is perfectly reasonable.

You would find that next to the option: "Have you played Uncharted 2 yet?"

DVD-DL = 8.5GB

BD-DL   = 50GB

I wonder what microsoft will do next generation. I doubt that Sony will let them use Blu-ray.

100 percent this.

Problem is that the Cell forces constraints on the developers from the get go. This is also true of game engines and Dev Tools.

This will sadly mean that a lot of games produced on the mature PS3 game engines will have a remarkably similar look and feel.

They should run well tho.

Blu-Ray has been a massive boon to the PS3, reducing piracy, HD media and obviously greater capacity. IMO Uncharted 2 has shown that it is a superior format to DVD on every aspect.

The Cell, well its more difficult to use than similar powered rivals and it shows in many games. In that case it was a mistake to use it.