News Why Valve don't make PS3 games

the 360 is not a PC in a box, it has a triple core PowerPC at its core, no x86 inside a 360, the Cell PPE is a single PowerPC supported by 7 SPEs, so in essence can run similar code as 360 but with less threads on main CPU (6 vs 2), 360 is nearer PS3 than a PC the problem though is not the hardware but in fact the software to develop on the hardware, MS make good tools, Sony are still getting there.

As for the whole argument regarding not being able to make money on PS3, a lot of third party devs make as much or more money on PS3 vs 360, the financials are out there go and have a look.

Most of the code monkeys I know would relish the challenge a new architecture brings and finding out what you can get out of it, perhaps I've just worked with higher calibre people, I'd guess more likely Valve don't have the resources to take on that challenge, whilst you could of got away with the comments like Gabe Newells initially when nobody could do much good with PS3, now you see the quality other devs manage to extract from PS3 and it becomes obvious the limitations are not the hardware or in fact the tools but the quality of the team behind the project.

 

They just sound lazy tbh

 

Yeh I reckon they just sit around playing Xbox and drinking coffee.

Grief.

 

I'm not forgetting anything - and internal tools have to be developed, they don't come out of nothing. Valve don't use Unreal engine, they have to take their Source engine which will be well over 100,000 lines alone (that's without game code) and make it work on Xbox 360. Then they have to take it AGAIN and make it work on PS3 too. It's not like they can click 'Build>PS3' and the compiler does all the work. There will be low-level assembly code all over the place that has to be re-written, system-specific calls, system-specific code paths, system-specific optimisations everywhere, etc. When you have multiple platforms using the same code - you have to maintain it on all the platforms. Got a bug-fix? Has to be applied to PC, Xbox 360 AND PS3 all at once and you have to hope that it doesn't break anything. You're quite right about the time developing their tools - Valve have obviously decided it isn't worth the time and effort.

As for the people saying Valve are lazy or incompetent. I would LOVE to see any of these people make a basic 2D game (from scratch - no game makers or use of XNA), let alone a triple-A 3D title. I have a great deal of respect for all devs who make a game to release. There are hundreds of games each year that are scrapped that you don't even know about. It's a massive undertaking, and to call someone lazy is ridiculous in this context. It's not far off of calling NASA lazy for not sending anyone to the moon for a few decades.

I'll leave it with one last thing: Would you rather take something you've already done and make it work on something else, or spend the same time and effort making something brand spanking new? These aren't devs working in a bank for big pay cheques, they're in it for the enjoyment and satisfaction.

Edit: Sorry, didn't read the second part of your post MrABC:

Completely agree 100%. Should point out lazy programmers are almost always better than programmers who aren't - but that's another topic for another day.

 

You couldn't be more wrong. oops sorry, not trying to start a flame war. MS pretty much stole the Cell from Sony.

"When the companies entered into their partnership in 2001, Sony, Toshiba and IBM committed themselves to spending $400 million over five years to design the Cell...All three of the original partners had agreed that IBM would eventually sell the Cell to other clients. But it does not seem to have occurred to Sony that IBM would sell key parts of the Cell before it was complete and to Sony's primary videogame-console competitor. The result was that Sony's R&D money was spent creating a component for Microsoft to use against it."

How MS got Sony to design the next Xbox

 

Not even close, see my previous comment.

 

Er, the Xenon is like 3 PPEs, the Cell is 1 PPE, 8 SPEs, 1 locked for OS/security and another locked during manufacturing. It's the SPEs that make the Cell incredible fast, even more so than the Xenon, the PPEs would most likely perform the same on both consoles, since they're the same PowerPC cores. It's the SPEs that makes the difference in processor performance.

On top of that, since the 360 uses a version of DirectX for it's graphics API, which I believe is a generally more used/easier to work with API. As my understanding is, the Cell has to have specific instructions to use the SPEs and for what, whereas the Xenon is much more like a basic multicore CPU, except from the obvious of being 3 PowerPC cores instead of your traditional x86 cores.