I first saw this on a forum the other morning and then it got lost in the pile of paperwork… but fear not it’s back.
Mark Randel, the president of Terminal Reality, has been chatting to videogaming247 about their highly anticipated upcoming game Ghostbusters and he had some very interesting things to say.
First off Ghostbusters development is being led on the PS3 because it is property of Sony Pictures… makes sense and it shows us all why these companies enjoy dabbling in multiple areas.
However he does go on to say that he would have led on the PS3 anyway since he loves the PS3 technology and wanted to show off what they can do.
He leaves the best for last though, apparently he feels the 360 is holding them back in a big way.
We’re running the same game for both platforms but if we made a PS3-only game, for example, you could double the amount of objects on screen that you’re seeing
He goes on to justify this by saying that the PS3 has 7 processors and the 360 only 3 and that is why the PS3 is so much better. I am not sure I follow his logic really, quantity doesn’t always win over quality… But he knows a lot more about this than I do so I bow to his superior knowledge here.
So do you think the 360 is holding the game back or do you think he is just sucking up to the bosses at Sony pictures? Wouldn’t it be a shocker if the 360 looked better in this face off…
Last Updated: April 30, 2008
Banana hammock
April 30, 2008 at 08:37
I’m guessing it’s a bit of both here, it’s easy to specify one of the consoles great strengths and say the other is holding it back in that department.
Yes the PS3 can handle more objects onscreen at once, but do the objects look better on the 360 or the PS3?
Bottom line is that it really doesn’t matter, i’d like to see any game put more objects on a screen that Super Stardust HD.
koldFU5iON
April 30, 2008 at 08:40
WHAT A BLATANTLY FANBOI ARTICLE!! how can you favour PS3 more now! sheesh make up your damn minds either your XBOX360 or PS3 !!
Just kidding 😀 I’m being troublesome
in my opinion though I think developers will always side with their favorite console, and when it comes to dev kit’s it’s not unheard of to hear developers have *developed their own coding packages to create games it is possible that Terminal Reality has done this and created a dev kit that’s better to develop on.
if they have utilised this then good for them we may start seeing all of the processors being used in the PS3. and maybe some really MIND blowing games.
evilredzombie
April 30, 2008 at 08:44
I think they had to..if its part of the bigger sony .
evilredzombie’s last blog post..Review – Dark Sector PS3
Fox1
April 30, 2008 at 09:04
I wonder why a “Sony Pictures” game would be lead developed on the 360
If he wants to load the PS3 version with a zillion objects why doesn’t he go ahead then 😡
StNick
April 30, 2008 at 09:51
Lazy, you’re such a PS3 fanboy!!!
*kidding* It’s Friday (sort of).
Rudolph
April 30, 2008 at 10:08
I reckon after statements like that, the game better be game of the decade… If the 360 couldn’t hold the rockstar developers back on GTA IV, I doubt it’s going to hold anybody back on ghostbusters.
kay
April 30, 2008 at 11:25
Couple of points if I may (I am a developer myself, although very far removed from games development):
The architecture of the PS3 is fundamentally different to that of the Xbox 360. So it is only natural that a game engine built around one architecture will not translate to the other.
The PS3 does NOT have 7 CPUs. It’s an asymmetrical machine with 1 general purpose dual-threaded core (PPE) and 7 co-processors (SPEs). The SPEs are very simplistic mini-CPUs which can handle very efficiently tasks like video decoding, 3D transformations, some physics effects, and even video rendering. The latter is usually delegated to the RSX GPU anyway but it is what makes software rendering possible on the PS3. Cray and other supercomputers have made use of similar architectures for years.
The SPEs cannot run full-blown programs, but they can munch on data very efficiently; thus to optimize a game engine for the PS3 one has to be very conservative with using the PPE and use it to prep and feed data into the SPEs, then use the results to update the game state and feed the GPU with display primitives.
The Xbox 360 is much more like a conventional CPU on the other hand – 3 dual-threaded general purpose cores take the place of the Cell BE. Any thread can run on any core but primitive data operations may be slower than on a SPE, thus different data structures and algorithms are called for. The Xbox GPU can be used for computation purposes similar to how nVidia graphics cards can be used for physics effects in PCs; whether any games actually do this I don’t know.
The challenge in creating a decent cross-platform game is in creating two completely different game engines that nonetheless share a common API and data structures so that high-level game logic, 3D models, and textures can be reused across the two.
Bottom line: an engine optimized for one platform will not work well on another; however the game architecture should allow for decoupling for the low-level engine from the rest of the game such that it can be easily ported to a different machine.
kay’s last blog post..Useful Reading for Game Developers
Nick
April 30, 2008 at 13:54
Thanks Kay for a really informative post, it’s nice to see some commentary from someone who truly understands what’s going on.
koldFU5iON
April 30, 2008 at 14:04
😕 …. er ok? 😛
Jinja
April 30, 2008 at 14:30
Ye, very nice post.
(He’s basically saying the PS3 RULZ!!!! … if you use the architecture correctly.)
😉
Jinja’s last blog post..How Not To Pick Up Women
Fred
April 30, 2008 at 15:44
Like kay said the ps3 is a beast ………. mmmm is that good or bad though. Yip it can like to be a Friday.
sabagamma
April 30, 2008 at 20:12
“PS3 has 7 processors and the 360 only 3”
The PS3 has one cell switched off and another dedicated solely to the OS. That means it has 5 cells dedicated to gameplay.
RivaZA
May 1, 2008 at 13:35
The Cell actually has one PPE and eight SPEs. One of the SPEs are disabled on the Cell chips that go into the PS3 to improve yields and bring down cost. That leaves 7 SPEs, one of which is dedicated to the OS. So the PS3 has 6 usable SPEs for games.
But I think this is just the Dev covering the ass. The game is most probably going to suck. So when it does they can use the 360 as a scape goat.