Questions about the PS3.

I have some questions about that PS3 that I hope someone who knows what he's talking about can answer.

1. On paper, the PS3 kicks the 360s ass technically, so why isn't the PS3 kicking it's ass in reality? For one, almost all multi-platform games are superior on the 360. I heard that multi-platform games are first developed for the 360 then ported to the PS3 because "the PS3 is a pain to develop for." That brings me to my next question.

2. Why is the PS3 such a pain to develop for?

3. Why doesn't the PS3 implement it's blu-ray technology. You'd think that since that since it's blu-ray, the games on their would look better, sound better, have more features, etc, than their 360 counterparts. It would be like the PS2 only making CD-Rom games even though it had a DVD drive.

4. Also, remember how back during the console generation of the PS1 and the N64, most third party developers preferred the PS1 because of how much more space they had to work with? The most infamous case here was when Squaresoft left Nintendo and decided to make Final Fantasy VII for the PS1. Why aren't any third party developers taking advantage of how much extra space a blu ray disc has over a DVD and exclusively develop for PS3. Wouldn't you say that the space difference between blu-ray and DVD would be equivalent to the space difference between an N64 cartridge and a PS1 CD?

5. Developers had not problem going from developing games on CD to developing games on DVD, so why do they suddenly have a problem going from DVD to blu-ray? I don't get it.

6. Finally, and this is a little off topic, but why aren't there any third party exclusives anymore? It seems like every exclusive is a first party game either published by Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo.

1. The verdict is not in on the technical side. The PS3 has an unproven processor and smaller memory than the xbox 360. Its not doing as well because its more expensive in general.

2. The processor is new and not as much memory.

3. The blu ray doesnt matter, its all about memory.

4. They preferred it because of the amount of disc space, yes, but also because discs were cheaper to make than cartridges.

5. Games have gotten more expensive since they came on dvds and since blu rays cost more to make and have more space for more game content, it too costs a lot to fill up.

6. Games are expensive to make. The more exclusive you are the less audience you have.

I'm not a developer or work in things relating to console games, but this is what I've heard:

2. It uses a nonstandard architecture. The 360 is similar to PC's, so new developers find it easier to develop for. Experience is a big part. The PS3 also has it's RAM split to 2 parts of 256 MB each, whereas the 360 has 512 MB which can be split as the developer wants, which is easier to work with.

3. Blu-ray is just more storage space. The reason the audio and visual quality is better in movies is because they have room to fit higher quality files on the disc. It's not as necessary in game assets.

4. Because the 360 is more popular (in the US) and easier to work with, so they want to make games that work on both. There are some PS3 games that use the extra space to give exclusive features (BioShock Infinite is supposed to have a copy of BioShock on the disc, and Dante's Inferno had a bunch of behind the scenes videos they cut from the 360 version due to storage space), but mostly it's used to use slightly better quality files, and to put duplicate copies of some assets to be able to read it faster. And, of course, games like Rage, L.A. Noire, Final Fantasy XIII, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow and others have been multiple discs on the 360.

5. It's not related to the disc type. The PS3 does read slower from the disc than the 360, but I'm not sure if that's a Blu-ray problem or a PS3 problem.

6. There were a bunch at the start of the generation, but at this point the first parties don't want to pay off the third parties to make exclusive games, since no one is going to buy a specific console because of third party exclusives at this point. We're very late into the cycle. Most third party exclusives at this point are probably due to the developers not wanting to develop for multiple platforms.

1. 360 is slightly more popular. That means that developers develop for that system first then port it over. Lowest Common Denominator

2. The processor has a different architecture than most other computer processors.

3. The PS3 exclusives pretty much showcase that. Again Lowest Common Denominator.

4. Lowest Common Denominator again. 360 prevents devs from taking full advantage. However you are seeing that more and more games are going multi-disc on 360 cause of the space.

5. They don't really. Just 360 is ahead so you develop for that

6. @manhunter1000 said: 6. Games are expensive to make. The more exclusive you are the less audience you have.

1. The Cell processor is superior, but in other areas the PS3 is somewhat lacking. The RSX isn't as good as the graphics card in the 360 and the PS3 has two times 256 MB RAM instead of the unified 512 MB of the 360.

2. PS2 was a pain to develop for as well, it's just that the PS2 sold tons more then the Xbox and the GameCube so developers always made their games for PS2 and ported it over to other platforms. Aside from that, the tools that developers have available for the PS3 aren't as easy as the tools for the 360. It's one of the reasons why Sony focussed on making the PSVita more developer friendly.

3. A disc format doesn't really make games look better. The larger storage capacity of blu-ray does let FMV's look better on PS3 (such as FInal Fantasy XIII). As for the more features part, I think that Sony's first party studios are doing a lot with the extra space, such as Naughty Dog with the making of videos on the discs of the Uncharted games. For third-party publishers I recon it's just not worth the effort since their games tend to sell more on 360 then on PS3.

4. First of all, the industry is very different then the one of the PSOne and N64 era. Developmentcosts have skyrocketed since those days, so third party publishers and developers would be insane to develop exclusively for PS3. Also, the difference between cartridges and CD's is a bit more dramatic then just space. Cartridges were exclusively made by Nintendo and were very expensive compared to CD's.

5. I don't think developers have a problem going from DVD to blu-ray. Aside from the read speed of the BD-drive in the PS3 (not as fast as the DVD drive in the 360), once again the industry has changed.

6. Once again cost. It's pretty simple, COD could sell 8 million copies had it been soley released on 360. Instead, it has been selling 15+ million every year because it's released on all platforms. It's simply better to be able to sell to a combined userbase of 360 and PS3 then to limit yourself. The same doesn't count for Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo, since they're making hardware they have to make exclusives in order to let their console stand out from the competitors.

1. XNA development kits are cheaper and easier to use because it is more similar to developing for PC as it's basically Direct X. Microsoft focused on making the system cheap and easy to develop on knowing that it would beat the Japanese systems.

2. A lot more game development companies are western and for one thing more documentation on developing for Xbox is in English. Xbox hardware is very similar to a PC so it is easy to develop for plus it has more video ram which explains the problems found in titles such as Skyrim. The cell processor is such a speciality piece of hardware that only in house developers have had the resources to maximize it as you can see in games like MGS and Uncharted.

3. Blu ray technology? More space? It costs a lot for a developer to create tons of assets to fill that space and if they want to make money they will focus on developing games for the platform that has sold more units which is the 360.

4. Seems like a repeat of question 3

5. It's not a blu ray issue

6. Third parties seem to be bought by first parties and are now called "in house" developers

Basically a lot has changed this generation that you can't really compare with the 32/64 bit era. With the rise of online gaming and the success of the XNA development platform we see more western developers making games on a platform they are already familiar on due to PC gaming. The biggest video game market is the US so it only makes sense that the mass market would better relate to the games developed by westerners as it caters to their tastes. Sony's proprietary use of optical format did not work this generation as we saw the popularity in downloadable games which can once again be attributed to the success of Xbox Live Arcade and XNA being accessible to smaller developers.

In the end it always comes down to money.

It is disappointing that the PS3 hasn't been used to its full potential. Hopefully Sony can listen to developer feedback and make the PS4 easier to use and more developer friendly. I think what they have supposedly done with the Vita is a good step in the right direction. 
 
Otherwise, I think most of the guys above me have answered your queries.

Thanks for your inquiries guys, but could you explain some of this a little better? Like, WHY is the 360 processor better than the PS3 one. Pretend that you're explaining it to someone who doesn't speak Nerd.

@Masha2932, That's pretty much what I was getting at.

@Masha2932 said:

It is disappointing that the PS3 hasn't been used to its full potential.

Uncharted 3, Killzone 3, and God of War III is it's full potential.

@Masha2932 said:

It is disappointing that the PS3 hasn't been used to its full potential.

Uncharted 3, Killzone 3, and God of War III is it's full potential.

360 came out first, that is why. It had more units out there, so developers focused more resources for the 360 versions of games. Same reason ps2 games got more love than original xbox versions.

Most of your questions are about third parties, and the truth is if they are developing for multiple systems, they will make sure it works and fits on the X-Box before porting it to PS3. There aren't really that many third party exclusives any more because Sony usually buys any third party whos exclusive game they like (though they did let insomniac games escape). Despite the popular American belief, the Ps3 is doing way better than ok, it was the number one selling console this year.You can see the difference right away when playing online, the PS3 community is much more diverse than the 360 community.

@FTomato said:

5. It's not related to the disc type. The PS3 does read slower from the disc than the 360, but I'm not sure if that's a Blu-ray problem or a PS3 problem.

Early PS3 models came with a 1X Blu-Ray drive, and the latest models have the 2X upgrade. This allows for a 4.5 Mbyte transfer rate in the old ones, and double that (9 Mbyte) in the newer. This is simply a factor of the lack of manufacture experience with Blu-Ray technology. I don't believe there are drives available above 2X (don't quote me, though).

In contrast, the first Xbox 360 productions had Toshiba 16X DVD drives for a transfer rate of 21 Mbytes, and the latest versions come with Lite-On 52X (I believe) drives for a 68 Mbyte total.

I hope that was helpful, or at least vaguely interesting.

Here's to hoping they figure out a practical replacement for disc drives in general soon...

Well for the third party exclusives, it just doesn't make sense for most developers as they can earn more money by developing for more consoles.

@mosdl So? PS2 came out before Xbox and cross platform games were generally technically superior on Xbox, one reason people would prefer the PS2 version is because the PS2 controller was better than the Xbox controller (4 should buttons are better than the 2 triggers plus the black and white buttons, which I hate the placement of, btw).

These are the sort of questions I'd expect from 2007, not almost 2012 where the PS3 has games that look considerably better than anything on the 360.

@psx2514 said:

Wouldn't you say that the space difference between blu-ray and DVD would be equivalent to the space difference between an N64 cartridge and a PS1 CD?

When games like Skyrim can fit onto a single layer DVD, being 4.7GB, then nope I wouldn't.

Blu-Ray is there for convenience and the option of uncompressed sound, it comes in handy because you don't have to change disks and you have the luxury of being able to have any FMV in HD, although this can also be done on the 360 but may require multiple disks to be used.

It's not like the N64 where some games simply were impossible on the platform. Nobody is going to have wanted to play MGS1 on the N64, it would have came on like 20 cartridges. That's way past the barrier of being a minor annoyance. (disk changing)

@mosdl said:

360 came out first, that is why. It had more units out there, so developers focused more resources for the 360 versions of games. Same reason ps2 games got more love than original xbox versions.

The difference in power between the PS2 and Xbox was very large, and in fact pretty much every time the Xbox version of games either ran better, looked better, or both.

Specs aren't everything, but if you compare the PS2 and Xbox, the Xbox absolutely demolishes it.

1) As stated by others, the Ps3 doesn't "kick the ass" of the 360. It is more powerful overall, but it's not like a Dreamcast to PS2 difference, or even necessarily a Ps2 to Xbox1 difference. PS3 exclusives can look a little better but not so that it's super noticeable. Art direction and the like probably matter more than the power difference.

2) It's not necessarily that the Ps3 is a pain in the ass, it's that the Xbox is super familiar because it's so close to a PC (and Xbox1). This is also probably why there hasn't been as big a difference between early and late Xbox 360 games as Ps3 games. Because there was a flatter learning curve since programmers already knew a lot of the tricks.

3) It does implement the blu-ray tech. For installs. The bottleneck with most games is not the size of the textures or video or audio storage. Streaming from the disc is an issue, but more importantly, developers don't have the time or resources to fill a whole blu-ray with material. Higher res textures take more time to produce and resources to display, the same for more music etc... Worst case scenario for Xbox they have to split the game into multiple DVDs like Mass Effect 2 or Rage. Because DVDs are so cheap to manufacture this isn't really an issue for developers.

4) The difference between N64 cartridge and CD was MUCH greater than the difference between Blu-ray and DVD. First of all, you're ignoring that in addition to being larger, CDs were much cheaper than cartridges. If you wanted to have a max size N64 cartridge that might cost like $10-20 in manufacturing costs PER cartridge. Having multiple DVDs might increase your costs by $0.75 per copy of the game, and that's after like 15 years of inflation. Secondly, N64 cartridges were small enough that audio and video were hard to include. Not so for DVDs. Would a system benefit from having terabyte sized discs? Probably not because developers wouldn't be able to fill them. After a certain point size isn't an advantage. Blu-ray is somewhat better than DVD for some games, but for more most its just not a big deal and nowhere close to cartridge vs CD.

5) They haven't had trouble going to blu-ray. They've had trouble filling blu-rays because blu-rays are huge. After a certain point they don't need the space and would rather have faster transfer speeds (thus installs.) A lot of blu-ray space gets used to store redundant files to reduce transfer time from the lens moving from one part of the disc to another.

6) There's enough of a market on each console and enough middleware to program on that making games for both HD consoles just makes sense. Plus with bigger publishers doing tons of development there's les need for smaller game companies (who have a harder time) to agree to exclusives in exchange for getting published. If you look at the downloadable game area you'll see there are, in fact, still a lot of exclusives.

Interesting couple figures here. Just throwing it out there.

Worldwide sales figures

1. Wii – 89.36 million
2. Xbox 360– 57.6 million
3. PlayStation 56 million

1. Wii – 11,534,590
2. PlayStation 3 – 6,341,950
3. Xbox 360 – 1,448,665

1. Wii – 24.9 million
2. PlayStation 3 – 19.7 million
3. Xbox 360 – 13.7 million

1. Wii – 30 million
2. Xbox 360 – 18.6 million
3. PlayStation 3 - nearly 12 million

@Stepside said:

Interesting couple figures here. Just throwing it out there.

Worldwide sales figures

1. Wii – 89.36 million
2. Xbox 360– 57.6 million
3. PlayStation 56 million

Japan

1. Wii – 11,534,590
2. PlayStation 3 – 6,341,950
3. Xbox 360 – 1,448,665

Europe

1. Wii – 24.9 million
2. PlayStation 3 – 19.7 million
3. Xbox 360 – 13.7 million

US

1. Wii – 30 million
2. Xbox 360 – 18.6 million
3. PlayStation 3 - nearly 12 million

Just so people know.

Wait just one second. The first party games are being published by Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo?