Sony hate thread

[ellroy]

It was pretty powerful in a special way but that was then counteracted by the GPU not being the best, it still used different execution units for pixel and vertex shaders and some corners seem to have been cut there. Naughty Dog and other have talked about how they offloaded the GPU by sending vertex shader work to CELL(along with other graphics tasks when appropriate). There are both blog posts and Siggraph presentations/papers about this, it's pretty interesting for people that find this interesting, it is absolute torture to everyone else.

Some early games only ran on the PPC CPU because CELL was a tricky beast to figure out. On tricky thing was that CELL itself couldn't read or write to system RAM, iirc, so the PPC CPU had to feed it data from either the XDR or GDDR3 memory pools, then collect it when done and write it back to wherever it is supposed to be. Each CELL SPE had 256KB to work with and that's not a lot, it needed constant attention from the general purpose CPU to get the most out of it. The people at Naughty Dog could run that shit like clockwork while other developers struggled.

I think you’re getting things mixed up. Cell refers to the overall chip, which in regards to the PS3, meant one Power Processor Element (PPE) and seven Synergisitic Processing Elements (SPE; the eighth exists but is physically separated and not used). The PPE was the Power PC core designed to do scheduling to send calculations to the SPEs. The SPE’s can access memory through an intermediary device on the chip called the memory flow controller (MFU). Because of how complicated this is and how compiler dependent the processor became, this is where developers hit a roadblock.

In the early days, Devs used the PPE do most of the work since they couldn’t figure out how to efficiently schedule tasks for the SPE’s. Skyrim’s PS3 release pretty much used the PPE and one of the SPE’s out of an available six. Devs had to use a different instruction set to use the SPE’s so they had to write code in a way so the compiler would recognize it for the SPE. Imagine only having a degree in CS, writing game code for Intel processors in school and then having to work on this vastly different architecture. Sony eventually wised up and sent subject matter experts to their in house studios to teach them how to use the processor and Naughty Dog became the most technically proficient.

Concerning the GPU, the system used a scaled down version of a 7800 GTX chip from NVidia and this chip was over a year old by the time the PS3 hit market. Combine this with limited system RAM (256 MBs was the biggest complaint the cluster operators had when they would install Linux), the PS3 was an over and under performing console when it came to its hardware.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

I think you’re getting things mixed up.

It is very likely that I got things mixed up and your post makes more sense, it's been a long time since the PS3 launched. I'm just going from old memory, refuse to look anything up, it's friday, I'm making risotto and the wine will spoil if resealed.

 

[Dojima's Dragon]

Whats the deal with sony engineering department and having consoles that have fatal or bad issues forgot about the issues with ps1 but i think it involved combusting if it overheated and early phat models of the ps2 would have the laser optic die out resulting in the games no longer being playable and the less is said about the silm the better and the barrage of isssues the better and the ps3 aside from being a pain in the ass to develop had constant overheating issues and YLOD the ps4 has the awful placement of the fan that lead to early ps4 models overheating and being a dusts favorite

 

[ellroy]

It's why the Japanese didn't develop any of the hardware revisions or the PS4 and PS5.

Exclusive: The American Who Designed the PlayStation 4 and Remade Sony

"He's an American who makes his home in Los Angeles, 5,500 miles from Sony's Tokyo headquarters and the all-Japanese engineering team charged with putting the new console together. "

Do you ever think before you post?

 

[Marissa Moira]

Exclusive: The American Who Designed the PlayStation 4 and Remade Sony

"He's an American who makes his home in Los Angeles, 5,500 miles from Sony's Tokyo headquarters and the all-Japanese engineering team charged with putting the new console together. "

Do you ever think before you post?

That's still correct? The Japanese didn't lead any of the hardware efforts since the PS3 bombed.

 

[ZMOT]

Dude, what the fuck are you talking about? I'm not talking about coding fresh I'm talking about porting. If it was difficult for people to port DOS games over to future OS's and CPU's what makes you think a Cell based game would be easier? So why would everyone have been lying 15 years ago when they were saying it would be impossible to port 3rd party games like MGS4 designed with Cell in mind to the 360?
And why are you even bringing up Grand Theft Auto? We were talking about porting Uncharted 1-3 to PC.

because my example was about RDR which is a rockstar game. also porting requires coding, in case you were that much of a smoothbrain to not figure that one out so far. here's another hint: where do you think those games get coded on?

Calm down and stay focused.

right, that's why you talk about DOS games all of a sudden?

which proves even more what a dumbass you are with that line alone
>DOS games
>future OS and CPUs
what do you think those where running on genius?
unless your point is about DOS ports to console which no shit porting FROM YOUR OWN SOURCE (not emulation) to a more limited/complicated platform is more difficult to do (and ignoring for a moment at which time those ports would've happened).

except we're talking about the other way around, keep up.

And it's funny you say it had nothing to do with it when every Sony fanboy has been claiming up and down the mo cap data just "didn't work" and it had absolutely nothing to do with getting a Tom Holland look alike.

you are aware "b-but fanbois said!!" is probably the most retarded argument anyone ever brought up, right? and that's not even considering how mocap data works for a remaster.

I mean, that's pretty much what my main point has been. I'm not saying it'd be impossible to port, but if it's a pain in the ass why would they bother? That's probably the best explanation in my mind for porting Uncharted 4 but not the Nathan Drake collection. The idea they only put their junk on PC doesn't work for Nathan Drake Collection as Uncharted 4 surely sold better than it and the collection would have to be as equally "worthless" to keep exclusive at this point.

see the part about business decisions, not technical reasons. there isn't much gained from putting 1-3 on pc when you already have 4 to claim "uncharted on pc" and tease people to buy a playstation to play future uncharted games and other sony exclusives, because that's goal at the end, not get some extra game sales on pc.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

because my example was about RDR which is a rockstar game.

Just port the superior 360 version and avoid CELL entirely.

 

[Dom Cruise]

Screw Sony for making the damn thing hard to develop for.

I'm still bitter about the PS3, Sony permanently wrecked a certain momentum videos games were on that's never fully recovered in the years since.

Especially when it comes to Japanese games, all those great Japanese games on the PS2 and it almost entirely dried up with the PS3, it just absolutely breaks my heart, especially in the case of the survival horror genre, all the games that were on the PS2 and how many games were like that on PS3? A grand total of ONE, Siren: Blood Curse, ONE game for the entire console's lifespan.

Japan's done some recovering since but it's still not like it was on the PS2 and probably never will be again due to so many devs already being defunct, again, it just absolutely breaks my heart.

It wasn't just Japan either, you saw more creative games coming from western devs as well on the PS2, I in particular miss Sony Computer Entertainment Europe and their games like Primal and Ghosthunter.

But even beyond Sony, it wrecked a certain momentum video games as a whole had, because Sony helped bring interest to the entire thing, there was never more hype than there was for the lead up to the 7th gen of consoles and it's not even been close to that ever since, the newest consoles have been basically met with a shrug.

Some of this is not Sony's fault, the Great Recession certainly hurt things as well and Covid is part of why there's not much excitement for the current gen since it's hard to even find a console for sale, but it's 2021, we should be playing games that would have seemed absolutely unreal to people 15 years ago but we're really not, things have slowed way down, compare what a quantum leap just going from the PS1 to the PS2 was, now compare the PS4 to the PS5.

So why would everyone have been lying 15 years ago when they were saying it would be impossible to port 3rd party games like MGS4 designed with Cell in mind to the 360?

On a side note it still pisses me off how so many on /v/ just insisted that MGS4 would come to the 360, they wouldn't even entertain the idea that it wouldn't come to the 360 but of course it never did, it's literally never been on anything else but the PS3 even though that was impossible to comprehend for a certain type of dipshit on /v/.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

I'm still bitter about the PS3, Sony permanently wrecked a certain momentum videos games were on that's never fully recovered in the years since.

Especially when it comes to Japanese games, all those great Japanese games on the PS2 and it almost entirely dried up with the PS3, it just absolutely breaks my heart, especially in the case of the survival horror genre, all the games that were on the PS2 and how many games were like that on PS3? A grand total of ONE, Siren: Blood Curse, ONE game for the entire console's lifespan.

Japan's done some recovering since but it's still not like it was on the PS2 and probably never will be again due to so many devs already being defunct, again, it just absolutely breaks my heart.

I'm going to start two segments with 'I think' because it is true, these are just my thoughts and they're scatterbrained.

I think that if PS3 had only used Super-CELL, the crazy idea that totally worked in Kutaragi's head, and the PS3 was the dominant force like the PS2 was, then jap developers wouldn't have suffered. The reason for this line of thinking is that they were so used to being beaten like dogs with new crazy hardware/software architecture that had little to no resemblance to the previous generation so they had to start fresh and just power through it.

It is known that Sony, late in the development of the PS3, realized that things weren't going to work out as Kutaragi envisioned it, so they had to add a western GPU and do some redesigns. This put jap devs at a disadvantage, devs had largely ignored the Xbox and didn't follow PC trends and how the shader model evolved. So in the west there was a legion of graphics programmers with years of experience in how these GPUs worked, at the core it was just another Nvidia GPU after all. The west also had a treasure trove of documentation and books about it in english instead of the opposite situation - like with the Graphics Synthesizer of the PS2.

What I'm saying is that if the PS3 was weirder japanese developers might have punched harder right out of the gate.

 

[Dom Cruise]

I'm going to start two segments with 'I think' because it is true, these are just my thoughts and they're scatterbrained.

I think that if PS3 had only used Super-CELL, the crazy idea that totally worked in Kutaragi's head, and the PS3 was the dominant force like the PS2 was, then jap developers wouldn't have suffered. The reason for this line of thinking is that they were so used to being beaten like dogs with new crazy hardware/software architecture that had little to no resemblance to the previous generation so they had to start fresh and just power through it.

It is known that Sony, late in the development of the PS3, realized that things weren't going to work out as Kutaragi envisioned it, so they had to add a western GPU and do some redesigns. This put jap devs at a disadvantage, devs had largely ignored the Xbox and didn't follow PC trends and how the shader model evolved. So in the west there was a legion of graphics programmers with years of experience in how these GPUs worked, at the core it was just another Nvidia GPU after all. The west also had a treasure trove of documentation and books about it in english instead of the opposite situation - like with the Graphics Synthesizer of the PS2.

What I'm saying is that if the PS3 was weirder japanese developers might have punched harder right out of the gate.

It's possible, whatever Sony did either way though it cratered the Japanese development scene.

And what sucks is From Software's games proves there was a market for it, they managed to thrive but if it was a more welcoming environment who knows how many other Japanese devs could have found similar success.

It just really sucks how the zeitgeist was pretty out of lockstep in America for games like that in the 2000s, whereas people are a lot more welcoming of games like that today, another example of that is the evolution in popularity of Yoko Taro's games, but it was too little, too late for a lot of Japanese devs that are now defunct or games that are now long out of print and highly expensive with no official re-releases despite renewed interest.

You just wonder what might have been if timing had been more on their side or if the PS3 was a more welcoming environment, it is nice today that gamers are a lot more appreciative though.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

You just wonder what might have been if timing had been more on their side or if the PS3 was a more welcoming environment

My thought is that if the PS3 was the only game in town and it was a way more hostile environment then the japanese would have thrived and would have had a head start.

 

[Dom Cruise]

My thought is that if the PS3 was the only game in town and it was a way more hostile environment then the japanese would have thrived and would have had a head start.

That's what I mean, more welcoming for Japanese devs, maybe not necessarily welcoming for non-Japanese devs, but one way or the other a console Japanese devs had more success with.

The biggest "what if?" with regards to that on my mind is of course what a PS3 Silent Hill by Team Silent could have been like.

 

[Marissa Moira]

Especially when it comes to Japanese games, all those great Japanese games on the PS2 and it almost entirely dried up with the PS3, it just absolutely breaks my heart, especially in the case of the survival horror genre, all the games that were on the PS2 and how many games were like that on PS3? A grand total of ONE, Siren: Blood Curse, ONE game for the entire console's lifespan.

Japan's done some recovering since but it's still not like it was on the PS2 and probably never will be again due to so many devs already being defunct, again, it just absolutely breaks my heart.

That's mostly because mobile games got popular around that time. Mobile games had a much lower bar for entry and generated more income.

That's why most developers switched to mobile who used to do budget games. However indies have more than replaced them.

If you want to play absolutely weird crap. many companies have popped up that even offer physical editions because I have a few for the PS5 already.

 

[Dom Cruise]

That's mostly because mobile games got popular around that time. Mobile games had a much lower bar for entry and generated more income.

That's why most developers switched to mobile who used to do budget games. However indies have more than replaced them.

If you want to play absolutely weird crap. many companies have popped up that even offer physical editions because I have a few for the PS5 already.

They turned to mobile because the PS3 wasn't welcoming, if things had been smooth sailing I honestly don't think there would have been as big a push into mobile at least not to the degree of console games drying up.

 

[Marissa Moira]

They turned to mobile because the PS3 wasn't welcoming, if things had been smooth sailing I honestly don't think there would have been as big a push into mobile at least not to the degree of console games drying up.

Dude mobile games got big there because they were signifgantly easier to develop for, even if the PS3 wasn't a pain to get going, mobile games would still have been easier.

It had zero to do with anything being welcoming and more to do that an alternative came up that required less overhead and reached higher profits.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

Dude mobile games got big there because they were signifgantly easier to develop for, even if the PS3 wasn't a pain to get going, mobile games would still have been easier.

We're talking about developing games selling well in the international market, like they used to do.

 

[Marissa Moira]

We're talking about developing games selling well in the international market, like they used to do.

Mobile games are what really turned a ton of studios who used to have significant console output into barely none. Kemco was one company who did a ton of console games for decades and put out smaller titles on the PS2, but now it's almost entirely mobile.

 

[Dom Cruise]

Dude mobile games got big there because they were signifgantly easier to develop for, even if the PS3 wasn't a pain to get going, mobile games would still have been easier.

It had zero to do with anything being welcoming and more to do that an alternative came up that required less overhead and reached higher profits.

I'm not saying you wouldn't have seen any mobile games, obviously you would have, just that you would have seen more console games had the PS3 been easier to develop for.

Once things like the PS4 came around, you started to see more console games, despite the mobile market being even bigger than before.

 

[Marissa Moira]

Kemco seems familiar, what did they develop that were successful?

Shadowgate 64
Daisenryaku VII
a ton of Warner brothers games during the 8 and 16 bit eras
Batman Beyond Return of the Joker

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

Shadowgate 64
Daisenryaku VII
a ton of Warner brothers games during the 8 and 16 bit eras
Batman Beyond Return of the Joker

Hey, no fair, I deleted that post.
Either way, Shadowgate and the games like it was western developed, Daisenryaku VII is oddly specific and I don't know what Batman Beyond is. Those all seem like childhood games.

A worse example of how the progress of technology hit companies hard is Sunsoft. Yeez, they used to be wizard at 2D and the gameplay associated with it. At least Tecmo shambles on, Xbox Ninja Gaiden was just fantastic.