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Activision’s Kotick: ‘We May Not Make Games For The PS3 Next Year’

8 points by newsio 17y ago

trezor 17y ago
I have both a PS3 and a Xbox 360 and hence have no real loyalty one way or the other. I have to admit, that despite better technical specs, the user-experience with Xbox Live is just so much better that for any game I care for with a online-component, the Xbox 360 version gets the sale every single time. As it is, I got the PS3 for near-free and hence have little emotional attachment to it, and these days have it around mostly as a bluray player. I guess to make this comment relevant to hacker news and whoever does startups here: User-experience trumps technical merit. I don't care one way or the other if you wrote it in 100% purely in Haskell or some hacked up PHP. I want something which works for me. Might not be a very cool message with the tech crowd, but as a consumer that's how I think. Heck I even ditched a technically superior Windows Mobile phone for an iPhone 3G and dammit if I will be going back.
- Retric 17y ago
  Between the PS3, Wii, or Xbox 360 I prefer the PS3. Granted, FPS on the Xbox suck when compared to FPS on a PC; so I don't really play any multiplier games on it. Basically, I feel console gaming is mostly about the arcade feel and the PS3 wins that. PS: The largest gap IMO was needing to buy recharable battery's for the other systems. That really bothered me for some reason.
  - chaostheory 17y ago
    The main problems I have with the PS3 are 1) the size & and the content of its software library 2) the QA level of the games Programming for the PS3 is no easy task given the strange design of the cell processor and short comings of Sony's SDKs and frameworks. Given this, I feel that most developers/publishers are less apt to take risks with PS3. This leads to less games, and more games that are mainly ports from the 360. To add insult to injury most of these ports (and DLC) come later and they also tend to have a lot more bugs. In defense of PS3, the other consoles aren't perfect either (360's were breaking left and right, and not having a hard drive by default was a big mistake game wise; Wii's software library is mostly shovel ware for 5 year olds); but imo the PS3's shortcomings are still the worst EDIT: if PS3's new motion controller is as good in real life as it was at E3, it may change things.
    - newsio 17y ago
      "Programming for the PS3 is no easy task given the strange design of the cell processor and short comings of Sony's SDKs and frameworks." Isn't the Xbox 360 processor based on the Cell design?
      - vollmond 17y ago
        looks like it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(microprocessor)#Xenon_in_Xbox_360 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(microprocessor)#Xenon_in_...
      - wmf 17y ago
        The 360's processor is based on the good part of Cell, not the impossible-to-program parts.
      - chaostheory 17y ago
        yeah all of the cpu's for this gen of consoles are from IBM including the Wii Someone can correct me, but to me the main difference between the 360's cpu and PS3's cpu, besides the number of cores, is that the 360's cpu cores are more general purpose while not all of the Cell's cores are equal... The Cell has one main core (PPE) and 8 Synergistic Processor Elements (SPEs). These SPEs are not as powerful as a normal core (and I think one of them is reserved for the OS), and (I think) they're main purpose is solely for graphics (well mainly good at dealing with floating point nums). If I remember correctly, the 360 has three general purpose, equally powerful cores (PPEs) in its version of the IBM cpu. I can imagine someone from IBM probably selling a Sony exec on how the Cell processor can save money by having Cell do both general processing and handling all the video rendering without a separate GPU... which we all know didn't quite work as well as Sony had hoped, since PS3's had an NVidia chip plopped in last min (this probably explains why programming for a PS3 really sucks since Sony wasn't planning on having a separate GPU)
        Retric 17y ago
        The PS3 has a graphics card. SPE's can be used to preprocess some information to increase graphics quality or to crunch numbers for AI code, or do any number of things. The problem is you can either code for the lowest common denominator between the systems and mostly ignore SPE's or build a game focusing on the PS3. PS3 has: Cell@3.2Ghz, yada yada RSX 550 MHz, 300+ million transistors, ~200 GFLOPs PS: The RSX has a higher GFLOPs than the Cell but it's only really usefull for specific graphics operations.
nazgulnarsil 17y ago
this is unmitigated bullshit. if activision paid 1/2 a billion in royalties to sony that mean their ps3 games raked in hundreds of millions in profit. you think Activisions shareholders would allow them to stop developing for the PS3? The CEO is just kicking the anthill that is tech news.
- csbrooks 17y ago
  It is a fact that the PS3 is a lot more painful to develop for, than 360 or Wii. Maybe his goal is to get Sony to come out with some better developer tools. Or just stuff that works right, and makes sense. Sony's attitude toward developers, as reflected in the quality of their tools, seems to border on contempt. With the PS2, it was well worth the effort because of the huge number of units. With the PS3, it isn't quite as clear-cut.
  - chaostheory 17y ago
    not to mention a large portion of PS3 users are older people who buy it as a bluray player with extras rather than a video game system that can play bluray
electromagnetic 17y ago
This is potentially dangerous stuff. If Activision leads the way in not producing PS3 games and sees a profit boost, then there's huge risks for Sony that other games companies like EA will also stop publishing games to the PS3. This is a risky situation for Sony and they've already lost some of their classic Playstation-only games that would have actually forced people into buying a PS3. The biggest one is Final Fantasy, with the next one being released on Xbox as well as PS3, I saw little reason to even consider the PS3 when I went to buy a console and with games like Mass Effect and Halo as Xbox/PC only, the choice was easier.
oomkiller 17y ago
All bark no bite as far as I'm concerned. Activision is just trying to get Sony to drop the price by threatening to pull games. This doesn't really make any sense, because Activision doesn't really produce many (if any?) PS3 exclusives, so making a game for 360 and not making it for PS3 would be crazy, since it doesn't require as much work to port a game as it does to write it from scratch. PS3's graphics and processors seem superior if you look at current games, but we all know it is difficult to program for. I think we have seen the Xbox's incline, and will start to see 360 sales falter just a bit as it tops out. When this happens PS3 will begin getting more titles and more exclusives due to it's increased graphics and processing power benefits (Kind of like the PS2). If you want a good example of this, compare the graphics of inFamous to Prototype. These are very similar games, but inFamous is exclusive to the PS3. To me it looks much better.

8 points by newsio 17y ago

I have both a PS3 and a Xbox 360 and hence have no real loyalty one way or the other. I have to admit, that despite better technical specs, the user-experience with Xbox Live is just so much better that for any game I care for with a online-component, the Xbox 360 version gets the sale every single time. As it is, I got the PS3 for near-free and hence have little emotional attachment to it, and these days have it around mostly as a bluray player. I guess to make this comment relevant to hacker news and whoever does startups here: User-experience trumps technical merit. I don't care one way or the other if you wrote it in 100% purely in Haskell or some hacked up PHP. I want something which works for me. Might not be a very cool message with the tech crowd, but as a consumer that's how I think. Heck I even ditched a technically superior Windows Mobile phone for an iPhone 3G and dammit if I will be going back.

Retric 17y ago
Between the PS3, Wii, or Xbox 360 I prefer the PS3. Granted, FPS on the Xbox suck when compared to FPS on a PC; so I don't really play any multiplier games on it. Basically, I feel console gaming is mostly about the arcade feel and the PS3 wins that. PS: The largest gap IMO was needing to buy recharable battery's for the other systems. That really bothered me for some reason.
- chaostheory 17y ago
  The main problems I have with the PS3 are 1) the size & and the content of its software library 2) the QA level of the games Programming for the PS3 is no easy task given the strange design of the cell processor and short comings of Sony's SDKs and frameworks. Given this, I feel that most developers/publishers are less apt to take risks with PS3. This leads to less games, and more games that are mainly ports from the 360. To add insult to injury most of these ports (and DLC) come later and they also tend to have a lot more bugs. In defense of PS3, the other consoles aren't perfect either (360's were breaking left and right, and not having a hard drive by default was a big mistake game wise; Wii's software library is mostly shovel ware for 5 year olds); but imo the PS3's shortcomings are still the worst EDIT: if PS3's new motion controller is as good in real life as it was at E3, it may change things.
  - newsio 17y ago
    "Programming for the PS3 is no easy task given the strange design of the cell processor and short comings of Sony's SDKs and frameworks." Isn't the Xbox 360 processor based on the Cell design?
    - vollmond 17y ago
      looks like it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(microprocessor)#Xenon_in_Xbox_360 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(microprocessor)#Xenon_in_...
    - wmf 17y ago
      The 360's processor is based on the good part of Cell, not the impossible-to-program parts.
    - chaostheory 17y ago
      yeah all of the cpu's for this gen of consoles are from IBM including the Wii Someone can correct me, but to me the main difference between the 360's cpu and PS3's cpu, besides the number of cores, is that the 360's cpu cores are more general purpose while not all of the Cell's cores are equal... The Cell has one main core (PPE) and 8 Synergistic Processor Elements (SPEs). These SPEs are not as powerful as a normal core (and I think one of them is reserved for the OS), and (I think) they're main purpose is solely for graphics (well mainly good at dealing with floating point nums). If I remember correctly, the 360 has three general purpose, equally powerful cores (PPEs) in its version of the IBM cpu. I can imagine someone from IBM probably selling a Sony exec on how the Cell processor can save money by having Cell do both general processing and handling all the video rendering without a separate GPU... which we all know didn't quite work as well as Sony had hoped, since PS3's had an NVidia chip plopped in last min (this probably explains why programming for a PS3 really sucks since Sony wasn't planning on having a separate GPU)
      - Retric 17y ago
        The PS3 has a graphics card. SPE's can be used to preprocess some information to increase graphics quality or to crunch numbers for AI code, or do any number of things. The problem is you can either code for the lowest common denominator between the systems and mostly ignore SPE's or build a game focusing on the PS3. PS3 has: Cell@3.2Ghz, yada yada RSX 550 MHz, 300+ million transistors, ~200 GFLOPs PS: The RSX has a higher GFLOPs than the Cell but it's only really usefull for specific graphics operations.

nazgulnarsil 17y ago

this is unmitigated bullshit. if activision paid 1/2 a billion in royalties to sony that mean their ps3 games raked in hundreds of millions in profit. you think Activisions shareholders would allow them to stop developing for the PS3? The CEO is just kicking the anthill that is tech news.

csbrooks 17y ago
It is a fact that the PS3 is a lot more painful to develop for, than 360 or Wii. Maybe his goal is to get Sony to come out with some better developer tools. Or just stuff that works right, and makes sense. Sony's attitude toward developers, as reflected in the quality of their tools, seems to border on contempt. With the PS2, it was well worth the effort because of the huge number of units. With the PS3, it isn't quite as clear-cut.
- chaostheory 17y ago
  not to mention a large portion of PS3 users are older people who buy it as a bluray player with extras rather than a video game system that can play bluray

electromagnetic 17y ago

This is potentially dangerous stuff. If Activision leads the way in not producing PS3 games and sees a profit boost, then there's huge risks for Sony that other games companies like EA will also stop publishing games to the PS3. This is a risky situation for Sony and they've already lost some of their classic Playstation-only games that would have actually forced people into buying a PS3. The biggest one is Final Fantasy, with the next one being released on Xbox as well as PS3, I saw little reason to even consider the PS3 when I went to buy a console and with games like Mass Effect and Halo as Xbox/PC only, the choice was easier.

oomkiller 17y ago

All bark no bite as far as I'm concerned. Activision is just trying to get Sony to drop the price by threatening to pull games. This doesn't really make any sense, because Activision doesn't really produce many (if any?) PS3 exclusives, so making a game for 360 and not making it for PS3 would be crazy, since it doesn't require as much work to port a game as it does to write it from scratch. PS3's graphics and processors seem superior if you look at current games, but we all know it is difficult to program for. I think we have seen the Xbox's incline, and will start to see 360 sales falter just a bit as it tops out. When this happens PS3 will begin getting more titles and more exclusives due to it's increased graphics and processing power benefits (Kind of like the PS2). If you want a good example of this, compare the graphics of inFamous to Prototype. These are very similar games, but inFamous is exclusive to the PS3. To me it looks much better.