New Edge is out, they have a fairly large number of pages covering next-gen hardware - it's the cover story. While I think Edge's own editorial on the matter is a bit of a mixed bag and not that enlightening, there were some perhaps interesting comments from a number of different devs. Believe it or not, this is just a small part of them (they've full interviews with one or two of the devs, and then smaller from more scattered all over the place, some more tech orientated than others) - so I hope it's OK to quote them here:
Mark Rein (Epic)
On PS3 UE3:
"It took less than a week to get the engine up and running, without rendering, with just wireframe rendering - out at Sony's office. The first couple of days the guys were just playing - we had no idea they would come home with a working engine. That surprised us because you know it has a new processor and all. And then once we got the kit it took a couple days to get it rendering, and maybe another week or two to make it fast and efficient and learn our way around it."
On PS3 dev kit:
"Any time we created any content it looked exactly the same on PC as it did on PS3. The only thing was, even though we had these ass-kicking Nvidia 6800 Ultra SLI systems, when we got the actual RSX card, even though it's not running anywhere near full speed, it was more than twice as fast as our SLI setup."
(over 2x SLI?!)
"It's a Cell processor and an RSX. Those are the main components of PS3. There are going to be other faster things than we had in the devkit. You've heard about their amazing memory bandwidth - this doesn't have any of that. The early kits are fast like that but they have Cell and RSX so it really is a perfect development station for PS3 and anything you run on it is only going to run a hell of a lot faster on final hardware, not slower - you're not going to get any surprises or lose any features".
On X360
"It (non final X360 kit) is about 30 percent right?
We think it's 25% [chuckles] That's why we weren't showing on a devkit. We told them there's no way we're showing our game on a devkit. We have UE3 running on devkits - that's how we got all these licensees - but... we think it's crazy. But we're not a launch title so we have a little extra time."
SN Systems (Middleware):
"The overall impression that we have with developers is that everyone perceives the PS3 to be slightly or significantly more powerful than 360. That's going to make quite a difference, since everyone's pushing high def so hard. High def means a lot more pixels being drawn, a lot more throughput, so that little bit more power PS3 has could be quite significant. But what you have to bear in mind is that peoples' perception of the PS3 is based on what they think they're going to be getting in devkits in probably a few months time rather than on what they have now. And also that the Xbox dev kits are not yet full speed either."
"Currently there are a lot more X360 dev kits out there than PS3, so the natural lead platform right now is Xbox. And if Microsoft can hang on to that, even if PS3 is more powerful, if games are converted from 360 to PS3, they're not going to be inclined to make the most of the PS3's power. But if PS3 devkit volume ramps up, and developers are comfortable enough working with it - there's a lot of "ifs'" in this! - but if they find it easy enough to work from, then they'll make it the lead platform and then that bit of power will make a real difference."
"If one machine is much easier to develop for than the other, it could have a significant advantage in early titles. Microsoft's earlier start may help it but it remains to be seen if that lead will last as developers take on more PS3 development. I don't think it's yet clear whether one of the next-gen machines will be easier to develop for than the other."
On Cell:
"Since these different parts (SPEs) can all access their own memory at full speed simultaneously, it should give the PS3 a significant performance advantage if you can program to take advantage of this. Just how big an advantage this really is remains to be seen, and will be down to good tools and clever programming by the game and middleware developers"
Andrew Richards of Codeplay (Middleware):
"The move from singlecore to multicore CPUs is going to be a major disruptive change. For launch titles, developers will just run the main C++ code on one core processor and try to farm out processor intensive work to other processors. This will work for a while, but not forever. It's too labour intensive and doesn't scale."
I won't quote everything here - buy the mag! - but these were the more interesting quotes I found..
Mark Rein (Epic)
On PS3 UE3:
"It took less than a week to get the engine up and running, without rendering, with just wireframe rendering - out at Sony's office. The first couple of days the guys were just playing - we had no idea they would come home with a working engine. That surprised us because you know it has a new processor and all. And then once we got the kit it took a couple days to get it rendering, and maybe another week or two to make it fast and efficient and learn our way around it."
On PS3 dev kit:
"Any time we created any content it looked exactly the same on PC as it did on PS3. The only thing was, even though we had these ass-kicking Nvidia 6800 Ultra SLI systems, when we got the actual RSX card, even though it's not running anywhere near full speed, it was more than twice as fast as our SLI setup."
(over 2x SLI?!)
"It's a Cell processor and an RSX. Those are the main components of PS3. There are going to be other faster things than we had in the devkit. You've heard about their amazing memory bandwidth - this doesn't have any of that. The early kits are fast like that but they have Cell and RSX so it really is a perfect development station for PS3 and anything you run on it is only going to run a hell of a lot faster on final hardware, not slower - you're not going to get any surprises or lose any features".
On X360
"It (non final X360 kit) is about 30 percent right?
We think it's 25% [chuckles] That's why we weren't showing on a devkit. We told them there's no way we're showing our game on a devkit. We have UE3 running on devkits - that's how we got all these licensees - but... we think it's crazy. But we're not a launch title so we have a little extra time."
SN Systems (Middleware):
"The overall impression that we have with developers is that everyone perceives the PS3 to be slightly or significantly more powerful than 360. That's going to make quite a difference, since everyone's pushing high def so hard. High def means a lot more pixels being drawn, a lot more throughput, so that little bit more power PS3 has could be quite significant. But what you have to bear in mind is that peoples' perception of the PS3 is based on what they think they're going to be getting in devkits in probably a few months time rather than on what they have now. And also that the Xbox dev kits are not yet full speed either."
"Currently there are a lot more X360 dev kits out there than PS3, so the natural lead platform right now is Xbox. And if Microsoft can hang on to that, even if PS3 is more powerful, if games are converted from 360 to PS3, they're not going to be inclined to make the most of the PS3's power. But if PS3 devkit volume ramps up, and developers are comfortable enough working with it - there's a lot of "ifs'" in this! - but if they find it easy enough to work from, then they'll make it the lead platform and then that bit of power will make a real difference."
"If one machine is much easier to develop for than the other, it could have a significant advantage in early titles. Microsoft's earlier start may help it but it remains to be seen if that lead will last as developers take on more PS3 development. I don't think it's yet clear whether one of the next-gen machines will be easier to develop for than the other."
On Cell:
"Since these different parts (SPEs) can all access their own memory at full speed simultaneously, it should give the PS3 a significant performance advantage if you can program to take advantage of this. Just how big an advantage this really is remains to be seen, and will be down to good tools and clever programming by the game and middleware developers"
Andrew Richards of Codeplay (Middleware):
"The move from singlecore to multicore CPUs is going to be a major disruptive change. For launch titles, developers will just run the main C++ code on one core processor and try to farm out processor intensive work to other processors. This will work for a while, but not forever. It's too labour intensive and doesn't scale."
I won't quote everything here - buy the mag! - but these were the more interesting quotes I found..
