Ray Maguire’s Vision: In Touch or Insane?

The boss at Sony Computer Entertainment UK believes that third party developers will start developing multiplatform titles with the PS3 in mind and downgrading them to other consoles. But is he right?

Speaking over on videogamer.com, Maguire says:

“I think we now have an install base which is big enough for any third party to want to develop for. Now the decision making part of development is which do you lead your development on?

“Is it easier to lead with the most powerful, both in terms of AI and graphics, i.e. PS3 and then just remove part of the functionality for the processors that aren’t quite as strong? I would imagine that’s very much part of the thought process now from a studio development point of view.”

I’m not entirely convinced that this is the developers point of view yet. There’s nothing wrong with the PS3 install base, but it after the latest round of 360 price cuts and — at least in the UK — an incessant campaign of TV ads it is getting trumped at retail.

In the last week Red Faction: Guerrilla developer Volition revealed that they had so many problems developing for the console they had to bring in someone from Sony to help keep it on schedule. Also this week, Red Alert 3 has landed on PC, and will be out soon on Xbox 360. it was originally announced for PS3 as well, but was cut after they discovered it was “exotic and tough” to develop for.

This represents the bulk of developers at the moment it seems. For every dev like Konami or Media Molecule that is really committed to push what PS3 can achieve, there are a score more who look at the larger install base of Xbox 360, factor in the reduced development time, and come realise they’ll be quids in. More so if they follow the template Eternal Sonata has laid down. When it moved to PS3, it boasted new characters and extended chunks of plot, bringing with it the opportunity of secondary sales to the same gamers.

Much as I love the PS3 — and this isn’t intended to be fanboy baiting — I can’t help but think that to achieve this Sony either need to cut the price to encourage sales or (more plausible) provide more help to developers. Kojima only achieved what he did with Metal gear Solid 4 after getting early access to PS3 before the console launched after all. What do you think readers?

Source: Videogamer.com

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  • Tomonoatmeal Cookigaki

    No.

  • horngreen

    LOL If I saw one game that proved the PS3 was more powerful than the 360 then maybe. Just because Sony says so doesn’t make it so…That REALLY holds true for lying Sony.

  • Henry Harris

    The PS3 is a more powerful machine because it’s a parallel processor. But that means some programmers hate it because they have to throw out old code and start thinking in a new way. Kudos to Sony for building a future-pointing machine, bad for lazy programmers, but very good for those of us who want next generation games. Any new technology takes time to show its mettle, a fact Sony bought into and is just now reaping its rewards.

  • http://www.barackobama.com/ DavidGX

    How would you downgrade a ps3 game to a more powerful system? How does that work exactly, Ray?

  • Ian

    Let me start by saying I chose ps3 over 360 because I moved up from my trusty ps2.

    Sony developed the system and *should* know it’s architecture inside out (at least more so than the 3rd party developers they continue to say ‘will produce spectacular content once they get to grips with the power’).

    Until they get their asses in gear and show/prove the benefits of parallel processing, it amounts to nothing but a marketing tactic.

    I’ve seen very little to date that is not comparable on 360.

    Come on Sony, show us how it’s more powerful than the 360. Stop telling us it is.

  • Henry Harris

    Stop for a moment and consider the nature of programming, especially the programming of complex games. Very little game development starts from scratch. A typical game has a software legacy spanning years, sometimes decades. This means that when an entirely new architecture appears, it is usually not financially viable to start from scratch. It would just take too long. A more reasonable plan would be to keep the core architecture while building new code that takes advantage of the features of the new architecture in stages. In my humble opinion, Sony is doing a very good job of incremental development and I have no doubt that in a few months you’ll start to see real improvements in the speed and power of the new games. I believe this because I understand the nature of code development and the power of parallel processing, not because of any infatuation with Sony per se.

  • Ian

    That’s true to a point, i.e. for third party developers who have an existing code base that they need to exploit.

    As a software developer, I also understand the nature of code development and the power (and complexity) of parallel processing. My point is Sony, the architects of this system, know the potential of its power and could be demoing this instead of talking about everyone else doing it. For all I know, they already are.

    However, we’re a year and a half down the line and in my opinion, little has been produced that stands head and shoulders above competing architectures.

    It will come, I’m sure of that. Until that day, few developers will commit full resource to the switch.

    Looking forward to that day. :)

  • Henry Harris

    What about Wipeout HD as an example? To me it stands head and shoulders above anything in that genre, and remember there was a lot of complaining about it being delayed, the reason being subscribed to the difficulty of parallel processing programing. Some pundits were even crying gloom and doom. Sony made a big mistake going to an architecture that was so hard to program, etc.

    I sympathize with programmer who spent many years developing code bases they could rely on. Sad to say, in this profession, sometimes you have to kill your children.

  • Ian

    I’m not comparing genres but technologies. Wipeout HD is superb but, IMHO, it is not head and shoulders above anything that can be produced on competing systems.

    In the end, I believe we’re saying the same thing (sometimes you have to kill your children), however I believe Sony need to demonstrate more actively than they are that ‘killing your children’ is not the end of the world.

  • Henry Harris

    Frankly I think we’re beyond the constraints of technology, or pretty close to it. Someday soon there’ll be a day when great games will be strictly a product of the imagination of their creators, and not a product of the strength of the underlying technology. After all, we don’t judge a book by the technology of the printing. In my opinion we are pretty close to the day when anything that can be imagined can be implemented as a computer game on practically any system, and in my humble opinion, that’s a great day.