Sony Addresses Past Mistakes: Ease of Use Promised for Cell
GDC courtship battle continues apace.
Time was the Game Developers Conference saw little or no interest from the established platform holders. They all had their respective market share and seemingly cared little for the coders at gaming’s coalface, focusing their attention solely on the money men within publishing.
The launch of the PlayStation 2 for example, shipping before finalised development kits and software libraries, made the job of creating games for the second Sony machine all but impossible and severely hampered the quantity and quality of first-generation software.
GDC 2005 has seen a complete revolution in the treatment of developers and the respect offered their opinions. Microsoft and Sony have both been bending double to impress the development community with promises of ease of use and unparalleled support from the hardware creator.
Sony, reating to Microsoft’s XNA-powered push, has released its own assurance that come PlayStation 3 launch, development studios will have everything they need to release top-notch gaming software with ease.
"The Cell is a complicated piece of machinery," said Mark DeLoura, manager of developer relations for SCEA. "What we can to do to make it easy for you, we'll do...We don't want to make you learn a new API (application programming interface) every time we come out with a new chip."
During his address, DeLoura underlined the fact that the Cell graphics will rely on a variation of the standard OpenGL library, already standard for PC game development. Sony and the software consortium The Khronos Group will be developing Open GL/ES, a dialect of OpenGL optimised for PlayStation 3 games content.
However, Sony fell short of offering the same level of support Microsoft has pledged developers of Xbox 2 software. As readers of SPOnG wil be aware, Microsoft has promised almost bottomless support via a new XNA dedicated studio.
With Nintendo president Satoru Iwata about to take centre stage, the Kyoto giant better have more than a new Zelda video and a DS online announcement up his sleeve.
The launch of the PlayStation 2 for example, shipping before finalised development kits and software libraries, made the job of creating games for the second Sony machine all but impossible and severely hampered the quantity and quality of first-generation software.
GDC 2005 has seen a complete revolution in the treatment of developers and the respect offered their opinions. Microsoft and Sony have both been bending double to impress the development community with promises of ease of use and unparalleled support from the hardware creator.
Sony, reating to Microsoft’s XNA-powered push, has released its own assurance that come PlayStation 3 launch, development studios will have everything they need to release top-notch gaming software with ease.
"The Cell is a complicated piece of machinery," said Mark DeLoura, manager of developer relations for SCEA. "What we can to do to make it easy for you, we'll do...We don't want to make you learn a new API (application programming interface) every time we come out with a new chip."
During his address, DeLoura underlined the fact that the Cell graphics will rely on a variation of the standard OpenGL library, already standard for PC game development. Sony and the software consortium The Khronos Group will be developing Open GL/ES, a dialect of OpenGL optimised for PlayStation 3 games content.
However, Sony fell short of offering the same level of support Microsoft has pledged developers of Xbox 2 software. As readers of SPOnG wil be aware, Microsoft has promised almost bottomless support via a new XNA dedicated studio.
With Nintendo president Satoru Iwata about to take centre stage, the Kyoto giant better have more than a new Zelda video and a DS online announcement up his sleeve.
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Comments
acidviper 10 Mar 2005 14:01
1/5
Wow it will be easier to program for. Compared to what? I belive PC and gameboy/DS are the easiest with XBOX and XBOX2 next. Gamecube then PS2 and PSP. So with Nintendo keeping everything a mystery with Revolution, Sony stays in last place. wonk wonk wonk.
ohms 10 Mar 2005 16:10
2/5
bit of a feeble reply to XNA really
more comments below our sponsor's message
Ditto 10 Mar 2005 19:33
3/5
ohms wrote:
bit of a feeble reply to XNA really
Why? XNA is a bunch of new Microsoft technologies that developers are reluctant to adopt. They aren't cross-platform at all.
Sony is extending existing technology allowing developers to use existing skills and with a greater chance of porting.
Sony's strategy with it's market-leading position will inhibit adoption of XNA.
fluffstardx 10 Mar 2005 20:02
4/5
Sony is flagging. They just can't admit to programmers they've just made their job even harder. The PlayStaion's programming was a mess, the second doubly so. CELL? A nightmare made silicon.
Microsoft have just effectively told every PC game maker "hell, if you can adapt the controls, it'll run..."
Microsoft have just effectively told every PC game maker "hell, if you can adapt the controls, it'll run..."
tyrion 11 Mar 2005 13:07
5/5
fluffstardx wrote:
Sony is flagging. They just can't admit to programmers they've just made their job even harder. The PlayStaion's programming was a mess, the second doubly so. CELL? A nightmare made silicon.
I'd be interested to hear where you heard that. Everything I heard points to the PSX being easy to code for, with good library support.
Everybody knows that the PS2 was hard to program for in the beginning, but I had heard that the later dev kits came with good library support and made things better at least.
And as for the PS3/Cell? We don't know what they are going to be like to code for, all we have to go on is what Sony have just said. As far as I read the quotes, the PS3 dev kits are actually going to come with decent library support, including industry-standard API support (OpenGL).
In addition, I would think that IBM would give good library support for the scheduling of threads on the Cell, they are trying to push Cell into workstations after all.