SCEA’s PlayStation blog has only been online for a few days now, but that hasn’t stopped its bloggers from stirring up trouble. Jack Tretton, CEO and President of SCEA, wrote up a short article two days ago about how the PS3 will succeed in the long run.
Dave Karraker, Corporate Communications Senior Director at SCEA, posted an article the next day about how the PS3 is not technically harder to develop for.
In Jack Tretton’s blog, entitled "A Quick Look Back, A Strong Push Forward", he starts out by saying that’s he’s your average gamer. He said he lacks free time, so he usually finds himself playing PSP on long plane rides. Can you say noob?
Anyway, his post was rather interesting, so that makes up for him being such a lightweight. Tretton talks about how both the original PlayStation and the PS2 both saw great success, even when people doubted the two system’s potential in the beginning. He then went on to tie that into the harsh criticism that the Playstation 3 has received as of late.
Tretton stated the following:
"We fully realize that past success is no guarantee of future success, but it does give you some perspective. We have to bring the games to market that will showcase what the PS3 can do and ultimately entertain you like no other games have.
"We need to provide proof of what the PS3 can do for you and work tirelessly to improve the value and justify your investment. At the end of the day, it’s always been about the games. To push the boundaries of gaming beyond where they currently lie takes a great deal of risk. I think all the hardware manufacturers are doing that in some way.
"We could have easily produced PlayStation 2.5 at a slightly increased price over the older model, and driven some nice profits and marginal innovation for a few years but that’s not how we got where we are today. You have to gamble and make major investments in the present that will pay dividends in the future."
I personally couldn’t agree more with Tretton. I think he’s finally answered the call to all saddened PS3 fans, myself included.
Dave Karraker blogged about the issue of developing games for the PS3 in his post entitled "Is the PS3 Really Harder to Develop for?"
He stated, "This is an interesting question and hidden within the question is an enormously complex subject! If the game starts life on PS3, then man-hours per feature or costs related to asset production are comparable with industry norms. For that, you can include Xbox 360 and high-end PC games, and exclude PS2 and Wii.
"However, since PS3’s Cell processor allows MORE features – better physics, more complex graphical processing, lighting or sound, etc. — there is inevitably going to be more cost in supporting those extra features. It’s not that PS3 is harder to write for, it’s just that you can do more with it."
He also said the following about Xbox 360 ports on the PS3, "Xbox 360 is a different machine with good, but lower powered hardware in a different architecture. Developers have to view them as two different machines not as a common platform."
I like how he threw in the phrase "lower powered" in that sentence. That should get 360 fanboys riled up.
