9 Nov, 2007

We don't know. Of course we don't. We're merely humble gamers, lacking the enormo-brain capacity to even begin comprehending the intricate complexities of game development, so how would we have any idea whether Sony's PlayStation 3 is a complete bitch to make games for? We have to listen to the experts - the men and women that work on the gruelling frontline of game-makery. Only trouble is, the developer community is sending out a mixed message.

Indeed, conflicting developer opinion on the subject regularly makes headlines. Just this week  Call of Duty developer Infinity Ward insisted that it hadn't had any problem working with the console, which seems to fly in the face of much of the perceived disgruntlement. So who should we believe?

We investigate both sides of the argument in an effort to help us - and you - draw some kind of conclusion about the truth behind PS3 game development, starting with the people that give us plenty of reasons to believe that Sony's console is an absolute  bitch to work with.

PS3 - a pain in the asymmetrical CPUs?

When Gabe Newell, the big boss at the incredibly talented Valve Corporation, said at the start of the year that PS3 was "a total disaster on so many levels, I think it's really clear that Sony lost track of what customers and what developers wanted," it was a pretty obvious indication that Sony's box wasn't going to be a game maker's best friend.

Newell even suggested that things were so bad that Sony should ditch the machine entirely and "do a do-over". Ten months later and his criticism  was still as scathing. "I think PS3 is a waste of everybody's time. Investing in the Cell, investing in the SPE gives you no long-term benefits. There's nothing there that you're going to apply to anything else. You're not going to gain anything except a hatred of the architecture they've created." If you're looking for unambiguous condemnation, Newell's your man.

But Newell wasn't the only industry big gun to start the year by taking head-shots at PS3. Celebrated programming mega-brain, John Carmack, offered his own negative appraisal  of the system. "I think the decision to use an asymmetric CPU by Sony was a wrong one. There are aspects that could make it a winning decision, but they're not helpful to the developers... I was not a fan of the PlayStation 2 and the way its architecture was set up. With the PlayStation 3, it's not even that it's ugly - Sony just took a design decision that wasn't the best from a development standpoint."

While asymmetrical CPUs might be conversational Valium for most gamers, if the man that coded Doom and Quake starts suggesting that PS3 isn't developer-friendly, people feel inclined to agree.

Continued on the next page...