Ex-Harmonix Dev Says, "PS3 Not More Powerful then Xbox 360"

Was reading this article and thought I'd share it. A lot of the things Jason Booth says is true and have been proven.

This comment from Jason was one of my favorites.

"He adds, "For instance, in Resistance: Fall of Man, every art asset is stored on disk once for every level that uses it. So rather than storing one copy of a texture, you're storing it 12 times. If you took that entire game and removed all the duplicate data, it would likely fit on a DVD without any problem."

Anyway, read the article and discuss.

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Ex-Harmonix Dev Says, "PS3 Not More Powerful then Xbox 360"

Jason Booth, a former Turbine and Harmonix developer who has worked on both Guitar Hero games and Rock Band, has posted some interesting comments on his blog regarding "PS3 misconceptions and spin."

http://jbooth.blogspot.com/

"I read various game forums from time to time, and often see gamers complaining about 'lazy ports' to the PS3. They often mention how the PS3 is the most powerful game console and blame developers working on the console for doing a bad job. Sony has all of these people duped by impressive marketing spin... ports to the PS3 will never be as good as their 360 counter parts, and ...most PS3 exclusives will likely continue to suck," he says.

First and foremost, Booth doesn't think PS3 really has a graphical advantage. Why? "Fill rate is one of the primary ways to measure graphics performance - in essence, it's a number describing how many pixel operations you can perform. The fill rate on the PS3 is significantly slower than on the 360, meaning that games either have to run at lower resolution or use simpler shader effects to achieve the same performance," he says. "Additionally, the shader processing on the PS3 is significantly slower than on the 360, which means that a normal map takes more fill rate to draw on the PS3 than it does on the 360. And I'm not talking about small differences here, we're talking roughly half the pixel pushing power."

He also suggests that Blu-ray is not really an advantage: "[It's] great for watching movies, but not so great for games. Getting data off the Blu-ray drive takes about twice as long as it does to get the same data off the 360's DVD drive. That translates into longer load times, or god forbid if you're streaming from disk, tighter constraints on the amount of data you can stream."

He acknowledges that with the greater storage space of Blu-ray "there is the potential to use that to do something cool," but he argues that "most developers who use the entire Blu-ray drive are doing it to work around other problems with the PS3 such as its slow loading."

He adds, "For instance, in Resistance: Fall of Man, every art asset is stored on disk once for every level that uses it. So rather than storing one copy of a texture, you're storing it 12 times. If you took that entire game and removed all the duplicate data, it would likely fit on a DVD without any problem."

Ultimately, Booth says "the performance centric research into the PS3 has been around making it easier for developers to get the same level of performance you get out of the 360 naturally... developers must spend significantly more time and resources getting the PS3 to do what the 360 can already do easily and with a lot less code... On top of this, there is shrinking incentive to do this work; the PS3 isn't selling."

Whether these comments can be taken at face value is up to you; Booth adds at the end of his post that his remarks "might come across as a lot of Sony bashing, but it's just the reality from the trenches." It's an interesting perspective nonetheless.

"MOOOOOOO!" *looks toward the horizon and runs for his life"

That's cool. It makes sense, I guess. But his line "most PS3 exclusives will continue to suck" is a bit harsh, although hardly arguable

(except by extremist cows).

I think it takes courage to publicly state what the community is saying behind closed doors.

I commend him for his honesty and common sense...

now...if only some of that would rub off on the ps3 zealouts....

This has been posted 5 or 6 times already and has been laughed off all times. Please nobody else post this, we already know what he thinks!DeathIsARight

Well, I never saw it. :P It may have been laughed it by the cows, but Jason Booth isn't the first developer to make these claims. There have been many developers who have said the same thing. Most of them aren't laughing.

Ex-Harmonix Dev Says, has worked on both Guitar Hero games and Rock Ban

So he got fired and he worked on GH and RB two of the most crappy looking games and gameplay that totaly copied a little old gme called says the PS3 is not more powerful then 360 jeeee i dont think he knows how to make games then becasue Squarsoft and Konami seem to have no problem with PS3 ........

Kojima, Carmack, Activision states otherwise. :|

Why should we belive this Ex-Harmonix patsy? instead of ^^^

The way lemmings work, is they post this developers comments hundreds of times...then months from now when they are desperate for something to bash Sony over, they say, "Everyone knows that hundreds of developers have spoken against the PS3!"

They don't care that those "hundreds" are really just one guy amplified by them, they see lots of anti-Sony posts and think that equals tons of anti-Sony sentiment in real life.

The way lemmings work, is they post this developers comments hundreds of times...then months from now when they are desperate for something to bash Sony over, they say, "Everyone knows that hundreds of developers have spoken against the PS3!"

They don't care that those "hundreds" are really just one guy amplified by them, they see lots of anti-Sony posts and think that equals tons of anti-Sony sentiment in real life.

ZIMdoom

actaully it's more than one developer talking about the ps3's inefficiencies...

kaos for example... even carmack made a comment about it... and not to forget the legendary Gabe Newell who called the ps3 a "waste of (developer) time"...

noone said "hundreds" as the ps3 doesn't have "hundreds" of games being made for it...;)

This has been posted 5 or 6 times already and has been laughed off all times. Please nobody else post this, we already know what he thinks!DeathIsARight

It has been posted many times,of course cows don't believeit. After all Sony's 1st and 2nd party devs said the opposite and they must be telling the truth.

The way lemmings work, is they post this developers comments hundreds of times...then months from now when they are desperate for something to bash Sony over, they say, "Everyone knows that hundreds of developers have spoken against the PS3!"

They don't care that those "hundreds" are really just one guy amplified by them, they see lots of anti-Sony posts and think that equals tons of anti-Sony sentiment in real life.

ZIMdoom

Kojima, Carmack, Activision states otherwise. :|

Why should we belive this Ex-Harmonix patsy? instead of ^^^

BitterExtract

Carmack complains about the ps3....not praises it...ive never have heard john carmack say anything nice about the ps3

This would probably mean something if:

- He didn't spell Blu-Ray wrong (he spelled it blue-ray).
- He worked for a developer that was developing a game thats pushing the limits of 360 and PS3 hardware (which GH and Rock Band are not).
-He was a programmer and not a designer.

This is like a week old. In PS3 fans' minds; the PS3 has recovered from this article by now and it runs much faster than X360.

then why does cod4 look awesome on both machines? and why do PS3 exclusives look great and run great?

i think the ps3 is more powerful but just alot differant then the 360 and PC that it is just a biotch to deal with... stupid sony

John Carmack says Ps3 IS more powerful(albeit more dificult to program for).

John Carmack > this John Doe