Killzone developer says PS3 dev
easier than PS2
You've heard it time and time again: the PS3 is not easy to develop
for. However, the folks behind Sony's flagship FPS,
Killzone 2, will
disagree. Guerilla Games' Managing Director Hermen Hulst spoke to
GameDaily about the working
as a PlayStation-exclusive developer. "Like us, if you are native
to PlayStation, our tech director doesn't say it's particularly
difficult. It's specific, but it's not difficult like PS2 was
difficult – PS2 was a difficult [machine] to crack, but PS3 didn't
take us a long time to get up and running." Hulst does admit that
multiplatform developers may have more trouble working with Sony's
console "because it is very different" from other consoles.
Development Director Arjan Brussee not only sees PS3 as an easier
system to develop for, but also believes Sony's proprietary
architecture can be easier to deal with than the Xbox 360. "I
actually think PS3 is a simpler architecture than some of the other
consoles; you just have to have a certain mindset on how to address
it. I think the Cell-based processor with the SPUs and the super
high speed DSPs that you can throw all your calculation tasks at
gives us a model that's way easier to program for, even for junior
programmers, than the general purpose multi-core type of
architecture, which the PC and Xbox 360 have." Brussee notes that
offloading certain processes to the SPUs allows programmers to take
full advantage of Cell's processing power.
The remarkable visuals of
Killzone 2 certainly gives
credence to their claims. Perhaps Guerilla should follow
Insomniac's steps and allow
the development community to learn some of their PS3 programming
tricks.
http://www.joystiq.com/2009/04/03/killzone-developer-says-ps3-dev-easier-than-ps2/