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Image courtesy G4TV
id Software's founder not ga-ga over the Cell processor

Famed developer John Carmack sat down with G4 TV (Video) during E3 this year and gave viewers the scoop on the Sony PlayStation 3 and the challenges of its development environment. Carmack, somewhat of a legend in the gaming community, gave us really the very first FPS title Wolfenstein 3D in 1992, along with DOOM and the Quake franchise.  He was at the show this year to show off id Software's upcoming title Enemy Territory: Quake Wars.

During the interview Carmack discussed the issues with Sony’s development strategy concerning the PS3 comparing the symmetrical processing approach Microsoft took with the XBOX 360 to the asymmetric approach that Sony is using with the Cell processor developed in partnership with Toshiba and IBM.

Carmack concedes that the PS3 is a more powerful platform saying "the PS3 has more peak performance on there and that’s what Sony was looking for." However he believes that Sony made a mistake with the Cell architecture in the difficulty there is with programming for it as opposed to the 360.

To take full advantage of the Cell architecture developers must break their code in to "small nuggets" and use a different compiler for the SPEs making developing for the PS3 more difficult then it needs to be.

During the interview he speculated that the PS3 would do well because of its following and Sony’s dominance in the console market. However judging by the reaction to the PS3 in our previous article covering the console, as well as comments across the web sphere as a whole that is obviously still to be determined.

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John Carmack on the future of AMD (1999)
By somegeek on 5/13/2006 3:59:10 PM , Rating: 1
"Architectural cleverness is all well and good, but if AMD can't keep the clock speed up with intel, they will still fall behind."

- John Carmack, 1999




By ksherman on 5/13/2006 4:33:00 PM , Rating: 2
but they still have. true performance wise they pretty much took the cookie, as well as the cookie jar. But still, customer impression is a big factor. even both compannies have dumped the x.xxGHz from their product naming scheme, you dont see a computer description anywhere that leaves that information off. They see Intel/Pentium, they think sweetness. they see 3.0GHz versus 2.2Ghz, they say "3GHz... sweet" Now that will all change soon, as it seems Conroe/Core 2 Duo is coming back into the AMD speed range, it has still been a big part of the topic.

Was Carmack wrong? Yes, in some ways. But he was right about the MHz ratings being in the fore front of most consumers minds. Honestly, outside of places like these, away from people like us (you know, the ones that care) really understands anything beyond the one with the bigger number MUST be faster, the one with the bigger price tag MUST be better? its just the sad reality of life sometimes.

and I will now step off my soap box...


By saratoga on 5/13/2006 7:57:11 PM , Rating: 2
Thats actually dead right in 1999. Had Intel ramped the P3 to 1GHz while AMD was stuck at 750MHz, we wouldn't be talking about the K8 today.

The modern AMD platform only surived because AMD managed to stay ahead of the P3 in clock speed long enough to get decient platforms (nforce) and 3rd parties on board (Ati, nvidia, gateway, etc).

Am I the only one that remembers having to buy Asus AMD boards in white boxes so that Asus could deny to Intel that they actually made an AMD based product?


RE: John Carmack on the future of AMD (1999)
By Griswold on 5/14/2006 5:36:42 AM , Rating: 2
Well he was right. Or didnt the original Athlon XP fall behind the P4? Yes it did. Enter the Athlon 64 and voila, AMD was up to snuff again. Not really because of the clockspeeds, but still.


RE: John Carmack on the future of AMD (1999)
By somegeek on 5/14/2006 8:57:49 AM , Rating: 1
"...Athlon XP fall behind the P4? Yes it did."

No, it didn't. In fact it was having trouble keeping up with the regular Athlons.

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=1524&p=1
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=1543&p=1

The only reason the P4 ever beat an Athlon was because of the larger cache (Q3A) or SSE2 optimizations, not clock speed. Even when it was beaten, it was obvious the Athlon XP 1800 at 1.53 Ghz was a better CPU than a P4 at 2.0 Ghz.


RE: John Carmack on the future of AMD (1999)
By Viditor on 5/14/2006 10:32:36 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
No, it didn't. In fact it was having trouble keeping up with the regular Athlons

It did actually...jump ahead a few months to Northwood, and the very troublesome Thoroughbred rev A, and the P4 wiped the floor with the Athlon. AMD caught up, but Northwood proved to be the pinnacle of the P4 design (it was all downhill from there...).


RE: John Carmack on the future of AMD (1999)
By somegeek on 5/14/2006 12:01:09 PM , Rating: 1
"...P4 wiped the floor..."

No, it didn't, heres the Athlon XP 2000+ 1.67 Ghz vs P4 Northwood 2.0 and 2.2 Ghz.

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=1574&p=2

If you refering to the P4 2.4 vs an Athlon XP 2100+ then it's not a fair comparison, you'd have to compare it to the Athlon XP 2400+. Who has the fastest chip available is meaningless. It's who is giving the most performance per dollar that counts. Who would compare a P4EE to a Sempron?


RE: John Carmack on the future of AMD (1999)
By Viditor on 5/14/2006 12:20:46 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
No, it didn't, heres the Athlon XP 2000+ 1.67 Ghz vs P4 Northwood 2.0 and 2.2 Ghz

I specifically mentioned the Thoroughbred Rev A for a reason though (your link is for the Palomino)...AMD's move to 130nm started out with a lot of pain and the XP was very limited in headroom at that time.


RE: John Carmack on the future of AMD (1999)
By somegeek on 5/14/2006 2:45:36 PM , Rating: 1
How long did that last?


RE: John Carmack on the future of AMD (1999)
By Clauzii on 5/15/2006 10:58:12 PM , Rating: 2
Thanks for reminding me why I still run a XP1800+ and a XP2400+ rig(at OC ~3000+) ... thanks :)


By Clauzii on 5/15/2006 10:59:27 PM , Rating: 2
edit: (at OC ~3000+) is recently tried out, just need a better cooler..


The PS2 was harder to program too.
By somegeek on 5/13/2006 4:36:27 PM , Rating: 1
When the PS2 was launched, people said it was hard to program. Even if it was, there were about 1200 PS2 games produced from 2000-2005 which is more than the XBox and GameCube games combined (xbox ~600, gc ~500). Also, the N64 and GameCube are both easier to program than the PS1 and PS2, but that didn't help them gain the necessary third party support they needed to beat Sony.




RE: The PS2 was harder to program too.
By outsider on 5/13/2006 4:57:11 PM , Rating: 2
If the PS3 strategy was that great, it would have been out by now. Delays show that its a more complex than neccessary architecture.
Very much alike is MS's situation with Vista. And just like Sony, MS hasn't lost any considerable market share. However, do you really think Sony can beat MS simply through its Public Relations and dev support, like MS has done with Linux and Apple? I think it stands no chance. And don't expect the turnover to happen in 2 years, but by 2015 we could see Sony where Nintendo is now.


RE: The PS2 was harder to program too.
By BenSkywalker on 5/13/2006 7:09:23 PM , Rating: 1
quote:
And don't expect the turnover to happen in 2 years, but by 2015 we could see Sony where Nintendo is now.


Do you mean ahead of MS? Which way do you think they will be like Nin? On a global basis MS is very weak in the console market, it appears that you could rig up a calculator with some video out cables and it would sell nearly as well as the 360 has in Japan as an example :) MS does OK in the US market, Sony only outsells them by ~2 or 3 to 1, in Japan it is a much, much larger rift then that.


By Zelvek on 5/13/2006 8:02:35 PM , Rating: 2
Ah that was John Romero not Cramack, Carmack was working on Q2 at the time.


By Griswold on 5/14/2006 5:41:15 AM , Rating: 2
Japan? Japan is a prestige market for MS, no more.


RE: The PS2 was harder to program too.
By neba on 5/13/2006 5:18:08 PM , Rating: 2
outsider; the PS3 is partly delayed due to BlueRay specifications.


By Lonyo on 5/13/2006 6:14:52 PM , Rating: 2
You mean Daikatana, the game by John Romero?
Although it was based on the Q2 engine.


RE: The PS2 was harder to program too.
By outsider on 5/14/2006 10:57:03 AM , Rating: 2
The decision to use Blue Ray at all costs is not much smarter than the one for Cell. They both do more harm than good. After all, even if a game requres 15GB, put it on 2 Double Layer DVDs. The user will need to change the DVD only once at about half game. Not a big deal from my point of view. It'll just put the price down 50$ and make the purchase look less like an investment.
The japanese are as geeky as the americans are. While the americans will buy anything that costs less or is big, the japanese keep buying PS2s out of no logic. The most important market to tell how good a product really is remains Europe. They buy what they need.

I know, I'll get flamed for this post :)


By Clauzii on 5/15/2006 11:00:53 PM , Rating: 2
No U didn´t :)


Ummm
By shaw on 5/13/2006 1:31:56 PM , Rating: 2
Umm, Questar, John Carmack programs his games on consoles and PCs and is one of the most unbiased and well respected developers in the game industry. How does he not get it? I mean the man pretty much invented 3D gaming you stooge.




RE: Ummm
By somegeek on 5/13/2006 5:35:12 PM , Rating: 1
"...invented 3D gaming"

Battlezone - Arcade, 1980
Virtua Fighter - Arcade, 1993
StarFox - SNES, 1993
Playstation, Saturn, 1994

Quake - PC, 1996


RE: Ummm
By peternelson on 5/13/2006 6:22:06 PM , Rating: 2

"invented 3D gaming"

3D monster maze on Sinclair ZX81.

"Rex lies in wait" LOL. Still great gameplay on emulators.


RE: Ummm
By Zelvek on 5/13/2006 7:30:29 PM , Rating: 2
Wolf 3d came out in 1992 granted not the first but the poster did say that he prety much invented meaning he was one of the first not the exact first.


RE: Ummm
By Araxen on 5/15/2006 8:32:42 AM , Rating: 2
"Inventing FPS's" would be a better description.


RE: Ummm
By Questar on 5/14/2006 11:33:26 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
John Carmack programs his games on consoles and PCs


No he doesn't. He's a PC developer. Other companies port id's games.


Carack is a rookie here
By BenSkywalker on 5/13/06, Rating: 0
RE: Carack is a rookie here
By peternelson on 5/13/2006 4:04:29 PM , Rating: 2

Precisely!

Any developer who was coding for PS2 to take FULL advantage of it is very likely to have no difficulty getting their head around cell and will already be used to thinking of how to share different parts of tasks among the processing units available.

Those coming from coding everything with Microsoft DirectX will find it harder. The whole industry is having to move towards multithreading anyway. The fact some of those need to be compiled for a different target does add complexity but not unduly so. The inconvenience is the price you pay for having that power available for use.


RE: Carack is a rookie here
By kepu on 5/13/2006 4:56:28 PM , Rating: 2
Rookie? Oh I dont think so. Perhaps JC have made more work with PC, but difference between PC or console developing aint anymore that huge. Sometimes it can be even easier to code with console, cuz you have that one system, which you have to work with.

And perhaps the reason, why JC main developing platform have been PC is that, what he says at that interview. He said something about that he just didnt like some solutions, which were made with older consoles. I think that atm he is using X360 as his main development platform.

And I think that he didnt whine anything about new generation of consoles were harder than older. But still making game engine to use multiple threads aint that easy . On PC side there is just couple of games, which can gain decent framerates with smp code. Like q4 and some other. Dunno if I remember right, but think that he said something about that he havent tried any ps3 devkits or smt.


RE: Carack is a rookie here
By BenSkywalker on 5/13/2006 6:48:09 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Perhaps JC have made more work with PC, but difference between PC or console developing aint anymore that huge.


This is precisely Carmack's mistake. The rift between the XBox platforms aren't that huge- the PS2 and PS3 are completely different- they aren't even remotely comparable. The RSX is the only thin the PS3 that has more then a passing resemblance of the PC platform, and even that has an entirely different way of interfacing with the system and it takes a very different approach in order to make best use of available bandwidth.


RE: Carack is a rookie here
By Griswold on 5/14/2006 5:32:43 AM , Rating: 3
And what is your console and pc development background? It must be amazing if you know so much about what mistakes carmack makes.


RE: Carack is a rookie here
By Questar on 5/14/2006 11:38:05 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
And what is your console and pc development background? It must be amazing if you know so much about what mistakes carmack makes.


Ha! Who needs a develpment background? Id hasn't make a game that's fun to play for 10 years.

You've been buying their technology demos?


Power Baby
By Pete84 on 5/13/2006 2:51:31 PM , Rating: 3
The most interesting thing for me in this article is his statement that the PS3 has more horsepower. And yet, with a more convoluted development process for games, will they be able to take enough of an advantage of it at release to produce better looking graphics than the Xbox 360 will have in games at the same point, given the extra time developers have had with the Xbox to learn some of the tweaks?




RE: Power Baby
By DRavisher on 5/13/2006 3:43:41 PM , Rating: 2
I agree with Carmack. Programs and games are becoming more and more complex, hardware is becoming faster. It certainly seems like a step back to make it harder to code the same features for the PS3 than it is for the xbox360, a PC or the PS2 (which I assume does not use Sony i5 t3h 1337(tm) programming techniques?). It also sucks that Sony is in effect forcing developers who want to develop cross platform to rewrite almost all of the code. I really wish consumers were better at punishing (that is, stop buying their stuff) asshole companies that do this shit (the PS3 isn't exactly Sonys only product that tries to exclude competition through proprietary technology etc.)


RE: Power Baby
By peternelson on 5/13/2006 4:09:12 PM , Rating: 2

"PS2 (which I assume does not use Sony i5 t3h 1337(tm) programming techniques?)"

Actually as anyone who has coded for PS2 will know, it definitely DOES require use of "Sony i5 t3h 1337" code to make decent games.

With PS3, though it is a new breed of 1337 s0ny haX0r because coders have to get up to speed on the new architecture.


RE: Power Baby
By OvErHeAtInG on 5/13/2006 4:20:07 PM , Rating: 2
as you allude to in your second sentence tho, it was almost the same conversation about the PS2. people were shocked how hard it was to code for at first. xbox and (i assume) GC had a huge advantage at first in terms of ease of programming.

Rewind 6 years and replace "PS3" with "PS2" and I swear I've seen this same thread before. :p


RE: Power Baby
By Lakku on 5/14/2006 2:06:51 AM , Rating: 2
Except this time, Sony doesn't have the large lead time they had with the PS2. As well, the PS One was marketed well and didn't have any real competition, who all didn't seem to take Sony seriously. Come to PS2, and it has a years+ lead time in development of games, which gives people time to learn it. Also, due to their essentially dominating take over from no real competition, they had all the 3rd party support they could ever need. Xbox was a rookie product and not every console can be like the PS One. However, come to today, and everything has turned. Sony is floating on that PS One reputation while MS has the 360 out now and Nintendo has everyone's imagination. Sony is offering nothing new or anything close to the 600 dollar price of admission. thus making this a different thread. The PS3 appears to be in more trouble then people think, because lets face it, 600 dollars is a lot to stomach for, what most people will use it as, a 'simple' game machine. In regards to the Japanese market, no outside company will ever compete with Sony or nintendo, even if Sony or Nintendo offered, as someone said, a calculator with wires coming out of it. This applies to them as well, as they will almost certainly buy anything Japanese before they buy another countries product. It's hard to break through the proudness and complete arrogance they have surrounding their products, so I am not sure why people keep trying.


eh?
By dome1234 on 5/13/2006 5:54:47 PM , Rating: 1
it seems like there are fair number of ppl taken the bait of nowadays common sony bashing. thought he said that it's harder to code for cell that's all, which is common knowledge. I seem to remember the doom and gloom of everyone saying that switching from single threaded game to multi. Seems like the new games coming x360 isn't looking too crappy, although I'm not sure if they're multi threaded, but I would think so.

afterall this is the guy that gave Dai Katana. :D




RE: eh?
By saratoga on 5/13/2006 7:59:39 PM , Rating: 3
quote:
afterall this is the guy that gave Dai Katana. :D


Might want to think a little harder about that:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daikatana


RE: eh?
By MMilitia on 5/14/2006 10:47:59 AM , Rating: 2
Carmack wrote both the Quake 1 and Quake 2 engines which Diakitana used at one time or another but it was develpoped by Ion Storm, a company started by John Romeao (and if you don't know who he is than you are a noob indeed).

In regards to this article I'm inclined to belive almost anything Carmack says - He is not only rediculously smart but he has been at the forefront of gaming almost since the beginning.


RE: eh?
By Rampage on 5/14/2006 2:51:40 PM , Rating: 2
There certainly is no higher authority on gaming development.

Period.


RE: eh?
By Clauzii on 5/15/2006 11:01:38 PM , Rating: 2
True, but he was one of the pioneers :)


I don't think PC gaming came first.
By Dev17 on 5/13/2006 2:11:26 PM , Rating: 2
"pc gaming came first"

I was 99% sure the first Atari came out before the Commodore 64 (old pc capable of gaming).

John Carmack knows a thing or two about games development. What he says carrys weight and can influence many. Do not take his words lightly.




RE: I don't think PC gaming came first.
By sxr7171 on 5/13/2006 2:45:23 PM , Rating: 2
By shadowzz on 5/13/2006 2:54:59 PM , Rating: 2
there's no such thing as pedantic here. lol


By Wahsapa on 5/13/2006 4:54:25 PM , Rating: 2
thanks for the link that proves pc gaming came first.

you just kind of hhave to question the logic of someone who thinks video game machines are not computers...


?
By Kryptonite on 5/13/2006 1:32:22 PM , Rating: 2
John Who?




RE: ?
By ksherman on 5/13/2006 2:12:33 PM , Rating: 2
i said the same thing... too bad he looks like a woman! well, in that picture anyway


RE: ?
By swatX on 5/13/2006 2:41:59 PM , Rating: 3
did you just started touching games from yesterday?

most of the gamers who played quake , doom , qoflestein know him except you


.
By albundee on 5/13/2006 1:07:24 PM , Rating: 2
he's entitled to his opinion.




RE: .
By TheFro on 5/13/2006 1:31:45 PM , Rating: 2
While I may not agree with that you say, I'll defend to the death your right to say it....


RE: .
By JNo on 5/15/2006 10:16:53 AM , Rating: 2
"While I may not agree with that you say, I'll defend to the death your right to say it...."

Please attribute to Voltaire next time before you (mis)quote him...


Well...
By Rapsven on 5/13/2006 1:20:57 PM , Rating: 2
Considering that Questar is the biggest troll of the comments section, it doesn't surprise me that he immediately dismissed one of the most influential figures in gaming.

He IS entitled to his opinion, and game development is his area of expertise. It's not like developing games for consoles is an entirely alien process from PC game design.




RE: Well...
By Wahsapa on 5/13/2006 1:33:14 PM , Rating: 2
not to mention the very fine line between pc and consol. pc gaming came first.

some one please try and explain how a consol is NOT like a very small pc for your living room


RE: Well...
By somegeek on 5/13/2006 7:29:14 PM , Rating: 2
"...very fine line between pc and consol"

Programming a PC is much harder since hardware varies from PC to PC. It's a major difference.


"...how a consol is NOT like a very small pc"

A PC is tool. Tools are for work. Toys are for fun. A console is a toy.


coming from carmack?
By mushi799 on 5/13/2006 3:38:10 PM , Rating: 3
out of all the people in the world, i think carmack would have been up to the challenge, meaning, programming for the ps3.




RE: coming from carmack?
By Clauzii on 5/13/2006 3:51:05 PM , Rating: 2
My thought too really. Maybe he is just trying to say between the lines that it´s more time consuming hence more expensive to develop for PS3 than the well known technoligies.

Even PC programmers have to new ways of thinking when programming for dualcores and up. With time every programmer will be able to code Cells like they now do the PCish stuff.


RE: coming from carmack?
By BenSkywalker on 5/13/2006 6:57:01 PM , Rating: 1
Squenix will likely have ~100 or so programmers per title for the PS3. Carmack tries to do as much of the engine by himself as possible. Certainly extremely admirable, but also out of place when compared against pretty much anyone else nowadays(including Sweeney who has a sizeable team working for him now). I don't think it is viable to ask one man to code a fully featured game for the PS3- no matter how good they are. A half a dozen extremely talented coders may be able to get it done, but they would have to be pushing hard.


programming
By viciouswar on 5/13/2006 2:22:37 PM , Rating: 2
I wonder much time he actually spent with the PS3 Dev kit?....

UT2007 anyone...

$.02
…Okay, with that out of the way... I'll say this, if what Carmack says is true "to take full advantage of the Cell architecture developers must break their code in to "small nuggets"" then damit so be it. It's that simple, why? Well because the Dev kit takes ‘full advantage’ of the Hardware and if I'm correct then you could see games that have a lot more content then its predecessor. What people fail to realize that PS3 comes with BlueRay drive and games will be 10+gb (or even more) with all these Instructions and codes which can go two ways... either the game will have a lot of details or the game will be late and not complete. Remember Dreamcast? Well, I still blame the Developers and not the Hardware; it’s too bad that there aren’t two versions of the Dev Kits, One for dummies and the other one for the enthusiasts…
/$.02




RE: programming
By suryad on 5/14/2006 8:31:16 PM , Rating: 2
UT 2007? That is by Epic. Totally different company. Totally diffferent project leader....Tim Sweeney. Carmack is for ID.


Vitamins anyone?
By lemonadesoda on 5/13/2006 3:18:11 PM , Rating: 2
Looking at the picture, I think Mr. Carmack needs to get a bit of fresh air and excercise. It's a shame to see a legend go to pot like that.

But I do agree with Carmack. A paradigm shift in technology is hard to embrace. And a pain up the ass. Particularly if the performance gains are only in the 10's of % and not 100's of %.

Think of a current analogy... it's much easier to program for controller, or a keyboard and mouse, than it is for the new Wii widgets.

In fact, I'm sure a Wii widget is not as good as a keyboard and mouse for FPS.

However, we are only just beginning to see the opportunities that the Wii widget allows for innovative gameplay and interaction.

If you can step out of the "corridor and scripted monster that jumps out at you" philosphy of programming, then perhaps PS3 cell makes more sense.





AN OPEN LETTER FROM SONY
By erok8150a on 6/9/2006 10:01:14 AM , Rating: 2
AN OPEN LETTER FROM SONY
erok8150a
Posted at 06/08/2006 11:19 PM EDT


AN OPEN LETTER FROM SONY

Recently my inside sources discovered an open letter from SONY head KEN KUTARAGI to his many American supporters.
Supposedly this letter was deleted by Sony?s head of PUBLIC RELATIONS the day before she resigned, for reasons still unknown.
Somehow we?ve gotten a hold of it and here IN ITS ENTIRETY is KEN KUTARAGIs
Impassioned thank you to all of his supporters.

Hello, many of you may perceive me as a cold and calculating executive but believe me when I tell you that I owe my continued success to YOU the playstation faithful.
Never in the history of mankind has their been a more loyal, faithful and sometimes just plain BLIND group of followers than those of you who have chosen to support the PLAYSTATION brand over the years no matter the cost.

In 1999 when I flat out lied to you and told you that PS2 would support AOL CLIENT and that it could produce 75 million polygons a second, none of you even bothered to question how that was possible seeing as at the time the latest PC graphics cards were only pushing 10 million.

You never got mad despite the fact that I drove the SEGA DREAMCAST, a more than worthy competitor out of business with a marketing blitz based more on fantasy than reality, and you especially didn?t get upset when it was revealed that PS2 could only produce 6 million polygons per second and that with the exception of DVD playback and backwards compatibility that PS2 was BARELY superior to DREAMCAST.
After the dreamcast folded, and many a hardcore gamer was left out in the cold, I could comfortably relax in my palatial Kobe estate blissfully comforted by the knowledge that for more than a year and a half the only game in town was my PLAYSTATION 2
And the knowledge that YOU the Sony faithful were blissfully ignorant to it all.

None of you seemed to care that my proposed Hard Drive add on for PS2 only supported one title and that in later PS2 models it would be dropped entirely.
No one seemed to notice the DISC READ errors or that the PS2 read DVD movies at speeds 2x slower than competing DVD products or even the fact that the DUAL SHOCK 2 controller seemed to collapse almost immediately when plugged into your PS2 and the power was turned on.

As I sailed off to my impregnable island fortress I counted my blessings [ and your cash]
Relieved that no one except true hardcore gamers had figured out that I had pulled a FAST ONE, I had used PS2 as a Trojan horse to sell SONY DVD players at an increased premium to an unsuspecting public.

In 2001 even though MICROSOFT and NINTENDO had far superior products in their X BOX and GAMECUBE offerings you never even noticed them, because thanks to a small company called ROCKSTAR and GRAND THEFT AUTO, millions of gamers everywhere decided that they would rather pick up badly pixilated hookers and shoot poorly animated pizza delivery guys rather than play HALO and METROID PRIME, two of the greatest video games ever developed.

In 2005 at E3 you never bothered to question how in Odin?s name it was possible for the recently announced PS3 to be twice as powerful as X BOX 360 when both machines were in development at approximately the same time, and that we had chosen to use an off the shelf PC graphics chip in PS3 rather than a custom built GPU like MICROSOFT.
Even more baffling still no one seemed to question the KILLZONE demo and that finished video games almost NEVER look that good in the early stages of development, or the fact that even as I stated these bold face lies no one noticed my nose was growing.

You seemed to look the other way when I promised you a spring launch knowing full well that the PS3 was a figment of my imagination and that spring 2006 may as well have been spring 2116.
I was especially taken aback when one of my OWN DEVELOPERS, the traitorous JOSH ROBINSON had broken NDA and blurted out that my PS3 was a jangled mess to develop for and that developers preferred X BOX 360.
You immediately and ferociously attacked ROBINSON and to this very day anyone who puts a negative spin on PS3 via the internet is attacked feverishly by you my PLAYSTATION faithful.
Amazingly In April 2006 when I finally revealed that the spring launch was actually a joke and that you would really be waiting five to six more months you didn?t blow your top. Hell you said, if we?ve waited this long why not wait several more months for KEN to come to market.
This Ages old delay tactic goes by several names, BUY IN and BAIT and SWITCH.

Thank you for putting up with my lackey PHIL HARRISON who?s only joy in life appears to be using a public forum like the media to insult your intelligence on a now DAILY basis.
Thank you for defaulting on your student loans and continually finding ways to justify to yourself why my $600 dollar PS3 is a steal for YOU, a minimum wage gas station attendant.
Thank you for not blowing your stack when I said that PS3 was not for households and that even though I make more money in one nano second than you and your entire family will ever see in a thousand generations , that you will want to work harder At your rewarding career at WAL MART to afford my PS3.

Thank you for not getting too upset with GAMESTOP, E BAY and BABBAGES this fall when they RAPE you for $800 dollars for the PS3 core bundle packed with RIDGE RACER 6 , METAL GEAR SOLID THE LOST CHAPTERS and the BLU RAY copy of HOODWINKED?.how APPROPRIATE.
Thank you for not noticing that for the past 10 years that instead of innovating, we have instead milked you for every dime in your possession, EMOTION ENGINE, CELL PROCESSOR, PSP UMD anyone.

Thank you for feverishly defending BLU RAY, a format SO expensive, questionable and costly that only the BIGGEST movie studios will support it, and so dubious that TOSHIBA, THE DVD BOARD , APPLE and MICROSOFT had enough sense to get as far away from it as humanly possible.
Thank you for ignoring MICROSOFT and their ever growing developer support and vast selection of TRIPPLE A games, if you continue to tell yourself that GEARS OF WAR, FABLE and HALO 3 is overrated perhaps sooner or later you just might believe it.

I look forward to fall 2006,and the PS3s eventual release, and despite the lack of any REAL online strategy or even a third of the launch titles we promised I just know that YOU the PAYSTATION faithful [ I mean Playstation faithful ] will be there that morning CASH IN HAND to support my continuing legacy.

DOMO ORIGOTO MR ROBOTO???..
KEN KUTARAGI





.....
By Techno on 5/13/06, Rating: 0
Snooze...
By Questar on 5/13/06, Rating: -1
RE: Snooze...
By DRavisher on 5/13/2006 1:10:53 PM , Rating: 2
What is it he does not get?


RE: Snooze...
By Questar on 5/13/06, Rating: -1
RE: Snooze...
By ahkey on 5/13/2006 1:28:15 PM , Rating: 4
Quake 4 and Doom 3 were also console games, or do the Xbox and 360 not count because they're not Sony?


RE: Snooze...
By Exodus220 on 5/13/2006 3:39:46 PM , Rating: 1
If I recall correctly, Id was not the company responsible for the porting of those games to the console systems. I am pretty sure it was a different company that handled the port...can anyone back me up on this one?


RE: Snooze...
By Hypernova on 5/13/2006 6:12:55 PM , Rating: 2
The name of that comapny is in an xbox for doom3 articale somewhere in HardOCP.


RE: Snooze...
By Wahsapa on 5/13/2006 1:30:46 PM , Rating: 5
john carmack builds mother f-ing rockets in his free time, not only does he 'get it', he 'gets it' for a lot of other things

sony is the one that doesnt 'get it', to most of us this is obvious...


RE: Snooze...
By Exodus220 on 5/13/06, Rating: 0
RE: Snooze...
By CZroe on 5/13/2006 4:07:31 PM , Rating: 4
YOU my friend, were not competing for the X-Prize.

I, too, built rockets using cardboard tubes, balsa wood fins, and nose cones. It's called *MODEL* rocketry. You know this. It's such an established hobby, even Wal-Mart has sold the kits and engines since I was a kid (Last 15 years at least). Get over yourself. Neither you nor I were developing the chemical compounds from hydrogen peroxide that will take a man into sub-orbit. You and I were not even building our own solid-fuel engines. We were buying pre-built engines. To save money, I contemplated building my own and even ordered the instructional books from the back of magazines. I gave up when I realized that I was no chemist.

I would never DREAM of equating a Wal-Mart hobby sold right there with the snap together Star Trek models with a genuine aerospace engineering attempt to put a man in space. You knew the difference and still tried to portray yourself that way. You have some ego.

John Carmack and the other Armadillo Aerospace group may not have won the X-Prize, but let me tell you that rockets with the potential and intention for a manned flight into space didn't come from your Junior High class.

Whee! I'm smarter than the president just because I dissagree (my decision must be the smarter one)! Oh wait... He went to what Ivory League school? OK. Whee! I'm smarter than John Carmack!


RE: Snooze...
By Zelvek on 5/13/2006 7:20:48 PM , Rating: 2
He builds rather large one's the size of cars ones that big are very tedious to build as they lose control in high altitudes far more easy than a modle rocket does.


RE: Snooze...
By Griswold on 5/14/2006 5:20:54 AM , Rating: 2
I think he is talking about rockets that can reach the higher levels of the athmosphere - if not leave it. Thats not something you do in high school.


RE: Snooze...
By peternelson on 5/13/2006 3:55:07 PM , Rating: 3
Some of us have worked on guidance systems for REAL missile systems, (the intelligent ones that fly and blow things up) not some "toy" rockets that any kid or enthusiast can do in their garden.

Having said that, ability to fly rockets has ABSOLUTELY ZERO relevance to who is the best games programmer or how hard coding for particular platforms is. So why on earth is this being mentioned in the thread?


RE: Snooze...
By Googer on 5/13/2006 3:15:04 PM , Rating: 3
Is it just me or does John Carmack look just like Jamie Lee Curtis?


RE: Snooze...
By Googer on 5/13/2006 3:16:01 PM , Rating: 5
Or Janet Reno.


RE: Snooze...
By tuteja1986 on 5/15/2006 1:47:22 AM , Rating: 2
Warhammer Online Age of Reckoning was running on xbox 360 and developers only wanted to see if it could be done and it only took 6 week to port it on xbox 360 and it was running smooth and looking good. The game is huge MMO and looks awesome but the funny thing is that its very easy to port game from pc to xbox 360.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6151181.html

"Mythic is not announcing an Xbox 360 version of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, but in what was purportedly a period of only six weeks, the developer has managed to get its game up and running on Microsoft's new console simply to prove that it can be done."


lol
By Griswold on 5/13/2006 1:20:38 PM , Rating: 1
Thank God we have Questar who knows it all about game coding. Thats also why you made millions with games and have a couple Ferraris in your garage. Oh wait, no you dont.


RE: lol
By peternelson on 5/13/2006 3:45:56 PM , Rating: 5

PS3 is asymmetric, but PS2 was also, so no big deal.

The only issue for games developers is not "can we code it for cell" but the problem that when making the same game for multiple platforms, the relevant parts have to be written twice ie once for Cell, once for PC.

This is a valid consideration, but not insurmountable as the number of games for PS2 shows. Assuming the PS3 has a big enough user base, it's worth making the effort to code games well for that processor.

John is not saying it's not worth it, he's saying it takes extra effort (in particular effort in addition to coding it for the pc which will probably be the case for his games.) For a developer who purely targets PS3, then it still only requires to be coded once so exclusive titles don't suffer this disadvantage.

The cell architecture is likely to suit particular genres of games better than others. We will find that out when we see what the titles play like.


RE: lol
By saratoga on 5/13/2006 7:51:23 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
PS3 is asymmetric, but PS2 was also, so no big deal.


Wow. Understatement of the year. The PS2 was asymetric in the sense that the Xbox 360 is now. It has a single additional processor in addition to the MIPS/FPU/VU hybrid core that serves as the CPU (technically I believe you could also detach the VU0, but I don't think that was the intended mode of operation, someone correct me if I'm not remembering the hardware details right). However, this processor acts as essentially an upgraded GPU. So yeah, programming for a GPU isn't too bad as far as symetric multiprocessing goes, but its NOT what anyone here is talking about.

If it were that easy, we'd all be using Cell.

quote:
John is not saying it's not worth it, he's saying it takes extra effort (in particular effort in addition to coding it for the pc which will probably be the case for his games.) For a developer who purely targets PS3, then it still only requires to be coded once so exclusive titles don't suffer this disadvantage.


You're overlooking the cost here. The price of developeing games has been exploding for a decade now. Games that could be developed by small teams now require huge organizations and long developement cycles. The industry is looking for way to keep costs reasonable because the risks of investing so much into one game are enormous. Sony is basically flipping a lot of these companies the finger and expecting them to get in line and pay the added costs imposed by their hardware out of their revenue. Its not surprising a lot of people are skeptical.


RE: lol
By Questar on 5/14/06, Rating: 0
RE: Snooze...
By creathir on 5/13/2006 1:59:28 PM , Rating: 1
What exactly do you think they are doing?
Is he talking about his PC game? No... he is discussing the differences between Sony's dev process and the dev process of just about EVERY OTHER system out there. It sounds really screwy how the PS3 is developed. It is true that you should be programming in small "nuggets" (break the code apart for performance reasons and reusability) but to have MULTIPLE compilers for a single program... this seems rather tedious. Unless its a clean IDE (which it very well may be... having never used it, I cannot complain too much) it would be more of a hinderance than a good thing for the developers. Should be interesting to see if the PS3 will easily run Linux as the PS2 did... given the rumored complexities involved in the programming process.
- Creathir


RE: Snooze...
By peternelson on 5/13/2006 3:36:07 PM , Rating: 3

Linux ALREADY runs on CELL *including* support for programming and running threads on the SPEs.

Needed compilers etc to do this in linux were written and made available by IBM.

Yes it requires you to THINK about what you will run on main core versus SPEs, but there were similar considerations with programming the PS2, which once people understood it and got used to exploiting it they milked that performance for their games apps.


RE: Snooze...
By Eris23007 on 5/14/2006 9:28:26 PM , Rating: 2

Do you have one? My group has been trying to get a cell-based linux system for like a year now to evaluate for our signal processing applications. So far, aside from the $$$$$$$$ and non-linux Mercury solutions, no dice...

Would love to get my hands on a linux cell system to play with...


RE: Snooze...
By Zelvek on 5/13/2006 2:13:29 PM , Rating: 2
wtf John Carmack doesn't get it? are you retarded do you even know what symetrical and asymetrical means? John carmack is known as one of the smartest most inovative programers in the gaming industry he is always coming up with new ways to do technical improvments in games and the engiens which he builds are some of the best and most used in the industry. As some one else has said he builds rockets in his free time not to see them blow up or fly but for the technical challenges.


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