Re X-Box vs PS3 vs the Wii what is the hardest platform to write/develop for? Just curious.
According to most devs who have been quoted on the subject, the PS3 seems to be the platform that fits the bill.
It’s pretty unanimous, they all think it’s a bitch to develop for. I’m not sure why though. It might be a combination of the API dev kit, and the cell processor architecture.
It isn’t just the architecture of the Cell, it is also that there are six or seven cores to juggle stuff between. To get any sort of performance out of the PS3 developers have to throw out a lot of their old ideas about processes for single core architectures and fully embrace parallel processing.
They also need to do an insane amount of memory tweaking because of the lack of memory in the PS3.
They continually need to push and pull stuff in and out of memory.
Which is an awesome thing to have to do when dealing with the slower read times of a Blu Ray drive…
That said, while the PS3 is probably harder to develop for, the Wii is clearly the winner on hardest to DESIGN for, since it seems like the game design world has yet to wrap its head around the Wiimote.
Honestly, the Wiimore is probably a nightmare to get right. The abstract design is easy - but figuring out how to adjust it to be just right for the game as well as players of vaarying body size and motions…
Argh, no.
Actually, I do research with accelerometers very similar to the ones in the Wii. I have to write programs (in Matlab, no less) that can recognize a whole bunch of different possible events, and it’s pretty easy. The Wii uses (I think) an ADXL-330 or 335, which I’ve used before. They’re not all that difficult to program for, the problem I think is building a game around these inputs. It shouldn’t be a replacement for a controller, but an alternative, and I think a lot of developers get that very, very wrong.
I think this is a very good point. The playstation definitely has the most difficult architecture to program for, even back in the PSX days it was getting complaints. They just don’t build the system that intelligently. On the other side of the spectrum you have the X360, which is the easiest to program for due to the fact that it runs basically like a windows PC with a more limited OS.
The Wii is in the middle. I don’t think it’s terribly difficult to program for, even when it comes to using the new input methods, it’s building a game around these inputs that throws developers for a loop. They simply don’t know what to do with it because it’s so different from other systems (for better or worse, that’s a whole other can of worms). A few people have gotten it right, but they’re few and far between (and mostly under the Nintendo umbrella of developers). For the most part people just replace a Quicktime Event button press with a QTE wiimote waggle or something equally mundane and stupid. The system has weaker power but the advantage of a new control scheme, the problem being that developers know how to take advantage of power but not different control schemes
If you’re talking coding, that’s one thing; but for developing game IDEAS, it’s obviously the Wii hands down. Everything on the Xbox 360 and PS3 is just sequels upon sequels, but developers still don’t know what to do with the Wii.
I think that’s a little unfair. I’ll grant there are a lot of 'em, but there are some innovative new games/IPs. Mirror’s Edge, for instance, even with it’s faults. Assassin’s Creed and Prince of Persia (same name as the older series but a completely different game at the core of it), Dead Space, etc.
Agreed. My favourite game of this generation so far has been Fallout 3. In name it is a sequel but in reality it has changed the format quite radically. Enough so that many fans of the older Fallout games hate it for changing too much.
Then there’s the likes of Gears of War, which started out on the 360.
Oh…I thought we were sharing canole recipes!
Tossed this question to a contract programming friend of mine that the 360 wins for easiest. He specifically mentioned the ability to program those amazingly fun and simple Xbox Live games. Its a god send for small developers apparently, or people who are trying to get some experience…
He said the ps3 was a bitch for the above mentioned technical reasons, and the Wii he had no experience on…