Sony: Developers Requested x86 Architecture for PS4
The Official PlayStation Magazine recently conducted an interview with Michael Denny, vice president of Sony’s Worldwide Studios. They talked about the hardware behind the upcoming PlayStation 4, revealing that the developer community actually requested the x86-based platform.
Looking back, this demand for an x86-based platform really is no surprise given how many complaints Sony received regarding the PlayStation 3's hardware. Sony co-developed the Cell Broadband Engine Architecture, AKA Cell, with Toshiba and IBM. It combines a general-purpose Power Architecture Core with streamlined coprocessing elements and a memory coherence architecture.
The PlayStation 3's Cell configuration includes one Power Processor Element on the core, and eight physical Synergistic Processing Elements in silicon. Developers have called this environment "challenging" which in turn reduced support for the PlayStation 3 and seemingly allowed the Xbox 360 to win the console wars.
Apparently one of the complaints heard repeatedly by developers, especially in the early days of the PlayStation 3, was that it was difficult to fit Sony's console within a PC-focused pipeline. "That’s certainly one of the points of feedback that developers had in when we were discussing in the early days of what PlayStation 4 architecture should be," Denny admitted. "But, as I say, the main thing was looking at the state of the art CPU and GPU, with ease of development."
Despite the upcoming console's PC-based guts, it's not going to be a desktop PC out-of-the-box, but a dedicated gaming console. Ultimately what this means for gamers is that they'll likely not see crappy ports, as developers can now better use their resources to create one baseline game and add specific platform–based features. Sony actually co-developed the PlayStation 4's APU with AMD, so expect some platform-specific surprises.
"I think that we learn from all the platforms we launch and systems we’ve developed," he told the magazine. "Part of PlayStation 4 is learning from previous platforms and making things better. Then part of it is the new experience as well, adding extra features, and you put those together for a much better package and much better experience for the gamer."
At the end of the day, it's about the output, he added. It's about having the best creators and development teams, the best games and the best experiences no matter what's under the console hood. But having 8 GB of high speed system memory doesn't hurt.
"[That] is just a massive win for developers in terms of the sort of games they can create, and the ease of game development," he said.
I am excited to see what Microsoft offers too. Xbox 720 with X86 could have a huge advantage over Sony if they setup their games to work both on the Xbox and Windows for one price, or something along those lines(I doubt that though).
Developers must have hated that CELL processor garbage with the PS3.
I feel like Nintendo can't make a good console anymore, Wii systems were real let downs, people shouldn't buy those.
I am excited to see what Microsoft offers too. Xbox 720 with X86 could have a huge advantage over Sony if they setup their games to work both on the Xbox and Windows for one price, or something along those lines(I doubt that though).
Developers must have hated that CELL processor garbage with the PS3.
I feel like Nintendo can't make a good console anymore, Wii systems were real let downs, people shouldn't buy those.
You realize Microsoft gets a cut off of games sold for the X-Box, right? You realize Microsoft won't even let you sell your game to someone else and have it usable on the 720, right?
But, you think they'll allow Sony games to run on their console, given that, and the fact they don't even know the precise hardware intricacies of the PS4, and don't have the development time left to do anything even if they did, considering they should be selling these machines in the near term.
This isn't going to happen. No way.
Don't know why you were downvoted, but you were absolutely right about the PS2/3. It was kinda funny----Sony had massive success with the PSX because it was incredibly easy to make games for---single efficient CPU and single feature laden, powerful Graphics chip. AND they had a good developer toolset.
So then what did Sony do? Completely ignore one of the most important reasons they dominated the Saturn (which was a hodgepodge of oddly slapped together silicon, and difficult developer tools), and put out the PS2, which made nothing easy for developers with its odd Graphics Synthesizer + Emotion Engine combo. When utilized to their full potential, the EE + GS could be quite potent. It was just very difficult and time consuming to do so. Same with PS3--a new, odd type of cpu that made its competition (360) look easy to optimize by comparison.
At least they've apparently FINALLY learned from their mistakes.
There is nothing wrong using x86 platform as it's been enhanced over the years with additional instruction sets. But the biggest difference here is that the APU/GPU is the one is driving the game not just the CPU.
You aren't considering the game purchases vs the console sales itself. AFAIK to this date Sony is still losing a decent amount of money anytime somebody buys a PS3. Last I looked, the game purchases to console purchase ratio was not good for the PS3 vs say, the X360. And I'm pretty sure the 360 console has always caused less of a loss for Microsoft for each sold (simpler design), which furthers Sony's defecit.
Dont get me wrong, I love my PS3 and its media streaming abilities. It just hasnt done as well as expected in turning a profit for Sony vs the cost of making the machine.
Did you think I implied Sony games run on XBOX? No, I said games that will work on both the Xbox and PC for one price would be pretty big advantage for the console. Games on both PC and 720 for the price of one, MS could easily set that up.
And i hope that next PS will not be bombarded with generified FPS games.. and rehashed games... since it's now a PC architecture.
Err...the Atari Jaguar was 64-bits, so was N64. Dreamcast was the first 128-bit console, and so is PS2....but number of bits in CPU does not means better performance. It simply means extra registers to play around in the CPU. XBOX was 32-bit Pentium 3...but it ownz both PS2 and GameCube. Even PC's 64-bit games doesn't means it's better than their 32-bits counterpart. It simply means it can access > 4GB RAM....And no consoles to date have that much memory.
Regardless the hardware, it's the software that counts. Consoles will still have exclusive. SONY/MS/Ninterndo will make sure of that, regardless if it's the same PC hardware inside. Furthermore, next gen consoles will bring features like better motion detection (Kinect 2). And this is not supported on a mass market yet on the PC.
Regardless the hardware, it's the software that counts. Consoles will still have exclusive. SONY/MS/Ninterndo will make sure of that, regardless if it's the same PC hardware inside. Furthermore, next gen consoles will bring features like better motion detection (Kinect 2). And this is not supported on a mass market yet on the PC.
I agree with you... consoles has more game genre i think...