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Comment by mackman | Hacker News Reader

Pretty useless video. The dev kits had both a Linux PC and a PS2 target board in the same chassis. These guys never got past the Linux login prompt. Now the PS3 dev kits were more interesting. I used a second gen one, a stainless steel box about the size of 4-6 large pizza boxes stacked up. The first gen was twice that height.

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PS3 dev kit was my first console dev experience, pretty late in the cycle so the dev kit looked like a beefy consumer model. We had one of the second gen ones in the office though. I miss really getting to know the machine and working with the spus, now that consoles are really just pcs it loses that special feeling of really taking advantage of the hardware - however that's just nostalgia, I don't really want to go back to that, but I do have fond memories

It is ironic that modern consoles are so close to PCs now, but PC games were much more popular back then. Nowadays there are hardly any big PC exclusives anymore, and many console ports are lousy, despite the extremely similar hardware. I guess much fewer people own PCs nowadays.

There are lots of PC exclusive games that are immensely popular, and I'd argue some of the most popular games in the world. csgo, valorant, league of legends, etc.

I think the reason why you won't see any big exclusives on PC is that because consoles are close to PCs, big games should be ported to console otherwise you're missing out on huge markets.

Beyond the live service type games I mentioned earlier, there's also a ton of smaller indie-AA type titles that are PC exclusive. Even that is dwindling down though since porting gets easier and easier for indie devs

> I think the reason why you won't see any big exclusives on PC is that because consoles are close to PCs, big games should be ported to console otherwise you're missing out on huge markets.

Yeah, but today it is mostly the other way round: Big console games get ported to PC. Exceptions like Cyberpunk 2077 (which was a PC-first development) are increasingly rare. Smaller games are another matter.

There's still plenty to learn about and deep dive into, even with the current batch of consoles. The most obvious difference that is openly available to talk about is unified memory. Sure it exists on some PC platforms, but you can't rely on it being there.

> These guys never got past the Linux login prompt.

Logging in to the Linux side isn't even part of normal use for a PS2 TOOL. The Linux system runs the RPC so you can connect it as a target in ProDG or whatever, then it pokes your code into the memory of the PS2 side.

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