> The PS3 failed developers because it was an excessively heterogenous computer; and low level heterogeneous compute resists composability.
Is cell really so different from computer shaders with something like Vulkan? I feel if a performance-competitive cell were made today, it might not receive so much hate, as people today are more prepared for its flavour of programming. Nowadays we have 8 to 16 cores, more on P/E setups, vastly more on workstation/server setups, and we have gpu’s and low level gpu APIs. Cell came out in a time when dual core was the norm and engines still did multi threading by having a graphics thread and a logic thread.
Comparing the SPEs to compute shaders is reasonable but ignores what they were for. Compute shaders are almost exclusively used for graphics in games. Sony was asking people to implement gameplay code on them.
The idea the PS3 was designed around did not match the reality of games. They were difficult to work with, and taking full advantage of the SPEs was very challenging. Games are still very serial programs. The vast majority of the CPU work can't be moved to the SPUs like it was dreamed.
Very often games were left with a few trivially parallel numerical bits of code on the SPEs, but stuck with the anemic PPE core for everything else.
Maybe in 15 years someone crazy enough will be delving in and building games that fully utilize every last aspect of the hardware. Like this person does on the N64: https://youtube.com/@kazen64?si=bOSdww58RNlpKCNp
Yes, especially exclusives like Uncharted, Demon Souls, Heavy Rain, Ni No Kuni, Metal Gear solid 4. They were definitely developed for Xbox, that version was kept secret and only the PS3 version was published due to Sony bribes.
I'd like to thank the above devs for going through the pain of developing those titles that entertained me back then...
There were some gems. I owned a PS3 and had tons of fun. Nothing in this discussion speaks directly to the entertainment value of good Sony exclusives or cross-console ports. Many people don’t care one ounce about a minor performance deficit. Deep breath.
Yeah usually only first party studios have the time, money, and access for that (Naughty Dog being a prime example thereof in the Sony universe).
"a game available for both Xbox and PS3."
The "both" part means they aren't talking about exclusives.
Funnily enough the opposite of this did actually happen at least once: https://archive.org/details/gears-of-war-3-ps3