PS3 offers limitless power, says Factor 5
by Nick Doerr 
{ Apr 16th 2007 at 5:00PM }
- Factor 5 sought the most powerful of the next-gen systems -- in fact, it's implied that they started a game for the 360 before beginning production on Lair because Sony was so quiet about the PS3 at first.
- The see a lot of risk in Lair because it's unusual and defies classical categorization by genre. They've never been a multi-million unit selling company, either. But they find a good number of rewards, too. Seamless world, new genre, air to ground combat, combat systems, and the choice of the PlayStation 3 can be both a risk and a reward... depending.
- Have they found out what the PS3 can do? Not yet, they say, but "the PS 3 has more of the situation where you could go another six months easily and forever. You can get so much more power. RSX is a known quantity. But Cell is pretty limitless at this point."
- Poor port quality from 360 to PS3 has become an obvious issue, but PS3-specific titles look so much better. Eggebrecht explains the situation: "They created the 360 engine with a unified memory architecture in mind, with the embedded frame buffer with its advantages and disadvantages, and not thinking too much in early stages about multicore. If you try to get that over to the PS3, you're in for a bad surprise. The PS 3 is all about streamlining about the two different memory pools. They are separate. You don't have to do tiling because you don't have an embedded frame buffer. All of these advantages of the PS3 turn into disadvantages if you don't start making your game on the PS3. If you create first on the PS3, it is pretty easy to port it to the 360."
- What will we see in Lair not seen in other PS3 titles? Scale, really. Going from 20,000 feet down to the ground and keeping a consistent level of detail is pretty amazing. All lighting is calculating in real-time, giving a nice day-night cycle. Not to mention fluid water dynamics.
- Compared to Gears of War, Eggebrecht cites scale as the difference -- GoW is based on moving slowly from corridor to corridor (metaphors, though there is a lot of that anyway), Lair gives you a 32x32 kilometer bubble to explore with detail kept throughout, at extreme speeds.
- This scale allows for more non-linear play, with vague mission goals, unlike the linear fashion GoW plays out.
- Multiplayer is just leaderboards and chat -- they want online multiplayer, but are having trouble getting the streaming and latency issues out of the way.
- The SIXAXIS sounds great -- their implementation is pretty impressive but they realize it can be overdone... so expect an option to turn it off, but no promises.
Cool. Long, but cool. Not sure why they kept going back to Gears of War for comparisons, but if you think of it on the macro scale, it does sound equally as impressive. Anyway, if you want to get much more in-depth answers, check out the interview in its entirety. It's pretty big.
[Via GameDaily]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Dolla Dolla @ Apr 16th 2007 5:31PM
--"All of these advantages of the PS3 turn into disadvantages if you don't start making your game on the PS3. If you create first on the PS3, it is pretty easy to port it to the 360."
This ... is a problem.
I can understand now why Capcom decided not to port Lost Planet and Dead Rising to the PS3, and why PS3 games are going multiplatform.
It's nice to know the Cell is "limitless" though. Just remember development cycles aren't. It all comes down to time and money.
Geoff Gibson @ Apr 16th 2007 5:35PM
I am just hoping the game is better than that other infamous "Dragon Flying" game on the PS2. It was amde by Square I think.
It was god awful.
Sounds neat though, can't wait to see the game in action.
John @ Apr 16th 2007 5:37PM
It's always nice when developers make an effort to take advantage of a platform's strengths. July can't come soon enough. :D
Triforceowner @ Apr 16th 2007 5:49PM
Can you die in this game? That was a serious question. When you jump off your dragon and kill another dragon with your sword-like weapon, I never see the player (as dragon rider) tumble to his death. Anyone ever see the player die?
Stef Geiger @ Apr 16th 2007 6:00PM
This game looks better and better. I'm really excited as I think it's the first non sports/racing title to do 1080i/p. It's a reasonably original concept that looks like it'll be pretty fun to play.
silence @ Apr 16th 2007 6:12PM
I don't really see the appeal with this game? It looks like its a amazing looking title but flying around on a dragon for more then an hour seems kinda boring. IMO, seems a tad over rated....
SuicideNinja @ Apr 16th 2007 6:13PM
"Limitless" is probably a bad choice word to describe the cell. It gives the wrong idea. "Unknown" is more appropriate.
64k was once thought to be enough memory. Yeah, I know who said that. I'm sure a similar jive was said about the PS2 though and it's x number of polygons etc.
The problem was identified immediately with the first comment. If PS3 games have to be written FOR the PS3, that doesn't look good to publishers. They want to hit as many consumers as possible, which is why we are seeing a higher interest in PC ports from Xbox 360 titles. It takes less money to do with Microsoft's quality development tools, mainly because it takes less time. It also means that PS3 programming will be the odd one out, leaving developers that don't have the exclusive commitments and with less drive to put out a quality product.
We'll see some high quality PS3-specific games (Probably Final Fantasy XIII, XIV, and some new IP's), but the 360 will probably end up being the realistic gaming route for everything else (like the PS2 was for most people). Well...then there's the Wii...I don't know...it seems pretty quiet for the moment.
Makes you wonder how complicated all of this will be next time. LOL
eddy_88_nite @ Apr 16th 2007 6:24PM
Sounds promising to me and i don't see a down side to this game.
SpeZek @ Apr 16th 2007 6:27PM
Just remember everyone: This is Factor 5. What they can do is not necessarily what all devs can do. I'm sure you've all heard of Star Wars Rogue Squadron II for the 'cube right? 15 million polygons / sec, more than any other game on the 'cube, and it was a launch game. No game matched it last gen. Factor 5 is the master of programming.
bootsielon @ Apr 16th 2007 6:32PM
That sounds awesome. Rogue Squadron games were great, and I can't wait for this one, especially because it's original IP and it has dragons.
alienclay @ Apr 16th 2007 6:33PM
what if, some 2-3 years from now, a game came out that met or overshadoded the power and quality of the demo videos shown at E3 05.
what if the killzone video (quality of ai/gameplay/graphics not nessasarly KZ), became a reality in 08.
what if,.....
at least it not like sony put 2 identical cpu processors on the same data bus at the last second like some other prior console manufacturer.
massive_98 @ Apr 16th 2007 6:53PM
Factor 5 was Nintendo's last out of house devoloper. Sony has won a huge battle in securing Factor 5 for PS3.
Factor 5 also would have made this game for 360 had it not been for the last minute motion senser idea.
Lair looks really fun,but not that pretty.
Wonderflex @ Apr 16th 2007 6:59PM
@ Silence - "I don't really see the appeal with this game? It looks like its a amazing looking title but flying around on a dragon for more then an hour seems kinda boring. IMO, seems a tad over rated...."
Although this game is not Oblivion, I think it will share a lot of it's appeal in reguards to the fact that it will give a very open ended feel. In Oblivion you can either walk, run, ride, or quick-travel, on it's giant map. It let's you get more immersed in the game. And for those who wish to just get things over and done with I would hope they would include a fast-travel system in this game as well.
scott @ Apr 16th 2007 7:00PM
Lair piqued my interest at first, but after seeing the game play footage I must say I'm extremely underwhelmed. Looks incredibly fake (Dragons shooting fireballs? Dragons shoot streams of fire in front of them!), mundane, and repetitive. Not to mention the on the ground scenes look hideous. You can see the tile grass textures and every soldier looks identical.
Wonderflex @ Apr 16th 2007 7:16PM
@ scott
Last time I saw a dragon at the zoo it was shooting a fireball. Also the ones on Planet Earth shoot balls as well.
silence @ Apr 16th 2007 7:19PM
@Wonderflex
This game will not be as open ended as Oblivion by the sounds of it. This looks like an action game, not an RPG. Scott is thinking what I'm thinking...
"Lair piqued my interest at first, but after seeing the game play footage I must say I'm extremely underwhelmed. Looks incredibly fake (Dragons shooting fireballs? Dragons shoot streams of fire in front of them!), mundane, and repetitive. Not to mention the on the ground scenes look hideous. You can see the tile grass textures and every soldier looks identical."
I think this game will end up getting very repetitive and I don't understand how this can really go that deep. Traditionally dragon games have sucked. The comparisons to Gear of War scare me too. It seems like they pay to much attention to other games and not their own. You never heard the GOW Dev's say "Our game will be better then this game". Honestly, I’m still waiting for a game that I can sink my teeth into. This however is not it...
Sacha Masgrau @ Apr 16th 2007 8:03PM
-"All of these advantages of the PS3 turn into disadvantages if you don't start making your game on the PS3. If you create first on the PS3, it is pretty easy to port it to the 360."
This ... is a problem. - Dolla Dolla
Maybe I'm being dense here but I don't get how this is that much of a surprise. When Nintendo released the Wii(which I also own), everyone realized that 3rd parties were going to have to recode everything for the system or their games will fail.
If developers don't want to reprogram their code, then they will obviously lose out on reaching an audience. In the end, I guess I just don't get why everyone is blaming the Cell processor as the culprit for making multiplatform games hard to program. Each console is reaching a different demographic and developers should react accordingly.
Sorry for the rant.
-Sem
Time @ Apr 16th 2007 8:17PM
@SuicideNinja
well that didn't take long, "oh look a skilled developer saying something good about the ps3, lets quickly try and spin it into how this is really bad for sony"
So let me get this straight, Games Designed for the ps3 which would probably be of the highest quality, because it was built from the ground up for the ps3 will be bad because publishers would have a hard time porting (milking) the game to other platforms..........
either way you try to slice it, this is a good comment and good view from an actual game developer and not some ranting of some Internet geek that probably doesn't even know how to write a javascript
I remember reading some comments from developers that said that developing for the ps3 was actually easier then the ps2 and we all know how the ps2 turned out.....my point is that there are developers that think the ps3 is impossible to program for and others think that it's not really at that bad, but of course the media only report the ones that bitch about it......bias anyone?
"Factor 5 sought the most powerful of the next-gen systems -- in fact, it's implied that they started a game for the 360 before beginning production on Lair because Sony was so quiet about the PS3 at first"
That comment is pretty self-explanatory and should at least silence a few xbots
if you buy a $600 dollar console, wouldn't you want games EXCLUSIVE for that system, if you buy a $400 (360) dollar console wouldn't you want some EXCLUSIVE games for that consloe, if you buy a $250 dollar conlose wouldn't you want some damn EXCLUSIVE games for that console?
if everything or hell half of all games go multiplatprom wouldn't you want the cheapest one (wii) because hell they are practically the same games?, leaving the 360 and fanboys looking like idiots
"They want to hit as many consumers as possible, which is why we are seeing a higher interest in PC ports from Xbox 360 titles."
No it sounds like they are milking their games and that the 360 is some kind of wannabe PC, if 70% of the 360 games (Very Popular Games) end up on PC ( fuck I heard a rumor that Gears might go to PC) then I say it it's trying to be an wannabe PC
Besides, these games are already Great Selling Games, it's a good chance that they made a good profit off of them already, So I say they are just milking them at this point
I am not really a PC gamer but if was to chose between the 360 and an High-End PC, I would chose the PC
Time @ Apr 17th 2007 10:20PM
Sorry for the rant, I am just trying to start some kind chaos or some kind of serious conversation
I just don't know why is it so hard to get people talking about positive feedback for the ps3 , but I am sure that if it was something bad we would have thousands of comments from nintendorks, and xbots about how the ps3 is doomed and sony sucks and etc.........
Matt B @ Apr 16th 2007 8:31PM
No seems to notice that these videos are from the ALPHA build and everything should be cleaned up quite nice before it ships. Not to mention the grainy internet video does not show what it truly looks like on a high def set.
L @ Apr 16th 2007 8:38PM
@18" am not really a PC gamer but if was to chose between the 360 and an High-End PC, I would chose the PC"
360 games only £200
High-End PC games only £1600
Work that out urself
WTangoFoxtrot @ Apr 16th 2007 8:44PM
well ofcourse they have to compare it to GOW, its gonna stay the de-facto industry standard for a while.
also i find it interesting that its easy to port PS3 games to the 360 but not vice-versa. the unified architecture in the 360 raised several eyebrows in the beginning as theres nothing like it in the industry but that seems to be paying off now.
the scale of this game is impressive and i would definitely like to see this game play on both consoles and see which is different ( the PS3 has faster ram which is helpfull but the 360 has theoritically twice the amount available due to it unified arch )
Dolla Dolla @ Apr 16th 2007 9:12PM
@Time
This is good news for developers focusing on PS3 for one reason: If the game doesn't do up to their standards, with minimum changes they can port it to the 360 and have another stream of revenue. But that could mean all exclusive PS3 games depend on whether or not they become successful enough to stay exclusive.
sicklesdawg @ Apr 16th 2007 9:34PM
at least it not a fps
silence @ Apr 17th 2007 1:18AM
I'm telling you folks, this is NOT about the PS3... It's about the GAME Lair. You Fanboys in general are way to sensitive to talk about a game without talking hardware. It's penis envy really. It's all about the systems when this should be about the GAMES. Don't you guys see this as the issue? I just don't see myself or many other gamers I know running out and buying a system for THIS game. That's what games are for right? Selling systems? I am a GAMER and I chose to buy a 360 first to play good games. You can mark my word that I will run out and buy a PS3 the very second a game thats system selling worthy drops an exclusive. Until then I will remember all those crappy flying dragon games from the past for what they were. Boring...
jou @ Apr 17th 2007 1:15PM
"if everything or hell half of all games go multiplatprom wouldn't you want the cheapest one (wii) because hell they are practically the same games?, leaving the 360 and fanboys looking like idiots"
No, because the Wii version would look horrible in comparison, would have smaller levels, less enemies, poorer AI, the controls would suck (the Wiimote just isn't right for most types of games), less everything in general and, as all this wasn't enough, it'll would also lack online multiplayer as well.
The difference between Wii and Xbox 360 Premium is just a little over $100 so there really is no reason whatsoever to pick Wii for multiplatformers.
alienclay @ Apr 17th 2007 2:20PM
"That's what games are for right? Selling systems? "
no that's backwards. systems are for selling games. the real money is in the game royalties. that or we can just get into chickens and eggs, but it had to be the chicken, because without the chicken the egg cannot incubate and it dies. so the system comes first. i don't know to many people who buy a game without a console to play it on. ... ok this is geting stupid.
"(the PS3 has faster ram which is helpfull but the 360 has theoritically twice the amount available due to it unified arch )"
no, because what the gpu is using up, the cpu can't. it allows you to optimise games of different types. ie both processor intensive, and graphics intensive games can make the best use of all the available ram on the system. it's more flexable, no question about that. (i still kinda wish there was 512 for cell and 256 for rsx, but whatever...)
it would stand to reason that if it is so hard to port from 360 to ps3, and it is so easy to port from 360 to pc, than (wouldn't it make more sense from here on out now that both systems are out on the market,) to make your game for ps3 first, optimise it a bit for cell, slightly downscale it for 360 and use more basic algorithems but keep the same ram allocation setups, then port from 360 to pc?
so we may never see the first lost planet on ps3. boo hoo. that's what happens when you're a year late to the party. but if my above logic pans out, we won't see a problem like it again.
i say wait till the lair demo comes out. actions and "fireballs" speak louder than words.
Dolla Dolla @ Apr 17th 2007 3:23PM
@alienclay
Theoretically, yes, it could pan out that way, which would be better for Sony. The problem is, what if the 360 is the one being developed for? That means that big games coming to the 360 will be harder to make multiplatform. And, it means it's more likely a PS3 game will go to the 360, rather than the other way around. I see that as problematic. What happens if Lair doesn't become a million seller, and Factor 5 ended up spending over 10 million to make it? What other choice do they have but to port it to the 360?
These are serious questions. I'd rather the cell be easy to port to, that way the playing field is much more even. Someone needs to make a middleware solution for the PS3 that allows better portability from the 360.