Philly H says: "don't judge a console by its launch software!"

by Nick Doerr { Jun 30th 2007 at 8:00PM }

Taking on the ol' "book and cover" judgment analogy, Phil Harrison recently spoke about the untapped potential of the PlayStation 3. Going so far as to say it's "dangerous" to judge a console by its launch software, Phil wanted to get the point across that every console has large discrepancies in visual quality from year one to year five. We can't help but agree -- we've made this argument ourselves. Multiple times. So what's Phil trying to say?

Exclusives? Let's dance, then. However, Phil moves his feet to a different beat, saying exclusives from first or third-party companies really don't matter: " ... as long as the games they get are great, [Consumers] don't care if they are third-party or first-party ... We have a larger platform-dedicated development resource than our competitors combined. So all of that goes towards the fact that the best games with the best technology are coming exclusively to [Sony] platforms."

Basically, Phil says that most exclusives don't matter, but internal Sony exclusives will probably show off the PS3's assets the best. We tend to agree, especially if the fellows behind Ico and Shadow of the Colossus try really hard. We suppose that we'll just have to wait until a truly landmark title pops up. There are plenty of contenders, but if none of them are getting praise from Phil Harrison, then what are we in store for a few years down the road?

Tags: playstation 3, Playstation3, PS3, sony

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

CarNage @ Jun 30th 2007 8:38PM

Phil is such the man its not even funny. people wanna jump on the ps3's ass cause its launch games "sucked". yeah so did the ps2s... and look how that system turned out. as if 360s launch games were good... perfect dark zero, gun and king kong... LMAO dont make me laugh.

i hate multi platform games because they dont use full power of the ps3, and if u aint using blu ray space or cell processor... your NOT next gen. so capcom, if you can hear me... STUPID move putting dmc4 on 360 just so you can get more "sales". 360 owners aint touching that game.. YOU DID YOUR RESEARCH AND DISCOVERED THERES MORE 360 UNITS OUT, BUT YOU SHOULD HAVE ALSO KNOWN THAT THEY ONLY LIKE OVERRATED SHOOTERS LIKE HALO AND GEARS OF WAR. DEVIL MAY CRY IS TOO HARD FOR THEM, DANTE DOESNT HAVE AUTO-AIM HAHA! THAT WAS LIKE TRYING TO SELL SHAMPOO TO A BALD GUY!

dmc4 is no longer next gen because capcum is greedy... not like i care anyways... ninja gaiden sigma, heavenly sword and god of war 3 will give me great action!

humpty @ Jun 30th 2007 8:56PM

Sony knew that third party exclusives were not going to be the norm post PS2.. which is why they seriously beefed up their own development studios while MS bought exclusives or got exclusives by being first to market.

If you compare Sony and MS first party offerings.. its clear that Sony's is much broader and deeper.

humpty @ Jun 30th 2007 8:57PM

TimeLess @ Jun 30th 2007 9:06PM

@#1
Hey, dude, we all want the ps3 to be number 1 but lets not turn into something we all hate and that's a blind fanbot......we have enough 360 bots to cover everything on the planet

John Zhang @ Jun 30th 2007 11:58PM

I think of it as the ps3 exclusives that are now being spread to other consols are lessons tought by sony. The other consols see that these games have potential, and are willing to get the companies for their own. But the truth is all of the companies that are in it for the moneys stoped becoming exclusives arent willing to test the powers of an actual next gen system....

Xiru @ Jul 1st 2007 1:23AM

Case in point = Warhawk. Just play it. It is beauty in every sense of the word. I have never seen a game that is so fluid crisp and beautiful. And its a 1st generation title...

ryano @ Jul 1st 2007 2:26AM

hahaha, of course i won't judge Mr. Harrison!

i just won't buy them!

to potential buyers such as myself:
wait a bit for the heavy hitters to come out. by then the PS3 will be cheaper and developers will come to understand how to port games from the 360 correctly.

i'm no hater, i just know programming for the PS3 is the PS3's only flaw. (i know a few game designers in the industry FYI. so i do know impressions of what it is like dealing with the PS3).

Nick @ Jul 1st 2007 3:18AM

"Don't judge a console by its launch games"??? The thing has been out for 7 months and we have had one top tier title in Resistance, which happened to be a launch game. I think we are way past launch, and no more top tier titles on the horizon till Fall. I know they couldn't afford to get any farther behind, but you almost want to ponder if they had of waited to launch this fall with the amazing line up due this Fall if the console would had gained more ground from launch.

Jldowning @ Jul 1st 2007 5:56AM

@ Nick

Actually there are lots of top tier titles that are going to come out this summer and this fall. And I could be wrong, but 7 months into the 360 they had a whole of 1-2 good games too, so its no different.

Actually when you compare the PS3's titles at 7 months and the 360's I think the PS3 has the better batch to be honest.

Thomas @ Jul 1st 2007 7:06AM

The PS3 is really still in launch mode... these games coming out now were supposed to be launch titles. (ex. Lair, Heavenly Sword, Motorstorm, etc.) So in terms of ps3 power, we haven't even gotten out of the first generation of games.

Vincent060 @ Jul 1st 2007 9:53AM

@12 poster

Actually, I think the 360 did have competition when it launched. It's called the PS2. And it couldn't beat it.

Kspraydad @ Jul 1st 2007 10:57AM

@poster...

The PS3 is selling at a faster pace 7 months in than the X360 did...

Please don't bother with the supply constraint arguement...there was NO acceleration in X360 sales pace after Mar 2006 either....

Just the facts...

Jason Axelrod @ Jul 1st 2007 1:01PM

I know you can consider this spam... but I wrote an article on this very topic a week or two ago on my journal: The Elitist Gamer's Journal.
http://egjournal.com/2007/06/22/the-second-holiday-season/

rockeranimefreak @ Jul 1st 2007 1:22PM

@1 dont be so ignorant capcom's dmc4 IS going to be next gen (err now gen) because it's something that couldn't have been done on previous consoles. One more thing.. capcom is releasing dmc4 to 360 owners because they: A. previously had a ps2 so now they can continue the story w/o paying 600 dollars (which is a good thing) and B. 360 owners are a WAY larger market right now and capcom wants them to experience the series.

Frosty @ Jul 1st 2007 2:11PM

CarNage (#1):

You annoy me. I don't know why you annoy me but I am agitated from reading your post.

upz @ Jul 1st 2007 2:45PM

Rockreanime, you seem to overlooking the all-too-important C: they want to make money. To think that companies actually care about gamers on a corporate level and want you to "experience the series" or "save you money" is foolishly naive. Sure, individual creators like Kojima or Sakaguchi may care about making enjoyable games. But Capcom, Sony and Microsoft are in it for the green. No two ways about it.

VPT @ Jul 1st 2007 5:54PM

If we can't judge it by its software, then what do we have to judge it on?
The color, the size, the price, units sold, eventual potential, the PR?! Nah maybe not the PR...

"as long as the games they get are great, [Consumers] don't care if they are third-party or first-party"
Indeed but consumers won't care neither if they play the game on an XBox360 or a PS3.

Oh Sony, Sony, my Sony....

Nick @ Jul 1st 2007 11:57PM

@9,
I'm not sure why you are comparing the 360 and the PS3. I wasn't. Because MS didn't have a good lineup by this point in there first year isn't an excuse for PS3 not to have more top tier games out by now.

Further more, my main point was that Phil is telling people not to judge the system by its "launch titles". We are waaaaaay past launch.

Langx @ Jul 2nd 2007 3:53AM

Actually, I think the 360 did have competition when it launched. It's called the PS2. And it couldn't beat it.

Posted at 9:53AM on Jul 1st 2007 by Vincent060

Vince if that's the case then the PS3 is losing to the PS2 also.

Don't you think if a person has a choice they would by the ps3. Sure they would if they had $800 for a system. I don't know to many moms and dads running out spending that type of money for little Johnny.
It's not happening.

This may all be a moot point if MS lowers the price when Halo hits.

News like this wont help you either. This could actually kill the PS3.

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3160709
Deflated Pigskin: PS3's Football Troubles
How Madden, All-Pro and NCAA ain't looking so good on PS3.

They may call baseball America's pastime, but in the world of videogames, that honor easily belongs to football. No other sport has racked up software sales quite like the pigskin offerings, and no other sport has been so vital to the success (PlayStation 2 having Madden since Day 1) and failure (Dreamcast never got it) of hardware. The importance of this genre is just as relevant today, yet it seems Sony's console ain't sittin' so pretty this time around.

We have confirmed the Xbox 360 versions of Madden NFL 08 (August), All-Pro Football 2K8 (July), and NCAA Football 08 (July) will run at 60 frames per second, whereas the PS3 editions are locked at just 30fps. In the simplest of terms, this means that the 360 versions will run smoother and faster, and you'll have an easier time noticing subtle animations.

While we haven't had the opportunity to see the difference with EA's titles (the publisher hasn't sent us PS3 builds of either), All-Pro Football 2K8 definitely runs better on Xbox 360.

Now, you'd think Sony would be doing everything in its power to make sure these system sellers are par with -- or better -- than Microsoft's version. That's not the case, as Sony seems to have a "hey, we can do it -- why can't you?" attitude. "We have already proven that sports titles can run on the PlayStation 3 at true HD with 1080p output with NBA 07," says Dave Karraker, Sony CEA's senior director of corporate communications. "If you have questions about specific third-party games, you should speak to those publishers."

OK, we will. After seeing Sony's response, Todd Sitrin, EA's vice president of marketing sports branding, replied:

"We want to make sure that we give the best experience we can on each platform. In designing a game, there are all sorts of tradeoffs that include frame rate, visuals, features, AI, etc. Football is an extremely challenging sport to replicate because of the number of people on the field, their interaction, and the scope of the environments. As you can see, every company making a football game this year made a decision that the best experience for the Xbox 360 included 60fps whereas the best experience for the PS3 was 30fps. We certainly believe that both the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions are our football products are outstanding experiences and recommend that each gamer look at the entire experience, not just one aspect. We think they'll be very happy no matter which version of the game they play."

Unfortunately, the folks at 2K Sports refused to comment.

Aside from the simple fact that this puts the PS3 at a disadvantage (again), this situation (and Sony's response to it) raises all kinds of questions: is Sony's console really that much more difficult to develop for? What is Sony doing to educate its third parties on PS3 development? And after Karraker's comment, do they even care to help? A few weeks ago, Karraker tackled the subject on Sony's PlayStation blog:

"If your game starts on Xbox 360 you will have to re-engineer aspects of the game to run properly on PS3. This means additional effort. Some developers have been complaining about this but I don't believe we can solve that. Xbox 360 is a different machine with good, but lower powered hardware in a different architecture. Developers have to view them as two different machines not as a common platform."

It's worth pointing out that EA's been working on Xbox 360 hardware a full year longer than PS3. With Madden, it's almost understandable, but 2K is having the same issues with All-Pro Football 2K8, a game built from the ground up to be released on both platforms.

With this now in mind, does this change which version you're going to buy?

By Bryan Intihar, 06/29/2007

Neil @ Jul 2nd 2007 8:40AM

@20

Actually Nick, The games we are due to receive from about now until Xmas are the next phase of PS3 games. And generally, this batch of games do look and play better than the launch titles.

saying that guys, I think it's going to be next summer before we start getting the real 'wow' games. I seem to remember the guys behind Ico/ Shadow of the collosus being cagey and yet not ruling out that they were designing a next gen game, and this was when Shadow was due for release..... well, nows about time to come out of the 'shadows' ( pun intended !)

Regarding Multi-platform games. They have existed since the dawn of consoles and even before that on home computers like the Sinclair Spectrum ( Timex xxxx in US ), and there's always been bodge conversions ( read the Retro section of GAMES tm to see what i mean!

It's just a shame that PS3 is currently more than likely not the lead console which is so daft as it is clearly the higher capacity machine ( ignoring GPU power where the Xbox360 appears to have a slight edge )
Saying that, If lead games start showing up the Xbox versions or if the Sony's exclusives wipe the floor with third party releases people will start taking notice.

Ok, thats me done.

timvp21 @ Jul 2nd 2007 8:49AM

to my knowledge 360 had a pretty good line up. They had call of duty 2, pg3, dead rising, and ghost recon. that is a pretty good lineup for a lanuch. the ps3 only had resistence. I love my ps3 but for the past few months ive been playing ps2 games on it. that is not what it is meant for.

Matt B @ Jul 2nd 2007 9:58AM

"While we haven't had the opportunity to see the difference with EA's titles (the publisher hasn't sent us PS3 builds of either), All-Pro Football 2K8 definitely runs better on Xbox 360."

So this article's writer is basing EA games off of how 2k's football title looks? That article has fanboy tripe all over it and rehashed the same crap we hear all the time.