Comments on: Is the PS3 an Afterthought among Developers?

By: Darrin

Darrin — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 13:07:46 +0000

Rip-offs are fair game in technology. Vista imitated a lot of GUI stuff from Apple. C# is fundamentally a clone of Java. Sony should imitate Microsoft regarding PR practices or whatever they are doing to garner such favor.

Rene, definitely count yourself lucky.

By: Paranoimia

Paranoimia — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 00:15:47 +0000

I recently bought a new PC with Vista, because my old one was starting to act up. I’ll admit that I love the look of Vista, but as Gary has pointed out, it’s a complete rip-off of the Mac interface. But that’s what MS do – they plagiarise everyone else’s technology, and sell it as their own.

I don’t use my PC for gaming any more, just browsing and video editing. I would have bought a Mac, but the prices remain extortionate. A similarly-spec’d Max would have cost DOUBLE what my PC cost me, so it wasn’t an option.

I’d use Linux, but the simple fact is that the software available is limited. That said, I will be upgrading my PS3′s HDD in a few months, and I’ll be installing and trying Linux on that.

By: Darrin

Darrin — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 17:34:47 +0000

mpz, good point. I assume “nicer” means MS has more sophisticated PR teams. They are better at tracking which issues are important to whom, they are better at knowing which PR or dev support materials to send, what to say on an interview, and when/how to wine & dine someone.

Microsoft is used to this kind of high publicity, political tech battles. They have a lot of experience with controlling press reaction and public image.

Sony doesn’t. Sony is used to making TVs and consumer electronics. Those fields don’t get anywhere near the publicity and political tech battle that the PS3/360 battle is generating and that Microsoft is used to.

By: mpz

mpz — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 05:59:49 +0000

That article and many before have mentioned how much ‘nicer’ ms are to them. Game ‘journalists’ have also stated it with respect to their own work.

I wonder what that actually means.

e.g. are they throwing a lot of technical people their way because they have near-bottomless resource to draw from. Are they taking less in royalties on game sales? Are they just taking the out to dinner and plying them with alcohol and women?

By: Rene Ritchie

Rene Ritchie — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 03:16:58 +0000

I’m glad my experiences have been so different! The only people I’ve ever met who loved Microsoft, who even wanted it in the farm, were consultants who made money selling Exchange/CRM/Sharepoint services, and younger programmers who really want visual studio on their desktops.

The vets have innumerable reasons for holding grudges, be it some perceived betrayal of VMS when they launched NT, to continued promises of vaporware like Cairo and WinFS, to the viruses and lack of stability on anything running IIS on the web, to the existence of IE 6, to the nightmarish admin overhead, and it just goes on and on.

For me its the lack of integration from the one company in the world who really could provide end-to-end solutions. Just the other day I had to explain, again, to a sales person that CRM will launch another IE instance and then try to close the original one every time they log on. They asked “why?”. I had no sane answer.

Again, in my experience the only real advantage Microsoft has is that no one is ever fired for buying the perceived standard. (Cash incentives from Redmond in the way of cheap starter packs probably open some doors before people realize the steep extra licensing fees they’ll get caught for later).

Outside Windows/Office, I don’t even think they’re the odds on favorite anymore in most areas, including the 360.

(Though I hope Ozzy and hopefully some new blood can use that as inspiration for renewal, the market needs competition).

By: mcloki

mcloki — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 00:12:48 +0000

it’s been out longer and Microsoft doesn’t support the XBOX at all. It’s 360 or nothing.
The year long head start is just that a head start. The blue ray strategy is getting game consoles into the hands of non gamers. This benefits non traditional game developers. N’gai talked to traditional developers, of course they’re going to say they want the status quo. They probably think the wii i a great platform to develop on because all they are doing is recompiling ps2 games an selling them brand new.

By: Darrin

Darrin — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 21:08:54 +0000

Rene, There are no shortage of IT people who are forced to use Microsoft products and hate it. I’m one of them. I’m taking a break from working on an ASP.NET/SQL Server/SharePoint project now, on my Saturday, and I hate it.

However, everyone else at my company and most IT people that I know are *fanatical* about Microsoft and they hate absolutely anything that opposes a Microsoft product.

There are definite people on both sides of the fence in IT and it the video game arena. But I believe N’Gai when he observes a Microsoft advantage in brand mindshare. The masses are fickle, though, and that zeitgest mindshare does shift unpredictably.

By: Rene Ritchie

Rene Ritchie — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 20:52:16 +0000

Microsoft doesn’t do well in brand loyalty. In IT, even people who use Microsoft tend to hate its living guts. Anyone who’s had to run IIS, Exchange, or any other of their proprietary, poorly developed server-side junk is not usually happy. Windows and Office are just so dominant you likewise have to use them. The development apps and maybe stuff like World Wide Telescope are rare exceptions.

Also, outside Windows and Office, where Microsoft got in early and (famously) abused their monopoly, they haven’t been doing well. Xbox is barely profitable even years in and Zune has floundered.

The only thing saving them is that Sony, thusfar, has floundered worse. They lost the MP3 market to Apple, and now the console back to Nintendo.

For developers, a cell processor on the PS3 may not be as familiar as the PowerPC in the Xbox 360. I’ve heard it described as programming for 11 size 1 CPUs (for Sony) rather than 1 size 10 CPU for the Xbox.

All of them are crazy. Whoever first gets to market with a single development platform with complete code portability/leverage for mobile, PC, and living room will clean up from developers. Be that Zune/WinMob/Vista/Xbox 360 or PSP/Viao/PS3 or iPhone/Mac/Apple TV.