![]() ![]() Some developers weren’t shy about criticizing Sony’s choices for the PlayStation 3’s architecture back then. “A lot of people see the negatives of it, but if you flip that around, it means the hardware has more to offer.” “We don’t provide the ‘easy to program for’ console,” CEO Kaz Hirai told Official PlayStation Magazine in 2009. Sony was aware of the issues its console caused developers, though wasn’t especially apologetic about it at the time. Add onto that the PS3’s much higher retail price and the extra year the Xbox 360 enjoyed ahead of its release, and the PS3’s potential wasn’t realized until late in its life-cycle. Simply, re-engineering games for a completely new system unlike any other was a time- and cost-prohibitive process, which meant that the Cell processor wasn’t used to anywhere near its full extent.ĭespite sinking millions into Cell architecture, the complexity of its SPU hardware contributed, in part, to a slow start for the PlayStation 3. Inaba called it at the time “the biggest failure for Platinum so far, the one that really sticks in my mind.” A similar story surrounds the problematic PS3 port of The Orange Box, which Valve handed off to EA rather than tackling it themselves. A failure to utilize the SPUs resulted in terrible performance compared to other platforms. When it came time to port Bayonetta to PlayStation 3, Platinum Games producer Atsushi Inaba described to Edge Magazine how Platinum handed the project off to an in-house team at Sega. When developing for multiple platforms, developers regularly ignored the complicated SPUs and just used the PPE. We’re all familiar with the time pressures developers face and the prevalent problem of crunch that may arise as a symptom of these time pressures. Developers had to code this handoff themselves, creating a multi-step process that resulted in a steep learning curve for programming on the PlayStation 3. Harnessing the PS3’s potential – back then and in the present day – wasn’t easy in large part because the process described above wasn’t automatic. ![]() Sony flirted with the concept in the PlayStation 2, but boosted the power in the PS3 with a floating speed that was forty times faster than its predecessor. Those SPUs could handle parallel mathematical calculations, which made them perfect for intricate physical simulations, like collisions, clothing, and particles. The processor’s setup allowed the central power processing element (PPE) to offload complex code to the extra cores. The PlayStation 3 utilized a unique structure that differed from the relatively simpler Xbox 360 and PC architectures at the time that Sony called "Cell." The PS3 console’s CPU was comparable to the Xbox 360, running at 3.2GHz, but Sony aimed to bolster the CPU’s capabilities by including seven floating co-processors, aka the PS3’s synergistic processing units (SPUs), which were infamously complex for developers. But surely they could've just used the software emulator they made for the later fat models and PS2 Classics for the slim.The primary roadblock to proper, official PS3 emulation could be that, well, the console was built differently. ![]() That brings the question, If Sony was willing to put all that effort into emulating PS2 games on the PS3 Slim, why didn't they just make the slim models backwards compatible through software emulation entirely like with PS One games, and even the later Fat models? I get including PS2 hardware in a PS3 is crazy expensive, and was part of the reason the console was $600 at launch. To compensate, Sony introduced a line of PS2 Classics on PSN that can be played on even the slim models through software emulation, while also going the route of just remastering much of their PS2 first party backlog as HD ports for the PS3. When Sony completely rebranded the PlayStation 3 in 2009, which included a new, smaller system, and a logo more in line with the PS2 and PSP, PlayStation 2 compatibility was gutted entirely, only PS One games can be played on the PS3 slim models. Later models of the original PlayStation 3 incarnation (The Spider-Man font era) such as the 80GB, switch to using a software emulator to handle PS2 games, which eliminated the need for the expensive Emotion CPU inclusion. While PS One games used a software emulation solution, PS2 compatibility was handled by the original Emotion Engine CPU built into the system. Back during the early years of the PlayStation 3, the crazy expensive 60GB model ($599 US DOLLARS!!) had backwards compatibility with the full range of PlayStation AND PlayStation 2 games.
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