Tretton blames third parties for PS3 software deficiencies

C

Conker

2[H]4U
Joined
Jun 1, 2004
Messages
3,025
Tretton blames third parties for PS3 software deficiencies

SCEA wants to encourage, but cannot control third parties

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz at an E3 roundtable, SCEA president Jack Tretton addressed the issue of some games looking better on the 360 than they do on the PS3.

“If the games don’t look good on the platform, consumers aren’t going to buy them. As I said, we can’t control what third parties are going to do,” explained Tretton. “We can try to evangelize the technology and assist those guys in development and try to convince them that it is in their best interests to take advantage of the technology.

“If we have to drive the message on our platform with the games that do that…whether they are first party or third…those are the games we are going to focus on and those are the games the consumers are going to make their purchase decisions on,” he said.

"At some point, what’s the point of porting it over to another platform if it is not going to look as good on a platform that is more expensive? Why waste any money in development doing that?”

When asked if that meant SCEA needed to pick up the slack with first-party titles, Tretton said that wasn’t the message he wanted to send.

“The message I want to send is, we can’t control what the third parties do,” he explained. “We want to encourage them as much as possible, we want to support them as much as possible…to your point, we want to give them the tools.

“We’re a company that does about 20 plus per cent of our business on first party, so believe me, I don’t want to send the message that we don’t need the third partes. We want to encourage them to maximize their development potential on our platform.

“But if a game doesn’t showcase our technology, I don’t know that is going to help either of us.”
Click to expand...
He really exploded:). He wants developers to make a point for people to buy the ps3 but i don't think theres much he can do really unless he pulls out his corporate credit card;).
 
Face it, the doubling of their sales in the US has sent them utterly batshit mental again. Bring back the Sony that had learnt a little bit of humility.
 
What he said was 100% true.

In fact it was almost spin-free which is unusual for Sony.

I certainly wouldn't consider what he said "exploding".
 
The problem here is that Sony simply isn't giving good enough tools to the third parties, and they're not helping them out like they used to with the PS2 (and yes, I do know this from direct experience). If Sony really thinks their hardware is capable of more than the 360 then it's their job to show third parties what they're doing wrong.
 
Totally agree with what Tretton said. These ports coming over to PS3 are seriously horrible with the exception of a few. It's sad seeing ported games looking crippled compared to its 360/pc counterpart on machine that is not crippled at all. Upcoming games such Lair, Heavenly Sword, Killzone, Uncharted prove that.

I for one will not buy any crappy port coming over to PS3.
 
Psychotext said:
The problem here is that Sony simply isn't giving good enough tools to the third parties, and they're not helping them out like they used to with the PS2 (and yes, I do know this from direct experience). If Sony really thinks their hardware is capable of more than the 360 then it's their job to show third parties what they're doing wrong.
Click to expand...

Really?

Cos' I know someone working on the new SOCOM project for PS3 and he says Sony came out with some dev tools a couple months ago that make it incredibly easy.
 
Edge makes things easier... but not easy. Also, that's part of the problem - a couple of months ago.
 
Edge... that's the name of it... I couldn't remember.

I understand it's still probably easier (and smarter from a financial standpoint) to develop it for the 360 first and then put out a crappy port for the PS3 but I think that's kinda his point.

Sony is stuck between a rock and a hard place with these non-exclusive 3rd party games. Especially with EA being the giant it is.

When Madden comes out on 360 with better specs than the PS3 version, everyone says "well why would I spend more money on the more expensive console when it won't look as good". He knows that the PS3 version could look as good if not better and is frustrated by the situation.
 
a couple of months ago it only just got released in the PAL territories. The PS3 isn't even a yr old and Sony are already trying to help as many developers as they can to code for the Cell.
 
Psychotext said:
...and they're not helping them out like they used to with the PS2 (and yes, I do know this from direct experience)..
Click to expand...

I thought devs complained about piss poor help from Sony even with the PS2. IIRC, Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee was a PS2 exclusive, but they ran into limitations and Sony wouldn't help them; so they left and went to develop it for the Xbox.
 
mrc said:
Totally agree with what Tretton said. These ports coming over to PS3 are seriously horrible with the exception of a few. It's sad seeing ported games looking crippled compared to its 360/pc counterpart on machine that is not crippled at all. Upcoming games such Lair, Heavenly Sword, Killzone, Uncharted prove that.

I for one will not buy any crappy port coming over to PS3.
Click to expand...

Original Xbox gamers know how this can be, when the Xbox ports, from PS2 games were often sub-par. I don't know if I'd call out the developers like Tretton did, at this point in the PS3's life, just yet.

The 360 has been out much longer, along with the tools (which I often here are a bit better anyway), so developers have had more time with it. Plus there comes a point where spending any more time and resources on a port, to fully maximize things for a console, really cut into your profit margin. I think a year from now you won't see this problem, as everybody has become quite comfortable with both platforms.
 
Jerome36 said:
Original Xbox gamers know how this can be, when the Xbox ports, from PS2 games were often sub-par. I don't know if I'd call out the developers like Tretton did, at this point in the PS3's life-style, just yet.

The 360 has been out much longer, along with the tools (which I often here are a bit better anyway), so developers have had more time with it. Plus there comes a point where spending any more time and resources on a port, to fully maximize things for a console, really cut into your profit margin. I think a year from now you won't see this problem, as everybody has become quite comfortable with both platforms.
Click to expand...

Jerome stole my thunder. The Xbox dealt with this last generation. the PS2 was out first and many developers made games for that system first and then ported the game over without any improvements for the "more powerful" machine.

Same thing seems to be happening here. Sadly (for owners of the PS3) their machine isnt out there in the numbers that the 360 is, and therefore the 360 is going to get priority in the minds of publishers and developers.
 
Psychotext said:
Listening to them around E3 I thought they were starting to get their act together.
Click to expand...

You must not have been listening hard enough. Here's some David Reeves (Sony Computer Entertainment Europe president) gold:

PlayStation 3, you will see, will be far and away the winner when you look at it by March '08. They really, really will...
Click to expand...

I honestly don't think that just having the games on Xbox 360 is enough.
Click to expand...

Reeves on this holiday season, and Peter Moore focussing on it this E3:
I know it's nice to focus on one year, but he said the same last year - 'We're going to win the holiday season.' But they didn't; they missed that opportunity."
Click to expand...

Ken maybe gone, but his spirit lives on :)
 
Psychotext said:
Depends how important you were to them. People like EA had pretty much continuous Sony dev support.
Click to expand...

Actually, that's not true. last year at E3 an EA producer told me that Sony's support was "among the worst I've ever seen. They literally send us documentation in fucking JAPANESE". The year before, when 3D Studio Max 8 was about to be launched, one of the engineers at Autodesk, when asked about 360 and PS3 support, said that "we've got full 360 support, but there won't be PS3 support when it rolls out because working with Sony is like trying to pull teeth from a rabid dog".

Supporting their tool makers and 3rd party allies isn't Sony's strong suit. They're like Nintendo of the mid 90's.
 
The other bad thing for Sony is, that 3rd party goes where the money is. That right now and the near future is the Wii and the 360. Bonus with 360, is porting to PC is that much easier. Wii on the other hand will require more specific development, and resources only being so much, the PS3 and it's current market penetration is looking awfully borderline to develop for.

Sony needs to stop making claims and make games that will sell the console. They are no longer the exclusives king, and MGS and FF series can only generate so many sales, and even worse that neither will be out for the holiday season.
 
DragonMasterAlex said:
Actually, that's not true. last year at E3 an EA producer told me that Sony's support was "among the worst I've ever seen. They literally send us documentation in fucking JAPANESE"....

Supporting their tool makers and 3rd party allies isn't Sony's strong suit. They're like Nintendo of the mid 90's.
Click to expand...

You're talking about PS3 support. I was working with people in EA in the PS2 days and whilst not stellar the documentation was certainly not in Japanese.
 
Welcome to the PC world. All we get is console ports which suck and few exclusives anymore. PS3 doesnt have it THAT bad. We cant even get a REAL football game made for our system anymore which would blow anything away on either console if made.
 
welcome to what nintendo had to deal with. at least they had their uber first partys to carry them.
 
Tretton can blame third parties if he wants for sub par ports. Sometimes its true ..sometimes it isn't. For instance Microsoft makes multiplayer a simple effective solution thats universal so that any third party developer has the toolset that the first party developers do , MS also offers a complete infrastructure (Live) that is already set for any type of developer to use. Sony doesnt offer a complete network but the hopes are soon it will with Home(it is still a open standard making it more confusing in the end though).

As far as graphics go ..well cant blame anyone but Sony for a crappy toolset that only allows third party developers to tap only a certain amount of power unless they want a huge amount of extra recoding and millions upon millions of extra dollars, while first party developers get a new revised toolset that makes it easier to code with.

Lets also mention that there are far more xbox 360's then there are PS3's so third party developers arent even wanting to really put in the effort (in some cases not all though) to make there games shine (such as more development time , extra bug testing and extended content) cause as they know since the install base is low the chances of a true hit are meger at best right now.

Tell Tretton to stop supporting bonehead choices to fake the price drop (sorry but 60 gig should remain the standard , not a sell through and get rid of product) and to point his finger right back at him for the number of mistakes that have taken place since he had the job. Time to lay the blame at Sony's feet for making there system too costly to buy , develop for and maintain.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top