I've been reading these forums for a while, and I've noticed that people are saying that it's not Bethesda's fault that Skyrim doesn't work well on the Ps3... so I'm just wondering as to why is it the Ps3's fault?

Because Bethesda are gods who can do no wrong.

And apparently porting to the PS3 is hard despite the fact that smaller gaming companies with far less green than bethesda have done it with no problems.

This thread will go well...

The PS3 is known to be fiddly to code for. Doesn't make it an inferior console though, don't get me wrong. It's just the way things are.

And yes, I doubt this thread will go well...

I guess they could of made the PS3 easier to code for? I don't know I've never played it on the PS3. Don't know how bad it really is. For all we know it's all Bethesdas fault...

"Fault" is the wrong word to use, though I can understand why it's used.

The PS3 is like the Mac in the gaming console world. While not impossible to code for, it does take a different way to do it. The actual physical design of the PS3 makes it impossible for any developer to port over a x86 system because the PS3 is not an x86 system.

The snide little "because smaller companies did it" is a poor retort as well, because it's well established these smaller games have different developer teams on them. Even EA has stated they have a special PS3 code team.

Skyrim isn't a small game. It wouldn't surprise me one bit if Skryim was already in development before the first PS3 SDK was delivered. Bethesda is to the TES franchase as Square-Enix is to its Final Fantasy series, and we can all clealry see how FFXIII worked out when trying to code for all consoles (the game svcks, which can't be said about Skyrim).

I feel for PS3 owners, because they weren't told this when the console was released. Instead, they just had options stripped from them, and who the hell knows what else Sony stripped, which may or may not have had an impact on developers.

Sony screwed up and they know it, which is why Kaz said the PS4 will be more developer friendly.

Hey, didn't Reggie say this about the Wii?

It's both.

While the PS3 version of Skyrim no doubt have some PS3 specific optimisations in it, it's mostly just portable code in it. It's not like they rewrote the whole game for the PS3. In this case it's Bethesda's fault.

And at the same time, the PS3 have a very unique architecture with the Cell processor and the SPEs in it, that makes it harder to program for than the PC or 360. The big problem with the Cell processor is that it only have one PPE. One general core. While many games today are designed for at least two general cores. So what the PS3 programmer for games try to do is to port as much of the general code to SPE code as possible. SPEs are blazing fast, but at the same time very limited on what kind of calculations they can do, so it's hard.

The low amount of 256MB system RAM doesn't really help either. Because of these differences, pretty much all sandbox games run worse on the PS3 than on the 360, it's not just Skyrim, but GTA4, RDR and others too.

The 360 is not a x86 system either, but it do have 3 general cores. The instruction set architecture of the general core use doesn't really matter, but rather the amount of general cores.

The Cell engine is a CPU/DSP Hybrid. Out of the eight cores, only one can access the main memory directly (PPE) while the others (SPE) rely on local memory; data has to be constanly shuffled in and out by the sole PPE core. Cell is great for number crunching tasks, much less where general purpose code has to be distributed between several processors.

The Xbox CPU is just a triple core processor... not very powerful by today standards (clock for clock each of its cores is about 25/33% as efficient as one found in modern AMD/Intel processors). The biggest advantage is that most of the code written for Xbox is good for PC and vice versa because of its SMP architecture. It's just a matter of compiling for a different target.

About memory.. both consoles have 512MB of memory (the Xbox additional 10MB EDRAM is for rendering only). PS3 memory is divided into two chunks, making dynamic allocation more complex, especially in a game like Skyrim where data and textures are constantly streamed from mass storage.

Said this, especially with the PS3, it seems that knowledge of the platform and skill of the coders have far a greater impact on performance than sheer architectural differences between the two consoles.

Agreed. I said "x86" only for generalization.

Wow. Debate like this on the CoD forums consists of "my console is better coz I say so" and only really gets as detailed as "my console is better coz I say so, I work with computers/in networking so I'm right"

Whereas the same debate on this forum, I read one page and I've learned LOADS of new stuff. I knew it was fiddly, now I know why. Cool

Actually I was wondering if this thread would descend to Lock Hell but actually it appears to have gone the other way and ended up being very informative.
Nice one.

This is one of those truths that I feel should be more obvious to people, like professional boxers have a higher chance of concussions and brain damage than the host of pawn shop program. It just makes sense that the reason some games that run great on other systems but worse on the PS3 is because the coding wasn't altered to accommodate the PS3's design. The reverse is also true. When a game is designed with a particular list of hardware specs in mind, it's going to play better with that hardware.

I've never understood simply porting a code designed for one console to another with a very different way of doing things and hoping it works. To me, it sounds like putting a train on the freeway and expecting it to run just as well.



And this just makes me wonder why Bethesda doesn't have a code team specializing in the PS3.

It really isn't as hard these days, but Bethesda doesn't have as much experience with the system. Their first game for it, Oblivion, was a port done by 4j because they probably knew they couldn't handle the system at the time. It was and still is a mess when it comes to developing something for the PS3. I have no experience with even opening one up(why would I need to salvage parts from a PS3?) but I know that the thing is a finicky system to develop for. My first experience with any PS3 game(I was a Wii, casual PC, and PS2/PS1 gamer for much of this console generation) was Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time.

I booted that game up, and just knew it had to be easier more for the second parties to develop for it than the third parties. It was built as a Blu-Ray player first, but then ended up being a game console. Blu-Ray was an extremely new technology at the time... *hugs my copy Blu-Ray copy of the Lion King and my giant Simba plushie* Okay, back on topic. Blu-ray was really new in 2006. I still remember when it was mainly Disney who were even bothering with it.

The thing seems to have some parts in it that just make things insane. This is why companies used to the 360 will have trouble making a PS3 version. Bayonetta's PS3 version actually is a less rich in looks for some reason, to be exact. You still get that hilarious dance video to watch as much as you want, though... I love that video.

A better question is why people think it isn't ever Sony's fault.

They built the system. They kind of are at fault to an extent. Bethesda is at fault for lack of experience with the system.

their is also a problem with the game engine also right? something about garbage disposal and the game keeping track of things going on in the gameworld honestly I would say the engine is more to blame than anything but 4j studios managed to port oblivion with almost no problems which makes me wonder even more who's fault is it but ultimately i think it's bethesda's fault because of their poor porting to the system I mean if 4j was able to port oblivion properly why couldn't Bethesda port fallout 3 or skyrim but then again new Vegas made by obsidian had the same problems but it was rushed almost a year early to release

Yep. That was my point.

4j likely has more experience with the console. From the Wikipedia page of them, it seems they are basically sellswords to game companies. They've done two PS3 ports so far. Most of their work and ports seem to be for the 360, iPad, PS2, and DS. Odd. That company is just an oddity, I suppose. Or they just are quick learners.