[ydl-gen] Microsoft: PS3 Linux Not 'Competitive' Compared To XNA

[David Seikel]

On Sat, 16 Dec 2006 11:21:08 +0100 Paulo Pinto <pjmlp at progtools.org>
wrote:

> Maybe this may help Sony/NVidia change their mind
> 
> http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=12107

Now that I have read the full interview, here are my thoughts.

Microsoft are speaking about both sharing of the games, and the
home-brew games authors getting a revenue share.  It will be
interesting to see what sort of IP protection / piracy activity falls
out of those conflicting goals.

The open source community have already been doing similar things for a
very long time, one good example is http://www.worldforge.org/ .  One
thing is obvious when you look at the results of the open source games
writing effort is that you end up with a lot of 8 bit style games, most
of them crap.  It takes a huge effort from a team of people in a
variety of disciplines to create todays really good games.  There are a
few really good open source games that might make it in todays game
market.  The XNA users will create a similar spectrum of games, but
will likely have more limitations on what they can do within the XNA
system.

Some of the infrastructure software that is the result of open source
game writing efforts is used by the game industry, but I can't recall
off the top of my head any open source game that actually made money.
The games writing industry is very fussy about the people they hire, it
has been my experience that they only hire people that are already
experienced in the games writing industry.  I expect the industry to
keep an eye on the XNA game creators and snap up the good ones.

On the PS3 side, the lack of proper access to the graphics hardware
will mean that the open source 3D games and 3D modelling software will
not run on the PS3.  Even video playback and editing software will have
a hard time of it.  The main enabler of open source development on the
PS3 will be that unique hardware that we can access from Linux, the
Cell processor.  The PS3 would be a good choice for 3D and video
rendering farms if the current crop of open source 3D and video
rendering software could make full use of the graphics chip.  Rendering
farms means lots of PS3s needed, which means lots of PS3's sold.  Games
consoles are traditionally loss leaders.  The hardware is sold at a
loss, the profits are made from selling the games.  Maybe Sony don't
want to sell that many PS3s that are not ever going to run commercial
games.

Opening up the PS3 graphics chip to the home brewers may foster the
same sort of open source to commercial game creation crossover that
Microsoft looks like it is trying to foster.  Sony can rely on the
infrastructure that is already in place, instead of creating their own
like Microsoft is doing.  It may result in more games sold for Sony.

As for the current lack of ability to use the PS3 wifi from Linux,
that's merely inconvenient.  CF and USB wifi dongles can be quite small,
not that expensive, and can already be used from Linux.
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