

The PlayStation2 vs. the PC (2000) - CoolGuySteve
http://arstechnica.com/features/2000/04/ps2vspc/

======
Eiriksmal
> The PS2 is such a bizarre and powerful beast that it took me many hours of
> poring over articles and slide presentations just to get my bearings with it
> > When the programmers responsible for some of the greatest console games
> ever made say that the PS2's learning curve is steep, you know something's
> up.

Update this for 2006 with a s/PS2/PS3/g. I do remember articles about the Xbox
and 360 touting its easy API interfaces, in stark contrast to Sony's.

Why did Sony keep creating such hard-to-code-for devices and yet end up with
such a monstrous install base? It's the chicken and the egg, I suppose.

~~~
billyhoffman
> Why did Sony keep creating such hard-to-code-for devices

While this was certainly true with the PS2 and PS3, Sony has largely moved
away from this with the PS4. The Cell architecture of the PS3 was very
difficult to effectively program. For the PS4, Sony spent a large amount of
time interviewing game programmers asking "what would make it easier to
development?" Hence the move to x86. Hence the simplified memory hierarchy,
etc.

[http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/191007/inside_the_play...](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/191007/inside_the_playstation_4_with_mark_.php?print=1)

~~~
frou_dh
Ken Kutaragi who was the "father" of PlayStation and boss up to and including
PS3 was known to be a big fan of developing exotic hardware. The PS4 is the
post-Kutaragi machine.

------
Aissen
Jon Stokes used to be my favorite tech-vulgarization writer, and he always
provided good analyses. I'm bummed that he stopped writing at Ars, but I hear
he's doing great stuff elsewhere (but not writing as much I'm afraid).

~~~
snarfy
All the people I cared about reading are gone. It's just another tech news
site now. It used to be an original content site too. There is still some
original content, but it's nowhere near the caliber of stuff Stokes was
putting out, and some of the newer stuff has a political slant to it that I
don't care for. Jon always kept it technical.

~~~
theandrewbailey
When they did their last design, it was pretty obvious. They threw out their
Microsoft and open source sections, and left the Apple section. These days I
sarcastically refer to Ars as an Apple blog.

~~~
dublinben
Do you remember who used to cover open source for them, and where they might
be writing now? I really don't feel like Ars offers a comprehensive
perspective of the industry any more.

~~~
theandrewbailey
Ryan Paul. [http://seg.phault.net/](http://seg.phault.net/)

------
georgeecollins
This brings back memories of working with PS2 dev boxes and reading Ars
Technica. Back then it was a such a good source for this sort of information.

The PS2 was an incredible pain to develop for. Sony new it would be a hit no
matter what they did. They really wanted it to have unique hardware. I also
think they wanted it to be a machine that developers couldn't master in a
singel development cycle. The way they released information about the VMUs
later I think leads credence to the idea that they wanted the second and third
life cycle of the device to show successive graphic improvements.

------
AdmiralAsshat
How's it compare to the Saturn? I heard that was a nightmare to program for as
well if you were doing anything 3D.

~~~
gecko
The big thing was just that the Saturn was supposed to be a badass 2D
platform, with insanely powerful hardware sprite management. When Sega
belatedly realized that 3D was the next big thing, they stapled on an extra
CPU to give it enough power to handle 3D...but neglected to up the RAM or the
CPU bandwidth. IIRC, it wasn't even theoretically possible to fully utilize
both CPUs.

Very different situation than the Emotion Engine or Cell.

~~~
MBCook
That's not true, it was meant to be a 3D console from the get-go.

However after they found out how powerful the Playstation was they quickly
added extra power to make the console more comparable and that was where the
complexity came from.

