Should game developers for PC take an example of Playstation?

» SWeiser - About the games...

This message first appeared September 21, 1999 and is edited for content
-editor

I've been wondering for some while if the game developers for the PC should take some examples from the Playstation.

The playstation has hundreds of games that you can play directly on the Playstation, just plug it in, put the disc in the station, start it up and there you have it.
No fuzz with drivers, memory, harddisk space, processor speed, operating system or anything else.

But that's not the point I was going to take up...

The point is the usage of every free resource.
I know this might sound simplified, not real but this is as close as it gets.

The Playstation has stayed the same since the release of it some 6 years ago, and the games have just kept on getting better.

Where's the magic?
The CPU has stayed the same.
The videocard has stayed the same.

The answer is the code.
All developers who comes up with new ideas to games give their plans and drawings sooner or later to the coders, who will write the game.

These people have had the same code for 6 years, and they know exactly how much power and speed they got on a Playstation, and they'll have to make due.

They will turn the code upside down until they get it to work smoothly. They kill every bug, insect and false code there is in the game.
Then they'll make the code lighter than it was before.

And the result is that when the game is released, they can have awesome graphics, speed and gameplay that wouldn't otherwise be possible, saving the Sony company from producing a new Playstation for each 10th game.

But this is different from the PC developers.
They create an idea for an game, they'll give it to the coders who will then as soon as possible write the code.

Then the game is due to release, they have couple of bugs left although the most of 'em have been eliminated, but the code is still pretty rough.

When looking at the users, you'll notice that the most users are still using Pentiums (I or II), but they can't make an game run on a Pentium I, so the developers say:

"F*** 'em, let them get themselves some Pentium III-machines, then they can play our fabulous game."

But it doesn't end there.
It's like a rat-wheel which keeps on going and going and going, it doesn't stop.

This leads to the situation where the demands of games keeps on rising with the speeds of the newest computers.

One solution to this problem would be that a game may not be published before it works on a predetermninated machine, that is most common on the market, like a Pentium II 300 - 450 Mhz, with a Voodoo 3 or compatible videocard.

In that package there's a lot of power, with which a good coder given the time can perform miracles,
although such miracles are few in the scientific world that we live in....

But for now, I rest my case.
TedyBear

-- posted by SWeiser

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