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Orange Box on PS3 largely unplayable
Author: Joe MartinPublished: 23rd November 2007
Everybody else has already opened The Orange Box, so the PlayStation 3 has a lot to live up to.
The game was first delayed on the PlayStation 3 platform due to porting problems. Then in an interview with Next-Gen.biz, Gabe Newell himself said that the PlayStation 3 version was, quite literally, a waste of everybody's time. Ol' Mr Newell was never very keen on the poor PlayStation 3 though.
Now, the final nail may be in the coffin. 1-UP recently did a hands-on preview of the PlayStation 3 version of the game and found that the game was largely unplayable.
The preview was described as 'near-final', which either means that it's about to be shipped or that it's still in the works depending on which way your bias swings. Either way, nobody was impressed.
"It's apparent that this version suffers from a number of technical flaws, which at best merely hinder game play and at worst make the experience downright unplayable" Said David Ellis of 1-UP.
Framerate was apparently the worst problem in Episode 2 and the past Half-Life games. The FPS would frequently drop to below 10 apparently, for no reason. Team Fortress 2 meanwhile had server problems which meant the game could not even be played. Portal meanwhile was technically sound, but obviously won't play as well as on the PC.
With the clock ticking down to the release of the already delayed game, EA has very little time to fix these problems. Think they can manage it? Let us know in the forums.
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Sure, the programming for the PS3 is far from a walk in the park, but others have done it.
Strange...
COD4 and Resistance aren't good examples because both games were made with the PS3 in mind from the begining.
Which highlights the problem. Valve focused on the easy platform, as the lead developers, they should have worked on the PS3 platform, and let EA handle the Xbox 360 version. EA has no problems developing good code for the 360, it's widely known that either 1. EA just can't develope on the PS3 properly, or 2. EA doesn't really try to develope on the PS3 properly to save on the budget. I'm sure this way the title would have released on both consoles at the same time with relatively no problems between the two. I'm done agreeing that the PS3 might be too diffucult to program for. Too many other developers have it down, why can't Valve/EA?
But why should we stop agreeing with the PS3s development problems. The PS2 was exactly the same, and SOny haven't learned anything. This is where Sony have failed, by making exotic hardware decisions and not being able to back them up with a good development kit, every developer is starting on the back foot. The Xbox didn't suffer from this, and the 360, while having exotic-ish hardware, has excellent development tools and a relatively similar environment to the PC.
It's a shame that people won't admit that Sony have completely destroyed their platform this time round, consumers are voting with their wallets and developers are by constantly whining and providing, to be honest, non spectacular to down-right-nasty games.
Indeed, If the devs can't be bothered to do a proper job, I can't be bothered to buy it, its not like the games are cheap.
This was always going to be bad, the moment I heard they were outsourcing I knew the game was never going to get the attention of the others, especially with Gabe Newells comments on the system.
Sort of like how Crysis is with everybodies hardware currently (which is actually the feature of their engines - as in run it at full 1-2 years after it is released)! :D
Although that said, this palaver is clearly not the way to do things.
If EA are so good, why do they seem to bodge every game they make? They are forcing gamse out to fast. They have done need for speed to death for instance. They also bought up two of the best game making stuidos going and now say they are going to be putting 8 games a year out from them i read in an interview. If this is the case they are likely to be unfinished and poor. Dont like have EA makes games, ive yet to paly one which hasn't had problems or been rushed.
It maybe insanely powerful but so is a cray super computer, doesn't mean its easy to work with and with out that it isn't worth a lick.
Playstation 2 in it's day says you are wrong.
Insonmiac says you are wrong.
Ubisoft says you are wrong.
Naughty Dog says you are wrong.
I can go on....
Valve says i'm right,
EA says i'm right
Gran Turismo says i'm right, if it was an easy console that would have been a launch games.
The PS2 was very powerful for its time and also difficult to work with but there was very little other option, the dreamcast and gamecube never really took off so if you wanted to make console games to sell you had to deal with sony. This gen 360 and PC games are virtually interchangeable and the wii has a huge market share so the question becomes... why bother!
the PS3 is loads of reasonably fast cores, but source is pretty sucky using multi-core (currently atleast) so its not a well suited platform
Ha!
The PS3 is far from a dying console, in fact, sales are better now than they have ever been, and growing. It's even out-sold Wii in Japan the last two weeks in a row.
True, but that's primarily because the Wii can't be made fast enough to sell. They had to ramp up production six months in advance for christmas and can only make 1.8 million for the whole world, every month. That means they've already sold out completely in Japan.
There is no reason the PS3 should be bad for Source, Source engine doesn't take advantage of multithreading well at all on PC therefore I doubt its much different on console so CPU wise Xbox and PS3 should be identical, the GPU used in PS3 is equvalent to a 7800GTX but with lesser bandwidth, Source games play well on much lesser GPUs, if you can make it work on the Xbox it should be able to run on the PS3 the only reason Orange Box could be bad is because the port was given to a bunch of muppets.
I'de agree if not for the fact that Wii sales have slowly been falling in Japan, while the PS3 was continually rising. You can't blame a shortage when sales drop by 20,000 while the Wii had already been in a shortage. Sales were high during summer, and they still sold out, now they fall, and it's a shortage when Nintendo is trying to ramp up production and get more out the door?
Isn't the PS3 basically an array of control chips handling a huge multi-core array of specialized processors ? Its been my understanding that programs written for the PS3 have to be have many specialized threads made up to run well at all, which is one of the main reasons that developers complain it is hard/time consuming to program for, compared to the PC/360 which have standard general purpose cores.
They may be shipping fewer consoles to Japan now, trying to meet higher demand in other areas (like the UK where they rip people off more)
Still, I wouldnt say the PS3 is a dying console, in fact, due to the rip off prices of the Wii currently, the PS3 is generally cheaper, and its available
I would suggest you check that, the Wii is one item where the price is fair in all countries.
$249 + tax
£179.99 inc tax
25,000 yen~ + tax
all works the same
And Nintendo is indirectly responsible anyway; they really should be able to cope with the demand a bit better, a full year from the release
Actually, 1.8million wiis a month is one heck of a lot in terms of production, I don't think Nintendo expected it to be so much in demand (and remember they have to produce the DS, the Gamecube, the gameboy advance, and all the cartridge games aswell). But it's resellers that are raising the prices for you, you can easily get the Wii at RRP if you find stock. So please don't say that it's unfairly priced.