According to a GAF poster the most recent issue of GameInformer contains an interview with Newell and when asked what he thought about PS3 his reply was...

The PS3 is a total disaster on so many levels, I think It' s really clear that Sony lost track of what customers and what developers wanted. I' d say, even at this late date, they should just cancel it and do a " do over" . Just say, " This was a horrible disaster and we' re sorry and we' re going to stop selling this and stop trying to convince people to develop for it" . The happy story is the Wii. I' m betting that by Christmas of next year, the Wii has a larger installed base than the 360. Other people think I' m crazy. I really like everything that Nintendo is doing. "

Now i don' t have the magazine as the UK issue isn' t out yet so if somebody here has it i' d appreciate confirmation that this is genuine.

The GAF thread is kinda out of control but can be found HERE

Who is this Gabe guy? Is he important? Is he smart?

He sounds like an idiot. Yeah, PS3 has quite a few flaws, but it' s not a total disaster.

I think when you look at the entire spectrum; production, forward panning, an online network, failure to deliver at launch, losing key exclusives etc... so far PS3 has been a disaster.

Bear in mind that Kutaragi was sidelined for how the console was handled prior to launch.

Dev support is going to be key for PS3s next 10 years (heh) and Gabe' s comments have been all too common so far amongst a lot of them.

Gabe' s always been a PC guy though with HL2, and he' s gone on record before to say asymmetric multi-threading is too mindboggling for him! So he' s not gonna be the first guy to jump to PS3.

Just cos he can' t hack it though, doesn' t mean other devs wont be able to! A lot of Japanese devs are probably cleverer than him hehe.

ORIGINAL: choupolo

Dev support is going to be key for PS3s next 10 years (heh) and Gabe' s comments have been all too common so far amongst a lot of them.

Gabe' s always been a PC guy though with HL2, and he' s gone on record before to say asymmetric multi-threading is too mindboggling for him! So he' s not gonna be the first guy to jump to PS3.

Just cos he can' t hack it though, doesn' t mean other devs wont be able to! A lot of Japanese devs are probably cleverer than him hehe.

Yeah but Carmack and Newell are two of the most revered people in the industry, both with big titles in development for the consoles. Whether it' s a case of him thinking it' s too complex or not isn' t the issue, the issue is that others will look, listen and read into it.

That' s true.

Remember what he said earlier in October 2005 too:

" There are incredibly few programmers who can safely write code in the PlayStation 3 environment. And I totally see why Sony wants people to write code that runs on seven SPEs and a central processing unit, because that code is never going to run well anywhere else. They' re saying, " Make your code not run on anything but one of our machines, and we' re betting that we' ll have market share that' s so high that everybody will have to write for our platform. We' ll just starve the air from the other platforms by absorbing everybody' d R&D budget and making their code less portable."

Sounds reasonable but a little like sour grapes too! He' s never really been hot for PS3...

link

Calling the PS3 a disaster! Oh come on what a load of bull!

Calling the PS3 a disaster! Oh come on what a load of bull!

Sarcasm?

ORIGINAL: choupolo

That' s true.

Remember what he said earlier in October 2005 too:

" There are incredibly few programmers who can safely write code in the PlayStation 3 environment. And I totally see why Sony wants people to write code that runs on seven SPEs and a central processing unit, because that code is never going to run well anywhere else. They' re saying, " Make your code not run on anything but one of our machines, and we' re betting that we' ll have market share that' s so high that everybody will have to write for our platform. We' ll just starve the air from the other platforms by absorbing everybody' d R&D budget and making their code less portable."

Sounds reasonable but a little like sour grapes too! He' s never really been hot for PS3...

link

Well that' s work the other way too which is why many games are being developed primarily on 360 and then ported to PS3 rather than the the way around. In the long run that doesn' t benefit Sony.

These recent comments come after the launches. Sony' s launch was a complete fuck up. Technologically they' ve made choices that are still questionable, ...it' ll be a while until it' ll be clear or not if they' ve paid off. I mean, every other developer has been praising Microsoft and their development tools, while saying that PS3 is harder to work for etc. Ok, so that was the case with PS2 too but Xbox wasn' t a real threat to Sony last time, and right now Sony are playing catch up with an opponent that has more money, resources, currently developer support, AND has already passed 10M sold.

Kutaragi screwed up. They didn' t plan ahead and made some really funky decisions. I mean, they originally wanted to use multiple CELL processors rather than have a GPU. Obviously that would have saved them a lot of money but it didn' t work and they had to run to NVIDIA and get what the could afford. That happened to be an inferior GPU to what Microsoft have. Then the messed up the RAM allocation, something many developers have already complained about.

They weren' t originally going to have an online network. Then when the re-modeled Xbox Live received so much praise they decided that they needed one. What they' ve ended up with is a jumbled mess that will no doubt improve over time but still, we' re talking about how they' ve handled it so far and not how it might be in 2 years time.

What Gabe is saying is that Nintendo are applying the same business model to Wii as they have done to DS. I too have said that i expect Wii to take the marketplace lead towards the end of Q4 2007. But right now you have Nintendo and Sony trailing Microsoft, and Nintendo who launched after Sony and have sold 4x the number of consoles.

Supply and demand looks to have already equalized and there are many reports of PS3' s being available but stil not selling. Just ask Mass, he mentioned it the other day regarding the store he works at.

Is his comment about it being a disaster OTT? Possibly, and the guy is almost certainly biased, but he' s also an important industry figure and knows more than we do. I don' t know about you but i wouldn' t second guess the guy behind the Half Life games and STEAM platform.

Sarcasm?

No way! Why would I call the PS3 a disaster?

No way! Why would I call the PS3 a disaster?

No clue

Your avatar still scares me to this day, I would hate to come upon that in a dark alley

Your avatar still scares me to this day, I would hate to come upon that in a dark alley

LOL.

Miyamoto is scary? Wow.... just wow....

Reggie scares me........

yes, in that picture he is terrifying

Reggie Fils-Aime is my idol!

Reggie will be just as popular as Chuck Norris very soon. Wait till you see.....

Newell its just amazing and i belive hes rigth in something he said but lets not forget his roots, he worked +10 years in Microsoft and he made his fortune there and he is very well known for the good relatioships he has with some MS execs, now that being said i belive the last NPD report and the Media Create numbers show very clear that the PS3 may no be doing as good as the industry leader should but its not doing bad at all.

Reggie will be just as popular as Chuck Norris very soon. Wait till you see.....

No one can be as popular chuck norris