Gabe Newell, co-founder and managing director of development house Valve Corporation, didn’t mix words when tracked down for an interview in this month’s issue of Game Informer. Newell had some rather strong opinions regarding the PS3 and Wii.
“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."
C’mon Gabe, the PS3 might not be exactly what most of us were expecting but I think the words “total disaster” might be best filed under hyperbole. Gabe Newell is one of gaming’s most lauded game designers and his opinions should be respected, but don’t let this concern you too much. The Xbox 360 caught its share of flak when it was first released too. Then came GRAW. After that…utter silence. The lesson here is that its easy to pick on a system that hasn’t had a chance to stretch its legs. Soon enough PS3 will drop a bombshell and the critics will go away, you’ll see.
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This is silly. He clearly isn't stupid. And too complicated doesn't mean he can't understand it (not that, at his level, he really has to). He leads one of the largest game franchises. And 'complicated?' As far as CS goes, nothing in game design would be 'too complicated' for him to handle - its not computational geometry. All he was saying was that it takes longer and is perhaps more complicated to accomplish the same effects on a PS3 as it would on 360. As far as the power ratio? there have been studies showing the power difference between 360 and ps3 is negligible. Microsoft far overcharges for alot of its live content, and squelches some developers who want to release some inexpensive material there. Yet the ps3 offers very little over a 360, so why pay the extra unless you want BD? Wii seems to offer something the 360 doesn't, and the market shows it. keep your opinions, great. but it seems rediculous when people without successes criticize someone with many. Its understandable you'd want to defend an expensive investment, but don't do it by critiqueing a game developer. Wow i must be bored.
I hate it when these publications take these interviews out of context like this. To all the people who are saying Newell is pro MS and is biased, read what he says about the 360 and Vista: http://www.gameinformer.com/News/Story/200701/N07.0116.1324.31632.htm He's telling people to go out and buy Apple PC's, that doesn't sound too pro MS to me.
"and how can anyone be against blue-ray?!? why would you complain about more space? Its like saying you'd rather have a 30 gig vs. a 50 gig hard drive. WHY?"
Easy, price. Why is Nintendo out selling every other console (except the PS2, which just proves this point even further)? Sure the innovative nature of the console plays a big role, but most of it has to do with price. You think if Nintendo jacked up the price to the price of the 360 or the PS3 they would still be doing so well? Not a chance. People want what's cheap, and more so they want what will get them the most for the least amout of money.
As far as the PS3 design, yes I think that Sony messed it up. They really should have left the format war out of it and saved themselves some money. If Sony would have dropped the BD player, stuck with a 20 GB HDD (I have a 360, and I'm probably using 2 GB of it for downloaded content. Really, how much do you need? All my music, movies, and pictures sit on an external HDD that's connected to my computer, and then to my 360 via Windows Media Connect), dropped the wireless ethernet (again, I connect my 360 to my laptop via crossover cable, and use it's wireless for them both, so no need for the PS3's wireless), and stuck the PS3 at the $399 price mark of the 360 (or maybe $50 more even), I probably would have purchased a PS3. Sony threw in so many things that gamers don't need, which is where they went wrong when people say they "lost track of what customers want."
I really wanted a PS3 because my brother has a PS2, and I really enjoy a lot of games on there. Some of my favorite franchises are for the PlayStation, like Resident Evil, Final Fantasy, and Silent Hill. Once Sony announced the price for the PS3, I started to lean more toward the 360 and finally bought one based on the 2007 lineup of games like Mass Effect, Halo 3, and Lost Planet. I actually just bought a PS2 last week of eBay.
the 360 rushed its system so fast, they have to make another version available (zephyr)...I feel sorry for all the xbox owners...no....not really. And i like how ppl trash the ps3 when its only been around for 2 short months. The xbox has been released for a year, so they will naturally have more and better games. But go to eb games and look at all the upcoming games for the ps3...i likey! And the Wii is doing so much better only because it was launched worldwide. and the ps3 only in asia and north america. When Europeans get the launch then the I think the figures will look alot better comparing the ps3 to the other systems.
"Mike you kinda contradicted yourself when you said that Newell was skilled enough to program for the PS3, but then said developers have been criticizing the PS3's architecture for being so complex. so uh, doesnt that mean he isnt skilled enough to program for it?"
He didn't contradict himself, I have the skill to mow the yard (not the greastes example), but i still go gah this is annoying, screw this, i would much rather just sweep the sidewalk (programming for the xbox) ... I hope that makes some sence
"and how can anyone be against blue-ray?!? why would you complain about more space? Its like saying you'd rather have a 30 gig vs. a 50 gig hard drive. WHY?"
Well price determines alot, why pay for more when you don't really want it... Other than price (and a tiny lack of support, still leading with support but missing some)
The thing is, a good bit of people are still satisfied with DVD, though I myself am all for blu-ray
I didn't Email this because im at school... other than those im pretty much with your other points...
Mike you kinda contradicted yourself when you said that Newell was skilled enough to program for the PS3, but then said developers have been criticizing the PS3's architecture for being so complex. so uh, doesnt that mean he isnt skilled enough to program for it? By the way ALL new technology cant be used to its max potential when it first comes out. Oh, here are some numbers for you, XBOX 360-The floating point performance of the whole system is 1 TFLOP (oh and if you have no idea what these numbers mean, take a class for it, cause it would take too long to explain) and the PS3-The floating point performance of the whole system is 2 TFLOPS, hence my figure for the PS3 being twice as powerful as a 360. Just to give you an idea of that difference, the PS2 was capable of 65GFLOPS and the original Xbox was capable of 80GFLOPS. So the difference in power of the last generation is not comparable.
As David said, because of its power does not ensure its success, but it does give it more of a lifespan.
and how can anyone be against blue-ray?!? why would you complain about more space? Its like saying you'd rather have a 30 gig vs. a 50 gig hard drive. WHY?
Jesse made a very good point, the PS3 has been out for what, 2 months, vs. the 360 which has been out for a year longer. so of course developers are going know how to develop for it.
As my main defense, what im trying to say is this; to get the performance and value out of a PS3, you have to spend several hundred more $. And after going through 2 360s i think that i have a right to say the 360 is a piece of crap when compared to a PS3.
I usually purchase products that have a generous life-span, but technology changes so fast that its hard to. And as far as gaming systems, blue-ray players, and an overall high performance computer, i find the PS3 to be a decent deal.
If you want to argue some more, my msn is howell_100@hotmail.com
360 need to do over. Design look stupid, stop being hater. Took him 5 years to do half life 2. I think Half Life 3 gonna take him 10 years to complete, that's why he want Sony to do over PS3. For professional business man to make stupid comment like that, then he's a a^$ kisser of Bill Gates. If he don't like PS3 then don't make games for it. Even he does make games for PS, I know i'm not gonna games from his company. MS think all u consumers out there are stupid, buy American support American, hahaahhaaah but all system made in Asia. When say hidef suppose to be on hidef disc format, MS made a killing on software on reg DVD. Other hand ps3 games are on hidef BD, now I call it's hidef games. Think about it, u paid $60 for games on reg DVD, come on. Sony want ps3 on reg dvd, it wold come out a year before 360, to all u out there call yourself a gamers. A hate to me.
Pssst ... Xbox 360 version 2 (zephyr) will be coming out soon - adding an HDMI port - how will the millions of current xbox 360 users like that one (I think it stinks). PS3 costs about the same as an XBOX 360 (with an HD DVD add on). You'd think microsoft would have put in HDMI at the start.
Nintendo - what can you say - they always get it right - mainstream thanks to price and new functionality but they too will need to adapt to HD in the future. Sony's there, Xbox 360 (almost there)
AT CES it seems that the new 1080p HD TV with the HDMI 1.3 will soon be standard fare (Lets see if your current Xbox 360 can handle that) Not liklely witht the current version.
My 360 crapped out after a year of the dreaded red ring now its in for repair, once I get it back I'll again be reminded hoe as an early adopter of this system it will soon be replaced by a better version. Hmm... PS3 is already ahead of the HD curve (sweet!).
Sony has a multicore processor. Games will need to be developed for multicore processors moving forward ( multi core is it - adapt or die). Xbox 360 will have a version 3 for this I suppose.
Portable versions of movies on Blue Ray (in addition to the movie) sounds pretty good to me as well, HD DVD have room for that?
Yellow Dog Linux 5.0 for the ps3 is pretty sweet as well- browing the web in HD, full office suite included etc.. How much will vista and office 2007 cost you on version 4 of the xbox 360?
Although Sony is slow out of the gate they got it right from the start- may be fun to tank them now but moving ahead they're already there. Seems clear to me that Sony's in the lead PS4 will be even further ahead. (It's Sony)
- unfortunately it will take time for the mainstream to actually see that they got it right.
I would like to know what sony got all wrong. everyone seems to have a problem with the ps3. It's been out 2 months there will be some problems. Gabe Newell pretty much put his foot in his mouth. The comment he made was just as dumb as what bill gates said last week. Sony did live up to what to what people wanted. I like it. It's a powerful console. Most people should play the ps3 before making judement. Blu- ray was a good idea, they didn't want to copy ms. People are buying the ps3. When games start coming out everyone will finally shut up.
There is substantial misinformation in this forum. E.g., the PS3 being twice as powerful as the Xbox 360 (only in Sony’s press releases). What matters is the gaming experience. When two of the most influential U.S. developers go on record with their concerns over the PS3 architecture and development tools then Sony and gamers had better listen. Developers are one side of the coin. The other, and most important, is the gamers themselves. Like it or not Microsoft set the bar for Next Generation gaming and the PS3 doesn’t match the Xbox 360 experience. Wireless controllers that have to be connected to sync and charge. Batteries that cannot be changed out. Music that cannot be streamed inside a game. Downloads that cannot multi-task. Backwards compatibility that just looks awful. Game graphics that do not match Sony’s promises nor the competitor’s capabilities. Graphic intensive games that only play in 720p and then still sputter and have low framerates. No 720p scaling (for games or movies). The list goes on. There are supercomputers at the lab where I work that can run circles around any gaming machine or PC, but they make really crappy gaming machines. So goes the PS3. After waiting so long and listening to Sony’s promises of gaming grandeur my expectations were sky high. The actual experience was disappointing. I’ll get a PS3 when it can do what Sony promised - unfortunately this probably means never.
David couldn't be more right. Sony made a lot of bad decisions when designing the PS3. First of all, don't forget it's a business, so it HAS to be profitable. Second, the BD, i'll never understand why is it necessary to play games (or do you really think that Motorstorm wouldn't fit on a DVD-DL). It would have been better to just ad more RAM and Better graphics chipset to the system so all the games could run at 60 FPS at 720p which is right now the standard. Because you have to ask yourself this: I'd love to play at 1080p, with a nice tv and all but, how much money am i willing to pay for it? how many people are out that can actually afford it? Not the 100 millions that bought a PS2 that's for sure so it's all ill conceived.
IGN named the PS3 Console of the Year. Hey why are you laughing? it's not a joke, the actually did it ¡¡¡
I think its well known that Valve has a very close relationship to MS - so no real surprise for his commentary. The real surprise is how short-sighted the man is, and how ignorant? The Wii and PS3 (based on recent NPD data) are selling roughly the same numbers (Wii being a hundred or two in front). This is hardly a disaster for the PS3 if he considers the Wii to be doing well?
Also, PS3 at least has an excuse for its relatively slow numbers - hardware manufacture and shipping (must come from Japan). Wii doesnt have this issue due to the cheap and common components. Makes this idiot from Valve look like an... idiot :) I guess ignorance is bliss as they say.
First off any fanboys (Looking at you Bob).... after this comment or before this comment.... SHOOT YOURSELF IN THE FOOT! now sit and rethink some things. I own a PS3, love it, but I don't go website to website calling smart people idiots. Also, I hate the Wii.... Change scares me ... and I've played the 360 at a friends.... love its line-up of games but not really into the system (Though I'm sure its awesome).
Now, as for what Gabe said, It saddens me due to the fact that the PS3 and Physics go together well. And no matter what we think about it, if he doesn't like it, he probably isn't going to go "Hey! We should make games for it!" Everyone out there with a PS3, just pray he'll reconsider....
Thank god we still got Insomniac!
P.S - This happens with most systems, but they learn to get over it, especially if it begins to gain steam.... hehe just had to slip "Steam" into there.
Everyone keeps talking about how the Ps3 is more powerful than the other consoles. Well, yeah, the Ps3 is a great piece of egineering, but that does not assure it success.
The reason Newell (as well as countless of other respected developers) is saying that total disaster is not because Sony has failed to created a machine which is technically superior to the others. Rather, he thinks that despite Ps3 undistputed raw power, Sony lost track of what customers and developers wanted.
Xbox360 has a strategic advantage over the Ps3, and that is not going to go away however powerful the Ps3 is. And if people think that the Ps3's extraodinary specs are going to somehow propell it to the front of the battle miraculously, then I wonder why Ps3 is already widely availabe from the shelf, when its lesser rival Wii is absolutely imposible to find.
And to add insult ot injury, the Wii has outsold Ps3 in every region, and has done so in a ratio of 2:1. My personal experience is the Wii is the console that's making a big stir at the moment. Everyone is really talking about it. Note that the Wii, as someone else said before, is 15 times less powerful than the Ps3.
I think Sony got it terribly wrong. I'm not getting one, and I don't know one person who's getting one. Yet I'm surprised now many people have told me recently how much they want to get a Nintendo Wii. Funny, I think, how things change.
Sony made a reallly good, really expensive behemoth which is struggling to catch up with lesser machines. Sony thought they continue to enhance gameplay with improved graphics (which has been done over and over for the last 20 odd years) but it seems to me now that's not enough. In order to be commerically successful you need to be commericial, and at 600 dollars, the Ps3 might be a very competitive Blue Ray Player (does anyone actually own any BDs?) but hugely disadvantaged over-priced toy.
Spartan..
Yes, the Ps3 has twice the power of the 360.
Its 15 times more powerful than the Wii.
And 35 times more powerful than the Ps2.
I just read an article on it last night.
I have a very powerful computer that allows me to say forget it to the 360, but im considering the Wii (for nostaligic reasons) and the Ps3 specifically because its just been rushed a bit to market.
The same thing happened to the Xbox 360.
Given time, the Ps3 should be really slick as game developers get into thier feature sets, and into a lax timetable for polish.
Gabe, sorry dude.. Halflife/ Halflife 2 are excellent, but I have to animately disagree with your opinion.
It took 5 years to get Halflife 2..
You of all people should understand that pushing time tables only results in weak products and thats WHY you kept working on it and working on it.
Success isnt measured in split second releases, and unrefined products.
There are plenty of manufacturers that know this all to well.
"one of the best deals for technology"? you mean to recuperate R&D costs for proprietary tech like a blu-ray drive so Sony can license the hell out of the movie studios... a drive that has a side effect of playing videogames -- you know, what a game machine is actually supposed to do? blu-ray = UMD. zing! no matter what bombshell ps3 drops, it's still a failure in design and function. no one but Joe Hardcore is going to drop close to 1 G on a system before they can play a proper multiplayer game with their buddies. wii60 FTW!
So the PS3 wasn't what devs are looking for? What a power house console? This is coming from Valve, the creators of Half Life 2 which requires gobs of memory and a beefy video card.
Yeah let's see you pull off all the realtime physics and effects with the Wii.
Saying PS3 should be a Do-Over is ridiculous. The machine is a steal at $500 (or $600, whatever your flavor). You can hardly pay that little for a video card with similar performance.
I can't say the machine is for everyone and it does have a certain luxury appeal to it at this time. Look at what Sony did with PS2. It was a bitch to code on and the games got exponentially better.
Bob, you might want to do a little bit more research on Gabe Newell before claiming that he doesn't have the skill to program for ANY PLATFORM. Besides, his sentiments aren't exactly new. Various developers have been complaining for some time now that the PS3's architecture make it difficult to develop for. I'm not saying that the 360 is a programmer's dream come true, but most developers seem to consider the lesser of two evils at this point. And twice as powerful as the 360? Come one. Give us a reasonable line of discourse on which to build here man.
Honestly, if this person thinks the PS3 is a disaster, its only because he doesn't posses the skill to program for it. THE ONLY PROBLEM with the PS3, is its about a year or so ahead of its time. Its twice as powerful as a xbox360 and more future proof than the wii. If the general public would stop being so shallow about the price, then they would realize that the PS3 is one of the best deals for technology. I was a hardcore PC gamer until I played the PS3, and i had spent somewhere around 3 grand on my tower alone, and its still not on par with the PS3! So PLEASE everyone stop just looking at the price, and if 600 bucks is expensive for you, then how much do YOU pay for your laptops? or Digital cameras? or Desktops? Just some things to think about. Oh and when nintendo and microsoft have both come out with a new console in 2 years, guess what, you have to spend another 300 bucks or so, while the PS3 is still just as capable if not more, and it will be around for at least 6 years.
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Gabe Newell, co-founder and managing director of development house Valve Corporation, didn’t mix words when tracked down for an interview in this month’s issue of Game Informer. Newell had some rather strong opinions regarding the PS3 and Wii.
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