Topic: Nintendo's Next Gen Software Tools

[Galford]

Well MS has announced XNA for Xenon and ZDNews has some info about the PS3's tools.


My question is, who is Nintendo partnering with to make it's next gen software tools?
Remember, being easy to program for was GC's hallmark...

Here's the ZDNews link about Sony...
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1040_22-5606515.html?tag=zdfd.newsfeed

Link to MS's XNA site...
http://www.microsoft.com/xna/

[BlkPaladin]

The answer to that will not  come around until after E3 or sometime around that. I may be the same companies that did the Gamecubes.

[slingshot]

what about the "broadway" chip and the Hollywood processor?  or did I mix them up?  I don't know much about
computers, so forgive me if I was incorrect.  I thought that ATI was making one of these two chips, I can't recall who
is making the other.

?

[Don'tHate742]

He's talking about the program that is used to develope the games...software.

ATI and IBM are developing the hardware.

[pudu]

I'm a firm believer that good developer tools/software is an important factor in game developement, especially at the beginning of a consoles life cycle when developers are are most unfamiliar with the hardware.  Good dev software and tools also allow for an overall quicker, more efficient, and cheaper development cycle.  It's also something important for the smaller game studios that deserve the chance to still make games with the rising cost of development.  

I've been reading a bit into Microsoft's XNA and from what I see they definately have the upper hand at the moment (although we still don't know what Rev is going to have so it's unfair to assume they can't compete with XNA).  As far as Sony goes it seems to me they always seem to hurt themselves because by innovating their hardware with things like the Cell chip, they also make brand new developement obsticals...ones that make it harder to develop quality software at the begging of their consoles life cycle.  

Lastly, I'm hoping Nintendo makes the new control mechanic they are going to use a key part of their developement software so it is extremely easy to impliment and utilize to it's fullest.  If the first generation of games show the potential of it the Revolution will be far more likely to do good next generation.

[RickPowers]

Most competent developers only use tools to jump-start development.  Almost all the AAA developers hand-code their own development tools, because it gives them far greater control over the hardware than any sort of abstraction.  Yes, tools are important in the beginning of a console's lifecycle, if only because it gives developers an idea of where to look for answers, and what a console is capable of.

That said, some developers have early Revolution tools already.

[Galford]

I found some of the sites that were talked about on the ZDNews article, it looks like Sony is embracing a version OpenGL for it's development language.  

If you goto Collada's website you can see some interestings things over there.  
Namely people from SCEA and SCEJ talking/arguing with other developers.  It's kind of weird.

The only thing is, that article talks about Cg being ported to Cell.  That doesn't make a lot
sense if unless Sony plans on throwing a CRT controller on a Cell chip and calling it a
graphics processor...  

[RickPowers]

Isn't Cg an Nvidia development language, specifically for Nvidia graphics hardware?  If there is an Nvidia GPU in the PS3 (I honestly don't remember), then porting Cg to PS3 should be fairly trivial.

[ThePerm]

Devlopers will just use xenon tools for rev since they will be so much goddamn like the same thing....i say to revolutionm and xenon..you want ice cream cone..both of them say yes..what in the hell!

[couchmonkey]

...but with Revolution theoretically having much different input devices than Microsoft's next machine, programming for them isn't going to be exactly the same.

Whatever Nintendo is planning, I hope they do what it takes to get third party support as soon as possible.

[Galford]

Rick, as you know Cg is Nvidia's high level programming language for pixel shaders.  Porting them to Cell, the PS3 CPU would make little since.  I assume ZDNews's article meant the PS3's GPU, not Cell.

Unless my comment is true, which I doubt...

Also, my guess is that Metrowerks will be involved in Revolution's
tools.  Considering that Metrowerks is used for N64, DS and GC development.

[RickPowers]

I think the original article was in error, saying that they were porting Cg to the Cell processor itself.  Honestly, I know very little about what's going on the PS3, so I couldn't tell you for sure.

[Galford]

Rick, I have a couple of questions for you, I don't know if you can answer them....

Is Rev's CPU going to be dual-cored?  I just read a new CELL article over at Anandtech and
it brought up some interesting info about the PS3 and Xenon.

I have my internal theories about Broadway, but I'm curious to see if
what I'm thinking is correct...

[KDR_11k]

Of course it will be multi-cored because everyone's doing that these days and IBM loves multicore CPUs.