PS3 struggles hurt Haze development

They should just go the way of Blue Omega and lay off the entire staff. Send them back to school or something.

a cool idea, story or feel to a game is easy to see even in the most broken and badly coded products.

Haze had none of those things.

You only have to look at the interesting but buggy-as-hell games coming out of eastern Europe. Nice ideas and stories, even if playing them is like hitting your hard drive with a hammer.

the guy talking the game up was a total fudd...it made me not want to play it.
I did..I wish I believe my gut instinct

as I knew he was just full of it...yes rob yescombe I'm talking about you

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pr6b0SPp0U0

Makes me wonder what Free Radical could do with a console that wasn't intentionally made difficult to program for.

Porting a game from any other system to the PS3 is tantamount to taking it all apart, running the pieces through a blender, and trying to reassemble an approximation of the original item. The PS3 system architecture is completely different from any other computing device, and very strongly dictates what you can and can't do with it.

It's one thing to build a wooden cabin out of unrefined timber. It's another altogether to try and make the same item out of wood pulp.

Not a statement of quality of any system; the developer's comment is correct. The PS3 is by far the most difficult platform to develop for, and without massive allowances of time and effort, your ports will look like crap.

It's easy, Microsoft are a software development company. = Great dev tools.
Sony make hardware ... Stat!

He's blaming the PS3 for his failure? Please. I guess he has to account for it some how and it was easier to blame the PS3 because at the time everyone did. Haze was just bad game all around. Not as bad as many claim, but the dialogue and story was just bad. That was not the fault of the system, but the developers.

i thought this game was decent. not incredibly spectacular, not a killer of anything, but a decent enough FPS to stand on its own. it also helps i paid less than $20 for it as well.

The PS3 is difficult. It takes a lot of time and money to get things up to the same level as PC or 360 development. You only have to look at the John Carmack quotes about the Rage engine and the PS3 to see that getting the PS3 up to speed and working correctly is a beast.

People mention Killzone2, MGS4, Uncharted but these publishers had Sony and IBM helping them get their code up to speed. Smaller devs like Free Radical evidently did not have this benefit and they struggled to get things working.

The Uncharted Devs even went on records stating they spent 3 years on the engine alone (this was an interview where one of the devs was asked the question what you least liked about Uncharted development). How many Devs do you think can afford to put that kind of investment into a game.

We already know that a lot of time was invested in getting Killzone2 to market.

How many devs have dropped PS3 projects or had poor showings because of the PS3 Architecture. Using Devs who have insider access to Sony is not the best examples if Sony does not provide the same service to all of their 3rd Party developers.

Do not forget that Epic had to screen for support before Sony and IBM gave them help with the Unreal Engine to get it up to par.

Last but no least, it has been reported many times how crappy Sony's tools were during Haze development. FR probably thought they could get a game out in 18 months until they started working on the PS3 and found out the tools were crap, Library's non-existent and documentation was sparse at best. Then you find yourself having to create all of the things needed just to actually get content for your game.

What I believe is that if Sony has the same attitude next-gen to hardware and not providing the proper tools, library's, API'S and documentation to help developers get their games up and running without having to fight the hardware, they will see more developers find the home MS build a much nicer place to be.

The undeniable fact that several developers reach amazing results on the PS3 means that the developers whining about how hard is to develop for it can only blame their own inability for their failures.

Simple as that.

@Abriael
Yeah, I am sure Carmack and Tim Sweeney both feel just like failures for having problems with getting the PS3 up to snuff. I am sure those developers that were able to get great results from the PS3 did it with just their talent alone and no help from Sony and IBM or spent 3+ years getting up to speed....

"...Gabe Newell hates the thing so much he once forced an elephant to eat a crushed up 20GB model, jammed a cardboard cutout of Jack Tretton into the resulting dung pile and burned the whole thing in effigy."


As Sony has stated in the past, they made the learning curve for PS3 development intentionally difficult. Because they hate the PS3, too.

I find it hard to believe that the reason for the deathly demise of Haze was because of the slow development time with the PS3. Don't get me wrong in the early days of the console everything was going against it. From the price point to the competitors getting a quick foothold within the industry; nothing seemed to be working for Sony. But the main and true reason that Haze was poorly excepted was because it SUCKED! Next time, Karl Hilton, point the finger to yourself instead of blaming others for your shitty game.

Abrial mutters:

"The undeniable fact that several developers reach amazing results on the PS3 means that the developers whining about how hard is to develop for it can only blame their own inability for their failures. "

What a load of BS.

"Several developers reach amazing results on the P3" simply because they are owned outright by SONY. As pet, in-house developers, they have access to all the technical resources of the mothership, as well as huge budgets, all funded by SONY.

The average developer, on the other hand, has none of these things. They have to make do with their own funds, own schedules, own investors, own technology. They don't have three years and the freedom to make a game just so that SONY can wear the game like a badge of marketing pride.

"And of course you perfectly know what kind of help did developers get from Sony or IBM, right?"

Umm, it's on the public record dude. The makers of Uncharted and Killzone 2 are wholly owned by Sony. They have access to vast sums for both development and marketing, as well as priority marketing and product placement. They have direct access to Sony's PS3 technical staff.

Unlike most other developers.

Maybe they should look into sharing technologies with competent FPS developers, for the PS3, like Guerrilla Games or Insomniac, instead of hiding behind such an excuse.

When Naughty Dog and Insomniac were both established, on the PS2 through Jak and Daxter, Ratchet & Clank, respectively, they shared trade secrets and even their own graphics engines to help each other out. Likewise, they did the same with Sly Cooper developer Sucker Punch Studios.

And, in turn, all three fed off one another and benefited, as well as had great, if not amazing, debuts on the PS3 with Resistance, Uncharted and inFAMOUS.

It does seem a little odd that the same people that once heralded Free Radical as one of the best developers out there are now saying that they're trying to cover up how awful they are by saying this.

For 2 years they've been the amazing developer that made one bad game when money was tight. But now when they say something bad about the system it was on, they're "just bad developers".

So what's changed in the last 2 years since they went under?

When was Haze released again? Because I'm sure other good/great PS3 games came out already by then from exclusive devs they could have asked the advice of. There's a reason why Sony studios share techniques, guidelines, tips, and tricks: because they are all in it together and its easier than bullsh*tting around.

Being a dev that has a ton of support they can get and complaining about how hard something is is like being a college student having trouble with a class and never getting a tutor - despite having a willing tutor sitting next to you in class the whole term.

And of course Konami is owned by Sony as well, right? Just as much as Square-enix?

I didn't hear kojima whining about how terrible working on the PS3 is, like i don't hear anything of the sort from the Final Fantasy XIII team, just to make two examples. I don't hear it from Namco, that continues to develop PS3 exclusive titles (like the upcoming Gundam game that looks awesome) or from Capcom, that makes their PS3 multiplatform titles totally on par with the 360 ones, I don't hear it from the vast majority of developers.
That makes me guess that, most definitely, the problem doesn't lie in the console, but in a couple of western primadonna developers that can't be arsed learning a new system that gives great results to others. 'Nuff said.

One time I made a song that no one liked and blamed my guitar.

the problem with the logic is that the technical side wasn't the issue. The story wasn't REALLY the issue either. Bad AI isn't usually that big of a problem to a game either (really, online it's a non-issue and some great shooters have next to no AI) The problem was the horrible balancing and absolutely horrendous voice acting. BOOSH!

Regardless of where the blame belongs, it is the sheer fact that they had a product that they weren't satisfied with but decided to put out hoping that a bunch of stupid nicknames and blurbs would sell it.

That is a developer issue.

Granted I'm sure the PS3 is very difficult to develop for, especially for smaller third party companies; nevertheless when you sign an exclusive deal you sure as shit should know how to develop on the system you sign the deal with.

Just the facts.

Just taking a quick scroll through metacritic's top PS3 reviews.

Grand Theft Auto IV
Call of Duty IV
Street Fighter IV
Metal Gear Solid IV
Bioshock
Dead Space
Fallout 3
Demon's Souls
Ninja Gaiden Sigma
Valkyria Chronicles
BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger

All of them turned out pretty well. None of which are games owned or made by Sony. Not sayin. Just sayin

Wait didn't they say they were going to create a their own engine for Haze? So yeah no duh a game is going to be better on something like the CryEngine cause its been proven to work well. Again I'll echo what everyone has been saying, don't blame it on the PS3. Look at all the great games on it that had no problem to be worked on ONLY for the PS3, Heavenly Sword, Ninja Gaiden Sigma, Uncharted, etc. etc. The games are only going to get better. Lets all just hope devs learn to stop trying to create their own engine for a game to save money and just use whats been proven to work well.

Sure haze wasn't as great as I wished but I still break it out and play with friends every now and then.