It seems everyone and their mother wants to get in on the PS3 bashing these days.  However, the twist is, more and more developers are the ones doing the bashing! This time it's Jason Booth, an ex-Harmonix employee, who, in a recent blog post, breaks down the myths and marketing hype behind the PS3  - essentially taking the system to task. 

You may know Jason best as the character model for Lars Umlaut.  Ok, I'm kidding but damn - he could be!

In all seriousness Jason breaks down some of the big marketing myths in easy to digest bite-sized explanations:

"The PS3 is more graphically advanced than the 360"

Fill rate is one of the primary ways to measure graphics performance - in essence, it's a number describing how many pixel operations you can perform. The fill rate on the PS3 is significantly slower than on the 360, meaning that games either have to run at lower resolution or use simpler shader effects to achieve the same performance. Additionally, the shader processing on the ps3 is significantly slower than on the 360, which means that a normal map takes more fill rate to draw on the ps3 than it does on the 360. And I'm not talking about small differences here, we're talking roughly half the pixel pushing power.

"Uh, Blue Ray!"

Great for watching movies, but not so great for games. Getting data off the blue ray drive takes about twice as long as it does to get the same data off the 360's DVD drive. That translates into longer load times, or god forbid if your streaming from disk, tighter constraints on the amount of data you can stream.

This one I have a hard time with - I'm currently playing through Insomniac's farking amazing Ratchet & Clank Future Tools of Destruction and the load times are non-existent.  Obviously, it can be done - with a good chunk of core files sitting on your 40GB PS3 hard drive of course!


"Why the PS3 version often pails in comparison to the 360 version, and why exclusives often suck:"

As outlined above, getting equivalent performance out of the PS3 requires a lot of work unique to the platform, and in many cases, even with all these tricks, you still won't see equivalent performance. Thus, many ps3 games have simplified shaders and run at lower native resolutions than the 360 versions. On top of this, there is shrinking incentive to do this work; the PS3 isn't selling.

This one can be validated.  One need only look as far as the recent Tony Hawk Proving Ground to see the difference.  The X360 version of the title simply looks amazing while the PS3 is...meh...

As always - these things can be taken with a grain of salt - they are valid and major arguments - but if you recall - there was much hatred around the PS2's architecture as well. Once can also argue we're still early on the systems life-cycle and development can only improve and become more efficient as they learn to tap the systems power.  Though, as more and more major developers come out against the system - the future doesn't look all bright and cheery either...

Lack of a compelling online community experience - I couldn't be happier with my PS3.  Now - just get me some more games!

Source: NeoGAF
Origin:  Jason Booth's Blog