The PS3 is the machine that separate men from children.

We heard a lot of fluff about the technical abilities of many studios and it is very interesting to see that, at the end, they always blame the consoles for ther failures.

I would much prefer to hear something like "we did our best, we are sorry if it did not match the players' expectations" [as a player, I don't give a damn about crap excuses].

What a pathetic excuse for a shoddy game.

A poor workman always blames his tools.....

Guys, can you stop bashing on any fucking person who happens to find it difficult to develop for the PS3.

Can you stop clinging to your toys so hard that it makes you ignore a developer admit that there are issues with the hardware.

Free Radical went bust after Haze, and I commend Hilton for coming out and explaining problems in the past, because it can help us developers learn from these problems.

Not everything is about market share, kids.

How come everyone else managed it just means they werent good enough to adapt and in this new age would naturally go bust.

before the game came out didn't they make a claim that they don't see any issues developing for the PS3...now they are making a claim that it was difficult...I don't buy that...reason...because Sony has been lending a helping hand to devs who release an exclusive to make sure they understand what they are doing...If the PS3 is such a problem how come Sucker Punch did not have an issue...and they are also a third party developer that released their first game on the PS3 this past year...and it was one of the best games I have ever played...

First of all, programming the PS3 is a pain in the arse. It just is. sorry.

But my main point is, that Haze wasn't bad if you just look at it technically. I can't remember people leveling complaints at it for those reasons. What was more disappointing was the dull gameplay, bland art and poor (and overhyped) story.

Lets be fair, folks. These men are extremely talented. Besides the fact that these are the same men who put Goldeneye and Perfect Dark, they also put together the Timesplitters series, which despite not becoming financial blockbusters, the series has a die hard fan base, and is a critic darling.

To call these men anything less than extremely talented and creative is a slap in the face to the industry as a whole.

While I agree Haze was lackluster, it clearly suffered from technical issues above all. They were a small developer, and chose to create their own engine rather than use the extremely generic yet reliable Unreal Engine 3. You cannot blame a small studio when they cant afford to hire extra staff to code for a tricky system. People wonder why small studios are disapearing so quickly.

Also, people wonder why Valve, the foremost FPS developer on this planet; some of the most talented men in all of gaming, refuses to develop for the PS3. Developers arent fanboys, and theyre not idiots. At least Valve understands that sometimes making a stand in the face of an arrogant electronics giant that decided the create an amazing system which was too hard to develop for for smaller studios with less cash.

Cmon:
1: these guys WERE extremely talented. So was Konami's Seabass team, during the PS1 and PS2 era... they created Pro Evolution Soccer, a marvelous football game. Yet, they were unable to step up to this new generation.

2: Valve?! "Valve, the foremost FPS developer on this planet; some of the most talented men in all of gaming, refuses to develop for the PS3". Do you know who Gabe Newell is? Do you know his history? Go no further, check Wikipedia. Do you really think Gabe is uncompromised with Microsoft?
COME ON!

Valve even said they didn't want to develop on the PS3 because it's too advanced.
Just admit it, Free Radical was stupid.
They should have asked Sony for help (if they didn't already).

The PS3 is insanely powerful but even most of the most experienced programmers out there have never worked with anything remotely resembling the PS3's architecture. You can't blame them for failing.

The 360, in contrast, is very developer friendly. The result is that developers maxed it out years ago.

You young fools. Terrible developers make terrible games. It has nothing to do with the hardware since devs have had PS3 kits since 2004.

fanboy comments always raise a chuckle

valve have actually said they wanna develop for the PS3 but not until they've got some dedicated PS3 guys in there, and that they are actively looking for these people.
so yeah it is a bit tricky, but Media Molecule, Naughty Dog, Sucker Punch, Konami and many others have released stellar titles exclusively for the PS3, and not bitched about it. but even then Ex-Free Radical haven't critized the PS3, just addmitted that they couldn't get to grips with it, and that they now can.
regardless of why, Haze sucked balls, in fact was an embarrasment. that's behind us now, we are starting to see parrity now engines are being developed to bridge the PS3/Xbox devide. there should be less to no difference between Xplat games soon. imagine what'll happen if/when these guys actually start to exploit the PS3s "potential".
Oh and BTW, nobody's maxed out the 360 yet either. whoever said that was blowing smoke.

Who are we to stand in the way of technology. we dont get mad at the guys who build elect cars, and then support the poor mechanic that complains it is too hard to work on because they don't understand electronics.. we would say get educated on the new tech... done.
food for thought..

"Following the poor market response to Haze"

Almost 800 000 sold copies (according to VG Chartz) is a poor response from PS3 owners? For this crappy game? Mmm kay!

As much as I care about lame excuses for a terrible game, the first two comments have a point. You look at games like Uncharted, Ratchet and Clank Future, MGS4, Resistance 1/2, and Killzone 2 among others, you see how great the PS3 can be when developers use the potential. Uncharted came out before Haze, as did Resistance and Ratchet, while MGS4 came out a couple months after. Last time I checked, those are all amazing games

as has been said before, the PS3 is not easy to code for, that is known. coding your own fps engine is not easy either. why a small shop would decide to tackle both at once... that's just overconfidence at best, and arrogance at worst.

haze sucked because the team didn't have the skill to handle the task, which was a very big task, for a small shop.

the electric car analogy above is correct. if you don't have the skills, don't bitch about it, get the skills.

I still play HAZE and will always will!! Best Game EVER! Bring on HAZE 2! :)

Sorry, but if other developers can make a good ps3 game, there's no excuse for not being able to handle it. It couldn't have anything to do with laziness, could it? Oh no, let's just blame the hardware.

If they are so stupendously talented, they should be able to measure up to the standard that everyone else does. And that goes for Valve, too.

always blames his tools.

I don't understand all this extremist talk. Either the post consists of arguing how the devs were wrong to blame their tools when they sucked, or how the ps3 really is difficult to program on and it makes sense. Subsequent posts are just tit-for-tat.

Doesn't anyone understand that both could be true? What common threads I can glean are: yes, the ps3 is pretty difficult to develop on due to its unique architecture. Yes, successful games have been made. Yes, developers write the stories. What does this mean? That both the tools and the builder could have contributed to the problem of a bad game. Even good car mechanics can't always build Porsche engines...

Continue the back and forth.

secauth told damn tru things
PS3 is extremely difficult for programming. Especially for talented disigners, scriptwriters etc. To program anything they have to be a talented programmers. They have to know hardware. To be bitdiggers finally, But if they are not - sorry - they spent a lot of time to got a clue how to programm it and had no time left foe what they know how to do.
We live in very interesting time. Only 20 years ago an average programmer had to know what registers is, how to implement the code into interrupt chains, many had to know machine codes (assembler) to do anything advanced.
Nowadays in the age of programming tool, libraries written years ago, visual programming and middleware only some single programmers can to the thing mention above. PS3 threw programmers back into the world of bitdigging. Many are not ready to step back and boil their minds, most of them have no knowledge and passion to do it.
Program friendly programming tools did the bad work - many developers stop thinking. The result is Haze-like games faults.
So Hilton is right - PS3 is extremely difficult to program. For him.

Sounds like excuses to me. The PS3 is no harder to develop for than the PS2 (in many ways the tools are SO much better, it's actually easier).

There is not actually to wrong with Haze as a game, the reason it failed in the marketplace was because Sony put the game on a pedastool, and everyone knows the media has it in for Sony this generation.

You young whipper snappers don't know what hard is. Why when I was a young lad we programmed using eight toggle switches one for each bit in a byte. We didn't have any fancy dancy compilers or visual object oriented guis. Sure it was tedious especially if you made a mistake but we LIKED IT!

No matter the generation there are always console fanboys out there arguing the merits of their hardware. I skipped Haze since it pretty much looked like it was going to suck and any console unless they made it for Magnovox Odyssey II WHICH IS THE GREATEST GAME CONSOLE OF ALL TIME BEYATCHES :)

“I don’t think we’ve seen the best out of the PS3 at all,” added Hilton, “and I definitely think one of the best things about Crytek and the CryEngine is that we’re now in the best position to get the most out of the hardware.”

That is the most encouraging bit of the article, sweet games coming our way....

I found this whole programming case on the PS3 a bit of a joke. In the days of mainframes, programmers knew about forking and multi process paths. Then Intel and Microsoft took control and out went the multi process paths and replaced it with basic interrupt multi tasking. Now that Intel has worked out that there are physical speed limits and the only way forward is multi cores, we now have to teach the new guys about forking and multi processing paths. I have read about Intel and Microsoft going into uni's states to try and get them to start to teach forking and multi proccessing paths again! History repeats!

haze could of been good if it had better graphics,story and online,it really had good concepts tho

haze was a good game, buggy but a very good game, to me its the second best shooter released this gen, first being gears 2.
but this just proves what ive said a million times.
sony does not give a 2 hoots about their 3rd party devs, since this was a exclusive you would think sony would be checking in asking ubisoft how their going with the game asking if they needed any help.
but nope i bet you 50 bucks sony did not ring them once to offer help, yes thats ubisofts job to but sony should own up to part of their responsibility.
if it was naughty dog or GG or insomniac they would of been their at the drop of a hat, but since its a 3rd party dev meh who cares.
this is probably why splinter cell conviction is a 360 exclusive, because sony dident help ubisoft with haze so why should they bring SPC to the ps3.
thanks sony thanks to you i have to play SPC on the crapbox 3 fix me.

Piss poor excuse for a piss poor game!

Funny: Naughty Dog doesn't seem to stumble on these technical issues.

Nor does Sucker Punch...and many others.

Are you sure that it was the PS3 the real problem?

Would it have been different if Haze came out on the Xbox 360? Hmmm?

Er, wasn't it originally a 360/PS3 game anyway? Sure the blame here needs to be laid at the feet of whoever thought it would be good to go exclusive? Can you hear me, Ubisoft?

its not a excuse.
the only reason why devs like GG insomniac sucker punch naughty dog have no problems with the ps3 is because there first party developers.
most of them some are 2nd.
meaning sony would be helping them every step of the way, KZ2 for example at 1 stage of development GG had 6 of sonys programmers helping them with the code for KZ2.
why do you think it runs so smoothly.
if sony treated their 3rd party devs like they did their first party they would of been in a much better position and haze would of not been the buggy game it is.

I think Free Radical Design was over ambitious with their plans. For example the constant background loading was a nice feature but probably took the effort away from easier but just as good features.

I think HAZE was a fun game. It wasn't as good as expected but it was still a good game. The ending was crap though. I wanted a big boss fight.

Hmm so if studio X can write a good PS3 game then why can't studio Y?
... I mean, they're both studio's right? and "studios" make PS3 games so why is it Y cant and X can?

Really? folks REALLY? That kind of logic is totally mind boggling and bordering on moronic (or at least shows lack of exposure to any real world coding/engineering environment). What if, for just a moment, we imagine that studio X has much greater resources in the form of money, man-hours, PS3 knowledge base, more direct support from Sony (not all levels of support are equal!), etc .... And that Y had significantly less of all of those but their money men where lured by a big, fat, "Exclusivity" deal and just took a chance?

How does any of that make the developers any of the less-than-complimentary terms some of you are banding around??

Also, all this:
-"in my day we had to code by pushing individual bits around with the tip of a sharp HB pencil and hold them in place with a matrix of used, blueberry, bubblegum... so modern tools are lazy, etc, etc"-
...Is all well and good if you want your code to become a pet science experiment and never get out to the customer. Or you don't care if you never see any money for your endeavors, etc.. But a game you actually finish and people can actually buy and play is worth a thousand high concept, ultra fast, tech demo's written in assembly language that never see the light of day.

(Hmm should I crack open Visual Studio and write a perfectly adequate 360 game or try and "herd some digital-cats" in an attempt to make a PS3 game that doesn't run like crud?... Any wonder about Valves previous PS3 standpoint? or the fact Id reported that Rage (currently) runs at 1/2 the 360's frame rate on the PS3?)

The lack of good PS3 coding tools is a fault on Sony's behalf not on that of studio Y's developers... just because studio X has the money and man power to throw at the problem does not make studio Y a bunch of feckless baboons.... IMO.

Obviously studio Y's high-ups can make the same unwise decisions any of us could make regarding which projects to undertake and which projects to gracefully sidestep ... But, for a bunch of fanboys to pour in; with their noses firmly out of joint and start blaming the developers being "poor workmen" for not being able to harness the "awesome!!!! power" of the focus-of-their-brand-loyalty, is just shocking.

A developer should blame its tools, but in this case not the PS3. A place like FRD could just about bumble along with the ps2 - but they were always way behind with their structure. From what I have heard they were trying to work oldschool with hacky crap tools etc. For the amount of people they had they should of been far better.

Had they been doing PS3 and 360, then I might give them some more credit for struggling. But single platform...