ID's John Carmack stokes the console fanboy war: "360 better than PS3"

With all due respect, I don't believe in console 'wars' and nor does John Carmack - but it was a catchy title for the blog ;)

In context, John was recently interviewed by QJ.net about his experience with development and the question was put to him as to his thoughts on the PS3 being the 'best console' of all time.  His response was not particularly surprising - saying that although he liked the PS3, the 360 was much easier to develop for - largely because of a much better SDK (which we knew) and the flexibility offered by the 360's RAM architecture (the 360 allows devs to vary RAM allocation between CPU and graphics) compared to the PS3's sparse devkit and segmented RAM. (256k hardwired to CPU and GPU respectively)

While John's comments were not meant as a criticism necessarily - just an honest answer to a..perhaps fanboy-type of a question, his thoughts are worth listening to as the next generation of console approaches.  In terms of sheer potential, the PS3 is arguably better if only slightly, but for years studios have been forced to 'unlock' that potential by coding around incomplete development tools and architecture bottlenecks.  Some have been more successful than others largely due to money and resources; this has taken its toll on the PS3 particularly from the Indie games side of things which is largely non-existent for Sony's premier machine.

The Playstation 3 is a clear example of how hardware engineers can run amuck and create good electronics that are bad for developers.  Not knowing much insider details about the development cycle for the Playstation 3, we can only surmise that the software side of Sony didn't have a lot of involvement in the planning process.  Instead, it would seem that Sony used a 'if you build it, they will come' approach counting on the expertise of the software community at large to get their heads around the PS3's unique hardware arrangement.  While Carmark's comments about the PS3 are hardly unique or new, they underpin an important point of concern for Sony engineers who are, no doubt, in the final phases of specification for the 'Playstation 4.'