Would it have been smarter for Sony had they stuck with CELL for another generation?

[StingBull]

Sony suffered a lot when PS3 launched because of it's alien Cell architecture, but credit's where credit's due, they managed to create a powerful platform. It's true potential was lost to us for so many years and maybe we still haven't seen its limits. Sony switched to x86, a more familiar platform with the PS4.

 

But developers worldwide has been learning the PS3's architecture for nearly a decade now. It isn't as alien as it was before.

 

Would it have been so wrong of Sony to stick with the CELL, create a more advanced version of it for the PS4? Maybe if they did that Cell could have been much more. Not just for games consoles but for computers as well. A competitor for x86.

[Quest]

I think they would have gotten a lot of flak for it and lost popularity upon launch, since XBOX also moved to x86. It's just something that people would have been bound to bring up. "Oooohhhhh, now XBOX is closer to PC than PS4 is, it probably performs better. Why can't Sony be as open as Microsoft?"

[DevanArianne]

Even with a near decade of experience with the CELL processor, most developer shad no idea how to program for it properly. Even near the end of it's like the PS3 was still getting horrible, choppy, tearing ports because of it's cell processor. No, I really dont think holding onto it for another generation. 

[Vacsol]

A PC architecture on the 3 major platforms makes for easy ports, excellent scaling and easier development.

 

If they stuck with CELL they would still get occasional crappy Xbox -> ps4 ports and people would brag about games looking better on Xbone.

 

Since they are both VERY similar, games will almost always scale correctly when it comes to performance and visual fidelity, which is good for Sony.

[elkenrod]

Cell came from the same place that all of Sony's proprietary evilness comes from....

 

They didn't do it to "advance" the industry, they did it to lock out the competition.  

 

Looks like it backfired.  They learned their lesson

[Sharkyx1]

Cell development basically hit a brick wall when apple decided cell was a blow over and switched to Intel, since then it's just been die shrinks and attempts to make their profits back. Without Constance development you can't make a game console on the platform

Cerny was pushing Sony to use x86 since the ps3s release, ps3s development was headed by the sane guy who designed the first two, both of which had somewhat difficult designs and he thought that making the ps3 difficult devs would make ps3 games and not have the resources to port it to competitors

[Tacitus]

A quick glance at Skyrim shows even a renowned and talented team of developers had no idea what they were doing when it came to Cell toward the end of the console's life-cycle. That game had terrible framerate issues, and DLC delayed for months and months. Not to mention it had far worse graphics than the Xbox version.

[viperatedrko]

The reason the Cell architecture was so foreign to developers was because it was far more difficult to use than any regular common PC developer tools. 

 

Sure, Sony could've kept Cell with the PS4, but only the developers who had experience in the past with PS3 would be able to utilize it effectively. 

 

 

The problem is that there are many many new indie developers that Sony is promoting and that we are able to play through today that have never used PS3's architecture and began developing titles for PS4's launch and lifespan. 

 

 

Using distinguishable PC architecture in the PS4 helps developers to not make their titles multi-platform across console and PC, but makes development easier and faster

[GeathX]

A quick glance at Skyrim shows even a renowned and talented team of developers had no idea what they were doing when it came to Cell toward the end of the console's life-cycle. That game had terrible framerate issues, and DLC delayed for months and months. Not to mention it had far worse graphics than the Xbox version.

From what I remember reading, the issues with Skyrim were more to do with the split ram setup of the PS3 rather than the Cell. They were just having issues getting parts of the game to fit in the RAM, the 360 had an easier time because the RAM was just one singular block ( Like what we got with current gen now ) and so the system to accommodate all the variations of pieces choices in game. 

 

 

 

Sony suffered a lot when PS3 launched because of it's alien Cell architecture, but credit's where credit's due, they managed to create a powerful platform. It's true potential was lost to us for so many years and maybe we still haven't seen its limits. Sony switched to x86, a more familiar platform with the PS4.

 

But developers worldwide has been learning the PS3's architecture for nearly a decade now. It isn't as alien as it was before.

 

Would it have been so wrong of Sony to stick with the CELL, create a more advanced version of it for the PS4? Maybe if they did that Cell could have been much more. Not just for games consoles but for computers as well. A competitor for x86.

 

Yeah it is up for debate if Cell paid off for Sony with the PS3, it did have issues at the start, with things smoothing out a bit towards the end of the consoles life time. There were some games that the PS3 version was actually better, had more sophisticated technical details (MLAA) and showcased deferred rendering techniques, which a lot of 3rd party engines use or at least support now days.

 

But if going x86 allows developers to make games that much easier, that is probably more important. A lot of the compute functions that ran on Cell can be transferred over to the GPU in the PS4 now, so everything learnt isn't completely being wasted.

 

Also a big one, if they stick with x86, that could go a long way in maintaining backwards compatibility moving forward.

[tacticalpanic]

The reson sony used the cell processer is because they were banking on developers being reluctant to port games to the 360 because of the different architecture (sony did this with the ps2)