Volition’s Dan Sutton has said that developers have yet to realise the full potential of the PlayStation 3’s cell processor, noting it will be another “two or three years” before PS3 visuals of multiplatform games surpass those of the Xbox 360s.
Speaking to Videogamer.com in regards to why PS3 versions of multiplatform titles generally look identical or indeed worse than their Xbox 360 counterparts, Sutton replied: "Graphically, in itself it’s a very very powerful machine. I think the problem is you have to teach programmers how to do that. We have very very amazing programmers on our Xbox team who when they get the PS3 in front of them, it takes them forever, because of the multi-threading they do with the Cell processor.”
“It’s just how complex the Cell processor is. As people get their heads around that it gets better and you get more parity coming out, but code has to be written in a certain way for that and it’s a lot more complicated than it is for the Xbox."
Sutton observed that although some games such as Konami’s Metal Gear Solid 4 and Insomniac’s Resistance 2 push the PS3’s graphical capabilities “firmly,” he noted that developers have yet to utilize cell to its full potential.
"I think you’re seeing development teams now ramp up. You get people who are dedicated to the PS3 and that’s why you’re getting equal graphics. You see some stuff on the PS3, like Metal Gear Solid, that push it very very firmly graphically, and I’m sure Resistance 2 is going to do that as well. I think you’re going to see games that are developed for each console specifically, the exclusives, really push it that way still. I think the Xbox, even though it doesn’t have as much hard drive space, is not Blu-ray, you still see that it’s a very very powerful machine,” he stated.
“I think that’s why games like Final Fantasy are coming over to the Xbox. It’s still, in essence, as powerful, and people have their heads around that. Maybe two, three years from now when they’re very much into the PlayStation cycle you may see better games come out. We don’t know. I don’t think anyone’s really taken the Cell processor to its full potential yet," he concluded.