While PC and 360 owners already have their hands on "The Orange Box", PS3 owners have had to wait for a delayed December release. But even with a longer wait, it doesn't seem like it was worth it.
Why?
Apparently Half-Life 2 is suffering from some "technical issues", the biggest problem being the framerates that can sometimes be so slow that, instead of cruising easily through a scene on a fast-paced vehicle at 30 frames a second, you'll be forced to watch your character struggle at a painfully slow single-digits crawl or even worse - the framerate completely halting the game.
In an interview earlier this year, Valve Software founder Gabe Newell referred to PlayStation 3 as "a waste of everybody's time." This attitude shows in the development structure of The Orange Box. While the PC and Xbox 360 versions were handled by Valve, the PS3 port was handed off to an internal team at EA. Originally scheduled to be released day and date with the PC and 360 versions, the PS3 Orange Box has been delayed until December. PS3 owners, forced to watch from the sidelines as their gaming kindred inundates them with tales of Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2 and Portal, continue to wait patiently for their chance to take a stroll through Valve's universe.
After spending a significant amount of time with a near final version of the PS3 game, it's apparent that this version suffers from a number of technical flaws, which at best merely hinder game play and at worst make the experience downright unplayable. Framerate is a consistent issue throughout the Half-Life series of games included in The Orange Box. One moment you'll be cruising through the game at 30 frames per second and the next you'll be enjoying a slideshow of series protagonist Gordon Freeman cruising down the river. However, Portal suffers from no such technical hiccups and is on its way to being a pitch-perfect port of the spatial reasoning exercise. Due to a server connection issue, we were unable to get any time with Team Fortress 2.
With the clock ticking, EA has a limited amount of time to fix the glaring issues which plague this port of The Orange Box. Unfortunately, it seems that, once again, PlayStation 3 owners are doomed to suffer through another substandard version of a multiplatform game.
Get used to still images. The framerate often grinds to a halt during the vehicular portions of the Half-Life games.
News Story attached to:
Submit a Story
Register
Get Started
Webmaster Tools
... and if the problems are really that bad, I'm sure they'll just delay it slightly rather than publish an unplayable game ^^
Stop blaming the PS3. It's the lazy ass developers at EA that are to blame.
EDIT:Don't know why i got thumbs down i was only replying to Mnmfan and besides its not like i said COD was superior to 360 i said the Infinite Ward head Honcho claimed it and directed a link for you all to see it. My intention wasn't to bash the 360 only to get more people insights on the article, just something i needed to clarify before this message gets out of view.
(Not saying it is, but just thought I'd raise the idea)
If the shift of talent makes the game superior or not is an entirely different story though.
That's what I meant. Although I'm guessing a lot of people haven't taken it that way.
EA decided to port the Orange Box, they assigned their Dev teams to the task. In this case the ability to do that was quite a failure.
This isn't a sign of hardware being unable to keep up, it's a sign of continued SDK problems and companies still trying to get it all together a year later.
Heavenly Sword and Lair...that's all I got to say, 1000 people on one screen or super gynormous maps
Then again, this is EA, and Valve doesn't like the PS3 at all...so I'm not surprised.
PS: INCOGNITO BEATS YOUR ASS!
Who handled the port? a UK EA Team? Yeah they're like right next door to Seattle.
A little less hate spam would be great.
Now, read it again to see if it makes sense.
And just in case you still don't get the message, this is it:
Incognito > EA
The point is your original jab goes at EA and then tries to drag Valve in as if they intentionally coded source to fail with the Cell processor and RSX. Had you left that out then it would have been fine, the point is you didn't. In case you forgot you wrote it here it is again.
"Then again, this is EA, and Valve doesn't like the PS3 at all...so I'm not surprised."
Amazing what a FULL quote looks like.
You're comparing a publisher that thrives on console wrappers for their code to a dedicated group of coders for an individual title. I'm pretty sure anyone can dig up a better group of individuals than pretty much 99% of the teams on EA.
Your attempt at being clever would better be left as,
Most developers in the world > EA's teams.
Why they didn't have part on the PS3 production? I don't know, but we all know it was a bad move when EA was involved.
CEO's CFO's and other executive bodies round off their hatred or love of things all the time, does it stop them from supporting them to some level? No. They do it anyway because the industry is going to move ahead regardless. Gabe Newell could hate lemons, it's not going to mean that Valve employee's are going to stop drinking lemonade.
In the end what drives the company is a profit margin, if they were so hateful of the PS3 they wouldn't have allowed it to be ported to the PS3, it's that simple. EA doesn't own the HL series, they merely publish discs and in this instance they were allowed to port the code to the PS3, as such Valve makes the final call on what happens with their property.
No one will know for sure why they didn't, one easy guess could be production cost and investment in something that is essentially a short term venture to them, they wouldn't be back porting their entire catalog and they do not turn out enough games a year to warrant the research into development on the Cell whereas EA has some experience (although they're proving that to be worth nothing at all really) and the capital to go through with the venture.
Tell why do you think the PS3 multiplayer games are bad its cause porting games make the game on one system suck hence in this occasion PS3 version. If people have two different teams working for the respected consoles both games regardless of multiplayer will be awesome, just another example of laziness taking the easy way to get both games out quicker. Another reason for many gamers to say i would rather wait and have the game to be delayed for a polished up version than a rushed up sucky version. It seems thats why the PS3 have shity multi-player games, Porting. Stop porting your only going to make the game worse.
It goes to show you that if people like Tecmo who made Ninja Gaiden Sigma the best Action game on the PS3 as good as it did, its not impossible to make the games on the PS3 own. But people are either lazy or in fact short on people to make to give two different teams to work on two systems at once. I think people need to make the PS3 game as if its an exclusive even though its multi and it gets better reviews and a better game over-all and everyone wins.