For those who do not know, Gabe Newell is the big boss at Valve Software, who recently made a little game called Half-Life 2. And Gabe, he is none too thrilled with making games for the upcoming Xbox 360 / PlayStation 3 consoles. The reason? Multicore processors, which is a recent development even for today’s personal computers (except for maybe Apple G5’s). Next Generation has an interview with Gabe, where he explains why he feels sorry for both the developers of next-generation games and the customers, too: “Statements about ‘Oh, the PS3 is going to be twice as fast as an Xbox 360’ are totally meaningless.” Well said.
This rant does not seem concern Nintendo, since it didn’t jump on the multicore bandwagon - maybe that’ll be a good thing. Then again, everyone is fretting about having to program for its controllers, so I guess that’ll the tradeoff. Interesting read for those interested in how the other side of the games industry - the creators - think.
