PS4 architect knew in 2007 that "clearly we had some issues with PlayStation 3" - He began covertly canvassing devs about PS4 in 2008.
FOLLOW LINK FOR FULL ARTICLE:
Inside the PlayStation 4 with Mark Cerny
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/189368/Inside_the_PlayStation_4_with_Mark_Cerny.php
"Mark Cerny originally began to think about designing the PlayStation 4 in 2007. Over Thanksgiving weekend, a mere year after the PlayStation 3 was released, he began to read technical documents about the X86 processor -- the processor that ended up going into the system that was unveiled this past February, by Cerny, in New York City.
The fact that he spent so much of his personal time working on the question of just what hardware should go into the box made Cerny realize something important: "I probably have more passion about the next generation than anybody inside the Sony Computer Entertainment world."
With that in mind, he pitched his bosses on letting him lead the PlayStation 4 development efforts. To his surprise, he earned himself the role of lead system architect.
Though he began with the technology, "wanting to lead the effort wasn't based on any specific beliefs at that time -- other than that clearly we had had some issues with PlayStation 3, in that a very developer-centric approach to the design of the PlayStation 4 would just make things go more smoothly overall."
"The biggest thing was that we didn't want the hardware to be a puzzle that programmers would be needing to solve to make quality titles," says Cerny. He's referring here to the fact that the CELL processor, which powers the PlayStation 3, was extremely powerful by 2006 standards -- but also notoriously difficult to work with.
So in 2008, once he'd gotten the okay, Cerny began to canvass PlayStation 3 developers, asking them what they wanted from a theoretical next generation console -- yes, that early. "It's not like we could come out and say we were developing the next generation of hardware -- we certainly couldn't say that in 2008," Cerny recollects."
FOLLOW LINK FOR FULL ARTICLE:
Inside the PlayStation 4 with Mark Cerny
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/189368/Inside_the_PlayStation_4_with_Mark_Cerny.php
"Mark Cerny originally began to think about designing the PlayStation 4 in 2007. Over Thanksgiving weekend, a mere year after the PlayStation 3 was released, he began to read technical documents about the X86 processor -- the processor that ended up going into the system that was unveiled this past February, by Cerny, in New York City.
The fact that he spent so much of his personal time working on the question of just what hardware should go into the box made Cerny realize something important: "I probably have more passion about the next generation than anybody inside the Sony Computer Entertainment world."
With that in mind, he pitched his bosses on letting him lead the PlayStation 4 development efforts. To his surprise, he earned himself the role of lead system architect.
Though he began with the technology, "wanting to lead the effort wasn't based on any specific beliefs at that time -- other than that clearly we had had some issues with PlayStation 3, in that a very developer-centric approach to the design of the PlayStation 4 would just make things go more smoothly overall."
"The biggest thing was that we didn't want the hardware to be a puzzle that programmers would be needing to solve to make quality titles," says Cerny. He's referring here to the fact that the CELL processor, which powers the PlayStation 3, was extremely powerful by 2006 standards -- but also notoriously difficult to work with.
So in 2008, once he'd gotten the okay, Cerny began to canvass PlayStation 3 developers, asking them what they wanted from a theoretical next generation console -- yes, that early. "It's not like we could come out and say we were developing the next generation of hardware -- we certainly couldn't say that in 2008," Cerny recollects."
