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Chris Grannel, ex Sony dev interview.

D

Deleted member 471617

Unconfirmed Member
That was part of a great 3 hour podcast. Also had OptimusCode from Twitter on it who has 30 years of development experience. Learned a lot from Chris and Code.
 
That was part of a great 3 hour podcast. Also had OptimusCode from Twitter on it who has 30 years of development experience. Learned a lot from Chris and Code.
I just find Dealer insufferable to listen to.
But yeah, it was really interesting hearing from both Chris and Code.
Would love it if Chris could come back and talk about what it was like working for GG on Killzone 2.
They could have asked him more about what working on the Cell was like, and if it was as powerful as Sony said it was.
Maybe They can do a part 2.
 
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Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
Here's the problem: A quick look at Grannell's Mobygames profile just shows him as a designer, not a programmer and quite frankly if that's what his position was back in the early 2000's his technological knowledge is not only limited but way outdated.

The bottom line for me is that I know what projects he was working on at Studio Liverpool, I know what an absolute shit-show that studio was during that period, and I know how sour a lot of the people were after Shuhei Yoshida shut the whole the thing down.

He's not a trustworthy source in any way, shape, or form. And I say this knowing A LOT of people from the NW dev-scene accumulated over the 30+ years since I started in the biz.
 
D

Deleted member 471617

Unconfirmed Member
I just find Dealer insufferable to listen to.
But yeah, it was really interesting hearing from both Chris and Code.
Would love it if Chris could come back and talk about what it was like working for GG on Killzone 2.
They could have asked him more about what working on the Cell was like, and if it was as powerful as Sony said it was.
Maybe They can do a part 2.

I listed to RDX every week for about the last year and in that year, I have learned much more about tech and all that plus, everything they say on their podcast (as well as Rand/Jez) have turned out to be accurate which is what I care about the most. I'm not going to waste my time listening to Xbox or PlayStation guys who are wrong the vast majority of the time.

Chris talked a little about the Cell processor and even made a reference to the PS5 SSD being a pain in the ass like the Cell processor was but not to the same extent which I do believe. To me, Sony is trying to go "unique" like with PS3 and I believe that it will backfire. All this tech, no reason to try different shit especially when the SSD is only going to be taken full advantage of by their first party studios.

For me, my number one interest is Ray Tracing for next gen followed by RGB HDR, Native 4K resolution and locked 60FPS. I simply see Xbox Series X being much more capable in these aspects than PS5, especially Ray Tracing. Third parties are not going to be able to take full advantage of the PS5 SSD unless they're working on an exclusive which for the major AAA publishers is unlikely.

As someone who loves PS4/PS4 Pro and heavily favors it over Xbox One, Sony's direction isn't what I was hoping for in regards to PS5. Their internal studio exclusives will be amazing as we all know but 70%+ of my gaming is from third parties and I actually expect this to increase while exclusives will decrease for me going into next gen so in this regard, I just want the best overall package. Both SSD's are like ice cream to shit compared to the HDD that is currently being used for PS4/Xbox One. Plus, the Zen 2 CPU is a massive leap over the Jaguar CPU.

But yeah, would definitely like to see Chris and Code on a future episode of RDX. Hopefully, that happens.
 

Dory16

Banned
Interesting that when there are devs talking up the Sony SSD that's 100% important and relevant. When it's another dev saying something critical, it should be immediately dismissed. Never fails to disappoint, SonyGAF.
That's when your thread isn't outright deleted or renamed to something that makes the title as harmless as possible to Sony PR. Both have happened to me.
 

Deto

Banned
Interesting that when there are devs talking up the Sony SSD that's 100% important and relevant. When it's another dev saying something critical, it should be immediately dismissed. Never fails to disappoint, SonyGAF.
That's when your thread isn't outright deleted or renamed to something that makes the title as harmless as possible to Sony PR. Both have happened to me.


several developers, including third party working with devkits, talking to Jason Schreier
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
developer retired for almost 15 years, that the most close to games is interacting with xbox fanboys on twitter.
 
Here's the problem: A quick look at Grannell's Mobygames profile just shows him as a designer, not a programmer and quite frankly if that's what his position was back in the early 2000's his technological knowledge is not only limited but way outdated.

The bottom line for me is that I know what projects he was working on at Studio Liverpool, I know what an absolute shit-show that studio was during that period, and I know how sour a lot of the people were after Shuhei Yoshida shut the whole the thing down.

He's not a trustworthy source in any way, shape, or form. And I say this knowing A LOT of people from the NW dev-scene accumulated over the 30+ years since I started in the biz.

So basically about the same circumstances as the Crytek dev in the interview they gave, then. That's why all of these type of interviews should come with a pinch of salt; if they have some prior history working for a platform holder, they probably have a tiny bit of skin in the game.

Doesn't mean their points aren't worth taking into consideration when it comes to the larger scale discussion, however.
 

Dory16

Banned
several developers, including third party working with devkits, talking to Jason Schreier
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
developer retired for almost 15 years, that the most close to games is interacting with xbox fanboys on twitter.
Designer, not dev.;)

What about the developers in this article? Are they retired and interacting on twitter or are they just designers?
 

Handy Fake

Member

FranXico

Member
Don't know, I'm not talking about them. :)
Him. It's one developer they interviewed. Only quote taken from the actual developer is that bandwidth is more so a limiting factor in a narrow+fast design than in a wide+slow one. Which is correct.

Rest of the article is throwbacks to the PS3 (evil Sony made it difficult!) and vague claims that it isn't clear whether faster IO will carry any benefit (no devs quoted there).

It's a very typical style of clickbait article, really.
 
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Deto

Banned
What about the developers in this article? Are they retired and interacting on twitter or are they just designers?

and what's the point?
He talked a lot and said nothing.


moreover: stop victimizing yourself.
 
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Can't say I recognize the name. What is he known for and what is he working on for next gen?

Ex-Sony Game Designer (F1, Killzone 2, Wipeout), Founder and CEO
@UrbanZooIO

Urban Zoo is a sports technology company with extensive design and development experience in mobile, web, e-commerce and fan engagement.

In other words, he should shut the fuch up.

looool his instagram is hilarious. Its mainly just selfies lmao.
 
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Bernkastel

Ask me about my fanboy energy!
This is the OP from the other thread that got merged here
Chris Granell has worked on Formula One Series, Wipeout HD:Fury and Killzone 2 for Playstation. In this Dealer-Gaming podcast he explains why Xbox Series X caught Sony off guard.


From 2:09:34
I got a lot of shit talk from lots of fanboys, but I kind of said that "staggering sentence, something that developers that I've been speaking to utilised, some said "significant", [some said] "staggering" - there were all different types of wording used, but there was kind of an overwhelming difference that the machine that Microsoft had put together is a beast compared to what Sony have put together.
I think Sony have kind of rested on their laurels a little bit. You know, they've got this massive kind of market share and lead, and they've done a bit of a PS3... not that bad in terms of hardware and complications and things like that, but just a little bit of - they didn't really kind of appreciate what Xbox were going to try and do in terms of this kind of power narrative
..
There is no question that they have been caught off-guard, there is no question that Microsoft has been working a little bit closer with AMD on some of the technologies that they have been working on, I am sure thats gonna cause a stare from lots of people out there for me saying that.
...
There is a confidence from Microsoft and Xbox on what they have put together and you only have to see that with Phil when he starts talking about you know the PS5 reveal, they kind of knew that they made the right choices.
...
I think in terms of true next generation consoles, heres where the misses which I have kind heard about a little bit in terms of solely for kind of performance, not graphical performance but you know the speeds and this SSD side of things, they have also started kind of going 4K and decent frame rate and things like that. An element that I am kind hearing that you also have been hearing is it on this kind of next gen features like Real Time Ray Tracing, there been a drop in that, you can see by the targeted CU's(XSX has 52 CUs vs PS5's 36) they have gone with on the GPU side of things, compared to what Xbox have put together and thats massive and if you look at the through-puts and the Ray Tracing capability then you start to get to those levels where you can understand why developers would be saying its staggering, so you have got the Math and then you start looking at the real time ray tracing capabilities.
...
The narrative that came out last month or few weeks ago or what not, I havent heard anything, any kind of major this overheating issues on PS5, I have heard that it runs hot and Dev Kits are running a bit hot(Jet Engine 2.0 confirmed), thats kind of you can expect. Theres an element around kind of the cooling, so whether it has been nailed and its one of the reasons why we havent seen final boxes and things like that. But its more kind of this blance between CPU and GPU is where some of the devs that I have spoken to have kind of issues or headaches, because that starts to become a really irritating balance, so Sony arent kind of automatically doing some of the variables on your behalf that becomes your headache as a dev, then you start to ask the questions on do you want to utilize the CPU more or the GPU etc. But then you kind of look at the list what i/o's doing, what the Memory bandwidth speeds doing, how Xbox has gotten some of the pluses like the 320 bus compared to (Sony's) 256 bus and so forth and so on. The whole kind of narrative around the SSD being the killer, the game changer of next gen, I mean that starts to being debunked for 3rd parties and stuff, it makes no difference if you are playing with cross-play as theres more cross-play coming into more developers doing cross-play and bring gamers together and things like that, theres absolutely no reason for someone at PS5 to be sat in that lobby for 5-6 seconds than someone on a PC or Xbox or whatnot, because you then have to seat there anyway. Or you know you have got the compression architecture, you have got Kraken (for PS5), you have got (for XSX), I forget what its called (another guy tells him its BCPack), I am kind of hearing similar things to some of the narrative is that Xbox's really kind of shit-hot compression and thats actually helped them with Performance.(Explains SSD might have advantage for first party)
..
As a developer I would rather work on fixed performance deltas, so knowing that my GPU's gonna do 1.8 (GHz), knowing that my CPU's gonna do 3.6 (GHz) consistently, not having to kind of worry about pulling power from one side, pulling that kind of performance delta from one to the other.
And the boost clock stuff, I cant kind of quantify this but theres this absolute reaction that PS5 is 9 TFlops console all day long, theres this boost clock element that pushes it upto 10.2 and whatnot. There a bit of kind of reactionary to that because I have been here before the talks were here and stuff, before it was kind of the talk was out, I was not hearing anything about it being a 10.2 console, it was always kind of 9.something area and it just feels theres this bit of boost has come into play, yeah ofcourse you can boost the PC cards and stuffs like that so it exists and we all overclock our PC cards and push them to going to the max and some things like that, but you have got this kind of cooling solution. As I said I am not hearing some kind of overheating issues as some people would say it was almost kind of disaster and stuff like that, but I am hearing its running kinda hot and I am hearing that decisions need to be made on where you decide the GPU or the CPU depending on what you are doing... You run something so hot for so long on these 4-5 year console cycles, so that same pace gonna be kept, theres gonna be lots of variants that are gonna kick in cornering harware together.

Original tweet by Chris Grannel


This confirms what Tom Warren had previously said
 
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Dory16

Banned
and what's the point?
He talked a lot and said nothing.


moreover: stop victimizing yourself.

I see. Thank god he's not a designer, otherwise he would have talked a lot, said nothing AND "only" been a designer.
Not too long until you see the light on Digital Foundry.
Not that I believe your eyes will open.
 

Bernkastel

Ask me about my fanboy energy!
For the last couple weeks a narrative is being pushed on Neogaf about PS5 being "better engineered" device using more "quality parts" and XSX being a "brute force" machine with "heavy bottlenecks". But, everything he says makes it sound like XSX is better engineered.
 

icerock

Member
yeah_eddie_murphy.gif
 

Dory16

Banned
For the last couple weeks a narrative is being pushed on Neogaf about PS5 being "better engineered" device using more "quality parts" and XSX being a "brute force" machine with "heavy bottlenecks". But, everything he says makes it sound like XSX is better engineered.
There's 3 possible outcomes from here. This thread gets renamed, closed for being redundant or the developer who gave the quote gets personally attacked and dismissed.
 

Dory16

Banned
Why does it annoy you so much that Sony fans are optimistic about the new console?
You are in a thread about a developer's interview to dismiss the man's career (a lot of people in his field do not get such a track record) and I am the one annoyed by optimism? Are you for real?
 
I think this is pretty obvious. Nothing about the PS5 sounds like they actually planned for it to be like that.

The variable clock speeds, ultra duper boost just to reach 10TF... The narrative that power is all about the SSD all of sudden, but also power doesn't matter.

Just looks like they got caught off guard otherwise they also wouldn't need to the ridiculous amount of damage control they put out after the catastrophic Cerny deep dive.
 
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Deto

Banned
They are busily scouring the internet for another random developer that says something that loosely contradicts this other developer no one ever heard of.

Choose an alternative:


a) several developers, including third party working with devkits, talking to Jason Schreier

b) Designer retired for almost 15 years, that the closest he gets to working making a game is when he records a podcast with xbox fanboys, who has no access to any devkit



It seems quite simple which side has credibility.
 
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FranXico

Member
They are busily scouring the internet for another random developer that says something that loosely contradicts this other developer no one ever heard of.
Then xbox fans will quickly dig up some click bait article explaining how Cerny is lying to people or yet another tweet from an unknown expert who explains in 140 characters or less how Sony have spent millions designing their console for nothing.
And the cycle will forever continue.
 
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