No Gravity Developers: “PSP is more powerful than iPhone”
by Carter DotsonIGN’s Matt Nix has conducted an interview with No Gravity: The Plague of Mind developers Realtech VR, and they dropped an interesting tidbit about the PSP vs. the iPhone in terms of hardware capabilities:
“We did a try of No Gravity on the iPhone and it was no match against the PSP version. The iPhone SDK is cleaner/better, but the console is less powerful (for example it is possible to do bloom effect on the iPhone, but it is way too slow and not usable in our game). Basically, No Gravity is No Gravity because it is on PSP, and cannot exist on the iPhone. ”
Is John Carmack wrong about the iPhone's power?
This seemingly flies in the face of famed id Software overlord John Carmack’s August 2008 comments that the iPhone was far more powerful than the DS and PSP. Now, we have some less famous people, albeit ones familiar with the PSP (quick, name an id Software release on the PSP!), saying that John Carmack is a liar, with requisite pants on fire. My only experience with programming came in freshman year of high school, and my dream of making games crashed to the ground like a lead zeppelin when I changed the window title of my game and it borked the controls to the game permanently. I still got an A for that horrible clone of Atari 2600’s Combat though, and my second year of computer science was mostly internet surfing. So despite my inexperience, I shall try to delve deeper into this issue of system power.
Let’s take a look at 2 things that I can at least pretend to understand: Megahertz and RAM. The PSP processor can run at up to 333 MHz (most games are set at 222 for battery life purposes, though. PS1 games and God of War: Chains of Olympus notably break this restriction), and has 32 MB of RAM for games to use. The iPhone processor is a 620 MHz processor that is underclocked to 412 MHz and has 128 MB of RAM. The iPod touch 1G’s processor is 400 MHz and the 2G’s is 512 MHz. So pound for pound, the iPhone OS devices necessarily have the advantage. But the two systems aren’t necessarily on equal footing. Remember that the PSP is primarily a game system, focused on one task at a time – doing whatever the user says it wants to do, so for playing games, it has access to the full system power.
The iPhone is different – it has to use some of its power for background resources, as it is essentially built as a miniature computer (the iPhone OS is based on the same kernel as Mac OS X) instead of a pure gaming machine. If you have an app like Free Memory or for jailbreakers, SBSettings, installed, check the free RAM on your device. Even for my iPod touch, it is well below 128 MB, in fact, mine is rarely ever above 64 MB available. And the system runs at a slightly higher resolution than the PSP, so more resources must be used to cover the extra screen space, although this is not a great amount (480×272 for PSP, 480×320 for iPhone).
This would've been cool on the iPhone, but alas....
So who are we to believe? We have certainly seen some solid 3D work done on the iPhone, especially in its relative infancy, but it not being a dedicated gaming machine does hurt its overall performance for games. And the 3D games on the iPhone do not seem to run as smoothly as they do on PSP, but this is purely subjective on my behalf. Maybe Realtech VR are correct and John Carmack is wrong – a likely proposition considering that Realtech VR actually make PSP games, and id Software does not. Or is the iPhone just not being used at max power yet?
This could be especially intriguing as the iPhone continues to mature as a gaming platform and we start to see developers with more experience developing for the system start to push its capabilities to unforseen limits.
More powerful or not, there's something else in effect here. There are more iPhones in people's pockets than PSPs. Just like consoles, the PS3 out powers everything else, but is no where close to the Wii which is pretty underpowered in compairison.
It's not about powerful systems, it's about fun games. Make a good game and people will play it. End of story. :)
(disclosure: I had surgery today and am high on pain killers. The post may not make sense to anyone but me)
I wish the fact that good games (or good anything, really) would automatically equal an audience, but that's not really the case at times. Well…the gaming market is kind of 'weird' in that usually the most popular games do have some underlying element of universal quality behind them, but there are plenty of underappreciated gems out there as well. But the issue of system power IS important at this level – what happens if some developer has a really cool idea for a 3D game on the iPhone but can't pull it off due to a lack of processing power? While the more powerful we get, the less likely it is for small differences to have a huge effect, right now, I think it does. And if the iPhone can't match up to what the PSP is doing (and remember, a PSP2 is probably coming soon, it has been a while since its original release), then it could hamper development of 'advanced' games for the system. Don't be so quick to dismiss the issue.
But then again, I could just blame it on the painkillers ;)
"There are more iPhones in people's pockets than PSPs"
No there isn't. There is 17 million iphones, 50 million PSPs, 48 million Wiis
Ahh, but more sales does not directly mean that they are in people's pockets. I know that because I am a person who owns both. My iPhone goes everywhere. My PSP does not, mainly for planning reasons.
Um, PSP has 2, not 1, 2 333 MHz processors. And iPhone runs a power hungry OS
You are not indicative of every other psp owner though. I have to bring my psp to make up for things iphone cant do like acting as a usb harddrive
Most ppl with iphones use them as phones, not gaming machines. So more iphones in ppls pockets is as irrelevant as there being more blackberrys, which also play games
Not to get too argumentative, but I have an app on my iPhone that allows me to use it as a data holder of sorts: DataCase. And the point about the phone being a phone is precisely why I have it in my pocket, and, I believe, why it's getting tons of press and developer support upon release, whereas the PSP has just now, IMO, started to gain some headway in the non-gamer's mind. Add to that the fact that I can grab MANY games for my iPhone for the $30 I'll spend on a good PSP game, and the iPhone is just that much more attractive.
It's totally cool to disagree, though. GREAT conversation!
And those games would be minigames in comparison to to the psp game. Iphone is incapable of psp-quality games for many reasons including buttons and storage capacity
Those apps still dont let iphone work as a standard universal usb hard drive which i need
That's a fair statement Techni. But then, so is pointing out that *you* are not indicative of a typical PSP owner ;-)
PS: I do believe the iPhone is capable of PSP quality games. I've played them.
And yep, I have a DS, PSP, and iPhone. I just go where the good games go. And they're everywhere…
“: I do believe the iPhone is capable of PSP quality games. I’ve played them.”
No it’s not. Show me a 1.8 GB iPhone game with CD quality sound, multiplayer, and complex gameplay. Which isn’t possible given the lack of buttons
“And yep, I have a DS, PSP, and iPhone.”
So do I. And each have their own quality level. DS will never have a PSP-quality game, iPhone will never have a DS-quality or PSP-quality game. There are too many restrictions. Even DS games can go up to 256 MB, iPhone devs are pressured to stick to 10 MB or lower.
And no developer is going to make a PSP-quality game for a system where the average cost of a game is less than $5. It'd be impossible for them to make their money back
Developers can't make PSP quality games on iPhone simply due to cost differences. No $1 game will ever match a big budget PSP game. Comparing tap tap revolution (example) to Crisis Core is just silly.