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This is the best news for Java on consoles yet.
JGO/GTG/community must now port natives to PS3 for complete game stack!
Lets hope its true, but I won’t be holding my breath. There has been way to much posturing from the big 3 these days, only time will tell what’s fact and whats “creative marketing”.
What about the JVM? Will it be the game developer’s responsibility? Will the game player have to down load it from Sun? Would we have to wait on something like J2SE Embedded since the PS3 is an embedded system? What about a product like Excelsior Jet?
That was a great move. I doubt Bill Gates would ever allow the next XBox to get linux. More power to PS3.
;D
Great as this is, I dont think its really a viable serious PS3 VM solution.
A PS3 VM written ontop of this Linux would only work with PS3s with the optional hard-drive.
Not many developers will want to target that as it will be a much smaller market then
the PS3 market as a whole. WHile ti might rpovide an avenue for develoerps primarly targeting
desktoip to reach SOME PS3s, its far from ideal.
My POV is that a true native PS3 VM is still the best way to go. It would also mean that you
dont have the Linux memory usage under your app.
Yeah, but what are the chances of that happening? ??? 
It all depends on how many people will want to have an hard disk on their ps3. The ps3 will not come with an hd, keyboard and mouse by deafult and if customers want to extend it into a personal computer they can have both a console and a pc, or even connect their ps3 to a personal home lan with their pc and possibly a printer or something else. I guess it would be just like a pc and could provide a complete development platform for ps3 games.
Having linux as an OS could be a first step in that direction. Linux is very flexible and if you configure it to run without the services that are useless for a machine playing a standalone game i bet someone would get the java vm running on top of the bare linux services almost as good as a native jvm. Even a normal linux stystem doesn’t heat memory so much, not as much as windows. You can run a minimal linux system with an x-server with an absurd small amount of memory.
This is a bigger move than just Linux on HDD for games because you can ( people do ) run Linux from a CD-ROM, no install. They call them live CD’s IIRC.
If you have a working verison fo Linux for PS3, then you can embed that in your game launch, and run it all from the CD-ROM. BTW I have tried this for PCs it runs just fine.
Pack your custom Linux build for your game and you’re off.
Still, a native PS3 JVM only layer would be best.
It’s possible to do a very economical system with linux running with x-windows not wasting more than a couple of mega-bytes of ram. Still a native jvm would require a native kernel to run on top, right ? That could be a tweaked version of linux kernel with minimal set of apis like glibc and an x server for ps3.
Is there anyone talking with Sony about a possible JVM for Linux/Playstation 3?
i really think sun should get on this case, would be pretty cool, with ps3’s number crunching power lots of nice stuff could be done!
Should SUN try to get Java to the PS3?
It would be nice from a technical point of view.
Theoretically.
Is the the PS3 (or Xbox360) going to affect any Java game developers at all? No.
Maybe Nintendos’ Revolution console which apparantly tries to target also the independant devs?
Why? Because many of the current mid-sized dev studios which produce games for the current console generation won’t survive the “jump” from PS2 to PS3, because the amount of development time needed to make PS3 class titles won’t just increase but explode.
Currently a friend of mine works in such a mid-sized PS2 dev studio and they’re already having a hard time (which they hadn’t btw with PS1). When the next console generation appears they’re going to have to close their doors.
Please see the interesting article Technoholism at Gamedev from December 2004.
My favorite quote:
[quote]Costs are spiraling. Most developers are not having much success in bringing costs under control, and they know that the situation is only going to get worse. In the UK, over a hundred development studios, big and small, have gone out of business in the last three years. The next round will cull nearly everyone else.
(…)
Many studios made the leap from PlayStation 1 to PlayStation 2 development without stopping to think whether it was a good idea. PS1 development was typically inexpensive, and therefore afforded a good rate of return on even a modest scale. PS2 development changed all that, ramping up the costs by four times as much, and increasing development time.
On the surface, it was a great prospect. There were millions of customers out there. They recognized the brand, they would upgrade smoothly. It was rock solid. The customers moved over, the PS2 brand became ubiquitous. The problem that many developers discovered was that what was good for Sony and EA was not necessarily good for them. But they discovered it too late.[quote]
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[quote=“Jeff,post:5,topic:23751”]
I agree with Jeff, a native PS3 VM would be the best. Shouldn’t it be possible to run a VM from a DVD/BlueRayDisch/… instead of a HDD? Isn’t a memory card enough for the configuration/preferences stuff?
On the other hand, I also doubt a native VM will be implemented unless some (pure) Java Games for the PC-Plattform ascends the throne of popular genres. With the rise of commercial java games for the pc, the scope will cover consoles as well.
I don’t see software houses that follow good pratices having any problem with high tech requirements. Neverwinter Nights for example took a lot of time to do their game engine and editor, but they released a lot of extensions in the mean-time, making a total of 1 game+4 expansions. Neverwinter Nights 2 is going to license the new Unreal engine that will also bundle with Havok and Speedtree. The game will be released for all platforms.
Another example Morrowind took about 4-6 years to complete but, after that the game, they have released 3 expansions in the following years. They are now using a pluggable architecture a relying mostly in third-party componets (except for their own self finnanced AI component RadientAI) SpeedTree, Havok, GameBryo. They are going to release Oblivion for all platforms PS3, Xbox2 and PC.
You bet that games are not for people who are afraid of technology. It’s called progress and progress only comes from competition. Only those who deserve to be making games should be doing them.
No offence, but a lot of what you’ve heard on this is largely naive and ignorant (I’ve been reading a lot of similar stuff, and it’s mostly BS). If you look hard enough you will find … the same predictions were made about PS2! LOL.
When PS2 came out, the word on the street was that no PS2 game could be written without teams of 40+. This turned out to be BS. Similarly, the ridiculous claims that no PS3 game can be written without 80-120 teams (there have been plenty of reports of this ) are rubbish.
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My apologies, but you’ve completely got the wrong end of the stick here - this is how the commercial side of the UK games industry works: in the UK, between 50 and 150 games studios go out of busines EVERY year: that is how the business is designed to work.
In reality, considerably fewer than that genuinely go out of business: the rest are accounting, shareholding, and tax tricks. Often a studio is deliberately “put out of business” so that another studio can buy up 70%-90% of the original studio, minus the 10% debts / liabilities / useless Directors who refused to quit, etc.
Funnily enough, games studios have many smart people. Funnily enough, most studios have long ago stated their intention NOT to work on PS3 for at least another year, many even saying “not for 2 years or more” because there’s still 80 million PS2’s around the world representing a hell of a lot of profit for them for some time to come.
So…the doom and gloom around PS3 is mostly just rumour-peddling and will quietly be forgotten in a few years time when none of it turns out to be true ;D.
There are lots of publically avalible docs on the Cell and PS3 architecture, many of which were released before E3. If you actually read them you’d see that Java on a PS3 just isn’t going to be practical.
Who can predict anything about a complex subject like this ? If it was just as easy as reading a couple of technical docs … Its a matter of strategy and winning in the multiple battle-grounds of the console wars. Most likely the war for consoles is going to be won on other battlegrounds and by Microsoft, besides the technological one. It would not be the first time Microsoft would won over the competition with the competition having superior technology products and im not saying that it is necessarly by illegal pratices but by better overall vision of marketing, selling and support strategy.
Let’s see what Microsoft is doing to support their own games division. They have a complete games division that supports and finances games under the Microsoft logo. Their new java wannabe language C# has full solid support already for DirectX and OpenGL despite C# having worse performance and being inferior technology by a small margin than Java. Microsoft has even created its own game console.
Let’s see what Sun is doing to promote Java games. They have a site www.java-gaming.org with a couple of guys organizing things and doing the best they can to promote Java games. Suns does not finance or suport any games under their logo. Suns strategy, every time they release a new version of the jdk seams to be completely ignorant of the needs of people who are interested in using the tech advantages of Java into making pro quality games. Even in the mobile game market Microsoft support support is much better than Suns one. Will Sun join with PS3 in a effort to support a native jvm on that console ? I bet not.
On the technology side the arguments against a jvm on the ps3 doesn’t make any sense. Virtual machines are taking over. You know very well that a JIT compiler can do more optimizations and better optimizations than a native compiler. This is not only a theoric result but also a fact proven by existing programs. In a more network like architecture a vm/JIT compiler solution has even a greate advantage than a native compiler solution. It will allow games to take more performance from the architecture and it will allow games to be backwards compatible without imposing hardware solutions.
[feed up statement]
So, yes, i would say that Sun has a great opurtonity with this but they will not use it. Microsoft will, as usualy, win over the dumb tech heads of this industry .
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I apreceate java technology but i apreceate doing games much more. Java is loosing the respect from people who use their tech mosty because of themselves and their despise for game developers. Don’t expect gamers to sacrifice themselves forever. Anyone with a real interest in doing pro games will want to be able to port their games to as many different platforms as they can sell them with minimal fuss. Whatever Sun will do with ps3 will probably be the last drop for me and many other people. If Sun doesn’t supports gamers then bye-bye Sun.
If there is no JVM on PS3, then Sun have truly, completely failed for the next 5 years on the gaming front. They have one last chance which is a JVM on XBox.
Cas 
It would be nice to hear someone from Sun commenting on this.
Because this site remains unofficial after all these years, Jeff and Chris and friends are usually unable to say anything useful to you in here for fear of getting the sack. You’ll never get any useful information from this board on these matters, I’m afraid.
Cas