CELL session at GDC sells an elegant Playstation 3

Sony gave a CELL presentation at GDC today. They tried really hard to ease any fears in the room about developing for the Playstation 3. The first part of the talk was a bit on the dull side for us laymen. The recently- released white paper was essentially read out loud. 76.8 Gbps combined bandwidth, support for multiple OSs (for security and stability), you know the drill. In a moment of refreshing honesty, it was acknowledged that the architecture is:

1) the first of multiple planned generations

2) complex and tough to get a handle on

But they also went out of their way to make it clear that they wanted to offer tools to make game development manageable. Content and asset management, support (indeed a preference for) C/C++. When the slide show got to that part, everyone leaned forward in their chairs. Development tools will work in "popular operating systems." They also announced support for OpenGL ES, Cg (for shading languages) and Collada (content management).

For the most part, people seemed pleased with the presentation. Talking to a couple of developers afterward, there was a sense of hope that Sony may have offered them an easier path to profit.