Na GDC’09 a Sony demonstrou uma nova atualização de seu próprio engine exclusivo do PS3, conhecido por PhyreEngine. A nova atualização traz algumas novidades como “Renderização de Folhagem” que pode ser bem vista no jogo Flower da PSN.

Mas essa é a parte dos Developers, para os Gamers, as novidades são outras. A Sony aparentemente revelou 4 novos jogos ainda desconhecidos, e todos fazem uso da PhyreEngine. Dentre esses 4 jogos estão um jogo ainda não nomeado do estúdio Australiano Big Ant Studio, um jogo puzzle/plataforma para a PSN cujo nome é Topatoi, desenvolvido pela Boolat Games, um jogo de ação em terceira pessoa chamado Strenght of the Sword da Invent Studios, e também The 7th Seal do estudio de Paul Cuisset VectorCell.

Esperamos que mais novidades sejam reveladas sobre esses jogos ainda nesta GDC.

From/De: Sony Computer Entertainment America

SONY COMPUTER ENTERTAINMENT ANNOUNCES RELEASE of PHYREENGINE

Game Engine provided with PLAYSTATION®3 Software Development Kit has been widely adopted by the game developer community since GDC 2008

San Francisco, March 23, 2009 – Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) announced today that PhyreEngine™ 2.40, the latest version of the popular games development framework, has been released to PLAYSTATION®3 (PS3®) game developers and publishers, capping a successful year since its initial announcement at GDC 2008.

PhyreEngine is a graphics rendering engine provided under a license that allows it to be used by any PS3 game developers and publishers as well as Tools & Middleware licensees in their products. The engine uses sophisticated parallel processing techniques that are optimized for the Synergistic Processor Unit (SPU) of the Cell Broadband Engine™ of the PS3, but can be easily ported to other multi-core architectures. As a result, PhyreEngine has been newly-adopted by dozens of game studios in the last year, now appearing each month on the PlayStation®Store or on Blu-ray Discs.

Some of the more recent developers and publishers to adopt PhyreEngine include (in alphabetical order):

* Australian developer Big Ant Studios. Ross Symons, their CEO added “PhyreEngine has cut down Big Ant’s development time significantly while allowing us to fully harness the power of the PS3. PhyreEngine has given us the opportunity to focus less on tech and more on creating good games.”

* Veteran Ukrainian studio Boolat Games, who will self-publish their platform/puzzle game topatoi on PlayStation Store soon.

* UK-based studio Doublesix Games, whose game Burn Zombie Burn will be released in Europe and North America later this month. Jonathan Hobson, Lead Programmer, commented that “PhyreEngine allowed Doublesix Games to begin development of our first game Burn Zombie Burn immediately and rapidly, without initial financial outlay or dedicated tech development time. It is a neat blend of clever, high-performance code that the SCE tech teams are famous for, with a modern, well designed, and easy to use set of interfaces and tools. In a matter of weeks we had hundreds of animated zombies running around at a fairly solid frame rate. The extensive set of sample code meant that we always had an idea of how to do things and on the rare occasions that we didn’t, the PhyreEngine support team was fantastic.”

* Bristol, UK-based studio FluffyLogic, whose PlayStation®Network title Savage Moon was released in December 2008 in European regions and January 2009 in North America. Will Bolam, FluffyLogic’s Director of Technology noted that “PhyreEngine was a great solution for FluffyLogic during work on our first PS3 title Savage Moon – loads of useful components we could use straight away to get the game up and running, easily extensible during development of game-specific code and great support from the PhyreEngine team.”

* Tokyo-based studio Game Republic recently released Catan using PhyreEngine in Japan.

* Famous Japanese studio IREM published PachiPara DL (DownLoad) Hyper Sea Story In Karibu in July 2008 in Japan.

* Bulgarian studio Ivent Games, who are developing the third-person action game Strength of the Sword. Georgi Rakidov, Lead Programmer, commented “I see PhyreEngine as a complete game engine suitable for all types of games. The support is just outstanding, with a nice balance between improving old features and adding new ones – most recently the terrain and the foliage utilities.”

* New French studio Lexis Numérique whose PS3 title Brooklyn Stories (working title) is currently in development.

* New Portuguese studio Seed Studios, whose real-time strategy game Under Siege will be released later this year. Lead designer, Bruno Ribeiro, noted “PhyreEngine enabled us to rapidly prototype our game and provided a solid and efficient foundation to explore the potential of the PS3.”

* New Paris, France-based studio Spiders working on their as-yet-unsigned RPG/Action disc-based game Mars.

* US studio thatgamecompany, who released Flower in North America and Europe in February 2009. Their lead programmer, John Edwards commented, “Flower is thatgamecompany’s second game using PhyreEngine and it won’t be the last. Support is friendly and responsive and the code is mature to the point where you just download, build and go. PhyreEngine’s suit of PS3-optimized utilities lets us spend less time reinventing the wheel and more time making games.”

* VectorCell, Paul Cuisset’s new studio, whose PS3 title The 7th Seal (working title) is currently in development.

During the last year, a range of new fully functional “game templates” were released, including support for Havok Complete XS™, NVIDIA PhysX™ and Bullet for physics, making it even easier for game teams to kick-start their development process. In addition, a host of white papers have been made available describing the techniques used within PhyreEngine, helping a broader community of game developers to improve and extend the features of their proprietary game engine code.

Chris Kingsley, the CTO and co-founder of UK-based developer Rebellion noted, “Although Rebellion is famous for the strength of its in-house developed game technology, PhyreEngine makes available PS3-optimized game code that we could reference to help our own transition to PS3.”

Bryan Marshall, Codemasters’ CTO added, “The PhyreEngine team’s technology provides us with an excellent basis to build our own PS3 technology on, leveraging the most out of the machine. Their intimate knowledge of the PS3 system is a great asset and the support has been first class.”

An example of this latter work may be seen on Wednesday March 25, at GDC 09, when Matt Swoboda, senior engineer on SCEI Euro R&D’s PhyreEngine team, presents his latest research on “Deferred Lighting and Post Processing on PLAYSTATION®3” in Room #3002 at 4 p.m. PST. As well as supporting the immediate needs of the growing community of PhyreEngine users, 2.40 includes a new major “foliage rendering” system that provides tools and technology to enable ultra-realistic trees and plants procedurally on the SPUs. These can then be easily integrated into games in addition to new lighting samples demonstrating SPU-based deferred rendering techniques.

“We’re very happy to see the popularity of PhyreEngine with the global game developer community,” said Teiji Yutaka, Senior Vice President, Software Platform, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. “It has helped demonstrate our commitment to the game developer community and enabled many developers and publishers to flourish on PS3.”

About Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.

Recognized as the global leader and company responsible for the progression of consumer-based computer entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) manufacturers, distributes and markets the PlayStation® game console, the PlayStation®2 computer entertainment system, the PSP® (PlayStation®Portable) handheld entertainment system and the PLAYSTATION®3 (PS3®) system. PlayStation has revolutionized home entertainment by introducing advanced 3D graphic processing, and PlayStation 2 further enhances the PlayStation legacy as the core of home networked entertainment. PSP is an innovative handheld entertainment system that allows users to enjoy 3D games, with high-quality full-motion video, and high-fidelity stereo audio. PS3 is an advanced computer system, incorporating the state-of-the-art Cell processor with super computer like power. SCEI, along with its subsidiary divisions Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc., Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Ltd., and Sony Computer Entertainment Korea Inc. develops, publishes, markets and distributes software, and manages the third party licensing programs for these platforms in the respective markets worldwide. Headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. is an independent business unit of the Sony Group.

###

PlayStation, PLAYSTATION, PS3 and PSP are registered trademarks and UMD is a trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

SONY COMPUTER ENTERTAINMENT ANNOUNCES RELEASE of PHYREENGINE ™ 2.40

Game Engine provided with PLAYSTATION®3 Software Development Kit has been widely adopted by the game developer community since GDC 2008

San Francisco, March 23, 2009 – Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) announced today that PhyreEngine™ 2.40, the latest version of the popular games development framework, has been released to PLAYSTATION®3 (PS3®) game developers and publishers, capping a successful year since its initial announcement at GDC 2008.

PhyreEngine is a graphics rendering engine provided under a license that allows it to be used by any PS3 game developers and publishers as well as Tools & Middleware licensees in their products. The engine uses sophisticated parallel processing techniques that are optimized for the Synergistic Processor Unit (SPU) of the Cell Broadband Engine™ of the PS3, but can be easily ported to other multi-core architectures. As a result, PhyreEngine has been newly-adopted by dozens of game studios in the last year, now appearing each month on the PlayStation®Store or on Blu-ray Discs.

Some of the more recent developers and publishers to adopt PhyreEngine include (in alphabetical order):

* Australian developer Big Ant Studios. Ross Symons, their CEO added “PhyreEngine has cut down Big Ant’s development time significantly while allowing us to fully harness the power of the PS3. PhyreEngine has given us the opportunity to focus less on tech and more on creating good games.”

* Veteran Ukrainian studio Boolat Games, who will self-publish their platform/puzzle game topatoi on PlayStation Store soon.

* UK-based studio Doublesix Games, whose game Burn Zombie Burn will be released in Europe and North America later this month. Jonathan Hobson, Lead Programmer, commented that “PhyreEngine allowed Doublesix Games to begin development of our first game Burn Zombie Burn immediately and rapidly, without initial financial outlay or dedicated tech development time. It is a neat blend of clever, high-performance code that the SCE tech teams are famous for, with a modern, well designed, and easy to use set of interfaces and tools. In a matter of weeks we had hundreds of animated zombies running around at a fairly solid frame rate. The extensive set of sample code meant that we always had an idea of how to do things and on the rare occasions that we didn’t, the PhyreEngine support team was fantastic.”

* Bristol, UK-based studio FluffyLogic, whose PlayStation®Network title Savage Moon was released in December 2008 in European regions and January 2009 in North America. Will Bolam, FluffyLogic’s Director of Technology noted that “PhyreEngine was a great solution for FluffyLogic during work on our first PS3 title Savage Moon – loads of useful components we could use straight away to get the game up and running, easily extensible during development of game-specific code and great support from the PhyreEngine team.”

* Tokyo-based studio Game Republic recently released Catan using PhyreEngine in Japan.

* Famous Japanese studio IREM published PachiPara DL (DownLoad) Hyper Sea Story In Karibu in July 2008 in Japan.

* Bulgarian studio Ivent Games, who are developing the third-person action game Strength of the Sword. Georgi Rakidov, Lead Programmer, commented “I see PhyreEngine as a complete game engine suitable for all types of games. The support is just outstanding, with a nice balance between improving old features and adding new ones – most recently the terrain and the foliage utilities.”

* New French studio Lexis Numérique whose PS3 title Brooklyn Stories (working title) is currently in development.

* New Portuguese studio Seed Studios, whose real-time strategy game Under Siege will be released later this year. Lead designer, Bruno Ribeiro, noted “PhyreEngine enabled us to rapidly prototype our game and provided a solid and efficient foundation to explore the potential of the PS3.”

* New Paris, France-based studio Spiders working on their as-yet-unsigned RPG/Action disc-based game Mars.

* US studio thatgamecompany, who released Flower in North America and Europe in February 2009. Their lead programmer, John Edwards commented, “Flower is thatgamecompany’s second game using PhyreEngine and it won’t be the last. Support is friendly and responsive and the code is mature to the point where you just download, build and go. PhyreEngine’s suit of PS3-optimized utilities lets us spend less time reinventing the wheel and more time making games.”

* VectorCell, Paul Cuisset’s new studio, whose PS3 title The 7th Seal (working title) is currently in development.

During the last year, a range of new fully functional “game templates” were released, including support for Havok Complete XS™, NVIDIA PhysX™ and Bullet for physics, making it even easier for game teams to kick-start their development process. In addition, a host of white papers have been made available describing the techniques used within PhyreEngine, helping a broader community of game developers to improve and extend the features of their proprietary game engine code.

Chris Kingsley, the CTO and co-founder of UK-based developer Rebellion noted, “Although Rebellion is famous for the strength of its in-house developed game technology, PhyreEngine makes available PS3-optimized game code that we could reference to help our own transition to PS3.”

Bryan Marshall, Codemasters’ CTO added, “The PhyreEngine team’s technology provides us with an excellent basis to build our own PS3 technology on, leveraging the most out of the machine. Their intimate knowledge of the PS3 system is a great asset and the support has been first class.”

An example of this latter work may be seen on Wednesday March 25, at GDC 09, when Matt Swoboda, senior engineer on SCEI Euro R&D’s PhyreEngine team, presents his latest research on “Deferred Lighting and Post Processing on PLAYSTATION®3” in Room #3002 at 4 p.m. PST. As well as supporting the immediate needs of the growing community of PhyreEngine users, 2.40 includes a new major “foliage rendering” system that provides tools and technology to enable ultra-realistic trees and plants procedurally on the SPUs. These can then be easily integrated into games in addition to new lighting samples demonstrating SPU-based deferred rendering techniques.

“We’re very happy to see the popularity of PhyreEngine with the global game developer community,” said Teiji Yutaka, Senior Vice President, Software Platform, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. “It has helped demonstrate our commitment to the game developer community and enabled many developers and publishers to flourish on PS3.”

From/De: Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. developer

SONY COMPUTER ENTERTAINMENT FURTHER STRENGTHENS ITS SUPPORT FOR GAME DEVELOPMENT FOR PLAYSTATION3

Introduction of New Reference Tool Models to Provide a Lower-cost Game Development Environment

Tokyo, March 23, 2009 – Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) today announced that it would further strengthen its support for game development on PLAYSTATION®3 (PS3®) computer entertainment system. Since the launch of PS3, SCEI has introduced a wide range of hardware and software tools to improve efficiency in game development for PS3, and the company will continue its effort to support the growing game development community.

To meet the needs of various game development styles, SCE reduced the price of the original Reference Tool models DECR-1000A and DECR-1000 in 2007, as well as added new features to PS3 Debugging Station to help raise productivity in game development. Further enhancing its support for developers, SCE introduced new Reference Tool models in March 2009, DECR-1400A for North America and Europe/PAL territories at US $2,000 and €1,700 respectively, and DECR-1400J for Japan at JPY 200,000. Having the same form factor as the commercially available PS3, the new Reference Tool models allow advanced game programming and more efficient computer graphics rendering. With its more affordable pricing, this new model will appeal to a broader range of developers and publishers, and will help to provide a more streamlined game development environment, further accelerating the game development for PS3.

In addition to the introduction of new Reference Tool models, SCE will also enhance its support by providing a comprehensive line-up of software tools as well as technical support to the game development community. “SNC PPU toolchain for PLAYSTATION 3 (SNC)”, a compiler made available as part of the Software Development Kit* since February 2008, is optimized to the power of PS3 and generates high-quality code. As a result, not only will it contribute to raising the quality of the game but also to significantly improving productivity.

SNC is widely supported by many developers and publishers for its quality and efficiency, and is utilized in some of the best-selling franchise titles including Fallout 3 from Bethesda Softworks LLC, Killzone 2 from Guerrilla Games, and Ryu ga Gotoku 3 from SEGA Corporation. SCE will continue to further improve the performance of SNC and will expand its features to meet the needs of the game creators.

Additionally, at the Game Developer’s Conference held in San Francisco, California, in February 2008, SCE introduced a graphics-rendering engine known as the PhyreEngine™. Provided as a full package along with its source code, and incorporated with many updated features including the linkage with the physics engines, this graphics rendering engine is adaptable to various game development styles. Furthermore, documents describing the technical aspects and overview of PhyreEngine have been made available to help the game developer community in creating games more efficiently using this graphics engine. The latest version 2.40, released in March 2009, includes a new “foliage rendering” system that provides tools and technology to render ultra-realistic trees and plants to be easily integrated into games, helping game developers to express their creativity more freely on the PS3 system.

With more and more new and exciting PS3 titles scheduled for release this year from third party developers and publishers as well as from SCE Worldwide Studios, SCEI will deploy various measures to further reinforce game development for PS3 and will continue to expand the platform to offer attractive interactive entertainment experiences only available on PS3.

* Software Development Kit is a set of development tools and software libraries. Developers are able to obtain this SDK by signing a license agreement with SCE and by purchasing tool products.

About Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.

Recognized as the global leader and company responsible for the progression of consumer-based computer entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) manufacturers, distributes and markets the PlayStation® game console, the PlayStation®2 computer entertainment system, the PSP® (PlayStation®Portable) handheld entertainment system and the PLAYSTATION®3 (PS3®) system. PlayStation has revolutionized home entertainment by introducing advanced 3D graphic processing, and PlayStation 2 further enhances the PlayStation legacy as the core of home networked entertainment. PSP is an innovative handheld entertainment system that allows users to enjoy 3D games, with high-quality full-motion video, and high-fidelity stereo audio. PS3 is an advanced computer system, incorporating the state-of-the-art Cell processor with super computer like power. SCEI, along with its subsidiary divisions Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc., Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Ltd., and Sony Computer Entertainment Korea Inc. develops, publishes, markets and distributes software, and manages the third party licensing programs for these platforms in the respective markets worldwide. Headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. is an independent business unit of the Sony Group.
# # #

PlayStation, PLAYSTATION and PS3 are registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

No último dia do SBGames, houve uma palestra com Bruno Matzdorf, gerente de suporte para desenvolvimento da SCEA (Sony Computer Entertainment of America) com o título “Incubação de Desenvolvedores na América Latina”, perguntaram para ele se a Sony planeja criar uma plataforma de desenvolvimento para jogos assim como a Microsoft lançou o XNA para desenvolver jogos para PC e para XBOX 360, se faria o mesmo para a pltaforma da Sony. A resposta foi um “Maybe”, com um tom de que deu a impressão que ele sabia de alguma coisa que ainda não pode contar. Três meses depois da SBGames, em Fevereiro, na Game Developers Conference, o maior evento para os profissionais da área de jogos do mundo a Sony abre o jogo: a PhyreEngine.

PhyreEngine é uma plataforma de desenvolvimento de jogos gratuito da Sony estilo XNA da Microsoft que dará suporte a programação para Playstation 3, PC e com alguma habilidade em programação, para XBOX 360. A motivação da Sony lançar o PhyreEngine é pelo fato que os jogos multi-plataforma que são lançado, na maioria das vezes a versão do Playstation 3 é o mais demorado a ser lançado e para piorar, é a pior versão do jogo. Logo o objetivo da Sony é atrair novos desenvolvedores dando um suporte facilitado na programação, além de incentivar os desenvolvedores a criarem os jogos primeiramente para Playstation 3 e facilitar a portabilidade para as outras plataformas.

Para fins didáticos, a PhyreEngine vem com a documentação completa, mais de 70 exemplos práticos e um exemplo de jogo, com código-fonte e artwork. Foi também revelado que já foi lançado três jogos que utiliza essa engine, que são “flOw” (PlayStation 3 e PSP), “GripShift”(Playstation 3 e XBox360) e “DiRT” (Playstation 3, XBox 360 e PC).

Na minha opnião, aparentemente é uma plataforma de desenvolvimento bastante robusta e deve facilitar bastante a programação para o Playstation 3, que das três plataformas concorrentes de hoje, é um que os programadores tem maiores dificuldades de utilizar os seus recursos. Entretando é esperar para ver se ela consegue realmente concorrer com o XNA da Microsoft.

flOw para Playstation 3 e PSP

Fontes:

UOL Jogos

Joystiq