Unlocking the PS3's potential

IBM recently held a workshop to help Vivendi-owned studios get acquainted a little better with the PlayStation 3's Cell processor. Next Generation caught up with High Moon Studios' (Darkwatch) technical boss Clinton Keith during the event and had a little chat with him regarding the Cell processor's potential and the trade-off between ease-of-development and the possibilities the PS3's hardware brings to the table.

Will it be something like two or three, four more years before we see just truly mind-blowing games and results from the PS3?

I think somebody might surprise us with a few things here and there. We’ve actually got a prototype on the PS3 that simulates liquid like no one’s seen before and we’ve actually built a little minigame around that to take advantage of that… The goal of this small game was that [we] might be able to put out a small downloadable game that somebody might buy for five dollars, play it on their 1080p television set with their PlayStation 3 and just really show people an experience that no other console can give them on their $3000 TV set.

Keith goes on to talk about Vivendi's plans for the future, the amount of work required to get comfortable with the Cell processor and how this would benefit, both the studio as well as IBM. Interesting read if you're into technical mumbo-jumbo.