Alone in the Dark (2008) (PS2)

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Alone in the Dark has been hiding in the shadows for seven years now. The last time we tasted the multimillion selling survival horror series was back in 2001 with Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare. Now it's time for the game that paved the way for the Resident Evil and Silent Hill franchises to step out from the shadows with its fifth game. We caught up with senior producer Nour Polloni at French developer Eden Games to find out why the PS3 version still doesn't have a release date, and why Alone in the Dark might have the greatest fire ever seen in a video game.

VideoGamer.com: Is there a firm date for the PS3 version and why is it coming out so long after the 360 version?

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Nour Polloni: There's no firm date yet but what we can say is that it's coming out this year. In terms of why it's coming out later, we have the full game running on PS3 and all the features, no problem. The thing is it's not performing as well on PS3 as we hope it is in terms of frame rate and all that. We didn't want it to come out and have less of an experience for the PS3 gamer. We wanted to tweak that up and make sure they get the best experience on PS3 as much as possible.

VideoGamer.com: Alone in the Dark has been in development for a while now. Did PS3 development simply start too late?

NP: We actually started on the PC version initially and then we worked on the 360 and we got the PS3 later on. We started already attacking the PS3 and all that. Today in terms of the work, like I said it's working on the performance and things like that. We're not that far off. It's just in terms of the focus of where we wanted to put the effort in, we wanted the game to be excellent quality and make sure everything was tuned right. In some sense we said OK that's our priority one. And our priority two is to make sure it's on all platforms. So to make sure that priority one was right we put the focus in terms of the human resources on that. So it's just a question of timing that made it that unfortunately we had to push the PS3 version out. It's just a matter of time.

VideoGamer.com: How are you guys finding multi-platform development?

NP: It's a different platform. It's another way of working it. The 360 is actually kind of like a PC in terms of development. It's like a PC without the inconvenience of different configurations. And the PS3 is actually a completely different architecture in terms of the way it works, processors and all that. To be able to do it multi-platform we gave it a global, what we call frame structure in which whatever the platform it is there is a first software level which handles the data and then redistributes it depending on the availability of the CPUs and all that. Today that's why we have all platforms available, except for the PS3 there was some tweaking that we need to do. We need to do some specific PS3 work to make sure that we get the true value of what it offers.

VideoGamer.com: Is the PS3 harder to develop for?

NP: It's not hard if you do a PS3 specific game. It's hard when you try to have it global multi-platform. That's when it's hard.

VideoGamer.com: Will there be any differences between the PS3 and 360 versions?

NP: It's the same content.

VideoGamer.com: So it'll be worth the wait for PS3 owners?

NP: Yes. It will be really worth it. It's something that we didn't want to deceive the players. That's why we preferred waiting. And I know it's tough but we want them to wait to be able to get that same experience.

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