The developer behind hotly anticipated stealth game Assassin's Creed has revealed details of its struggle to make the game as good on the PS3 as it is on the 360.
The game's creative director, Patrice Desilets, told Pro-G in an interview that one of the biggest challenges the team is currently facing is fitting everything into a 360 DVD disc compared with Sony's Blu-ray format. Conversely, he revealed that the team was "really struggling right now on PS3" because of memory problems specific to Sony's console.
He added that the developer, Ubisoft Montreal, had drafted in help from both Microsoft and Sony to make sure the game has "the same quality on both systems".
"The PS3 version is as good as the 360 version. We've been showing the PS3 version at E3 this year, but we've done a lot of events and it's just easier for us and for people from the press to have a 360. But the versions are the same, basically," he said.
He added: "Both have their own challenges. Right now we have a big challenge on the 360 to make it fit on a DVD, to put five languages, to put all the data on eight gigs. On the Blu-ray side we're really good, but then the memory is quite different. How we handle memory is really different between the two machines and we're struggling right now on the PS3. But we have people who are really dedicated and we're having help from Microsoft on one side and Sony on the other side to have the same quality on both systems. It really depends on the week basically as to who's best."
Owners of the PS3 will find comfort in the comments, having suffered some poor quality ports of 360 games since Sony released the console in March this year.
You can check out the entire video interview with Patrice next week, where he talks about the possibility of using Assassin's Creed's technology in other games and why the PS3 version will not make use of the Sixaxis controller's motion technology. If that's not enough for you, you can check out our hands-on preview of the game later today.
User Comments
xboxlive
wel anywayz i cant wait for this game
Anon
Anonymous
but to be honest using blu ray atm is pretty extravagent as the most games will get up to on these consoles is maybe 12gb, 50gb is simply not needed for films or games HD or not and wont be needed for years, can you imagine trying to make a game to fill even half a 50gb blu ray disc it would take yearsssssss
anyway they both have there strengths im more in favor of the 360, possibility ps3 may prevail near the end.
anyway its the developers problem they have to make all versions the same in terms of graphical performance, gameplay (pratically) otherwise people might start getting all annoyed about it etc
i wonder when they will start releasing 360 games on hddvd?
360 & PS3 owne
If anything this game is being ported to 360 since PS3 was announce first as exclusive.
Morkai
Kadeem Boyd
Evan
Mr. Pete
The 360 doesn't have the luxury of doing this because not every 360 owner has a hard drive. Unless they made this a "hard drive-required" game or something like that.
Marianne
The PS3 memory problem is a hardware problem, to the dumbasses saying it's the "developers" problems.
LOLSTER
Knowing alot of developers slacking off so far, they would delay the ps3 version. However, underthese circumstances they might delay the 360 version. That would be a nice change of pace, but in the event of a delay they would probably delay both even if the PS3 version was ready.
Sad truth.
unknown
MTK
=> It's not as easy as that Tom. Assassin's Creed is a free-roaming game as far as I know, i.e. gameplay is not linear, and the character can move anywhere between three cities (I think). As such, it's not practical to have multiple DVDs.
For instance, each time you want to move from one city to another (I'm guessing that you can fast-travel like in Oblivion), you might have to switch discs as well. Once is fine, but if a quest requires you to move between cities frequently, switching discs frequently can be a hassle.
I'm not a fanboy here (I own both a PS3 and a 360), but I think multiple DVD games are only okay as long as the gameplay is linear (like in many FPS). However, in free-roaming games (like RPGs), this might not be practical. Which is why, at least in this kind of circumstances, game media like Blu-ray which can hold more content might be better off.
Anyway, time will tell. Why should we worry? We are only here to play. It's the Developers' headache how they get things to work, right? ;)
Pete
They are not talking about Hard Drive memory. They are talking about system Ram. 360 has 512 MB of unified ram that can be used for the system and GPU combined. PS3 has split Ram. It's only has 256mb video Ram and 256 mb system Ram. Developers can't dip into the system ram to use towards the video Ram if they need to. Thats why all the mutliplatform games look like crap compared to the 360 version so far.
Cooper
"The PS3 version is as good as the 360 version. We've been showing the PS3 version at E3 this year, but we've done a lot of events and it's just easier for us and for people from the press to have a 360. But the versions are the same, basically," he said.
I think the author made a typo in this quote. He wrote they are showing the PS3 version at E3. That is not true they were showing the 360 version at E3. The quote also seems to contradict itself. If they are showing the PS3 version at E3 then why is she making excuses as to why the 360 version is easier to show?
Tom