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BioWare, the developer of Mass Effect and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, is “really pumped” to be working on the PS3 with the upcoming multiplatform fantasy RPG Dragon Age: Origins.
The game is BioWare’s first for Sony’s console. Last generation, the EA-owned developer made only a single PS2 game: third-person shooter MDK2.
Speaking to VideoGamer.com, vice president of entertainment and miscellaneous at BioWare, and vice president of Electronic Arts, Greg Zeschuk, said that the team’s found developing on the PS3 “exciting”, and even has its advantages.
“It’s been interesting,” he said. “It’s actually been quite good. We discovered a couple of things we did were pretty beneficial. We have multiple threads going for the game and it looks really great on the PS3. You can just throw them on all different processors, for example.
“It’s new. Because we already had experience on 360, that kind of got ahead a little bit, but now we pretty much caught up. Actually it was very exciting. People on the team were really pumped to work on it. They were like, wow. We have a lot of people that like doing new stuff and trying new things, and they were like, wow another platform, can’t wait! It’s been good.”
Zeschuk added that BioWare’s previous commitment to Microsoft’s consoles was a result of having worked with the US company for five years.
“It’s going to be exciting having a PS3 game out finally. We only did one PS2 game – MDK2 on PS2. It’s not like we have anything against Sony by any stretch. It’s just that from a publishing perspective we worked with Microsoft for five years – that made it so easy to focus on Xbox and we didn’t have to worry about the PlayStation platforms. But now, since being part of EA, it just makes complete sense. It’s something we’re totally behind.”
Some developers have criticised the PS3 for being too complicated and difficult to develop for. During the first 18 months of the console’s life gamers suffered from poor-quality ports of multi-platform games, especially on the graphics front.
Sony Computer Entertainment’s current Chairman and Group Chief Executive Officer admitted earlier this year that the PS3 was “hard to program for”, but said it was a deliberate move in order to ensure that “the hardware has a lot more to offer” farther down the console’s life cycle.
Zeschuk, however, said BioWare was not only getting to grips with the console, but discovering its advantages.
“It’s not bad actually,” he said when asked about development struggle on the platform. “It’s funny, we had extra graphic memory left over on the PS3. We were like, wow! So we actually started putting some of the audio bits in there and stuff. It’s a function of effort. Overall, pretty happy with how it’s turning out.”
Will the graphics be exactly the same on both consoles? “Oh yeah. I can’t say absolutely for sure. There will be elements that will be better… the actual graphics hardware is different on them, so one may be brighter than the other, but definitely the content will be absolutely the same.”
So there you have it PS3-owners. Looks like BioWare’s first effort on your console won’t be a substandard port.
For more on Dragon Age: Origins, head over to our hot off the press hands-on preview.
What do you think readers? Let us know in the comments section below.
