It has shown itself to be more than a worthy adversary when it comes to producing both visually stunning and enjoyable games, but the PS3 is still proving itself to be the beast that doesn’t wish to be easily tamed. Even EA, who seemed to be able to deliver an equal experience on the Xbox 360 and PS3 with Burnout Paradise, has admitted that they still have much to learn about the console:
“Games where we led development on the PS3 platform, like Burnout, which is doing very well on the market today, we had no issue at all. But in circumstances where we either led with the Xbox 360 or ran parallel production, for the most part, we’re still experiencing some delay on the PS3. It’s a little bit more of a challenging development environment for us. It’s probably only a third of a problem for us as it was [nine months ago]. But there still remains some catching up to do on the engineering side for the PS3.”
If you recall, Rockstar partially blamed the delay of Grand Theft Auto 4 on programming challenges with the PS3 as well. Seems like the obvious thing to do with multi-platform releases from this point on is to start out with the PS3. Still, I could’ve sworn that Infinity Ward developed Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare for both the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 at the same time — without a lead platform. Perhaps it’s just a matter of who has the greater talent on their payroll, and who’s confident enough that Sony’s console is going to give them the return on their investment that they are looking for. Trust us guys; if the game is equally as good on the PS3, it will sell.
