The CEO of Ubisoft Montreal has spoken highly of PlayStation 4’s developer-friendly architecture, describing the next-generation console as a “pleasant surprise.”
Speaking with CVG, Yannis Mallat said the transition to new consoles has proven less taxing thanks to its experience with high-end PCs. PS4, as we know, has already been compared to by the likes of Mark Rein as ‘the world’s best PC.’
“PlayStation 4 really comes as a pleasant surprise because indeed it’s a very familiar architecture. I think it’s paying off for us deciding to develop on high-end PCs early. It’s a less complex transition.”
“From what we can talk about, which is the PlayStation 4, it’s been a radical change from those guys.
“I’ll tell you an anecdote: When I was the producer on Prince of Persia: Sands of Time we managed to get our hands on a very good programmer who’s still on the Assassin’s Creed core team,” he added.
“One day on his desk he had a black book all written in Japanese, and I was like, ‘what is that?’ It was the documentation support for coding for PS2. ‘That’s why I wanted to have Japanese lessons,’ he said – to understand and make the most out of the machine.
“That day I understood how complex it was to develop on PlayStation 2. So we were eager to find out what the PlayStation 3 would be in terms of architecture, and it was pretty much the same but more complex.”
PS4 was officially unveiled at an event in New York City back in February. While the system itself wasn’t shown, Sony took the opportunity to showcase a number of in-development titles, as well as the new DualShock 4 controller.
The new console will be released in holiday 2013. The latest Internet rumblings suggest it will be released in the U.K. in October for £300.
Stay tuned to PSU.com for more details.