Co-founder of Ubisoft’s Tiwak Studio, Yann Lee Tensorer, has played down suggestions that the PlayStation 3 is more difficult to develop for than rival machines, insisting it is simply a case of developers needing to familiarize themselves with the consoles hardware.
"It’s wrong to say it’s harder to code on the PlayStation 3, it’s just something that needs to be learnt," offered Lee Tensorer, who stated, “It’s not harder to develop on the PS3 than it is on the 360, it’s just a different console. Developers might say it’s harder because it just takes time to understand the technology, we’re still early in the lifecycle."
He observed that developers must acquaint themselves with the machine’s architecture much like with PlayStation 2, adding, "We need all developers to learn from the console, it was the same with the PlayStation 2. Our team are more than happy with the PlayStation 3."
Elsewhere, Ubisoft’s international brand manager, Adrian Lacey, briefly touched on the studios highly extolled Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, stating, “Because we built the engine for this generation of hardware we’ve been very well placed – Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter hit that level of quality early in the cycle when the 360 first came out because we had our engine in mind for PS3, 360 and PC from the very beginning.”
Lacey observed how the team are becoming more acquainted with PS3’s hardware as development moves forward with the forthcoming movie tie-in, Beowulf, adding, "For us it’s been a learning curve and technology changes very quickly. We’re learning step-by-step to use the PS3 to its fullest capacity.”
Finally, he drew contrast with Sony’s PlayStation 2 console, observing its critically acclaimed title God of War – a game that made full use of the machines power, albeit almost six years into its life cycle. "If you take the PS2 for example, when God of War come out people saw it was tremendous. But it wasn’t until the end of the PS2 cycle that we’ve seen the machine being pushed to its fullest," he said.
Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 is due out on PlayStation 3 later this month; expect a full review here at PSU.