Nov 2, 2007
It's no secret that multiplatform games are arriving late on PlayStation 3: Stranglehold, TimeShift, Colin McRae DiRT... the list goes on.
Unreal Engine 3-focused publisher Midway though has been big enough to come out and admit its PS3 porting problems, but promises that the sluggish arrival of its titles on Sony's console will stop beginning next year.
"For our first wave of next-gen games... lead development has been on the Xbox 360, due to its earlier introduction and larger installed base. We ran into some technical issues developing for the PlayStation 3 that have taken more time to finalize than we expected," said Midway boss David F Zucker in a company conference call.
"These include... making sure that the framerate, networking, and graphical features are at parity between the platforms. We've also encountered challenges as a result of shipping two of the very first PS3 games using Epic's Unreal Engine 3," he said in reference to Stranglehold and Blacksite.
"We do believe that these technical issues are now complete at a core level in our engine. Looking ahead to 2008, we expect the PS3 versions of our titles to ship day and date with the Xbox 360 and other SKUs." About bloody time.
Off the top of our heads the only games we can think off that've shipped day and date on both consoles are EA Sports titles... and there's been plenty of hoopla surrounding dodgy PS3 ports of those.
Hopefully, now that developers have had more than a year of flipping between the two consoles, PS3 owners won't have to wait weeks and months longer than 360 kids to get their games.
Also of interest is a comment that came later in the conference call, where the Midway boss also hinted at an "ambitious open-world game" to be announced shortly. We'd put our money on that one cropping up at Midway's Gamer's Day in January.
