Why doesn't Quake Wars have cross-platform play?

After being coerced byour crack interviewer, Splash Damage boss and Lead Designer Paul Wedgwood has explained the lack of cross-platform play in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars.

"It was never a focus of the game's design," he explains. "We didn't start off a couple of years ago thinking 'we have to have players on the PC play against players on the Xbox,' for example.

"At this stage in console development I think there's too much disparity between the player on a analog controller and the player on the mouse and keyboard on a PC."

He continues: "The guy on the analog controller has an advantage over the PC with vehicle control because he doesn't have the 'on-off' acceleration and steering, and the guy on the keyboard and mouse is able to turn faster and slightly more accurately. So our thought was that at this point it might be a bit premature with the communities generally happy playing amongst themselves and having a level playing field."

Read the full interview here, where Wedgwood also discusses the future of PC gaming and even more keyboard vs. joypad banter.

April 26, 2007