EA Has "Some Catching Up To Do" With PS3
See Full ImageAs if it comes as any surprise to PS3 owners, Electronic Arts has admitted they haven't exactly mastered Sony's hardware just yet. Basically, they're saying they have some "catching up to do" with the PlayStation 3.
According to Next-Gen.biz and EA CEO John Riccitiello, their titles certainly enjoy a "faster development cycle" when being produced for the Xbox 360, but development on the PS3 is still lagging behind. An analyst recently asked Riccitiello if the PS3 development process had managed to catch up to the 360, and the CEO's reply was-
“Not quite. There’s no doubt that Electronic Arts, along with many other publishers, had some challenges essentially meeting the technical specifications effectively on the PlayStation 3," he said when asked by an analyst if PS3 game development had caught up with the 360. 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.”
Other publishers have indeed faced difficulty when developing for the PS3. For instance, Rockstar recently said the reason for the initial Grand Theft Auto IV delay was because creation of the PS3 version was taking longer than expected. However, we've already seen some pretty amazing productions on the PS3 to date, so we're wondering how much longer EA can hide behind this ongoing mantra... Yes, we get that it's tough, but how come other developers (and not just first-party teams) are coming through for PS3 owners?
1/31/2008 Ben Dutka
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fatchad420
Friday, February 01, 2008 @ 11:25:17 AM
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ArnoldK PSXE [Administrator]
Friday, February 01, 2008 @ 12:05:09 PM
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bamf
Friday, February 01, 2008 @ 3:06:03 PM
EA has teams all over the place with some teams working independently. Like Burnout that was developed by Criterion. I think Criterion are a good developer look how the other Burnouts looked and played on PS2, almost or if not identical to the xbox. Look how good Burnout looked on PSP. Criterion know their way around Sony hardware. So I think it's EA's own in-house development teams that need educating.
For the future I think its better for the development process if PS3 is lead platform or Infinity Ward's approach to Call of Duty 4 which they had 2 separate teams working on both platforms.
The problem with EA is that they don't have much development time with their games as they produce so many franchises year after year not giving them really any time to understand the architecture properly.
EA will obviously be up to speed in the near future as they will have to be when PS3 sales numbers catches 360 and surpasses it. PS3 may become lead platform for them after all.
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DragonSphere
Friday, February 01, 2008 @ 6:20:52 PM
though considering i know next to nothing about the complexities of game development, i do have to ask: would shifting the PS3 to be the lead platform on future projects (if EA so chooses) that hard of a thing to do? otherwise, that seems like the most logical choice since the 360 versions rarely suffer at all
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Ben Dutka PSXE [Administrator]
Friday, February 01, 2008 @ 8:56:36 PM
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huskerfan_101
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Thursday, January 31, 2008 @ 11:39:52 PM
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Most likely because we are a minority, and EA only cares about numbers, they also know that even if they release a crappy title everyone will still buy it cause its still the best football, basketball, golf, etc., game out there.