Saints Row Developer Chronicles Their PlayStation 3 Progress

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In one of the first successful spin-offs of the Grand Theft Auto franchise, Volition's Saints Row was a hit for the Xbox 360 when it released. It was supposed to arrive for the PlayStation 3 at a later date, but according to a recent CVG interview, the team "just couldn't get their heads around the Cell technology."

Producer Dan Sutton spoke about the complex process of delivering a game for the PS3 in the early days of the system's existence, and why Volition was forced to pass on bringing Saints Row to Sony's machine. Said Sutton:

"In Saints Row 1 we got about half way through the process and then we realised that we just couldn't get our heads around Cell. It's just really complicated and I'm sure you noticed other games like Stranglehold push their dates up. Cell's really, really powerful. The problem is it's also a really different system, the way it uses multi-threading technology."

But you needn't worry about Saints Row 2, which is scheduled to arrive in October simultaneously for the Xbox 360 and PS3. Like smart developers have been doing lately, Volition has assigned a dedicated team to handle the PS3 development, which means both versions should end up being mostly identical. "Now we're up to showing PS3 at the same level and only one day behind the Xbox, which is really exciting for us," Sutton added. As for the current state of developing on the PS3, Sutton - like most other devs at this point - believes most designers are now more accustomed to the console, even though some difficulties still remain:

"I think it's closing. There are still difficulties on it, I think you still see some games push out their PlayStation ports a little bit later. I think now the support's there at least - we've had many conversations with Sony trying to get our heads around that. We see PlayStation-only bugs pop up. There are Xbox only bugs too, but the problem is those PlayStation-only bugs are so complicated and Sony didn't have the support to help us out during the Saints Row 1 development. But now we have that support and it's really exciting."

Ah, support. That's always good to have, isn't it? Let's hope Saints Row 2 turns out to be a winner, because PS3 owners certainly shouldn't be worried about getting an inferior version. Yep, Volition and others are slowly but surely "getting their heads around" to the PlayStation 3.

Related Game(s): Saints Row 2

7/31/2008 Ben Dutka

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