“Xbox – flame shield ON!” It’s a pity Kinect isn’t out at the moment or we’d be asking Microsoft’s motion device to do just that, protecting us from the recent bombastic statements coming from inFamous developer Sucker Punch. Commenting to Play Magazine, the plucky studio have stoked the perpetual console war flame-pit once again with the claim that, just like Uncharted 2 – a game they seem to be imitating in more ways that one – inFamous 2 could not be possible on rival Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console.
Quoting the PS3’s arcane and voodoo hardware configuration (known to make experienced devs cry like babies), Sucker Punch Development Director, Chris Zimmerman, states:
“There’s just more processing power on the PS3. If you look at games like Uncharted 2 that’s a game that you actually can’t do on Xbox [360] no matter how clever you are. InFamous 2 is going to be the same way. You’ll look at it and see that there’s no way we could have done this game on 360. In technical terms the biggest thing that we’ve done is migrate a much larger part of our code to run on the SPUs.”
It isn’t the only revelation Sucker Punch are offering, admitting that some “dumb decisions” were made on the first game when it came to how it was developed. Chris continues:
“The PS3 has this elaborate architecture where there’s a whole bunch of different places you can have your code run and we had it all running in the slow part.”
Somehow we’re finding it hard to believe the first statement when they come out and admit something like the second. Really? You really ran it all on the slow part? Focusing on the positive, however, it does suggest the sequel will be something special. At least, you know, now that it’s (hopefully) running on the fast part.
Source: Play Magazine
TSBonyman
I’m not a fan of the first game so it’ll take more than a Drake-over to impress me this time around.
david
I dont know. I mean what if they are right. How many 360 exclusives look as good as MSG, Uncharted 2 etc.
The 360 in terms of graphical fidelity is stuck back when gears 1,2 was released imo and little has gone to push those bars.
Maybe there is more headroom in the ps3 architecture??
kivi95
Dont forget that Infamous has probably 9-12months left of developing time.
gazzagb
How much were they paid by Sony to say that do you think?
hazelam
i doubt they meant they deliberately ran it in the slow part, just that they didn’t know that was the slow part when they used it, whatever that part is.
anyway, the game does look amazing for an open world game.
i’ve still only played the demo of the first one, have to find a copy when i get a new ps3.
Porcupine_I
i believe the “slow” part is the Video-Card of The PS3, by offloading most of the graphic processing and effects to the spu’s before sending it to the graphics card, is going to speed up things
Kovacs
It was not my intention to suggest they did this on purpose. “Purposely” was a poor choice of words on my part. Intentionally would have been just as bad. The fact is they DID run it on the slow part by design. Bad design, sure. But it didn’t get there by magic. I’ve tweaked the article but just wanted to mention it here in case anyone accused me of ninjaing.
PriceKitty
LULZ.
360 SUCKS.
Ryan1991
Please don’t. Nobody likes those comments.
Shakugan
Agreed with Ryan1991. So many new troll members who says “OMFG X360 sucks and Wii” TSA is supposed to be TROLL FREE (Well, to me it is) and now they’re trying to ruin it. Just enjoy all consoles and games!
Quinlank
There’s certainly a point to be made about Uncharted 2 as the guy says, I have honestly seen nothing on 360 that looks as impressive as that game.
Quinlank
Also, can I just say(Apologies for double post) that I saw my mate playing the Crackdown 2 demo last night, and the visuals in that game look identical to the first game, like some first gen 360 title. When I compare that to the recent gameplay vid of Infamous 2 which runs just as smoothly as Crackdown 2(So any claims of sacrificing visual detail for performance are out the window) but looks significantly better it certainly gives the appearance of the PS3 being the more impressive machine when properly utilised(Meaning when you compare something other than half assed ports to 360 games).
hazelam
if a devloper had spent the time and made a true sequel to crackdown instead of reusing 99% of the assets, including the engine without any improvements it seems, and just having a single gang, oh and their version of zombies, because god knows there’s not enough games that feature zombies right now. o_O.
where was i? oh yeah, if they had made a true sequel, it should have looked a lot better than crackdown, but they didn’t and it doesn’t.
you might as well play the first, game, as they’re almost exactly the same, gameplaywise anyway.
Raen
Crackdown 2 is one example, and based on reviews seems to be a very poor example. Go look at the gameplay videos of Gears of War 3 or Halo: Reach from E3.
retsam
I can totally relate to the second comment. It is more than easy to program something halfway through and then realize that all the code wizardry stuff and program flow would have been better done in another different way. Refactoring existing code is not a simple task, and also if there is any middleware or anything, it’s even more daunting to start doing it again when you could just leave it to the sequel.
They probably did their “mistake” on programming it in a way as what you would usually do on any platform, even the 360. I remember that they did talk a lot of SPU praising already on inFamous 1, but they are not your average math calculators and it may take 3-4 games to master them completely. Do remember that they may also have xbox devkits to play with, even when they do ps3 games. At least we have ps3 kits, when there has only been xbox games so far. :P
dizappear
Shame……. Not