EA: PS3 dev still hasn't caught up

[Dark Drakan]

EA: PS3 dev still hasn't caught up

EA have recently been talking about the development of its titles on Sonys PS3 and how they are still struggling to meet the technical specifications effectively. They have also stated that games that started production on the PS3 or led development on it they had no trouble. However where they either led with the Xbox 360 or ran parallel productions they struggled to get the games working properly on the PS3.

Electronics Arts' PlayStation 3 development still hasn't caught up with that of Xbox 360, the company said during a conference call this morning.

When asked if PS3 game development has caught up with the Xbox 360's faster dev cycle, EA CEO John Riccitiello said, "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.

"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."

Rockstar Games also admitted recently that technical problems with the PS3 version of Grand Theft Auto IV was a "contributing" factor in the game's 2007 delay.

As Mr. EA notes, Burnout Paradise is a great example of a game running fantastically on both PS3 and Xbox 360 - and it was release day and date on both as well. If leading on PS3 is the answer, then do it we say.