Games Thirst – Amazing Life
PS2 dominated a console generation, the sixth, but PS3 struggled in the beginning and has never been able to match the prowess of its predecessor. Why is that? Well according to PS4 chief architect Mark Cerny, it’s because of the console’s “puzzling” architecture, leaving developers in disarray trying to learn how to create games for the machine.
“Our feeling was that EA and Rockstar better watch out. This was, of course, completely the wrong attitude. Were were thinking abut about our games and not the platform,” said Cerny. He described Sony’s focus at the time as ‘99 per cent hardware, one per cent software,’ which led to a “weak lineup”.
At PS3’s launch, “The entire dev environment was in a very primitive state,” continued Cerny. At this point, Sony’s priorities shifted – the platform holder realised that thirdparties were essential for PS3’s ultimate success, and there was “a complete turnaround in attitude.”
With PS4, “we didn’t want the hardware to be a puzzle,” said Cerny. Cerny wanted developers to work on familiar hardware, but with potential to explore and get greater performance from it further into the console lifecycle. “The concept is that as game developers learn to use these techniques later on in the lifecycle, and we’ll see richer worlds.” Creating PS4 was a “fundamentally developer-driven process,” he added.
Cerny made his remarks when Keynoting a Gamelab event, held in Barcelona earlier today.
