WHAT IS THE PS4 LIKE TO DEVELOP FOR?
Avalanche CTO and co-founder Linus Blomberg
"Compared to the PS3 it's a walk in the park. I think that's one of the major lessons Sony learned with the last generation, you have to be accessible for the developers to be successful. Of course, there's still some quirkiness involved, especially if you're used to a Windows development environment."
Codemasters senior exeutive producer Clive Moody
"With its incredibly bespoke architecture, the PS3 didn’t make itself an easy platform and it has taken pretty much the entire generation for many studios to get the best from it. The PS4 seems much workable straight away, we can apply some of our advanced tech to it straight away and spend more time on the creative execution."
Ubisoft CEO and co-founder Yves Guillemot
"The PS4 is a great machine; we'll be able to make things look fantastic. Because the teams are working hard on their projects, I think we will see good things from the start. Sure, in two years engineers will figure out how to do a lot more. But these machines are easier to build on than before, so we should be able to reach their potential quicker.
"They have so many features that they can play with. It’s easier to be a creative person with new consoles, because after four years of people using all the capacity, it's harder to be innovative. With the PS4, we will see new ideas and new ways to approach gamers, and that will excite consumers and excite creators."
Rebellion CTO Chris Kingsley
"At Rebellion we’ve always developed on the PC so the x86 cores will be a fantastic time saver. Having commonalities across more than one platform means you spend less time just getting things working and more time pushing the hardware as far as you can. Of course, there are always likely to be a few wrinkles along the way.
"But it is also great that Sony are literally thinking outside the box. The PlayStation 4 is so much more than a box that produces great images and sound. Sony have built in ways to connect with players more deeply to create better ways for players to experience their games."
Xiotex founder Byron Atkinson-Jones
"The fact that Sony have finally adopted a PC architecture makes me believe there may be a god especially after many years cursing the obscure hardware they always made us code to."
Climax Studios CEO Simon Gardner
"It's much easier to develop for. The tool chain is an advancement over the PS3 and everything about it is slicker, simpler and much more developer friendly. We were very pleased with the 8GB of memory and the compute shader system is very powerful."
Four Door Lemon owner Simon Barratt
"The PC like architecture is a big boost in terms of productivity for teams of all sizes. More technically capable teams will be able to take advantage of the huge amount of CPU cores and also compute power in the device for amazing results whether they are using them for graphics, physics or other interesting uses."
Air-Edel's Chris Green
"The roll back to x86 technology (PC technology) should make it a lot easier and quicker for studios to create and optimise cross-platform games, and get up and running quickly when the new systems come out, something that the PS3 had issues with.
"Also, I feel the x86 platform was what helped the XBox 360 get such a strong hold in the market even though the PS3 was on paper a better machine, because the developers felt more comfortable writing for it. In my opinion it was only really the PS3 exclusive games that showed off the system to its full potential."
