BioWare “Really Pumped” for PS3 Development
Bioware, the famous developer behind Mass Effect and Jade Empire, is known for its extensive work on PC and [shal]Xbox 360[/shal], and traditionally hasn’t had much experience with [shal]PlayStation hardware[/shal]. But all this is changing with their new multiplatform [shal]RPG[/shal], Dragon Age: Origins.
When asked about what PS3 development has been like for the team at [shal]Bioware[/shal], vice president Greg Zeschuk stated:
“We discovered a couple of things we did were pretty beneficial. We have multiple threads going for the game and it looks really great on the PS3. You can just throw them on all different processors, for example.
It’s new. Because we already had experience on 360, that kind of got ahead a little bit, but now we pretty much caught up. Actually it was very exciting. People on the team were really pumped to work on it. They were like, wow. We have a lot of people that like doing new stuff and trying new things, and they were like, wow another platform, can’t wait! It’s been good.”
[shal]Zeschuk[/shal] was quick to emphasize that despite the fact that Bioware only released one PS2 title, the reason they didn’t make many PlayStation games was because of the great publishing relationship they had with Microsoft. However, their absorption into the ranks of [shal]Electronic Arts[/shal] has led to a shift in platform focus. And not only has Bioware adjusted to the PS3 hardware, but found some unexpected benefits as well.
“It’s funny, we had extra graphic memory left over on the PS3. We were like, wow! So we actually started putting some of the audio bits in there and stuff. It’s a function of effort. Overall, pretty happy with how it’s turning out.”
[Source]
11 Responses to “BioWare “Really Pumped” for PS3 Development”
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July 8th, 2009 at 4:53 PM
“It’s funny, we had extra graphic memory left over on the PS3. We were like, wow!”
In other words the PS3 is more powerful.
July 8th, 2009 at 4:54 PM
i smell a ps3 exclusive!!!
July 8th, 2009 at 5:01 PM
Woohoo! Always good news.
July 8th, 2009 at 5:10 PM
sweet. dragon age origins is looking better and better!
July 8th, 2009 at 6:07 PM
As a long-time fan, it bugs me to see Bioware referred to as “the famous developer behind Mass Effect and Jade Empire…”. Baldur’s Gate, man! Come on!
Which brings me back to the fact that I’d love to see Infinity Engine games on my PSP…
July 8th, 2009 at 6:20 PM
I have always said that developing for the 360 and PS3 are not that far apart since the core hardware between the two is identical, the only difference is in the addon cores that support the PPC core. Sony uses an 8 core parallel processor function. M$ uses a 4 core (serial) processor function, and they had to borrow some Sony code for their process to get the 360 to market.
So when you factor the fact that the Cell Processor has 256K of memory for each core you can see why they have more memory left over and that is physical memory because M$ uses software compression to do what the Cell does in hardware, so it loses a small time slice to compact and un-compact the graphics, that might be why the graphics of the PS3 software is more detailed.
07/08/2009 at 6:44 PM
Yup, 1MB of on-chip memory in the 360’s CPU vs 2MB of (available) on-chip memory on the PS3’s CPU.
There’s something really cool that Cell does with compressed data, too. I’m trying to remember what it was though.
July 8th, 2009 at 6:33 PM
I wonder if this means that Mass Effect 2 may come out on the PS3 also?
July 8th, 2009 at 7:14 PM
Sweet.
July 9th, 2009 at 7:46 AM
Its funny how so many developers still cant get the hang of the PS3.
July 9th, 2009 at 10:57 AM
It’s nice to hear someone enjoying learning how to work with/on the PS3, not complaining about how hard it is.
July 9th, 2009 at 11:30 AM
tell valve this ok?