The PlayStation 4 is significantly more powerful than Xbox One and also sports a much more faster RAM. Does this mean it will be held back when developing Witcher 3 for both Xbox One and PlayStation 4? CD Project’s Lead Engine Programmer, Balázs Török, ensures that it won’t be the case.
Speaking in an interview to Eurogamer, Balázs Török seems to be happy about the PlayStation 4’s 8 GB of GDDR 5 RAM.
“On the PS4 it’s very good to have the fast memory,” said Balázs Török, “everyone is really happy about that – but the problem is the game has to function on everything.
So while the PlayStation 4 might have the advantage of faster memory, their game has to work on a variety of platforms that includes PC, Xbox One and of course, the PlayStation 4.
Balázs Török then explains that this doesn’t mean they will hold back on PlayStation 4 capabilities and says that their primary target is to get the game running on all platforms with all the bells and whistles. So while PlayStation 4 might have better hardware, its performance advantage against Xbox One won’t come until later in the development stage, more specifically, during the optimization of the game.
“No we are not holding it back,” he added, “it’s just we are not at the stage right now to go in and optimise on each platform specifically. We want to make the game and the whole engine run on everything, with all the features and bells and whistles, and then just optimise, optimise, optimise.
Balázs Török also thinks that both consoles don’t have much power difference, especially with respect to their computation capabilities.
“I don’t see a major power difference. The memory is very different but I already said that before. Pure computation power, if you just measure that, there’s no major difference.”
Both new consoles are like PCs anyway, he added. It won’t be until teams really delve into low-level optimisations that the true grunt of each will come out.
So while the difference between Xbox One and PlayStation 4 might appear bigger on paper, it doesn’t matter to most developers during actual development. Although, during the optimization stage, such difference is more apparent when the developers have to decide on where to make the cuts for each platform.
Stay tuned to GearNuke for latest news and info on Witcher 3.
