PS3 "not hard" to develop for

Taking advantage of Sony's recently-launched PlayStation blog website, senior corporate communications director Dave Karraker responded to criticism that the PS3 is more difficult to develop for, GamesIndustry.biz reports.

"It's not that PS3 is harder to write for, it's just that you can do more with it," he noted.

"Since PS3's Cell processor allows more features - better physics, more complex graphical processing, lighting or sound, etc. - there is inevitably going to be more cost in supporting those extra features."

Karraker also addressed conversion between the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. "If your game starts on Xbox 360 you will have to re-engineer aspects of the game to run properly on PS3. This means additional effort. Some developers have been complaining about this but I don't believe we can solve that."

"Xbox 360 is a different machine with good, but lower powered hardware in a different architecture," he added. "Developers have to view them as two different machines not as a common platform."

Sony conceded that Xbox Live has a more robust online infrastructure.

"XBL provides more and better standard libraries for online gaming to developers," said Karraker. "For the same features on PS3, developers have to do some extra work. We're catching up, but there is a difference."

Even so, Karraker stood by Sony's machine. "If the game starts life on PS3, then man-hours per feature or costs related to asset production are comparable with industry norms."

To read the full post, visit the PlayStation blog.