quote:
Edge: Going back to thinking about different platforms, we notice that you aren’t developing the PS3 version of The Orange Box in-house. Do you have some horror stories to share?
GN: I think the people who have The Orange Box on the PS3 are going to be happy with their game experience. We’ve done the PC and 360 versions here and EA has a team doing the PS3 version – and they’ll make the PS3 version a good product; EA got the job done in putting a lot of people with PS3 experience on the project. But I think it’s harder to get it to the same standard as the 360 and PC versions.
Edge: Obviously you’ve ported games between platforms before, but is there anything you’ve learned from developing for multiple platforms from the outset?
GN: We’ve learned that you can create a framework where all you need to do is recompile for each of those three platforms. You know, that’s a sort of abstraction of our goal. With The Orange Box we could do that, so getting Left 4 Dead up on the 360 was like a day’s worth of work. It requires a big technology investment to be able to do that. I was pretty sceptical that we would; I thought there was going to be more work than that. I think in the longer term we’ll have the PS3 as well, but, to be honest, the biggest hole for us right now is the Wii.
Edge: A while ago you said that you thought Sony should do a 'do-over' with PS3. Do you still think that?
GN: Absolutely. I think [PS3 is] a waste of everybody’s time. Investing in the Cell, investing in the SPE gives you no long-term benefits. There’s nothing there that you’re going to apply to anything else. You’re not going to gain anything except a hatred of the architecture they’ve created. I don’t think they’re going to make money off their box. I don’t think it’s a good solution.
