Chris Roberts has appeared on the Star Citizen forums to alleviate some fears about the game making some eventual move to PS4, after a PS4 devkit was spotted on Chief Technology Officer Jason Spangler’s desk. He characterises this deductive process as an “over-reaction” but also says he’s pleased at how passionate about the PC the Star Citizen community are.
As a definitive statement on the subject, he has this to say:
Star Citizen IS a PC game. It will NEVER be dumbed down for a lesser platform. We will NOT limit the input options or supported peripherals to the lowest common denominator. We will NOT pass on features and technology just because they will only run on some hardware configurations … Star Citizen will always be primarily a PC game and will embrace the best and newest tech.
He also talks a little about the team’s decision to make use of AMD’s ‘Mantle’ technology (which, let’s be honest here, I don’t fully understand, but it’s a separate AMD-created program designed to improve the efficiency of your graphics card.) “We are doing this because it increases the ability of a PC to get the most out of its incredibly powerful hardware. Going to the hardware without an huge inefficient API like DirectX allows us to radically increase the number of draw calls in a frame,” Roberts explains.
After that, he states again that Star Citizen will never ever ever times a million be on Xbox 360 or PS3, and explains that the door would only be open to PS4 and Xbox One on the following conditions:
IF the platform holders (Sony & Microsoft) allow us to update the code and data without restrictions and odious time consuming QC procedures, IF they allow our community to openly interact with each other across platforms then I would CONSIDER supporting them.
It seems unlikely that either Sony or (especially) Microsoft would be able to agree to this, so you can be pretty confident that Star Citizen will stay PC only.
Published: Nov 18, 2013 10:03 pm