As part of an
in-depth Gamasutra interview discussing next-gen title
Dark Sector, Digital Extremes project lead Steve Sinclair has been discussing its history and challenges of multi-platform development, commenting that the PS3 and Xbox 360 aren't "as similar as you'd like" for game creation.
Digital Extremes, formed in 1993, has a long history of games, from work on
Epic Pinball through
Pariah and
Warpath, and Sinclair explained the history of
Dark Sector and its current publisher D3 in some initial comments:
"We've been with D3 for a couple of years, and before that, Dark Sector's been something that's been on the backburner at various times in development. It's been two years in full production, and prior to that, we worked on Unreal Championship, and some of the Tournament games. Some of it was funded on our own dime, and some of it was with D3."
Later in the interview, Sinclair discusses the opportunity that D3Publisher has given them by stepping in to help with funding publishing, and focuses on the necessity to take time to get the game right on the differing platforms it appears on:
"They have given us more time, because the scope of the game is pretty large, and with the inclusion of multiplayer and that sort of thing, we've been able to put some things back in the game that we were sort of kicking ourselves for having to cut. Like the multiplayer game modes and that sort of thing.
Part of it is, "Do we have a choice of being a little bit later?" because of PlayStation 3 and 360... you know, they're not as similar as you'd like, and not as similar as we had initially thought when we were pitching the game. In some ways, we had no choice but to take extra time."
You can now
read the full Gamasutra interview on the subject, including more on how development is going on this ambitious next-generation, multiplatform project, and the challenges of developing a game on an original engine with intriguing new play mechanics.
