Shuhei Yoshida is the president of Sony's worldwide PlayStation
software development and oversees all Sony's game studios, from
Japan to the US. He has worked at Sony for over 25 years and was a
lead executive on the original PlayStation project. I travelled to
Tokyo to meet him at his office to find out the processes and
challenges of developing games that appear on the PlayStation 3
console and the portable PS Vita system.
What is the process for developing a game that is to be
released on PlayStation 3 and PS Vita? Are they separate
teams?
We do not have a set process. Some of the games we start as a
PS3 title and add in a Vita [version] during development. Some
other projects are started as Vita titles and a PS3 [version] is
added later. For newer titles, we start both from the beginning.
It's different for every title.
The performance is quite similar [for PS3 and Vita] unless
you're making something
like Uncharted or The Last Of Us,
which take every bit of [hardware] performance available. The
Vita's smaller screen size allows developers to economise on
textures and the level of detail so that it can be played on the
Vita. Plus sharing the core gaming engine makes it really easy for
developers to enable cross-platform play. Continue reading