Bioware, the famous developer behind Mass Effect and Jade Empire, is known for its extensive work on PC and [shal]Xbox 360[/shal], and traditionally hasn’t had much experience with [shal]PlayStation hardware[/shal]. But all this is changing with their new multiplatform [shal]RPG[/shal], Dragon Age: Origins.
When asked about what PS3 development has been like for the team at [shal]Bioware[/shal], vice president Greg Zeschuk stated:
“We discovered a couple of things we did were pretty beneficial. We have multiple threads going for the game and it looks really great on the PS3. You can just throw them on all different processors, for example.
It’s new. Because we already had experience on 360, that kind of got ahead a little bit, but now we pretty much caught up. Actually it was very exciting. People on the team were really pumped to work on it. They were like, wow. We have a lot of people that like doing new stuff and trying new things, and they were like, wow another platform, can’t wait! It’s been good.”
[shal]Zeschuk[/shal] was quick to emphasize that despite the fact that Bioware only released one PS2 title, the reason they didn’t make many PlayStation games was because of the great publishing relationship they had with Microsoft. However, their absorption into the ranks of [shal]Electronic Arts[/shal] has led to a shift in platform focus. And not only has Bioware adjusted to the PS3 hardware, but found some unexpected benefits as well.
“It’s funny, we had extra graphic memory left over on the PS3. We were like, wow! So we actually started putting some of the audio bits in there and stuff. It’s a function of effort. Overall, pretty happy with how it’s turning out.”
[Source]