14 DAY TRIAL // Infamous: Second Son is a PS4 exclusive game, and developer Sucker Punch has highlighted some of the ways this has resulted in a great level of performance for the game and how knowing the exact hardware meant improving certain aspects to a great level of detail.
Infamous: Second Son launches later this week and finally delivers a new experience that's exclusive to Sony's PlayStation 4 console, coming from internal developer Sucker Punch Productions.
The studio has already emphasized just how happy it is working with the PS4, thanks to its extra power, and it has now talked a bit about the advantages of working with a single hardware configuration and pushing it to the brink in terms of performance.
During the latest PS blogcast, via DualShockers, the studio's Conrad Zimmerman exemplified this with Delsin's movement speed, which is in direct correlation to how fast the game can stream new elements into view.
"We know exactly how fast Delsin can move through the city…He can move 18 meters per second. If he moves faster than that, we cannot guarantee than we’ll be able to load the next block before you get to it."
Knowing the hardware performance and specs of the PS4 allowed Sucker Punch to make sure that the game is taking advantage of all the power and is careful about limitations like the hard drive speed.
"It’s one of the advantages of being a Sony exclusive developer, is that when we’re building the game, we can make decisions like that, because we have exactly one platform we’re aiming for, and we can leverage the heck out of it. We know exactly how fast the hard drive is and these things, and we can design our games to run right up to the limit."
Last but not least, Zimmerman also said that working on multiple platforms, particularly when one is more powerful than the other, means a lot of extra problems that can appear.
"If you’re someone that has to support multiple platforms, especially if one is slightly less powerful than the other one, then you’re kind of in trouble right? Because you’re kind of having to work hard so that it can look as good as it can on all of them, and we don’t have to worry about that, we can just focus on making it look great on PS4 and just focus on having the game be as good as possible. We don’t have to wrestle with all that stuff, and that’s freeing," he added.
Infamous: Second Son makes its worldwide debut on March 21, for the PS4.