14 DAY TRIAL // Chris Roberts, the creator behind the recently announced Star Citizen, says that he is making his space simulation title exclusive to the PC because he is confident that even next-generation home consoles will lack the computing power to run the game as it is now.
The developer, best known for his work on the Wing Commander series, tells Ars Technica that, “You can do most of it on a next generation console, but I can promise you a top-end PC now is already more powerful than what a next generation console is going to be.”
It seems that the biggest problem for Star Citizen on home consoles would be the limited amount of RAM available for use.
When it comes to the PC, Roberts says that those who have the best systems will get the better experience out of Star Citizen, but even those who have an older rig will be able to run the game and see what it has to offer.
The designer says, “It’ll be kind of like Wing Commander used to be. If you had the extra memory, if you had the 386, it was a better experience, but you could still play it on a 286.”
Apparently, he also accepts that some games are specifically designed for those consoles and is ready to buy those for the Xbox 360 or for the PlayStation 3, so that he does not have to deal with a problematic PC port.
Star Citizen is a complex online space simulation which allows a player to create his own ship, customize it and then perform a number of quests inside a universe that has a limited set of rules and allows for everything from trading to piracy.
At the moment, the sim has managed to get about 10 million dollars (7.78 million Euro) in traditional funding.
Chris Roberts is also using crowd funding for Star Citizen, both via the official website and Kickstarter, which has managed to bring in another 3.8 million (2.9 million Euro).