In speaking with Eurogamer on Wednesday, June 18, regarding The Witcher 3’s gameplay demo at this year’s E3 during Microsoft’s press conference, CD Projekt’s executive producer John Mamais revealed that the developer is aiming to hit 1080p on both current-gen consoles.
Mamais also revealed that the developer will be making sure to optimize all three versions of the game–Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC–so that they all run smoothly on their respective platforms.
” We’re still optimising for Xbox One and PS4 so it should look better than that in theory, ” he told Eurogamer. ” But everything we’re doing optimisation wise for PS4 and Xbox One, we’re also optimising for PC. It’s a cross-platform engine, so any optimisation we do for one platform goes into the other platform and just speeds it up, basically. ”
Mamais continued on to note that the gameplay demo of The Witcher 3 was running on an Xbox One at 900p, 30 frames per second. However, he insists that the game will look even better by the game’s release in February, 2015. As it stands, 900p is currently the “minimum” resolution the game can achieve.
” We will hit 900p no problem, ” Mamais stated. “ We’d like to get it up to 1080p on Xbox One. That’s our goal. Whether we can do it or not I don’t know. We’ve got to squeeze everything we can out of the hardware. Microsoft and Sony say 900p is the sweet spot, and there’s not a lot of difference visually between 900p and 1080p, but it’s a hot topic now. So that’s what my goal is. ”
Regarding the PlayStation 4, Mamais believes achieving 1080p on Sony’s current-gen console will be easier to do, as it is the more powerful console out of the two. Despite that, he also believes that (eventually) both consoles will run at 1080p in the long run.
” It’s just a slightly more powerful machine, ” Mamais said. ” That’s pretty known. But I think in the longer run everything is going to be on both platforms running at 1080p. It’s just taking developers longer to do it than they expected because the architecture is a little more challenging on the Xbox One.
It’s actually easier to develop for Xbox One for us because we’re PC developers, ” he continued. “ So everything we do on PC is for DirectX 11. And Xbox is also based on DX. So for the rendering side it’s a more natural progression for us to go to Xbox.
But we anticipate being able to do 1080p on PS4 a little bit easier than on the Xbox, ” he added.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is slated to release in February, 2015 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC. CD Projekt has also been confirmed that neither platform the game launches on will receive exclusive additional content.
You can view the game’s E3 gameplay footage via the embedded video below.
[ Eurogamer ]