IGN: What's the performance difference of the CryENGINE on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 compared to the PC? Are you able to tailor the engine to each platform?
Harald Seeley: Yes, we definitely tailor the engine specifically to each platform. More than just the difference in CPU and video hardware capabilities of PCs and consoles is at play here. So are the much smaller memory budgets we must work with, the lack of a hard disk on some models, and the acceptance requirements of the hardware vendors themselves. All have an effect on how we approach each version of the engine.
The surprising thing has been how well the consoles can perform visually, once this tailoring is in place. We expect the final outcome will result in games that look like they're running at high settings, or nearly high settings, on a PC. Actually, we found it as much or more challenging to address the memory limitations of the consoles when converting our current AI system, as we did while converting our rendering engine or physics system, which was not something you might have expected at the start.
IGN: Would you like to share any thoughts as to the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360? What about the Wii? Will we see CryENGINE 1 games on it, perhaps?
Harald Seeley: Well there is no doubt that porting our engine to the PlayStation 3 is the more challenging of our two ongoing conversion projects, but that works to our advantage in the end. We feel certain we have the ability to get the most that is possible out of that platform, and therefore PS3 games which run on our engine in the future will definitely stand significantly apart from other games that don't. We haven't seen a great deal of demand for third party engines for the Wii, the limited complexity of games which can be developed for that console also limits the need for the kind of sophisticated tools and middleware which we are known for. So I doubt we will be providing any engine technology for that console in the near term.
