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Chris Roberts: PCs far outstrip consoles for raw gaming power

Star_Citizen_2

After spending more than ten years away from games development, the Wing Commander and Freelancer creator is now working on Star Citizen, a game that he says will finally realise his vision of a space opera MMO. Excited by the possibilities presented by PC development, he said that games should make the most of PC hardware and not feel they have to be compromised by cross-platform development.

“I
want to come back and say that PC was where I made my name. My games pushed
the PC boundary and I’m sad that that the business has moved away from
PC,” he said, as he spoke to me about his frustration with PC games that are ports
of Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 titles. “You’re essentially playing a game
built for seven-year-old tech on your PC, and a top-end PC gaming rig
is ten times more powerful than a 360 or a PS3.”

“The
ability to make a much more immersive environment and the level of visual
fidelity is really compelling for me,” he continued. “The moment I
decided I wanted to come back and make a game was the moment I was
playing games and going okay, first of all I feel like the technology is
going to a point where I could have the visual fidelity that I could
have in my head, that I was getting frustrated with before, that I
wasn’t able to achieve. I was feeling like the kind of game I wanted to
play wasn’t being made any more.”

It would seem that many gamers feel the same way and are delighted to see him return to the industry. When Star Citizen was announced yesterday, the Roberts Space Industries website collapsed under the weight of traffic.