You’re only as strong as the weakest platform you’re supporting, and PC gamers have got used to developers making concessions for the consoles. But Far Cry 4 is likely the last major Ubisoft game to pull the Xbox 360 and PS3 along with it: 2015 and beyond belongs to only the most powerful machines.
That’s great news for The Division especially. Ubisoft Massive are PC developers in their bones – and when they saw how the new consoles worked, they leapt for joy.
“We were a very, very hardcore PC gamer studio before,” Massive managing director David Polfeldt told Gamespot. “And we never understood the previous generation of consoles very well from a technological standpoint.”
When Massive saw the specs for the new-gen consoles, however, they realised they weren’t going to have to abandon their roots to build The Division.
“I remember we had a meeting at Massive and we just looked at each other and said, ‘Is this what I think it is? Is this our home turf?’ Because on this hardware, we can be excellent. We can be one of the best.”
Since their founding in 1997 until their acquisition by Ubisoft, Massive worked exclusively on PC games – two Ground Controls, World of Conflict, and expansion packs for each.
Since the French publisher picked them up in 2008, however, they’ve been a support studio, working on Assassin’s Creed: Revelations and Far Cry 3.
Did you see The Division’s E3 trailer? Utterly, utterly miserable. But exquisitely so.