Speaking to CVG Yannis Mallat, the CEO of Ubisoft Montreal, has claimed developing for the PlayStation 4 is a "really pleasent surprise."
Hailing what we called "radical change" from Sony Mallat said he believes the next generation console is "less complex" than what has come before due to its PC like system architecture.
"From what we can talk about, which is the PlayStation 4, it's been a radical change from those guys," Mallat commented. "I'll tell you an anecdote: When I was the producer of Prince of Persia: Sands of Time we managed to get our hands on a very good programmer who's still on the Assassin's Creed core team.
"One day on his desk he had a black book all written in Japanese, and I was like, 'what is that?' It was the documentation support for coding for PS2. 'That's why I wanted to have Japanese lessons,' he said – to understand and make the most out of the machine.
"That day I understood how complex it was to develop on PlayStation 2. So we were eager to find out what the PlayStation 3 would be in terms of architecture, and it was pretty much the same but more complex," Mallat added, presumably referring to the PS3's cell processor which many stuggled to develop for, particularly in the early years of the console.
The PS4 is being developed by Mark Cerny, the first non-Japanese PlayStation system architect, which may explain some of the changes in how the console is designed. Mallat says the PS4's development landscape justifies Ubisoft's decision to begin development of major upcoming titles such as Watch_Dogs on high-end PCs.
"PlayStation 4 really comes as a pleasant surprise because indeed it's a very familiar architecture. I think it's paying off for us deciding to develop on high-end PCs early. It's a less complex transition," he concluded.
Mallat joins Epic's Mark Rein, Arkane's Christophe Carrier, Double Fine's Tim Schafer and Avalanche's Linus Blomberg, among other developers, in praising Sony's approach to their next console and its architecture.
