Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag director Ashraf Ismail has revealed that developing the game on current consoles was "nightmarish" but that bringing the game to PS4 and Xbox was "very smooth" thanks to their PC like architecture.
Speaking in a Reddit AMA Ismail commented:
“Development on both [PS4 and Xbox One] was very smooth since they are both very similar to PCs. Last generation was very difficult and even nightmarish. Both Xbox One and PS4 were easy to deal with and the first parties were both there to help us out.
"The one gray area was understanding both Sony and MS requirements for the consoles. They were trying to figure them out themselves.”
He also spoke about the DualShock 4's features, saying, “The touchpad is used for scrolling through the map, adding waypoints, zooming etc."
He concluded by adding “Overall it was super smooth to develop on [next-gen].”
Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag is out now for PS3 and Xbox 360. The game will be released later this month for PC, PS4, Wii U, and Xbox One. Last night the Watch_Dogs PS4 bundle was replaced with one for Assassin's Creed 4.
The reaction to Black Flag has been generally positive and we awarded the game 9/10 in our review.