SolidSnakex
Member
Saw this over at PSINext
It goes on to talk about how Codemasters has had a better looking into how the PS3 works than most others 3rd party developers have had. Colin McRae DIRT will be the first game to make use of the engine. It's also going to only be released on next gen systems. So no current gen systems holding it down.
Explains Chesire: We looked at the middleware solutions we could use - we had no axe to grind, frankly, and just wanted to find the technology we could have ready for th next-gen so we werent left catching up in ten years time. We looked around at the Renderwares and the Unreals, but nothing really fulfilled our requirements specifically for the PS3, anyway.
So what do you do when your ideal platform is PS3? The answer is to speak to Sony. And together, Codemasters and Sony have come up with another answer: Neon.
A new next-gen engine built from scratch over the past year and a half, its been a significant investment and is a new tool with an unique and
interesting backstory. Sony knew early on that it was going to be hard to get the very best out of the PS3 early on, so the Japan office commissioned a team in Europe to start devising new technology and tools, says Cheshire.
We really only found out about it because a guy on that team is friends with a coder at Sony, but our guys have worked very hard on building that relationship with them. What we were able to do is exploit something that Sony was developing internally, which we were the first to see and since then weve worked very closely with Sony. Its a two-way street.
Having Sony provide the springboard for next-gen development on another platform isn't as unlikely as your may think, however
"The odd thing is that we wouldn't have wanted to use it if it wasn't cross-platform," explains Cheshire. "But Sony said that was fine. Sony realises that the only way to make next-gen viable for everyone was to allow everyone to exploit technology."
It goes on to talk about how Codemasters has had a better looking into how the PS3 works than most others 3rd party developers have had. Colin McRae DIRT will be the first game to make use of the engine. It's also going to only be released on next gen systems. So no current gen systems holding it down.