Splinter Cell : Conviction to remain Xbox 360 exclusive?

[Serren]

According to comments made by a developer at Ubisoft working on Splinter Cell: Conviction, the title will stay an Xbox 360 exclusive due to technical issues.

We all know that Splinter Cell: Conviction has been written from the ground up as an Xbox 360 title, but that hasn't stopped similar games being ported over to other platforms in the past. This though time it's different.

One of the key gameplay elements in Splinter Cell: Conviction is the use of the massed crowds. The AI that drives the crowds runs on each individual in the crowd, with each person having their own drives and motives, which can change depending on the overall crowd mood or direct interaction with Sam.

According to one of the dev team on Splinter Cell: Conviction, this level of AI control and complexity just isn't possible to do on the PS3 and the Wii is right out of it... meaning Splinter Cell: Conviction will stay firmly ont he Xbox 360 alone.

Now whilst we agree that a game coded specifically for one platform may be very tricky to port across, especially if there's loads of complex AI to worry about, we find it hard to beleive that the PS3 isn't powerful enough to handle the task as well as the Xbox 360. Perhaps this harkens back to those early reports that the PS3 is harder to code for and now we're starting to see the legacy of that extra complexity?

One thing is for sure, with the Xbox 360 architecture being far similar to a PC, we should see Sam on the run on the PC at least and if not, maybe there's more to this 'too tricky to port' stuff than meets the eye?

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[BrewCityUpstart]

I posted a story just like this in the Sony forum. How can Assassins Creed do it and not Splinter Cell???

[Serren]

Yeah, I saw your story a few minutes ago, my bad! I think it is most likely Ubisoft does not want to reprogram AI from scratch for the PS3. The 360 has some sort of AI assisting code built into the processors. Much like when the video card companies build specific helping code into the GPU chips that helop with shading or such.

By MS building in the AI code, it makes it a TON easier for the programmers. They only have to tell the 360 to run that code. Since it sounds like the ps3 does not have such code, Ubisoft would have to hard code it all from scratch. Which would suck. I would bet if there were as many PS3 out, they would do it. But until the PS3 marketshare is bigger, it is not worth the effort for them.

Good thing you have both systems though!