There’s been plenty of discussion (perhaps too much) concerning how Xbox One development compares to that of PS4, but one developer is suggesting that maybe certain issues have been overstated. Speaking with Gaming Bolt, Mel Kirk of Zen Studios (the team behind Pinball FX 2) describes an overall problem-free experience working with Microsoft’s’ latest box.
Due to confidentiality restrictions, I am not able to answer this question in detail, but I will say that working with Xbox One is easy for an experienced dev team, there are no challenges out of the ordinary, and the code is solid.
Of course, the first part of his response does raise an eyebrow — confidentiality restrictions? About developing a pinball game? Still, Kirk went on to say that Xbox One’s eSRAM, also a recurring discussion point, did not introduce any problems either.
No, we haven’t had any issues. Pinball FX2 is a big game with a lot of DLC content, and we have seen no issues.
According to at least one notable developer, then, the Xbox One is a painless platform to make games for. As time passes, it’s likely this opinion will prevail, and complaints will lessen. Remember PS3’s Cell Processor? I’m pretty sure nobody enjoyed working with that thing. At the end of the day a learning curve is something that levels off, even if getting to that point can be a slog for certain game-makers.
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Of course, this doesn’t completely wipe out more direct hardware complaints; Brad Wardell’s assertion that Microsoft “cheap RAM” is a huge bottleneck comes to mind. I’m sure Microsoft is hoping such remarks are swept under the rug and forgotten.
