Enemy Territory: Quake Wars isn’t cross platform because…

 

Quake Wars”>Splash Damage thought that cross-platform on Enemy Territory: Quake Wars (PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360) at this point onward “might be a bit premature.” But interestingly enough, in an interview with CVG, big boss Paul Wedgwood also pointed out that there was a technical inequality with the control scheme that would lend PC gamers a better edge on foot, while the console gamers a better edge on wheels. More appropriately, he said:

The guy on the analogue controller has an advantage over the PC with vehicle control because he doesn’t have the ‘on-off’ acceleration and steering, and the guy on the keyboard and mouse is able to turn faster and slightly more accurately.

Wedgwood made it clear from the get-go that the idea to drop cross-platform spurred from the fact that the game was never designed with the concept of “we have to have players on the PC play against players on the Xbox” – or something like that. Although you can suggest that they use the close dev studio communication to make cross platform work, Wedgwood would still decline. Defending his stand, he said:

What I do think is we would’ve had to have nerfed gameplay in some way or another to get it to a point where it was equally level for both sides, and that would’ve meant that both sides suffered because of our arbitrary goal of getting them to play together – which we weren’t convinced they wanted to do in the first place.

For future games it may well be the fact that that’s the most important thing, that everybody’s really used to the idea and you have guys on PS3 that drive the vehicles, soldiers running around on PC, but I’m not really sure.

And let’s also make one thing clear: he isn’t an advocate of “FPS PC pwns FPS console.” According to him, the edge issue is often situational. Games set up optimally for consoles will lend more advantage for consoles, while games set up more for PCs will always give the PC player the killing edge. With Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, that’s something id Software probably wants to avoid.

 

Quake Wars”>Splash Damage thought that cross-platform on Enemy Territory: Quake Wars (PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360) at this point onward “might be a bit premature.” But interestingly enough, in an interview with CVG, big boss Paul Wedgwood also pointed out that there was a technical inequality with the control scheme that would lend PC gamers a better edge on foot, while the console gamers a better edge on wheels. More appropriately, he said:

The guy on the analogue controller has an advantage over the PC with vehicle control because he doesn’t have the ‘on-off’ acceleration and steering, and the guy on the keyboard and mouse is able to turn faster and slightly more accurately.

Wedgwood made it clear from the get-go that the idea to drop cross-platform spurred from the fact that the game was never designed with the concept of “we have to have players on the PC play against players on the Xbox” – or something like that. Although you can suggest that they use the close dev studio communication to make cross platform work, Wedgwood would still decline. Defending his stand, he said:

What I do think is we would’ve had to have nerfed gameplay in some way or another to get it to a point where it was equally level for both sides, and that would’ve meant that both sides suffered because of our arbitrary goal of getting them to play together – which we weren’t convinced they wanted to do in the first place.

For future games it may well be the fact that that’s the most important thing, that everybody’s really used to the idea and you have guys on PS3 that drive the vehicles, soldiers running around on PC, but I’m not really sure.

And let’s also make one thing clear: he isn’t an advocate of “FPS PC pwns FPS console.” According to him, the edge issue is often situational. Games set up optimally for consoles will lend more advantage for consoles, while games set up more for PCs will always give the PC player the killing edge. With Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, that’s something id Software probably wants to avoid.