Sniper Studios’ Jeff Hasson talks PSP, next-gen development

As co-founder of Sniper Studios, Jeff Hasson has had a lot of experience in outsourcing game development resources and being outsourced for game development, despite the general outlook of the industry as a “dirty” word in the business.

 

The studio itself has already had a number of games under its belt – Halo, SOCOM and Star Wars Battlefront being those that stand out of the list. But after a team up with SEGA and its illustrious arcade franchise Crazy Taxi, Sniper Studios was able to take a step forward into next-gen development.

Crazy Taxi: Fare Wars for the PSP is currently under their skilled development hands and the game is slated to be set off as a blend between Crazy Taxi and Crazy Taxi 2 with multiplayer features. Although much of the ideas won’t be coming from Kenji Kanno, SEGA of America has been on-hand to lead the project the way its supposed to.

PSP development hasn’t been all that smooth however. According to an interview by Gamasutra with Hasson, certain technical issues such as UMD loading times and access times have been a difficult hurdle. Of course, they were impressed with the platform’s power as a handheld PS2, and even more so with Sony’s developers tools for the platform.

In fact, he mentioned that for a game that originated in a 4:3 aspect format, shifting to a small screen with a 16:9 aspect ratio was “straightforward.” Added to that, they’ve developed the multiplayer code from scratch while the engine for the PSP were ported from the original engines from Japan.

Not bad for a studio taking baby steps into PSP development. Big news is that they’ve also been tagged by Microsoft as an officially licensed Xbox 360 developer, but they are hoping to enter the Wii and PlayStation 3 also. Hasson said:

Sniper has experience developing across all major platforms and the team looks forward to making announcements about new development projects in the future. Every platform is of significant interest to Sniper. This includes potential projects on PS3 or the Wii.

As co-founder of Sniper Studios, Jeff Hasson has had a lot of experience in outsourcing game development resources and being outsourced for game development, despite the general outlook of the industry as a “dirty” word in the business.

 

The studio itself has already had a number of games under its belt – Halo, SOCOM and Star Wars Battlefront being those that stand out of the list. But after a team up with SEGA and its illustrious arcade franchise Crazy Taxi, Sniper Studios was able to take a step forward into next-gen development.

Crazy Taxi: Fare Wars for the PSP is currently under their skilled development hands and the game is slated to be set off as a blend between Crazy Taxi and Crazy Taxi 2 with multiplayer features. Although much of the ideas won’t be coming from Kenji Kanno, SEGA of America has been on-hand to lead the project the way its supposed to.

PSP development hasn’t been all that smooth however. According to an interview by Gamasutra with Hasson, certain technical issues such as UMD loading times and access times have been a difficult hurdle. Of course, they were impressed with the platform’s power as a handheld PS2, and even more so with Sony’s developers tools for the platform.

In fact, he mentioned that for a game that originated in a 4:3 aspect format, shifting to a small screen with a 16:9 aspect ratio was “straightforward.” Added to that, they’ve developed the multiplayer code from scratch while the engine for the PSP were ported from the original engines from Japan.

Not bad for a studio taking baby steps into PSP development. Big news is that they’ve also been tagged by Microsoft as an officially licensed Xbox 360 developer, but they are hoping to enter the Wii and PlayStation 3 also. Hasson said:

Sniper has experience developing across all major platforms and the team looks forward to making announcements about new development projects in the future. Every platform is of significant interest to Sniper. This includes potential projects on PS3 or the Wii.