There are always people in comment sections claiming that a cross-platform triple-A game has had its graphics "dumbed down" for consoles, the PC version's fidelity apparently lowered to maintain some kind of parity, but it's not often you get confirmation of this actually happening.

With The Division, we've just had that confirmation. YouTubers Team Epiphany were flown out to New York to see a post beta version of The Division, which also came with interview access to a Ubisoft developer.

While interesting questions and answers are thin on the ground throughout the video, an interesting answer pops up 13 minutes in, with the unnamed developer admitting that cross-platform development did have some influence on the PC version.


After speaking about the new game engine, and how it has "a lot of potential", he's asked if they've ever been restricted with how far they can push a game because of the differences between platforms.

"It is definitely a [factor]," says the nameless Ubisoft developer. "But one good thing about The Division is that we've always considered PC as a separate platform. I've worked on projects before where the PC version's a port from a console, so it carries those limitations over, but we've always been in the mind that we'll have a dedicated PC build, so it hasn't really held it back too much."

That all sounds like the sort of answer you'd usually expect, but then he follows up with this: "We do have to kind of keep it in check with consoles because it would kind of be unfair just to push it so far away from them."

Judging by early reports, the PC version is a significant step up from consoles, but this developer quote does leave you wondering what it could be like if there wasn't this need for some kind of parity, but it seems Ubisoft didn't want... a division.

Posted: Feb 07, 2016 11:36 pm
Related Forum: Gaming Discussion

Source: http://www.pcgamesn.com/the-division/the-divisions-pc-version-had-to-be-kept-in-check-with-consoles-or-it-would-be-unfair