Mirror's Edge interview discusses PS3's 'quirks'

by Nick Doerr { May 18th 2008 at 9:30AM }

An interview with Mirror's Edge devs, DICE, has swept onto the internet and we're collecting the information to relay back to you. The title is multiplatform, but was showcased only at the PlayStation Day event. DICE's general manager, Sean Decker, explained it was because Sony has been a great partner and developing on the PS3 gives them a lot of little quirks to work with (Sixaxis balances Faith, Cell helps push higher texture resolutions). This is interesting because Decker goes on to explain how each version of the game (PS3, 360, PC) will be different -- imagine, a developer taking the time to tweak a game to perform optimally on each platform.

The developers are aiming for a 720p experience across all platforms, to keep a super-smooth frame rate at all times. There's not going to be any user interface in the game whatsoever other than a dot in the middle of the screen, a "focus point" for players, which will minimize motion sickness for those susceptible to such an ailment.

The game isn't about combat, Decker explains, but about movement. Even when you get a weapon, it's more of a tool to get through an obstacle than to take out other people. Any online elements are being kept secret until summer (E3, we presume), along with information on any sort of demo. No release date yet, but that's also going to get discussed this summer. We'll keep looking.

Tags: DICE, ea, electronic-arts, mirrors-edge

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Brodie-san @ May 18th 2008 10:14AM

Still intrigued by this game. It's different enough and with an appealing aesthetic to make me want to pick it up.

Could be a sleeper hit.

R.crisp @ May 18th 2008 10:14AM

It's good to see a development team trying to come up with something really original. Too many copy cat games out atm. Parkour, yamikazee, w/e they call it. I'm hoping it will be a really good game. No doubt I'll pick it up to try it regardless of reviews ^^

Eggy @ May 18th 2008 11:04AM

720p on the PC? A bit of a weird res. 5:4 or 4:3 is alot more common I think.

Rowdehaj @ May 18th 2008 11:06AM

I was reading up on the Cell last night, and it appears that its architecture resembles a GPU more than it does a regular CPU. Does that mean that, when used properly, the Cell's SPEs can augment the RSX in terms of graphical computations, far surpassing anything a regular CPU-GPU combination is capable of?

If so, what's the deal with the 360?

The_Punisher @ May 18th 2008 12:18PM

uh....what?

Dehshizknight @ May 18th 2008 1:41PM

See, it's little tricks like these that make the PS3 more powerful. However, in porting the game, they are not able to implement these tricks.

The Sound @ May 18th 2008 6:00PM

"Does that mean that, when used properly, the Cell's SPEs can augment the RSX in terms of graphical computations,"

Yes, that pretty much sums it up. That's what a lot of Devs are doing now.

Rowdehaj @ May 18th 2008 6:37PM

Awesome, thanks.

Popfrogs @ May 18th 2008 11:24PM

Yeah that's basically how the SPE's are set up. They're little incredibly fast processors that don't have much (direct) memory. They are supposed to augment the main Cell by running tiny bits of physics programs, texture programs, geometry programs, whatever is needed.

If anyone remembers the Altivec vector processor for the Powermacs...you'll see the concept behind having SPEs.

The only drawback is that at this point in time, programmers are WAY behind hardware manufacturers. They are being given hardware they can't take advantage of because the code doesn't exist yet...and the way of thinking has to change also. Even though Intel and AMD push out triple and quad-core chips, very, very few programs and OS's can take full advantage of all cores.

BananaBoat @ May 19th 2008 2:45AM

Which is why the 360 and PS3 are basically identical when it comes to actual real world graphical performance. The only limiting factor on the 360 is the lack of Blu-Ray, which means that there is room for less uncompressed HD cutscenes (big loss), but plenty of room for the "Hi Res Textures" that Dice is throwing into this game, thanks to having more dedicated memory than the Playstation 3 (and enough storage on DVD-9). You could say that the PS3 theoretically has more "power" than the 360, but that statement wouldn't be taking into account that the 360 is multi-cored aswell, and that any code optimized for multiple cores, would work just as well on the 360 as it would on the PS3. Far be it from an Anti-PS3 rant, or a Pro-360 rant (I own both) but the disinformation that leads to people going "If only it had been made exclusively for the PS3!! It would have looked better!" (Or exclusively for the 360) is annoying.

Rowdehaj @ May 19th 2008 3:06AM

I thought having 4 extra cores is a bigger advantage than the marginally higher amount of memory the 360 posesses.

BananaBoat @ May 19th 2008 12:28PM

Not all of those cores can be used for gameplay. On top of that, the 3 cores the Xbox 360 has, are each dual threaded, which gives games 6 total threads to use (compared to basically the same amount for the PS3).

The two machines are alot more alike than alot of people think. Not that it matters in the end, since gameplay is what is important, and both consoles seem to be delivering as promised so far.

Reymo @ May 18th 2008 12:07PM

@Eggy

I do not think they are going to restrict the Pc version to that resolution. As always Pc users have the option to customize their resolution.

Eggy @ May 18th 2008 12:22PM

I know but they are talking about optimising it for a certain res.

Reymo @ May 18th 2008 12:09PM

@Rowdehaj

If that is case with cell. Then I think SONY is going to be in very good shape but, who knows what their goal and target is at SONY with this architecture.

Reymo @ May 18th 2008 3:06PM

@Eggy

Im wondering if the comments were mis-interpreted and it was said to be optimized for console resolutions, if not oh well. The only thing that comes to mind if that statement is true. It is just for the sake of making a very scalable game for all users across all platforms which would be very good.