Jesse Rapczak, founder of Studio Wildcard, the developer behind the dinosaurs action-survival game Ark: Survival Evolved, stated in a recent interview with GamingBolt that the PS4 and Xbox One are easier to develop for than last gen’s consoles.
He also mentioned that the Xbox 360 was the “clear winner” of last gen in terms of development since the PS3 “required a lot of specialized expertise” while now both consoles are pretty similar and development tools are more available nowadays.
“Both platforms are relatively easy to develop for to be honest. The PS3 and Xbox 360 days, Xbox 360 was the clear winner there because of the tools and the architecture. PS3 was so different, required a lot of specialized expertise to create good content and good optimization for. But now the tools are really good, the platforms are really honestly very similar and some things that the Xbox is better the PlayStation is stronger in other areas.”
Rapczak commented on how Ark: Survival Evolved depends on the power of the CPU of the console for rendering purposes. Although Xbox One has more CPU than the PS4, the PS4 has a more capable GPU which balances the equation.
“One thing that I will say that is very interesting is that our game is limited by CPU for rendering right now. A lot of people know that the Xbox has a stronger CPU than the PS4. That’s not to say that it runs better on the Xbox or PlayStation, but the PlayStation having a little bit more powerful GPU is offset by the fact that our game requires a lot of CPU to run well. It’s kind of a balance between the two right now for different reasons.”
Ark: Survival Evolved is currently available through Steam’s Early Access with the full version of the game releasing in June 2016 for the PS4, Xbox One and PC.