On its face, the relative sluggishness of the PS3 would appear to be counterintuitive, given its powerful processor. On the other hand, the 360 has been on the market a year longer than the PS3 — meaning game developers have had more time to configure and optimize their software for Microsoft’s machine. At least that’s what video game industry analysts are intuiting.
Electronic Arts hasn’t been quite so explicit.
In a written statement, Todd Sitrin, EA’s vice president of marketing sports branding, said that its games are tweaked in different ways to fit the different consoles.
“In designing a game, there are all sorts of tradeoffs that include frame rate, visuals, features, AI, etc. Football is an extremely challenging sport to replicate because of the number of people on the field, their interaction, and the scope of the environments. As you can see, every company making a football game this year made a decision that the best experience for the Xbox 360 included 60fps whereas the best experience for the PS3 was 30fps.”
The statement did not indicate specifically why EA had made the tradeoff for slower speeds on the PlayStation, and did not address whether EA is having more trouble developing for PS3 than for the 360. The company did not respond to follow-up questions this afternoon.