Long read: The beauty and drama of video games and their clouds

"It's a little bit hard to work out without knowing the altitude of that dragon..."

If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy.

Sucker Punch on inFamous 2

On Cole's new look, the power of the PS3 and Sony exclusivity.

Eurogamer By saying that you mean you couldn't make it for the Xbox 360. Why do you say that?
Bruce Oberg

We're using so much more of the Cell processors now, I just don't know if other platforms have the horsepower to pull it off. At the end of inFamous 1 we were using 30 per cent of the Cell processors at any one time. Now we're creeping up over 50 and 60 per cent, because we know how to put things on to the Cell processors. I don't know where we'd go if we were on some other platform.

Eurogamer You're making a PS3 exclusive and Sony loves 3D.
Bruce Oberg

You know, we're not announcing anything besides the core single-player game. I will tell you though that I did the original 3D technology for the Sly series. If you played Sly 3, we shipped it with red green glasses for a regular television. This was five years ago. Since our guys are doing the Sly trilogy, the Sly Collection, they're taking that same 3D technology that I had done and making it work with the full HD and the shutter glasses and it's super awesome. I'm really excited about that and Heroes on the Move and the other 3D titles we've seen.

We're not talking about anything beyond the single-player game here for inFamous 2, but obviously 3D... Personally I'm a 3D nerd. I build my own 3D cameras. I did it for Sly 3 because it was just like a hobby. I was like, you know, I think I can do red-green 3D with our engine in Sly 3. And we got it working on the PlayStation 2.

Eurogamer So what are you saying? Are you saying it wouldn't be technically challenging for your team because you've got the expertise?
Bruce Oberg

We've always been a small team, and we have to choose our battles carefully about what we're going to do beyond just a really great single-player game. So we're not making any kind of announcements about 3D or the Move controller or whatever. We've just got to make a great single-player experience then figure out what we want to expand on.

Eurogamer Let's talk about the single-player. How many hours of gameplay will people get out of it?
Bruce Oberg

It always comes out as a promise that doesn't exactly match up with whatever you said. A lot of times we honestly don't know because we're creating content right now we're not going to be releasing until next year. So what the actual hour number is, I honestly don't know.

Hitting the spark.
Eurogamer Gamers care because of the value issue.
Bruce Oberg

In inFamous 1 we had a lot of side stuff you could do. There were side missions for taking control of the city, we had the shards to collect, and getting enough experience to upgrade all your powers. We want a great experience for someone who's not a hardcore gamer, and we want a great experience for the uber collectible guy who wants to get the Platinum trophy. That's a pretty wide range of gameplay time. It's tough to make a prediction about that especially at the stage we are in development.

Eurogamer Were you surprised by the success of the first game? It's one of the best-selling PS3 exclusives – 1.8 million worldwide, I think.
Bruce Oberg

We were cautiously optimistic. It's the entertainment industry. You work in such isolation for such a long time. It's always hard to know. You're trying your best to make something that both you like as a team and you feel is going to be a great experience for other people.

Before we shipped, probably in the last two months, we had a pretty good feeling it was going to be successful. We didn't know how successful. We were surprised hitting the million mark. It sold much better than any of the Sly series did – week to week sales. We were nervous because it didn't ship at Christmas time. But we did a pretty good job of being a summer videogame blockbuster.

We're happy that we're making a sequel. We started on the sequel right away. We took some time off – but we were working on the sequel from day one after we finished inFamous 1.