Itagaki says X360 is best
But he reckons most games are struggling to run at 30fps.
Tomonobu Itagaki, flamboyant head of Tecmo's Team Ninja and one of the Xbox 360's biggest proponents in Japan, reckons Xbox 360 is the best console on the planet – but he also says most developers are struggling to get above 30 frames per second.
Speaking to GameInformer at TGS, Itagaki-san delivered this in response to a question about his confidence in the Xbox 360: "I think Xbox 360 is the best game console on the earth. It's better than PlayStation 3." When pressed as to why, he said, "PS3 has too complicated architecture."
Interestingly though, he doesn't think we're going to see many games running at 60fps, although Dead or Alive 4 will. "[After E3], we’ve brought it up to 60. To be more specific, maybe it’s about 55 fps. From now until launch we’ll bring it up to 60. Other developers are now trying to bring their games up to 30fps. That’s a fact," he said. "Can you think of any other games that are running at 60 fps? Every Party?" he joked.
That seems to tie in with what Project Gotham Racing 3 design manager Gareth Wilson told us at TGS. Asked about hitting 60, he said: "We'll see how we go. It's all about timings. If we had four months we could get it running at 60. It's whether we've got the time." Although he then argued that with the physics running at the full rate and so many visual effects, the difference between 30 and 60 actual frames delivered every second would be difficult for most people to notice.
Getting back to Itagaki-san, the sunglass-loving developer also had some kind words for Nintendo concerning the Revolution controller. "I think it’s good if it can be used as a sword or something like that – it would be really different. [Although] It would be very tiring. If you use that with my games, and it’s speed you’ll end up with a bigger right arm (laughs). Frankly I think Nintendo’s hardware presentation is just great. I just saw the trailer, and saw it multiple times and I was laughing my ass off. To be top notch you need to be able to make people laugh."
The full Tomonobu Itagaki interview is online over at GameInformer.