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PopCap Developing For Multiple Platforms With Next Project
Ever wondered why PopCap games such as Peggle and Plants vs. Zombies take such a long time to work their way around to different platforms? First it comes to PC, then phones, then DS, then XBLA and PSN...why so slow? Well, turns out there's a reasonable answer for that, and it's something that the developer is looking to change.
Speaking to Gamasutra, PopCap senior producer of core IP Matt Johnston explained that the team spends a lot of time simply figuring out if and how a certain game will work on new platforms because of the switch in control methods:
"[Plants vs. Zombies] XBLA was a project that I worked on, and the first thing I did was get those guys to figure out the control scheme, because that was a big question; like, 'Is this even going to work?' And it wasn't like, 'make it work,' it was like 'let's see if it works, and if it doesn't work we're not going to do it.' And we actually took a long time trying to get it to work."
Johnston went on to say that PopCap is changing how they do this with its next project:
"So we're going to build our game for platform A as the lead platform, but we're also going to build our game so that it also considers platform B, and that the adaptation process is a little bit more smooth, and it's not as work-intensive."
Johnston added that this way of working on games "makes business sense for us." It certainly does. Here's hoping that whatever PopCap's next game is, we'll see it across a wider spread of platforms much faster.
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