Dishonored 2 was our favourite game of 2016, however its PC launch wasn't without its problems. With Arkane Austin's much-anticipated Prey due this week, the developer has sworn to do everything it can to avoid the issues its Arkane Lyon colleagues faced last year.
In conversation with Gamespot, Arkane's president Raphael Colantonio outlines that while modern big-budget games often feature on PC and console hardware, they begin life on desktop and thus Arkane's games are not substandard ports.
"First of all, it's not like we first do the game on console and then in the end we suddenly port the game to PC," says Colantonio. "It starts on PC. That's how game development works. The real reason why PC games often have problems is because there are so many permutations of hardware. Sometimes it's timing—drivers come out the same time as our game. Something happens that makes it more challenging."
Colantonio continues, suggesting that all measures to ensure Prey receives a smooth PC launch have been undertaken and that while nothing can be guaranteed, he's pretty confident everything is under control.
"This time we are, given what happened with Dishonored 2, we doubled our thoroughness in making sure that the game is going to run smoothly," Colantonio adds. "At this point the game is fully ready, but that's what we've been doing for the past months—a lot of tests on different configurations and making sure it works. So we're pretty confident. You never know. But we're pretty confident."
Prey is due this Friday, May 5—make sure your own specs are up to scratch against its system requirements before then.
