Cliff Bleszinski has discussed whether the latest project he is heading, an arena-based first-person shooter called LawBreakers, will be ported to consoles following its PC release.
Speaking to Destructoid, the former Epic Games designer indicated an Xbox One and PlayStation 4 release wasn’t out of the question, but his studio, Boss Key Productions, wouldn’t be the one to port the game.
“People are like ‘You’re never coming to console,’ and I’m like ‘I never said that’,” he said. “[Boss Key is] 40 people. Even if we wanted to do a console version, we couldn’t right now.”
Bleszinski added he believes a partnership with Sony or Microsoft could help the process, but it would ultimately require an outside studio to handle the development.
“We wouldn’t be able to do the port ourselves. We’d need a really great partner that could knock it out of the park, keep it 60Hz, nail the controls, and make it fantastic.”
Given the emphasis LawBreakers places on twitch movement, there could be concerns gameplay is better suited for mouse and keyboard instead of controller. Bleszinski also addressed this, drawing a comparison with Titanfall.
“Some of the Epic engineers came over and we had a conversation where I was like ‘Good luck porting this to consoles.’ One of them looked at me and said ‘Titanfall’s crazy wall-jumping, wall-running, and verticality, and that works on PC and console.’ With the right amount of aim-assist and the right amount of little tricks, I could see it working. I wouldn’t want to do the cross-platform play, though. I don’t think the effort’s worth the outcome there.”
Discussing his studio, Boss Key Productions, Bleszinski said he wants to keep the size of the company “as small as humanly possible.”
He continued: “There may be a time where if this becomes League of Legends big, fingers crossed, where we would need to grow, but that would be a few years out. That would be a best-case scenario. That would be a very good problem to have, but if that’s the case, the first 40 to 50 employees will be very happy because we will have crushed it. But, we’re going to stall as long as we can on that.
“The bigger a company gets, the more accountability happens, the more things get overthought. When that happens, creativity suffers. I’m not saying great things can’t come out of big companies, but I’m saying that it’s harder than in small companies.”
As previously announced, LawBreakers is set in a sci-fi world after a major catastrophe called The Shattering has occurred. Boss Key released the first pre-alpha footage for the game, which runs on Unreal Engine 4, during PAX East back in April.
More recently, Boss Key teased LawBreaker with a new video titled “After The Shattering.” Take a look at the 30-second video here.
For more on the game, you can check out some weapon concept art, and read Bleszinski’s thoughts about the free-to-play business model and how his new game won’t be pay-to-win.
Source:: cnet.com