In a recent interview Dax Ginn of Rocksteady talked about the choice to release Batman: Arkham Knight for the Xbox One, PS4 and PC but leave owners of the Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii U out in the cold. He was responding to a question posed to him, “what do we have to do to make the Batmobile work?”
“It was the one thing we hadn’t done,” Ginn explained. “Once we decided we were going to commit to the Batmobile, all these other technical decisions were made for us.”
“We knew that we had to do it right – the imagination of the experience of driving the Batmobile that people have is that it’s fast, that it’s destructive, it’s kind of a tank in Gotham City, but it’s also highly technical – all of those things can only be done on next-gen,” said Ginn.
Ginn was then asked if it meant that Arkham Knight would not work on the Xbox 360 and PS3.
“Not in the way that people imagine it. It’s the power fantasy of driving this legendary vehicle; if it can only do a top speed of 25 mph that’s not the power fantasy and that’s why we couldn’t have done that previously,” Ginn responded.
We then asked Ginn if this was the same issue on the Wii U and if the console wasn’t powerful enough for Rocksteady to be able to do what they wanted with the game.
“We have to make our technology choices specifically with reference to the gameplay objectives that we want, so we choose the platforms that are going to give us that,” said Ginn.
