It’s common knowledge that Rockstar Games has a soft spot for PlayStation, and for a good reason—Sony gave them a chance when others, like Microsoft, didn’t. So you can only imagine the surprise over a decade ago when Red Dead Redemption performed worse on the PlayStation 3 than it did on the Xbox 360.
Although plenty of rumors have floated around for years trying to explain why this is the case, nobody really had a clear and definitive answer, perhaps until now. According to Obbe Vermeij – former Rockstar Games technical director who has been on a trivia streak about the games – development on Red Dead Redemption started on Xbox 360, with work on the PS3 port happening later.
He explained that it was easier to develop the Xbox 360 port of the award-winning title because it used DirectX and the “hardware was hidden behind a layer of software.” In comparison, the PS3, as Vermeij reveals, forced the developers to “program the graphics chips in their native language,” a process that he described as “hard and time consuming.”
While Obbe Vermeij wasn’t the lead technical director for Red Dead Redemption (he was with Rockstar North from 1995 to 2009, which is a completely different studio), he had a hand on several GTA titles for the Xbox 360 and PS3, including Grand Theft Auto IV.
Red Dead Redemption faced serious framerate issues on the PS3, with the game stuttering in certain areas. The problem wasn’t due to hardware, however. In fact, the PS3 technically had better hardware compared to the Xbox 360. However, it was difficult to program games for the PS3, requiring programmers to learn how to write and code differently.
Most developers were unable to code for both the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of the same game at the same time, so they had to make a choice. Financially, the gap between Xbox and PlayStation at the time wasn’t as wide as today. Thus, it still made sense to put off the PS3 port of a game for later, which is what happened with Red Dead Redemption.
Thankfully for all of us, the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One were an entirely different story, much more so for the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series S/X, which at this point are basically un-customizable thinly veiled PCs. Every year, we inevitably inch closer to the singularity.
Save for the Nintendo Switch, modern-day consoles are basically cousins. Porting games from one platform to another is easier and less time-consuming today than it was before. This explains why you’re seeing more console titles become available on the PC.
Case in point, Red Dead Redemption, which is finally coming to Steam, Epic Games Store, and Rockstar Games Launcher on October 31 a year after it came out on PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch (with PlayStation 5-exclusive enhancements to boot!).
The Red Dead Redemption franchise is currently on hiatus, with Red Dead Online getting the occasional monthly update. Take-Two Interactive, which is Rockstar Games’ parent company, isn’t even bothering to ask Capcom to remove the copyrighted content from Red Dead Revolver in the Dead Rising Remaster.
A third Red Dead Redemption game is bound to happen at some point, but we’re hoping Rockstar at least gives us a current-gen port of Red Dead Redemption 2 before then.
