When asked by an analyst if PS3 game development has yet caught up with the Xbox 360’s faster development cycle, EA CEO John Riccitiello said, “Not quite. There’s no doubt that Electronic Arts, along with many other publishers, had some challenges essentially meeting the technical specifications effectively on the PlayStation 3.

“Games where we led development on the PS3 platform, like Burnout, which is doing very well on the market today, we had no issue at all.

“But in circumstances where we either led with the Xbox 360 or ran parallel production, for the most part, we’re still experiencing some delay on the PS3. It’s a little bit more of a challenging development environment for us.

“It’s probably only a third of a problem for us as it was [nine months ago]. But there still remains some catching up to do on the engineering side for the PS3.”

As Riccitiello noted, other publishers and developers have had challenges with PS3 development when creating cross-platform titles. Rockstar recently admitted that hurdles with the development of the PS3 version of Grand Theft Auto IV was a "contributing" factor in the game's delay from 2007 to early 2008. Recently THQ also cancelled the PS3 version of Frontlines: Fuel of War, which is still slated for Xbox 360 and PC.

EA Sports also caught flack in 2007 when the PS3 version of Madden NFL 08 ran at only half the frames per second as its Xbox 360 counterpart.

Link: http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=8931&Itemid=2

Let Criterion take over the engineering resources ;) They led with the PS3 and it ended up being a better game for both systems :P

I think they should be doing just fine by now. Look at how CoD4 and AC did on the PS3. They are in the top 4 best selling games for the PS3 (3&4: http://vgchartz.com/games/game.php?id=7607
http://vgchartz.com/games/game.php?id=12727)
Both are multiplatform and although have not sold as well as their 360 counterparts, thats to be expected considering the smaller userbase.

I don't think the dev cycle will ever be quite as fast as the 360, which is based around ease of programming to a large extent. But if developers can mitigate most of the issues with the PS3 with high quality development tools (either in house or third party) and more expertise with the PS3 we can hopefully get the PS3 out of its games drought.

One issue that may remain is that expertise with the PS3 may be a little more difficult to come by and therefore more valuable and costly than it is with the 360.