Warframe developer Digital Extremes is bringing its free-to-play ninja shooter to PS4 at launch, and in an interview with VG247, has discussed the console’s technical power and PC-like architecture. The studio also championed the DualShock 4 controller as the best console pad they’ve ever held.

Digital Extremes is bringing its free co-op shooter Warframe to PS4 at launch and it will bear negligible differences to the PC build. It is almost like-for-like and allows cross play between Sony’s hardware and PC, making for a truly connected co-op experience. The team has repeatedly stressed that it wants no content differences between builds. At all.

When asked if Digital Extremes approached Sony with a view to bringing Warframe to PS4, creative director Steve Sinclair replied, “They approached us actually, I guess it’s coming up to about four months ago. We were in our open beta and rocking the Steam charts there, and Sony got in contact with James, who’s the owner of the company and said, ‘Hey what would you think about bringing Warframe over to our next gen console?

“We had, probably, a 30-second conversation about if we should do it, “Sinclair added, and then, “[Sony] squeezed themselves to send us as many dev kits as possible and three months later we were on the [E3] show floor at PlayStation 4 showing Warframe playable.”

The speed with which Digital Extremes brought Warframe to PS4 in a playable state for E3 speaks volumes about how closely akin the PS4 architecture is to PC systems. I asked Sinclair to describe just how closely matched both platforms are in reality.

“Warframe supported 64-bit and DirectX 11 for a long time, and there’s a lot of commonality in that sort of architecture with what they’re doing on PS4. They’ve got a lot of cores on there, so, I was every surprised how fast we got up and running – I think Sony was as well.”

“When we went to [E3] and people said, ‘Holy smokes this is on PlayStation 4, it looks amazing.’ Maybe they were Warframe fans so they were just trying to appease us, but they said it was one of the best-looking games they saw at the show.

“In three months time, that’s a testament to how developer-friendly this version of PlayStation is. It’s absolutely awesome. What surprised me most is how kick-ass the GPU is – the graphics are super, super high-end.”

Sony’s encouragement of a flat-development architecture seems to have ushered many indies into the PS4 fold, and the console’s technical aspects are easy to understand and utilise. Sinclair stressed that while PS3 was a powerful console it was “Byzantine”, and that PS4 is powerful yet manageable.

The studio is also impressed with DualShock 4, and this new version of Warframe will allow for gesture controls using the controller’s motion functionality – only if the player chooses. Sinclair added, “There are cool things on PS4 that we are taking advantage of. The DualShock 4 is the best game controller I’ve ever put my hands on, I’m so excited about it.

“It has touch screen controls. At E3 we showed little swipe gestures to activate your Warframe abilities that people thought was really cool. There are the ‘social features’ like the share button, all those integrated features where you can say ‘I just did this cool thing in Warframe’ and that pushes out over your network.”

We’ll have our full Warframe interview live soon, but for now you can play it on PC for free here.

For now, what do you make of Sony’s approach to indies and independent, publisher-less projects like Warframe on PS4? Let us know below.

http://www.vg247.com/2013/07/05/warframe-dev-praises-developer-friendly-ps4-tech-dualshock-4-best-console-controller-yet/

Nice to see any console dev friendly

It's so awesome to me that they can develop on the PC, with no intentions of having a console version, yet still get that version up and running in a few months. I think this kicks in the teeth the idea that development costs will skyrocket across the board. Especially after the tools and engine features mature, I think porting between the consoles and PC will be a piece of cake.

Also, I keep meaning to try Warframe. It seems interesting.

Another guy saying the PS4 controller is the best one ever created... not surprised me.

I like this game.. I will give it a try.

And congrats to the devs to make the game run in PS4 in three months... great job.

i'm so happy that the ps4 controller seems to be really good. i hate the ds3 so much

the social integration is nice for some gamers. i only care about screenshots but i will take a lot if possible. but not sure if the people on facebook who aren't gamers will like it so much if their friends start to post so many videos on facebook about "boring video games". i still think the main reason why sony and probably also microsoft will implement the video sharing option on facebook is to get free advertisement for their console when all the people in the friends lists who have no next gen console will see posted videos all the time but well...

good to see that porting between pc and console is so easy now. maybe some console games ported to pc will get little bit more love now when they don't have to waste their resources just to get a simple port without any extras. i hope that will also bring more japanese games to pc now. obviously also good for a lot of indie games which are only on pc right now and would be only on pc in the future without a console closer to pc development.

I have been hearing this from many develeopers now. This is great news, Sony is on a role right now

Note that the thread title is not accurate as he never said it was the best controller yet at all, his actual words were:

"The DualShock 4 is the best game controller I’ve ever put my hands on, I’m so excited about it."

Note there is no mention of what controllers he has tried so it is likely he hasn't used the XBO pad and doesn't really have any reason to have yet.

Great news for Sony fans though that its a better device than the DS3.

Way to put spin on it. 

Warframe looks good anyway, will be nice to give some of the F2P games a go, at least even if you've got no disc games to play, you've got soemthing to play. It might also make it more likely that other games will be ported over as well.

lol deal with it

It also means that it's better than the 360 controller which is amazing news. Also, since the new XBox controller looks similar to the 360 one I doubt the small changes will make it "the best game controller" he ever put his hands on. Anyway, it's his opinion that's all.