Skyrim “was not as polished an experience on the PS3” as getting the RPG to work on Sony’s console was a “Herculean effort for Bethesda”
Lead Skyrim designer and former senior Starfield systems designer Bruce Nesmith has revealed how Bethesda Game Studios struggled to properly port the fifth Elder Scrolls entry onto the PlayStation 3.
Speaking in a recent interview with VideoGamer, Nesmith explains that Skyrim was already pushing the Xbox 360’s capabilities to the limit, making as much use of the console’s shared memory system as it could. On the other hand, the PlayStation 3 uses split memory – a fact that left developers faced with a difficult challenge. “The PS3 had a memory architecture difference [compared to] the Xbox 360,” says Nesmith.
“So they had this bifurcation of memory where you had 50% for game logic and 50% for graphics,” he continues. “And that was a hard boundary, you couldn’t break that. Whereas the 360 had a single block of memory and it was up to you how you wanted to divide it up.” As Nesmith states, Sony’s system indeed had its advantages over Microsoft’s own – but certainly not in terms of Skyrim’s grueling porting process.
“I remember the enormous amount of effort our programmers put into making it work at all on the PS3,” says the former lead. “It was a Herculean effort, and my hat’s off to everybody on that team who did that work, because that was thankless, hard, long hours to make that happen at all.” Despite the hard work, though, the port still suffered upon its release. Fans may recall frame rate drops, lag, and lower-quality visuals.
Nesmith admits that it “was not as polished an experience on the PS3” compared to the 360, even if it was improved over time. “By the time the DLC was released, we had made even more dramatic improvements and it was actually not a bad experience on the PS3 by then. Although I would still maintain the 360 was a better experience.” Having played it now on multiple platforms myself, I can safely say the PC experience is the best – can’t beat those Skyrim mods, after all.