The Division from Ubisoft: Company talks next-gen development, launch title and more

Tom Clancy’s (God rest his soul) The Division is Ubisoft Massive’s upcoming tactical RPG shooter title that was first announced during Ubisoft's E3 2013 press conference.

The game is inspired by Operation Dark Winter and Directive 51, real-world events which revealed how vulnerable humanity’s existence is and how we have evolved as a society, which, in time, has become fragile and complex.

And as impressive as that sounds, the best part is yet to come. The Division is set to use Ubisoft’s Snowdrop game engine, which according to the developer, will offer unparalleled levels of graphics detail. To achieve that, Ubisoft Massive has around 200 developers who are helping to finish the game in time.

However, what does the developing team feel about making a jump to the next generation rather than releasing the game on current generation consoles?

David Polfeldt, the managing director of Ubisoft Massive, was recently in an interview with GamesBeat where he revealed that the game is much more complex to run on the current-gen and so the developing team is happy that it is working with improved PC-like tools for the next-gen consoles that have vastly simplified the process of developing titles.

On asked about the team’s experience regarding developing the title on next generation consoles, Polfeldt explained Ubisoft Massive is pre-dominantly a PC studio and so it was a massive help developing for the next-gen since both the consoles use the same Intel-based x86 chip architecture as found in a PC.

“We were always working on our own technology that we were happy with. World in Conflict was very beautiful in its day. We still have that same technology, new permutations of it. And when we started working on The Division, it was a PC-focused game,” Polfeldt stated.

Then our technical director called me into a room one day and said, ‘Hey, Dave, take a look at this.’ He had the specs for the next-gen consoles. We got goosebumps, literally, in the meeting where we saw these specs, because it was our home turf. These are machines where we can perform extremely well and build games in a way we understand on a deep level, which I’ll admit we can’t do with the current generation very much.”

“For us it’s a generation of consoles that are enormously developer-friendly. They’re also quite similar in structure, which means that we can spend a lot less time on making adaptations to get the same result,” he added. “I’d say 20 percent of the dev time on current-gen hardware used to be, or still is, spent just making sure it runs on both platforms. Now you can spend most of that time on the game instead.”

Polfeldt was also asked about his views regarding the next-gen systems, and if he feels that both Xbox One and PS4 are the same, as far as power is concerned. He stated: “Not on a technical level. I don’t see that yet.”

“As we get deeper in, when we’re really pushing the envelope on the tech, I think we’ll probably see some differences. Right now, though, they’re extremely similar. It’s a pleasure to work on. I’m optimistic by nature, but I’m unusually optimistic about this generation of machines, because they liberate developers from a number of headaches. We should see a lot of interesting games coming up.”

Also, on asked whether the team considered releasing The Division as a launch title, or if it was too complicated a matter, Polfeldt frankly revealed: “No, that wasn’t within reach, considering when we got started and the philosophy we have on the team.”

Lastly, Polfeldt was asked if it’s easier to work on a PC-based game at the same time when the developer is also working on the next-gen consoles since the consoles are at par with the development procedures involved with a PC.

Polfeldt explained: “I’m not able to speak for other studios, but on our side at the moment it’s one project. It started as a PC project, and now it’s all three platforms as one. The reason we announced The Division for next-gen only was really because we weren’t sure we would be able to get the controls and the interface right.”

“It wasn’t for any technical reason. It was already running on PC quite a while back. But the control scheme and the UI still require different approaches. That’s why we started thinking of it as next-gen only,” he concluded.

Tom Clancy’s The Division is currently scheduled for a Q4 2014 release for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.