Currently, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is raking in rave reviews from all quarters of the gaming kingdom, not the least of which is for the game's advanced HD graphics. Still, despite claims that the game makes total use of the system, Naughty Dog's Co-President Evan Wells specified to the Examiner that more can be done.
"This has been a very confusing point for a lot of people," said Wells. "What we said was the Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune was using only 30 percent of the Cell processor, not 30 percent of the power of the PS3. There are 6 SPU’s on the Cell and it takes quite a bit of effort to keep them all busy 100 percent of the time. With the first Uncharted, we were only able to keep them from being idle, about 1/3 of the time. So when we started production on Uncharted 2, our programmers dove in and started moving more and more of our systems onto the SPU’s and by the end of the project we were able to hit 100 percent usage. So all that means is that there is no idle time, but it does not mean that we can’t be more optimized with what we’re doing. We feel very confident that we will find ways to continue to squeeze additional performance out of the PS3 on future projects."
While Wells was understandably evasive about what Naughty Dog would be doing next, he did express interest in expanding the Uncharted series onto the PSP.
"We’d love to see Uncharted grow beyond the PS3," said Wells. "It would be interesting to see what sort of changes to the design one would make for a portable system. But right now Naughty Dog is purely focused on PS3 development so we can’t promise anything from us in the near future."
The Uncharted series could potentially work well on the PSP, though the comparative lack of graphical fidelity compared to the PS3 might prove to be a major issue for some gamers. Even so, God of War made the jump to PSP successfully, and Sony would be wise to bring another major action franchise to the portable.
