Far Cry 4 – Ubisoft Claims That The PC Is The Lead Platform


There is no doubt that Far Cry 4 is looking really interesting. And while the DX11 version of Far Cry 3 was plagued with various issues, its DX9 version was one of the best versions of 2012. In fact, Far Cry 3 DX9 won our ‘Best Optimized Game Of 2012’ award, suggesting that Ubisoft can deliver an amazing PC games.

What really surprised us, however, was the fact that Far Cry 3 had the PC as the lead platform (something that may explain why it performed so good on it, as well as why there were so many options to tweak). Major Nelson interviewed Far Cry 4’s creative director, Alex Hutchinson, who admitted that Ubisoft developed Far Cry 3 on PC, primarily.

In addition, Hutchinson claimed that the PC is also the lead platform for Far Cry 4, though the current-gen console version is reported to look as good as the PC one.

“Yeah so a few things, we really wanted the gameplay experience to be the same on all the platforms, obviously, so we’re leaning on bigger technical things. But if you imagine that, everything you see, whether it’s the fur on the animals, whether it’s the grass on the ground or the leaves on the trees, all these things are bumped up a huge amount in the next-gen versions. Previously, we developed on PC, primarily, which is actually unusual, like, Assassin’s we develop on console, so we can push the boundary of the console as hard as we can. But because we develop on PC… you’ve never really seen on console the ultra high PC version before. So even out of the box, even day one when we just stuck the code on the new consoles, we’re able to dial it all the way up, so as a console player you’re already getting by far the best version we can ship.”

While we’ve heard similar claims about the PC being the lead platform and in other titles (Watch_Dogs anyone?), we really won’t be surprised if Far Cry 4 PC plays smoothly. After all, Far Cry 3 was one of the few titles that pushed our old Q9650 to its limits.

Far Cry 4 is currently planned for a November 18th release on PC, current-gen and old-gen consoles!