"We Doubled Our Thoroughness," Prey Dev Says After Dishonored 2's PC Issues

Dishonored 2 was well-received critically, but the PC version stumbled out of the gate for some due to things like performance and input issues. Those problems were addressed through patches. With the next game from developer Arkane, the sci-fi shooter Prey, coming out this week, fans may be wondering what to expect from the PC version.

Speaking with GameSpot today, Arkane president Raphael Colantonio said the team at Arkane Austin (Dishonored 2 was made by Arkane Lyon) has "doubled thoroughness] as it relates to testing. He also pointed out that many games, including Prey, are developed with PC as the primary platform.

"We're pretty confident," Colantonio said. "First of all, it's not like we first do the game on console and then in the end we suddenly port the game to PC. It starts on PC. That's how game development works."

Another thing to note is that Dishonored 2 was developed on Arkane's own Void engine, while Prey was made using CryEngine 3.

He went on to say that the number of different hardware configurations that developers have to consider for PC is huge. Unlike consoles like Xbox One or PlayStation 4, PCs feature different components based on what people want to spend to get the performance they want. This complicates matters when it comes to testing for Prey and other games, Colantonio said.

"The real reason why PC games often have problems is because there are so many permutations of hardware," he said. " sometimes it's timing--drivers come out the same time as our game. Something happens that makes it more challenging."

While Colantonio of course cannot guarantee that Prey will run perfectly on PC out of the gate (no developer could make that promise), he assured fans that Arkane has put in the effort to ensure the game gets off to a better start on PC than Dishonored 2 did.

"This time we are, given what happened with Dishonored 2, we doubled our thoroughness in making sure that the game is going to run smoothly," he explained. "At this point the game is fully ready, but that's what we've been doing for the past months--a lot of tests on different configurations and making sure it works. So we're pretty confident. You never know. But we're pretty confident."

For more on the PC version of Prey, you can see the minimum and recommended specs right here.

Prey launches on May 5 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. You can play the game's first hour for free through a demo that is available now on consoles.

We'll have a lot more from our conversation with Colantonio coming up soon.

This story has been updated.