Hirofumi Inagaki has worked on almost any internal PS2 Gundam game you can mention, so there’s nobody more appropriate to spearhead the PS3 venture. Even so, he found the lack of libraries difficult to work with early on. We spoke with him about this, as well as the importance of fan input, and potential ideas for the gyroscopic controller’s in-game applications.

Gamasutra: So [Mobile Suit Gundam: Crossfire] is being developed internally at Bandai?

Hirofumi Inagaki: Yes, that’s correct.

GS: The other [Mobile Ops: The One Year War, Xbox 360] is being done externally?

HI: Yeah, that’s done by an outsourcing company.

GS: OK, just checking. So how have you found working with the PS3?

HI: I think there are a lot of possibilities with the hardware, and there were lots of things we’ve wanted to implement in games for quite a while but couldn’t, which the PS3 makes possible.

Mobile Suit Gundam: Crossfire

GS: Is the Cell processor easy to work with, using multiple cores and all?

HI: One aspect of the Cell that’s been really helpful is the physics simulation. We can use it in the game to enhance realism, like with location-specific damage and things like that.

GS: Has the processor itself been easy to figure out, even with a young library?

HI: Definitely hard! The library is basically zero, we’re starting from scratch, and there are no programmers out there who really know how to use it well yet. So it’s a challenge.

GS: Do you feel that it’s significantly a step above the 360 in power?

HI: I’ve never worked on the Xbox, so I have no idea, but in general I do feel there are more possibilities with the PS3.