Petter Sydow, who is the the vice president of development at Massive Entertainment, took some time out of his schedule to be interviewed about World in Conflict. In the interview we find out why there was a port made to the PS3 and 360, how good the control scheme will be for a RTS game, single player and multiplayer info for the console versions of the game, and loads more!

VideoGamer.com: First off, thanks for taking the time to answer some of our questions on World in Conflict. We were wondering why you decided to make a port of the game for Xbox 360 and PS3.

Petter Sydow: Having worked on the PC platform for the last 10 years, and with the strategy genre having a much larger presence on the consoles lately, it seemed like a natural next step. The PC as a gaming platform only covers a fraction of all the gamers that are out there, and we wanted to bring World in Conflict to gamers who would otherwise be missing out.

We started to work on a console version of World in Conflict around the time we worked on the PC release, so it's kind of been developed simultaneously. This was very important to us, since we didn't want to just make a mere port of the game. We knew from the beginning that it would need some special work.

VideoGamer.com: One of the big criticisms of RTS games on consoles is that nobody has quite worked out a good control scheme yet. How have you tackled this problem? Is it an issue consoles will always suffer from regarding RTS games?

PS: World in Conflict isn't a typical RTS, so the transition from mouse/keyboard to controller has been remarkably easy. Since we have a very free 3D camera, and because we don't rely on unit selection and macro management, our controls are more similar to FPS controls rather than your average RTS controls.

With that said, there are of course some things that have required a lot of attention in order to get the game to work with the controllers. We designed the controls from scratch and built a completely new interface to ensure that the console experience would be on par with the PC version. Now that we're finally starting to reach the end stage of development, you can really tell that the game works on the consoles, and that's an amazing feeling!

VideoGamer.com: We understand the 360 and PS3 version of WIC will come with new single player and multi player content. Could you tell us what this will involve? When will the extra content be released for the PC?

PS: The 360 and PS3 versions of World in Conflict: Soviet Assault will include the all-new single-player missions that show the Soviet perspective of the conflict. These missions will be included in the regular campaign and will be placed in-between the original American missions.

Multiplayer, on the other hand, will be very similar to what our PC community is playing right now. The only real change is that we've limited the number of players to 5v5, which, in our opinion, is the perfect game size. We've always recommended clans and pro gamers to focus on 5v5 in professional leagues, and I'm sure that console gamers will agree.

The extra content will be released for PC as well at some point. Our goal is to release the new content both as an individual pack of sorts at a lower price - for gamers who've already bought World in Conflict - and as a full release with everything included. The full release will probably be limited to some market areas, but that's still not finalized.

tyranitar24 via videogamer.com »