It’s been almost 14 years since Red Dead Redemption, successor to Red Dead Revolver and critically acclaimed upon its release, was released. The open-world adventure game would create a new lease of life for Rockstar, and today we discover that Rockstar had favored the Xbox version of the game, long before being developed for PS3.
Red Dead Redemption was first designed for Xbox
Developed by Rockstar San Diego located and Rockstar North, Red Dead Redemption shared many technologies already used by its cousin GTA, starting with the RAGE graphics engine and Euphoria physics. It is estimated that it took Rockstar more than $100 million to develop the game over six years.
The first trailer for the game was released in May 2009 and Red Dead Redemption was finally released a year later, and after two postponements. It was available on May 18, 2010 on Xbox 360 and PS3, but what we didn’t know was that Rockstar had not favored the Sony console at all, quite the contrary.
The information comes from the latest DF Direct from Digital Foundry in which, according to user Ben, who claims that the PS3 version of Red Dead Redemption was only confirmed late in development. Could Red Dead Redemption have been an Xbox exclusive? This seems unlikely, but we know that the game’s map was first created on the Xbox 360 before a PS3 version was even in development.
Obbe Vermeij, technical director at Rockstar North until June 2009 and for 13 years, added some details on this somewhat surprising fact.
The Xbox 360 used DirectX. This means that the hardware was hidden behind a layer of software. So it was easy to write for the 360. To get good performance on the PS3, the developer had to go very low. Program graphics chips in their native language. It was difficult and time consuming. That’s why it made more sense for us to focus on the 360.
At the time, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 was very popular and dominated sales compared to a PS3 which had been penalized by a prohibitive price, an online service less developed than Xbox, and enormous investments in marketing on the part of Microsoft, not to mention the numerous exclusives and franchises launched on this generation. On the hardware side, the PS3 was a console on which it was more complicated to develop, and Sony had understood this well, by changing the method on its future models.
Just recently, Rockstar and 2K Games announced the release of Red Dead Redemption on PC with improvements dedicated to this support, such as support for Ultrawide (21:9) and Super Ultrawide (32:9) monitors, from 4K up to ‘at 144 Hz, DLSS 3.7 and FSR 3.0 from AMD as well as DLSS Frame Generation. Red Dead Redemption will be available on PC on October 29.
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