David Cage Want's to 'Work on Different Platforms and Reach Players All Around the World'

By: Dylan Lepore | @dylanslegos

David Cage, Founder and CEO of Quantic Dream, in a recent interview with DualShockers, spoke on the subject of their recent off-brand move on publishing their past last three PlayStation exclusive games on the Epic Games Store, and how "after having worked exclusively with PlayStation for 12 years, we thought it was the right time for us to put our money where our mouth is."

Being now independent, as Cage says, allows Quantic Dream to achieve their goal to "work on different platforms and reach players all around the world."

Furthermore, "... as developers ourselves, we also believe that we understand developers." Cage continued, "We also felt that the landscape would change in the coming years, with the emergence of new platforms, 5G and Cloud Play." Hence their return into tackling a "new" beast ... the Personal Computer.

Quantic Dream's Past Work

While it seems few people know this about developer Quantic Dream, this isn't their first time producing games for other platforms; however, it's good to note that they never published a game themselves until Heavy Rain.

Back in 1999, they released their first game, The Nomad Soul, on Microsoft Windows, and then the Dreamcast shortly after in 2000. In 2005, their second game, Fahrenheit, was released on PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Microsoft Windows. Developer Aspy then remastered Fahrenheit in 2015 for OS X, Linux, iOS, Android, and PlayStation 4.

Now, with this split, Cage wants Quantic Dream to become "a' boutique' publisher.'" According to Ribbonfish.co.uk, who specializes in enterprise technology for publishers and media companies, "Boutique publishers are small publishing houses that choose to specialize in a very narrow subject area. They are common in genres which demand a greater level of expertise or which are only saleable to a very limited market share."

In return, this fits right into what Cage wants to do with Quantic Dream by "backing few titles and championing originality and high quality, while providing tech and industrial support." He continued that they "felt there was room for a new publisher that would have an 'ethical' approach, offering fair deals and not taking ownership of IP."

However, what did Sony PlayStation think about this?

Cage stated, "We always had a great relationship with Sony PlayStation. They have always been very supportive of my work, and we have always been very loyal to them in return. So we had a very open talk about all this, and they allowed us to release our catalog of titles on PC."

And so the converting process begins.

After a rigorous selection process, Quantic Dream has partnered with publisher NetEase because "They understood the ambition we had for the studio, and we felt there were some very interesting strategic synergies between our companies."

Even with the help of NetEase, it was no easy task converting the games to play on PC, getting the right controls, and most importantly making sure it runs on both low and high-end PC's. However, this is not just something they decided to do. Cage revealed that Quantic Dream has "spent a year working on porting our games, optimizing engines and redesigning controls, to make our titles accessible to all PC gamers."

Cage continued, "When we developed the PlayStation versions, all the code was native for PlayStation, optimized to the bone to run as best as possible on that platform. We also designed the interface for the PlayStation controller, as we always wanted to support the platform as much as we could and to be as close to it as possible. All these advantages we had on PlayStation became challenges in porting the game to PC."

In other words, Quantic Dream took their PlayStation games apart and then closely reconfigured them for PC, instead of a straight port like we have seen from publishers in the past with Batman: Arkham Knight.

A New Path

Cage says that Quantic Dream is "really pleased with the result," and that he believes Quantic Dream's games are "long-sellers, so we know that new players will keep discovering our titles in the coming years."

With that, Cage wants to make clear that, "Quantic Dream is not exclusive to any platform anymore. So yes, unless there are some specific exclusivity deals on a title-by-title basis, all our games will be released on all platforms at launch."

On Jul. 22, 2019, and Jun. 24, 2019, Beyond Two Souls and Heavy Rain released on the Epic Games Store, respectively. Heavy Rain being released initially on PS3 Feb. 23, 2010, with a Metacritic score of an 87/100, and Beyond Two Souls was released initially on PS3 Oct. 8, 2013, with a Metacritic score of a 70/100.

Detroit: Become Human will be available later this year on the Epic Game Store. The Metacritic score of the original PS4 game is a 78/100.

Let us know in the comments below what you think of the split, and for everything gaming, keep it here at HC GamerLife.