Eric Nofsinger, chief creative officer of High Voltage Studios, revealed while talking to Eurogamer that a 3DS version of The Conduit is in development. He said the development is still in its early stages, as the team is currently busy with Conduit 2.
“Now that we’re winding things down a lot of our resources are on pulling this technology over to 3DS,” he said. “We are very much pulling over this engine and this technology on this new hardware.
“We’re still early. The resolution is definitely lower, but the screen real estate is smaller so it balances out. We’ve not had a lot of severe optimization yet, but we’re going to be able to have something very close to this Conduit on the 3DS probably by GDC.
“We’ve got environments from this already up and running around. You can shoot, you can select different weapons and you can see enemies. It runs pretty darn well with full 3D and everything.”
While talking about the multiplayer component, he said the team was very excited about the new, improved Friend Codes. “We’re very excited about that system and what we’re going to be be able to do on it,” he added later.
He said it was different to develop games for the 3DS than to develop them for the DS or DSi. He said developers who wanted a game to have a console experience would prefer the 3DS. “It’s quite different than developing for the DS and the DSi,” he said. “Developers like us that have more of a console experience on GameCube and on Wii are going to be able to take advantage of the 3D better and they’re going to be able to do a little bit more with the hardware than people who are coming at it from the straight DS angle and used to doing more 2D, or very limited 3D, kinds of things… We can be a shining star on this.”
When asked who would be publishing the game, he said the studio was in talks with SEGA. “I would guess that SEGA will be interested. I had a nice conversation just yesterday with their head of artist and repertoire. At DICE, the conference in Vegas that’s coming up, we’ll probably have some more chats.”
The 3DS will be out later next month. Will you people buy it on launch?