“Sony knew early on that it was going to be hard to get the very best out of the PS3 early on, so the Japan office commissioned a team in Europe to start devising new technology and tools,” said Cheshire. “What we were able to do is exploit something that Sony was developing internally, which we were the first to see – and since then we’ve worked very closely with Sony. It’s a two-way street.”
Unusually though, the Neon engine is intended to be cross platform, with Cheshire indicating that, “Sony said that was fine. Sony realises that the only way to make next-gen viable for everyone was to allow everyone to exploit technology”. The first game to use the engine will be rally game Colin McRae DIRT, expected on both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.