Tecmo confirms support for PlayStation 3

Japanese publisher Tecmo has announced that it has begun development for the PlayStation 3, with company president Junji Nakamura telling an investors and media meeting yesterday that work on the platform is now underway.

Out of all the Japanese publishers, Tecmo is the one most committed to Microsoft's Xbox 360 - with its high-profile Team Ninja unit producing some of the biggest hits on Xbox, such as Dead or Alive 3 and Ninja Gaiden.

Team Ninja seems likely to continue to be a strong Microsoft supporter - although some vague comments from the team's boss, Tomonobu Itagaki, have suggested that a multi-platform future hasn't been ruled out just yet.

The rest of Tecmo, however, has produced a large number of titles for the PlayStation 2, and the announcement that work on the PS3 has commenced is no surprise - even given scathing comments about Sony's plans made by Nakamura last year, when he accused the firm of being over-secretive about the platform compared to Microsoft's openness with its partners.

Even now, however, Nakamura still believes that the PS3 is a difficult prospect for developers - contrasting it with the Xbox 360, which he says will cost only 20 per cent more to develop for that the original Xbox did.

"Compared to the Xbox 360, it seems to be somewhat out of place with today's developers," he told investors, according to an IGN translation. "I believe that it is having an influence on the skills and abilities of developers. You will have to change your way of thinking."