When you're behind the game that's broken all sorts of records for crowd-funding—$27,689,361 and counting—you can do what you want when it comes to the hardware that said title will show up on. Cloud Imperium founder Chris Roberts says that Star Citizen "will NEVER be dumbed down for a lesser platform." And yeah, by lesser platforms, he totally means consoles. Both current- and next-gen.


After a PS4 development unit was spotted in the Roberts Space Industries offices, speculation sparked that Star Citizen might wind up on Sony's newest console. The possibility is a very faint maybe. The creator of Wing Commander threw up a strident post on the company forums about what it would take for the space-faring sim to wind up on any hardware other than the PC:

As far as consoles go Star Citizen will never be on the PS3 or Xbox 360. As for the next gen consoles, PS4 and Xbox One, we have NO CURRENT PLANS, but my stance remains open and is consistent with the many interviews I've given - IF the platform holders (Sony & Microsoft) allow us to update the code and data without restrictions and odious time consuming QC procedures, IF they allow our community to openly interact with each other across platforms then I would CONSIDER supporting them. Why? Well because then they are essentially inexpensive small form factor PCs with a custom operating system focused on gaming and who wouldn't want a bigger community of Star Citizens? If Sony or Microsoft are willing to let their platform be open, then I see no real difference between them or Valve's Steambox, a Mac or a PC running Linux, all of which are platforms that I don't think this community would mind supporting as they are all viewed as "PCs". In fact most Macs are probably much worse gaming machines than a next gen console (as Apple is the antithesis of what I love about PCs) But this is a big IF as it's asking a lot. To their credit Sony seems to be the most eager to embrace indie games and the idea of openness, and they chased us down to give us some dev kits to play with but we've been very clear on what it would take to get Star Citizen onto PS4.


Roberts said essentially the same thing back when he first started talking about Star Citizen. It's natural that some folks would wonder if Roberts' thinking had changed with next-gen consoles coming out but it sounds like the decision-making here is informed as much by hardware specs as it is by platform holder policy. Still, if either Sony or Microsoft wants it bad enough, it sounds like Roberts would at least consider it.

