Ubisoft denies The Division on PC held back by consoles

The Division

A video by Team Epiphany has been circulating featuring an interview with an unnamed Division developer saying with regards to the PC version, "we do have to kind of keep it in check with the consoles; it would kind of be unfair just to push it so far away from them." This has been interpreted as Ubisoft hamstringing the PC edition in the misguided interest of fairness, a claim the publisher has vigorously denied in a statement sent to PCGamesN.

"It has come to our attention that a comment from one of our team members has been perceived by some members of the community to imply the PC version of The Division was 'held back' and this is simply not true. From the beginning, the PC version of The Division was developed from the ground up and we're confident players will enjoy the game and the features this version has to offer. And the feedback from PC players who participated in the recent closed beta supports this."

The Division

It's natural that Ubi would say that in the interest of public relations, but for my part I feel that the original comment was taken out of context. The bracketing statements in the video sing the praises of a PC version built from scratch to avoid the limitations associated with a straight console port—it would be an odd contrast to suddenly say "but we've made sure to keep it a bit shit."

I suspect it's more a case of not having designed the PC version to a much higher specification in the first place rather than developing an all-singing, all-dancing PC spectacular before deliberately making it worse. But perhaps I am too charitable. In any case, when the rest of the team jumped into the beta a week back, it was the gunplay and not the glamour that caused consternation.