Sleeping Dogs PC demo released; Square Enix 'incredibly supportive' of platform

The PC edition of Sleeping Dogs is, so They say, a fine piece of work--no quick and sloppy port. This, developer United Front has said, is thanks to support and encouragement from publisher Square Enix. The PC demo was released yesterday, so you can see how it turned out for yourself.

"When the game changed hands from Activision to Square Enix, Square was incredibly supportive of the PC version and actually wanted us to do more with it," senior producer Jeff O'Connell told The PA Report. "It was at that point that we began to focus more resources on the PC version and it became what it is."

Under Activision, the plan was for the PC edition to be outsourced, but United Front got to develop it internally and "make sure the PC version was everything it could be," O'Connell explained.

He noted, "the PC gaming audience can be very influential" and "respect and appreciate when effort is made," helping get word out about the game in general. Ultimately, though, the amount of love lavished upon PC often comes down to how much of a return publishers expect on it.

"In some areas of the world, the PC version outsells the console version. If I'm not mistaken, Germany is an incredibly PC-centric market. [Publishers] make the decision on whether to do the PC version or not somewhat dependent on what they have in their sales forecasts for those particular areas."

So cheers, Germany, for this fine PC version. To see it yourself, head on over to Steam, where the demo's a 2.84GB download. I don't know if it includes the high resolution texture pack released as free DLC, so the full game may be even prettier.