Insomniac Games is a third-party developer with ties very close to Sony. As such, some of their top franchises like Resistance and Ratchet & Clank are strongly associated with the PlayStation platforms.

On the other hand, Crash Bandicoot and Lara Croft, also third-party creations, were once upon a time both strongly tied to the PlayStation brand, serving as unofficial mascots for the original PlayStation. They've since moved on to encompass all platforms, and... well, that road has just been like traveling a long, gravel driveway on a tricycle for them, hasn't it?

In any case, the question remains: what does Insomniac think of the idea of spreading their wings and branching out (pardon my mixed metaphors) onto other platforms? After all, many publishers and developers have already decided that remaining console-exclusive isn't especially viable in this climate.

Speaking in an interview with VideoGamer.com (via Connected Consoles), Senior Community Manager James Stevenson explains what the company thinks of the prospect:

Never say never. Who knows what the future holds. We obviously have an awesome relationship with Sony. We have amazing product development support.

The amount of dev kits we received early with Resistance, even Ratchet when dev kits were scarce, put us way ahead of the game. So we have great support there. We get things we need from Sony. They've been a great partner for a very, very long time with us. We have fantastic relationships with the product development group.

So we have a happy relationship with Sony. But, like I say, you never say never. We are fully independent still. We obviously will never make a Resistance or Ratchet game on another platform because Sony owns those IPs. But as far as new IP goes, who knows? I could see that future. But right now we're very happy with the relationship we have with Sony.

That head-start with the development kits which Stevenson spoke of has also helped the company overcome what he describes as a "learning curve:"

"We had to rebuild Ratchet for PS3," Stevenson explained elsewhere in the interview. "All that stuff we took for granted: the move set, the animations, the character, the crates, everything that works on PS2, had to be redone for PS3."

"As soon as that's done and you have everything down and you have that codebase to work from, making the sequel is always a leap forward. This is the fun time in every console generation. Everyone gets excited about new game machines. The problem is game developers are so busy just getting their games up and running on the new machines at first. You don't get the innovation, the interesting stuff and the astounding games early on in the generation because we're just happy it runs."

"After we get it off and running and we have a game or two released, three, four years into the lifecycle of consoles is where it starts to get exciting. Now we know how to ride that bicycle and we can start performing tricks on it."

Stevenson talks about the change from the more simplistic PlayStation 2 development to PlayStation 3, describing it as a "complete paradigm shift," and relates how focusing exclusively on the PS3 architecture made things a little easier to learn.

"There was a learning curve," he admitted. "Getting a launch title out the door is always a learning curve. Everyone can aim for that but it's tough. Resistance 1 was a tough game to make. The hardest part about that is, you have to make the game on PCs, and you have to simulate the engine of the PS3 as best as possible until the dev kits start rolling out. And then it's a rapid process of trying to get the game working on dev kits. It was a tough process."

For this and much more, be sure to check out the full interview at VideoGamer.com.