The follow-up to the PS2 had a lot to live up to. Sony's successor to the first PlayStation was a smash hit selling in unprecedented numbers so when the PS3 arrived it had to be a giant release. This turned out to be literal, however, as a huge chunk of a console arrived on shelves in late 2006. Besides its bulk the console soon gained a reputation for being hard to develop for – something that had been echoed down the years.

The latest developer to join this chorus is Dragon's Dogma and Devil May Cry director Hideaki Itsuno who revealed in an interview with Bokeh Game Studio that he "felt let down" by the PlayStation 3 hardware (via NME).

Related: Why The PS3 Is Still My Favourite Console Of All Time

Itsuno with Capcom used a bunch of developer tricks to make their PS1 and PS2 games look more visually impressive. "It was strange with the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 that we could work with so many semi-transparent layers. We could just pile them up to make visual effects," he said.

But after the PS2, things didn't turn out to be so straightforward. "On the contrary, we couldn't do this from the PlayStation 3 onwards. Everybody struggled during that generation. We really felt let down," the veteran games director said.

Hideaki Itsuno has been a video games designer and director since 1994 and has spent his entire career at Capcom, working on titles like Street Fighter Alpha, Power Stone, Capcom vs. SNK, and Devil May Cry. Currently, Itsuno is hard at work on Dragon's Dogma 2. In the interview above, Itsuno spoke with fellow games designer and director Keiichiro Toyama, who is best known as the creator of the Silent Hill, Siren, and Gravity Rush series.

In it Itsuno clarified the difference between the development of Devil May Cry 3 on PS2 and its sequel on PS3. "That shift came right in between Devil May Cry 3 and Devil May Cry 4 for me. We were told that we couldn't replicate what we had done before," he said.

"For five years, all we had done was work with semi-transparent layers to make games look cool on the PlayStation 2. Once on PlayStation 3, we couldn't even think of that technique. I think [developers] all over the world struggled."

Itsuno is not the only developer to have said how hard developing on the PS3 was. Gran Turismo creator and Polyphony Digital boss Kazunori Yamauchi has unleashed his thoughts on the console before. In an interview with TheGamer last year, Yamauchi-san said, "The PS3 was a nightmare. The hardware was so complex and difficult to develop on."

The complexity of the PS3 is also the reason why some PS3 games remain on the console or are only available via streaming. But at least Sony learned its lesson and consciously made an effort for the PS4 onward to make hardware that was easier to work with for devs.

Next: Backwards Compatibility For The PS3 Divides PlayStation Fans, But Here’s Why It’s Needed