360 Limiting GTA IV In Some Ways 268
Last week CVG had a story from the Official PlayStation Magazine, a print entity partnered with the website, about limitations Rockstar faces on the 360. For almost the first time, we're now hearing about a title where lack of space on the disc and the lack of a guaranteed hard drive may be detrimental to Microsoft's console. "[Rockstar's creative vice president Dan Houser] continued, 'To be honest with you we haven't solved all those riddles yet.' The difficulties aren't limited to working on Microsoft's box, as Houser explains that 'both have enormous challenges' and that 'both have their own particular pleasures and pains'. Rockstar hasn't said anything about a target SKU between the two consoles, but they're currently demoing the game to press running on an Xbox 360 - so we wouldn't worry too much if you've only got Microsoft's console. Look for more on GTA IV in the next few weeks."
system requirements (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Just saying that it's not an absolute requirement to run without a hard drive.
Re: (Score:2)
since the choice will be between Premium and Elite for new customers anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't see the problem (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I don't see the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
The aforementioned problem is a game design problem where extra stuff was padded in but not fleshed out. It was most certainly technically possible to remove that padding but they chose not to.
Technical limitations and getting around them aren't exactly going to help game design any.
Re: (Score:2)
GTA4 on the other hand is apparently going to include an accurate model of New York (with Rockstars own brand of hu
Re: (Score:2)
I'd rather they spent more time on fleshing out the world and less on bleeding-edge graphics. Something the size of San Andreas but with the buildings more than textured boxes would be awesome.
I suspect I'm in the minority, though.
Re:I don't see the problem (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
The dressing didn't bother me too much towards the end. Eventually I picked out some nice duds and just wore them for the rest of the game. Wh
Re:I don't see the problem (Score:4, Interesting)
The first thing I do when ever I've played any GTA game is to hop on a motorcycle and just drive for a few hours, listening to the radio stations. I'm guessing that not too many people here have ever driven on the California coast, but much like the maps of San Fran and Los Angeles, they absolutely nailed it. Driving through that countryside while tedious to some was beautiful to me. Just don't get out of your vehicle.
I did wish they fleshed out these areas and made them more than just visually appealing. Maybe Oblivion will give them a good swift kick in the ass on this one.
Re: (Score:3)
I love how that's gotten cut down (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Seriously though, they've got hard drives, and you can stick a game on multiple DVDs if necessary. It also hasn't been unknown for a game to be released on one specific media either - Farcry only came on DVD. Add to that the fact that 99% of game developers out there could happily develop on an x86 box rather than cryptic head-bending Cell or less common PowerPC code, and I think he'd be onto a winner.
Oh, th
Re: (Score:2)
The two demographics:
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Most of they code they write is in C. Yes using the Cell has it's challenges but the PPC cores in the 360 are would be pretty straight forward. BTW for what you do have to code in assembly the PPC is MUCH nicer to code for than the X86.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Given the level of graphics in the trailer, how many PCs on the market do you think could handle GTA4? I'm going to guess a whole hell of a lot less than ten million. Remember, the current market leader in PC graphics chips is not AMD or nVidia, it's intel. Think about that for a minute. Intel doesn't have anything faster than the GMA 900. You think that's going to handle GTA4? It can't even handle GTA3.
Re:I love how that's gotten cut down (Score:4, Interesting)
But let's face it here. People who buy PC's for games know what they're buying. People who buy PC's for $500 and expect it to play the latest games don't know what they're doing, buying, or even using, half the time. The problem is, in order for said PC's to be $500, they need to cut them down to be as bare as possible - A decently powerful system will probably cost someone upwards to $1000, which will be adequate to at least run newer games.
If you're just going for the games, you're fine with a console, though I personally vastly prefer the keyboard/mouse style of control. You'll save yourself some money with a console, though (well, that's the idea), and you'll get a few years out of it. If you're looking to do games, rip DVD's, browse the internet properly, use IM, e-mail, newsgroups, and generally multitask, you're looking at a better value out of a PC. For something that does both, $1000 isn't too far off the mark for the cost of a low-end PC and a game console.
Re: (Score:2)
Probably true. That I suppose is the real difference between the consoles this generation.
Nintendo: Interesting hardware that has "low" graphic limits, but has interesting interface possibilities. "Small" Optical Media (but not pushed because of "low" graphic lim
And the Solution? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:And the Solution? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And why use a PC when you can use a game console? How about: It's extremely versatile, PC games are usually cheaper then console ones, it's cheap to upgrade them, you have a 101 button controller, and a mouse. There's no monthly fee to play most PC games, with the exception of MMORPG's, and MMORPG's exist for the PC.
FPS games are better with a mouse. Sorry, Halo might be fun bu
Re: (Score:2)
Or in my case, I'm playing the wii and xbox360 off the same two monitors that my PC is hooked up to.
Monitors don't really fit into the equation.
The primary difference is that the consoles have less variance in their specs compared to PC. It's a pro and a c
some translation help needed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:some translation help needed (Score:5, Interesting)
What this statement means is that the reporter wants to know if Rockstar might stipulate that GTA IV for the 360 requires the hard disk, meaning that instead of potentially inhibiting the game by designing around a lack of hard disk, they would require the hard disk and simply require Core owners to buy one if they don't have one already. Rockstar has not made any indication about that.
The hard disk is standard in the PS3, so that's a known quantity on the PS3. It isn't required to play almost all the games on a 360 (the only ones I know of that require it are FFXI and the Halo 3 beta, and Halo 3 probably only requires it since the beta content is too big to be stored on a memory card). I don't have any real numbers but anecdotal evidence suggests that the number of Core 360s in the wild without a hard disk attached is very low. Considering the price of the HDD versus the memory card ($100 for 20 GB versus $40 for 0.05 GB), requiring the 360 to have a hard disk would not be an onerous burden for most gamers, I would think.
Re: (Score:2)
However, I also wanted to point out with my original post that using the term SKU should not be used in news articles because it doesn't really mean anything important unless you're in a warehouse or working at a store.
Basically, that was a really piss poor sentence because several replies to my post all inferred different meanings.
Yeah, MS really dropped the ball here (Score:5, Informative)
The original Xbox was a really ballsy system overall. It was the first (commercially successful) console to have a hard drive and internet connectivity built-in. It brought LAN gaming and broadband online gaming to console gamers in a really big way. I thought it was really cool that if I played the same couple of maps or levels in Halo over and over it only had to load them once because Bungie was able to stream the files to the hard drive.
I feel like MS pussied out on the 360's design by removing the hard drive because they took that away from developers. Instead of innovating the console market again, they just seem to be riding on the success that they've already created. Now we're finally seeing a successful multi-platform developer complain about the 360's limitations. I don't think this looks very good for the 360 or for Microsoft.
P.S.: I'm sure the PS3 has development issues too--mainly the long load times as a result of the Blu-Ray disc and still figuring out the Cell architecture. But Rockstar is used to taking crap from Sony, so they're not complaining about it.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Doesn't make much sense to me.. they could have gotten cheaper/larger drives and just formatted them down to 8 GB.
Re: (Score:2)
Or... get this... formatted it at the new disk size and pass on the tech advantage to their customers.
Re: (Score:2)
I speculate that the thinking behind the decision was that Microsoft understands that game consoles are pri
Re: (Score:2)
Weird Development Approach Foreshadowing Delays? (Score:3, Insightful)
If I had to guess, it sounds like they are testing the waters, seeing if the 360's multiple configuration can be used as a viable scapegoat, should the developers miss the deadline they publicly set for themselves.
Sure, the PS3 fanboys are probably eating this up now, but will they be chomping at the bit later on, if it turns out the delays were actually caused by the nightmares involved in developing for the PS3?
Re:Weird Development Approach Foreshadowing Delays (Score:2)
GTA IV was well into development before they decided to add the 360 so developers designed and built a game thinking they could use a HDD. Now that they can't use it they are running into problems with their basic design. As a developer you run into this stuff all the time when management decides to move from Oracle to MySQL well it's going to take longer and have X, Y, and Z issues...
PS: It's not hard to build PS3 games that use 30-50% of the systems capabilities the issues are in tweaking
Gates says (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
I said the same thing ... (Score:2)
Who has a 360 with no hard drive? (Score:2)
From Xbox.com:
Custom IBM PowerPC-based CPU
* Three symmetrical cores running at 3.2 GHz each
* Two hardware threads per core; six hardware threads total
* VMX-128 vector unit per core; three total
* 128 VMX-128 registers per hardware thread
* 1 M
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, it's called the Core version. However, we don't know how many people bought the Core and hard drive separately.
They claimed both system has issues. (Score:4, Insightful)
But on the other hand they at least mentioned he said both systems have issues. And trust me from what I've seen with the PS3 and how my company is handling it, the HD issue and the Disc capacity should be the least of their worries. The 360's issues are easy to enumerate and resolve.. the PS3, not so much.
Seriously the 360 has proven itself over and over. We have Oblivion, yet if Rockstar can't get their head out of their ass and figure out how to do the work they don't deserve your money. We have at least 4 major open world games on the 360 (hell Just Cause was also available on the PS2, at the same size world which was "fucking enormous".) And Rockstar the guys who everyone seems to think can piss gold can't figure this one out?
Please.
Agree (sort of) but... (Score:2)
30fps limit and/or 60hz on computer.
Think about it for a second, 30fps limit on machines that can churn out 2 to 5x that amount?
Or the 60hz, which gets even more painful to my eyes as time goes on? Hell, I've amazed people
by being able to look at a monitor and tell the diff between 60/75/85hz w/o looking at the display
properties. 60hz hurts (pun intended), 75hz is tolerable and 85hz and above is best looking and
Require a HD? (Score:2)
Re:Consider the Source (Score:5, Funny)
Developing on the PS3 III
That must be the new Sony console everybody's been talking about.... especially since the PS3 flopped. The PS3 III might be the next big thing in console gaming!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Consider the Source (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
That aside, is it acceptable for a game to release for HD equipped consoles only? I seem to remember way back that a console that required a CD-ROM released one with the game
Re:Consider the Source (Score:4, Interesting)
From what I heard Microsoft requires that all games are basically playable (i.e. it doesn't matter that you can't feasibly finish the game without saving, it just has to be theoretically possible) on a 360 Core system OOTB, this would make HDDVD-only games not allowed.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
All I'm saying is that the whole "switching layers" argument seems like complete bullshit to me. I mean, heaven forbid it takes an additional quarter of a second in the loading times...
Would additional space be a virtue? Yes, of course it would be.
Re:Consider the Source (Score:5, Informative)
The problem comes from random access reads between layers.
To decrease this issue each layer has to be treated like its own disc. Once the transition is made to L2 you stay there. That means any part of the game engine that is not always in memory has to also be on both layers. Along with any textures, models, sounds, etc. that are used through out the game. So going to two layers does not double the ammount of space available due to having to store a lot of data twice.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Consider the Source (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Consider the Source (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
But
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
I, too, found it much less stressful to simply leave that job on the shelf. In an attempt to provide some perspective, here's a short list of gaming challenges I've run across recently:
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
But there's always a benefit to be had from having more of a resource. You just work with what you have. Crackdown lets you see the other side of the city if you can get high
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I heard talk from Rockstar employees about how they already hit the limit of the medium with GTASA, due to the slow layer switching (no idea if the 360 still has that issue) only one layer of the disc could be used to keep the load times lower (with streaming it'd be fatal if the loading took too long). Even without the layer switching overhead a "next-gen" GTA game is going to hit the limit of DVD9 very quickly so this report is very likely true.
From what I heard Microsoft requires that all games are basically playable (i.e. it doesn't matter that you can't feasibly finish the game without saving, it just has to be theoretically possible) on a 360 Core system OOTB, this would make HDDVD-only games not allowed.
Actually, the 360 has excellent streaming performance since it doesn't have the obscene memory constraints the PS3 has (the 360 has more bandwidth, more efficient pipeline, high performance DRAM on die, and its got that 512 mb of shared RAM for added flexibility.)
Honestly, when developing an open-world 360 game (I've worked on one), the biggest problem is the lack of an HDD- which means we need to disc stream all our data. It causes some major issues.
It's sort of a toss- the 360 is conventionally more powe
Re: (Score:2)
I suspect that the second Microsoft feels comfortable dropping the price of the 360, the core system will disappear from the market (they don't really need to worry about going below $300 with the PS3 at $600) and they'll allow developers to requ
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re:There are no HD equipped 360's (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
What would a person titled "Creative VP" have to do with announcing a technical limitation of a game that just finished releasing a trailer which implies the game is coming pretty soon? I dunno.
Would it be a big loss to target the game to HD-equipped 360's only? How about it looks less detailed if the console doesn't have one, so that those users can decide if they want extra detail and spring for the HD.
Granted adding a HD to a 360 isn't quite the sam
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
The source is Dan Houser, who works for Rockstar last I checked, not Sony.
btw, what is new about this article that it deserves another mention on the site? This is the same quote as in the OPM article; it's apparently just CVG referencing OPM.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sure they took stuff out of context (like ignoring the part where Houser talks about the drug rehab program he will have to put his PS3 system programmers into after they finish the project), but the DVD size and lack of harddrive will be an issue for the XBox360 going forward.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I bet the infidels are actually committing suicide by the hundreds on the gates, too, eh?
640k is enough (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Any specific examples?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Really, you have PS2 games on multiple DVDs and you have Oblivion on one. I think some folks just are better at getting a lot of quality content onto one disc... or at least try harder.
Re: (Score:2)
This generation just jumped from 480p to 1080p - that's a factor of six more pixels than before. If multi-DVD games were shipping with last generation consoles, that implies that we will see multi dual layer BD-ROM games in this generation, since a dual layer BD-ROM is only 5x as big as a dual layer DVD.
Re: (Score:2)
Also, textures aren't higher for 1080p as opposed to 1080i, that's interlaced vs progressive display and doesn't mean there's more pixels in any texture image.
Re: (Score:2)
Texture resolution and screen resolution are two different things... Right now their are cards with support for 4096 x 4096 pixel textures but most textures will be in the 256x256 or 512x512 range to keep the disk requirements to a minimum. Simply using 1920x1080 textures will not magically fix the world's gaming issues.
Another note
Re: (Score:2)
Anyway I think folks are losing sight of what I was replying to. I was asked why the storage requirements wouldn't
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
All of the 360 models support 1080p over component and VGA. This was added in one of the dashboard updates. All the elite adds is HDMI support.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If your streaming is designed intelligently enough and your disc layout is also well-designed, this does not have to be an issue.
I also have a hard time imagining that with all of the power involved in the Xbox 360 that procedural textures are outside the scope of the system...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Given the speed of the Blu-Ray drive, I'll take procedurally generated textures.
But actually, the answer to your question is "Mu", which means "the question cannot be answered as asked". This is because your question consists of a logical fallacy - because procedurally generated textures provide a more immersive environment. Why? First, they reduce load times. The procedure for the texture is
Re: (Score:2)
Games developers could really do with taking some tips from these guys [farbrausch.de]...
Re: (Score:2)
Apparently the moderators missed that, too, though.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
REQUIRES a HDD or a memory card to play
(emphasis mine)
means that it mearly requires that you be able to save system data to play the game. Technically this does limit your market to anyone who does not own a memory card, but it is assumed universally that owners of consoles without internal memory have external memory. The HD is a different issue. Perhaps the same ballpark... well, maybe not the same ballpark, but at least the same sport.