Xbox 360 Version of Champions Online Being Held Back By MS 154
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the ready-set-wait dept.
from the ready-set-wait dept.
Tomorrow marks the launch of Cryptic Studios' new superhero MMO, Champions Online. It was developed for the PC and the Xbox 360, but the console version will be much delayed, according to Cryptic CCO Jack Emmert, because Microsoft is holding things up. "Microsoft's a big company, and they have to work out all the various issues related to MMOs. It just takes time for the big beast known as Microsoft to get moving. I really have no explanation other than that, because it's as baffling to developers as it is to everyone else," he said during an interview with VG247. The game itself is apparently finished, but Emmert isn't sure it'll even go live for the 360 by the end of this year. Square Enix developers made similar comments earlier this month regarding Final Fantasy XIV, which will be available first on the PS3 largely because it's taking a long time to work out how the game will interact with Xbox Live.
More money! (Score:2, Interesting)
The Worst Console In History? 'Got Right'??? (Score:2, Interesting)
The only console in history to actually be defecting in design with the RRoD fiasco.
The only console in history to ship with a storage technology that is smaller than the previous gen. 6.8gigs per 360 DVD compared to 8.5gigs for the PS2 and Xbox last gen.
The wimpy graphics hardware. Fucking shitty old Unreal Engine games are still considered 'amazing' on the 360.
Noisy as fuck.
Giant external power brick.
Idiotic online fees.
No dedicated servers for games. Lag, lag, lag for Xbox 360 online games.
Overpriced WiFi and other peripherals.
Can't use standard laptop drives, can only use the double the cost Microsoft drives.
Re:When Sony exert less control than you (Score:3, Interesting)
>>The key question here is how will Microsoft Monetise this new games to make more money for XBox Live via the subscriptions that people take out for these games.
Actually, the XBL guys recognize that if people are already paying monthlies to get access to an MMORPG, it's pretty dick to also charge them for gold access. So IIRC, you don't need gold access to play a hypothetical MMORPG on an Xbox. Also, they have special rules that allows MMORPGs to break their normal rules on digital downloads, patches, etc. I watched a talk on it once at some game development conference. You can probably find it online.
I'm not excusing the fact that the entire notion of Xbox Gold accounts is a travesty - if I own Gears of War, AND I have a gold account, I still can't have my wife sit down and play with me. Or, rather, I can. But I can't also play with my two other friends online at the same time. Unless I want to pop for a Gold account for someone who is a very, very occasional user of the system. I've started collecting those 3-day Gold account cards and just using them, but it's, well, just really annoying.
I buy any game I can for the PS3 over the Xbox for this reason.
Obviously not a coder (Score:4, Interesting)
*Start Rant*
Actually that's not true, the Winsock API used to be so buggy you used to have to do error checking on operations which on any other OS there is no possibility of them failing. (I hear things are better now)
Also, if DirectX is such an amazing accomplishment, how come they had to make a version specifically for the XBox that is only partially compatible with the PC version? Why are they having to come out with a new version of the API every 6 months to 1 year? DirectX 9, 9a, 9b, 9c, 9d, 9e, 10, 10.1, 11
Why, if it's so amazing are so many companies switching to OpenAL for their audio?
Why did so many companies continue to develop for Glide when DirectX worked on all graphics cards?
The truth is that DirectX started out as a piece of garbage, and is slowly getting better and better. Microsoft was given the chance to work together to come up with a graphics standard that would be flexible and would be properly designed. It was called Fahrenheit. Microsoft was originally going to be a big force behind this, but did not allocate the needed resources, instead ramming DirectX 7 down our throats.
Microsoft does not want a good API. Look at the number of versions of DirectX there have been. Look at
I most recently ran into this when looking into the contacts system in Vista. Here it was, this brand new system to centralize all our contact information in Windows. A new API that is only about 1.5 years old. No longer supported. No links to the new API, if there is one. I can't even figure out if Windows Contacts are just in Windows 7 for "backward compatibility", or if its meant to be be used.
Re:How unacceptable of Microsoft... (Score:3, Interesting)