SOE Picks Up Former Monolith Employees

eXxy writes "1UP.com talked to SOE about the Matrix Online announcement, and came away with some info that wasn't in the public PR. SOE is picking up many former MxO employees and offering jobs at their Seattle office, the DC Comics game is PSP/PS3/PC and should be cross-compatible between all three platforms, stuff like that."

Right..

[Propagandhi]

I assume the only reason Sony is picking them up is so they can shake any loose change out of their pockets, right?

/Ok, Sony might not be that evil...

PSP-PS3-PC?!?

[KDR_11k]

What does it imply for the graphics quality of a game that gets puton the PC, the PS3 and the PSP? I mean, the PSP is a full generation behind the other two, are they planning on making all assets twice, even with expansions and squeeze it all into the 1.8GB UMD size or what? The PS2 needed a HD to play FF11. The PSP obviously can't have a HD so it will have to rely on the overly expensive MS medium. Which again limits size. I believe they'd actually make more money by dropping the PSP and not making everyt

Re:PSP-PS3-PC?!?

[ZosX]

It would likely be a version where you could raise your stats or do all the other menial things you do in a MMORPG. I dunno, like farm or something, then you could go home and waste all of your time playing the real game with improved standings. A PSP only online world would be kind of interesting though. Something like second life streamed to the PSP would be kind of neat.

Maybe make a DS port? That would make a whole lot more sense.

Re:PSP-PS3-PC?!?

[KDR_11k]

The DS could only handle it if it was sprite based and even there I have my doubts.

Re:PSP-PS3-PC?!?

[Babbster]

I doubt that the PS2 version of FFXI "needed" a hard drive. Square probably just didn't want to optimize for running from DVD - it's far simpler to decompress everything once during install, and with hard drive access you've got a much better speed cushion. As one example, Sony's own EQ Online Adventures ran straight from DVD on the PS2 and used memory cards for patches/network/login info.

As for "making all assets twice," that's not really how it works. After all, you don't need to make all assets twice (or many times) for a PC game that will run from 800x600 to 2048x1536 on computers running a myriad of different video cards and a wide range of CPUs. Art assets (which take up the majority of space) can fairly easily be scaled down. Even the MMOG game engine itself requires much less space than those in single-player games because the majority of computations are done on the game server, not the client.

Re:PSP-PS3-PC?!?

[KDR_11k]

The gap here is much larger than what you find in the PC world. It's like trying to port Unreal Tournament 2003 to a P2/233 with a Voodoo 2 card and 64MB RAM. With such a huge gap you cannot rely on downsampling textures and autoLODs, you have to pretty much redo your assets. MMORPGs also have unpredictable numbers of objects onscreen (think marketplace), that might become problematic with the RAM unless the game is designed for the PSP first.

As for the HD/storage meduim, well, something's got to hold the

Only if using SVG or other vectors.

[Inoshiro]

If your art resources are all bitmaps, scaling them all down is CPU intensive, and can end up looking bad if you use a less accurate interplotation method (cubic vs. linear vs. none).

Re:Only if using SVG or other vectors.

[ThePiMan2003]

Which is why you would scale them down once, on your development machines, and send them out to the PSP in the scalled down quality.

Re:PSP-PS3-PC?!?

[Chris Mattern]

> I doubt that the PS2 version of FFXI "needed" a hard drive.

Uh, yes, it did. Do you *have* the PS2 version of FFXI? Basically what you get on the disk is a driver to download the game--over the course of three years, damn near *everything's* been replaced. I bought it about a month and a half ago and and it took over *three hours* to download all the updates! Trust me, they need that HDD.

Chris Mattern

it's a shame you aren't Blizzard..

[sinner0423]

WoW seems to be the standard now for any MMO on the planet, it came & conqured over 2 million subscriptions around the world, thats pretty impressive for any title let alone a MMORPG.

It's pretty hard to compete with Blizzard, but now would be a great time because the users are wanting more and Blizz just can't keep the pace - they're starting to run up hill and it shows. It's too bad MxO's launch was bad, didn't really sell at all, and was based off of a series of movies that was bastardized by the

Re:it's a shame you aren't Blizzard..

[white1827]

SOE is all about making long tedious games to appeal to the type of person willing to sink all their free time for years into them. Blizzard is after the "people who want to have fun playing games" market. I think the numbers speak for themselves as to which market is more lucrative.

Re:it's a shame you aren't Blizzard..

[ThePiMan2003]

I'm more interested in seeing what the numbers say in a year or so. SOE is about games that take a long time, a LOT of people are already getting board with WOW and leaving.

Memo to new employees:

[Master Asia]

Welcome...to your doom!

Yes, all hail the SOE benefactors

[Anonymous Coward]

Sony has offered jobs to 25 people on the Matrix team, yes. But around 100 people got laid off. 1UP's story is fluff.

Pick up everyone but the game designer

[CrazyJim1]

The graphics were great. I could see they put thousands of hours into modeling all the 3d items.

The game was programmed moderately well, with a great deal of bugs still. Still the guys know how to somewhat program.

Animation makers were good.

But the game design was extremely sub par. It was like watching the guys first day out on the golf course. For a game that could have ruled, all you did was run from building to building, room to room, over and over again. Sure the first five times you infiltr

Re:Pick up everyone but the game designer

[mellon]

I think you've pretty much hit the nail on the head. It's very sad. I have some vague hope that there might be something fun in the International district or downtown, and I've had some fun sneaking around and not getting shot there, seeing how many hardlines I can collect, but the only way to go up levels does seem to be to whack somebody or to run around in buildings trying not to let your simulacrum pick fights with guards. The big payoff for me has been acquiring and playing with new abilities, bu

DC game!!!

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

> the DC Comics game

* a_Street_Thug_with_kryptonite_in_his_pocket punches YOU for 8 points of damage!

* You have died.

Yeah, I can't wait. :rollseyes

PSP maybe low end PC equiv?

[Taulin]

I guess the PSP version will be the same thing as just turning down some settings on the PC version. This usually just means automatically using low poly LOD objects and textures. The best part of online games is that the client software is nothing more than a representation of the data. How it looks has no impact on how the data is manipulated on the server. I am really excited about seeing a console/pc/handheld union.

It...

[BuddyJesus]

It seems logical to me. I mean, if you're picking up the game, you might as well pick up anybody else that you can that worked on the game.