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XBox (Games)

Japanese Devs Talk 360 Development 65

Posted by Zonk from the friends-in-far-off-places dept.
Japanese developers have had the chance to work with the Xbox 360, and as Gamespot reports, there are mixed feelings over there. From the article: "...but even with Microsoft's development tools and strong technical support (another aspect for which the developers had kind words), there are still a number of issues game makers face. Many developers consider the system's graphic capabilities 'double-edged.' The Xbox 360 can handle much better looking graphics than previous consoles, but it also requires a lot more effort in development."
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Japanese Devs Talk 360 Development More

Japanese Devs Talk 360 Development

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  • Is it so surprising that Microsoft really has an interesting providing developers with good tools and support?

  • To be fair... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by samdu ( 114873 ) <samdu@@@ronintech...com> on Tuesday August 30, 2005 @02:37PM (#13438720) Homepage
    I'm no fan of Microsoft, but to be fair, the complaint about the 360 having better graphics but being more difficult to develop for is going to apply to ALL of the next-gen consoles.

    • Re:To be fair... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by AcheronHades ( 837485 )
      I'm no fan of Microsoft, but to be fair, the complaint about the 360 having better graphics but being more difficult to develop for is going to apply to ALL of the next-gen consoles.
      I agree, deveopers complain about this sort of thing every generation.

      To be fair to the 360, the summary does not do the article justice. For the most part it talks about how easy the 360 is to develop for.

    • Re:To be fair... (Score:5, Informative)

      by FadedTimes ( 581715 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2005 @03:16PM (#13438957)
      I've read that the Nintendo Revolution dev kit is very similar to thre previous generations, so the learning curve for existing developers won't be as much. The revolution is just basically a more advanced gamecube when it comes to processor and graphics. from Ninendo's Press release
      Freedom of design: A dynamic development architecture equally accommodates both big-budget, high-profile game "masterpieces" as well as indie games conceived by individual developers equipped with only a big idea.

      • Re:To be fair... (Score:3, Informative)

        by Rayonic ( 462789 )
        I've read that the Nintendo Revolution dev kit is very similar to thre previous generations, so the learning curve for existing developers won't be as much.

        Same for the Xbox 360, according to the article. Its the 10x increase in rendering capacity that they're complaining about.

    • Re:To be fair... (Score:3, Informative)

      by AscendantOat ( 822634 )
      What'll make cross-platform work hard is they're difficult in different ways.

      The 360 has three PPU cores, so without multithreading you can only use a fraction of the available power. With the PS3 you instead have to do low-level SPE unit programming, and any code that can't be adapted has to run on the single PPU.

      Those are the big CPU difficulties, but thethe PPU's used in both systems have weak/nonexistant branching predictors, which lowers production costs. Poor branching performance doesn't hurt strea

      • Re:To be fair... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by HunterZ ( 20035 )
        This brings up an interesting point: Perhaps by a quirk of fate, this next-generation console hardware innovation may be incentive that the entertainment software industry needs to crawl out of the enormous rut it's now in.

        Cross-platform games and ports of engines from current-generation consoles will look/perform poorly compared to console-specific titles as a result of using only the lowest-common-denominator of hardware. Attempts to optimize ports for individual platforms will also be less likely to occu
        • It also sounds like Nintendo's presence in the console market may continue to slide further into a niche with the Revolution

          Quite possibly, but Nintendo's goal with the Revolution is to appeal to the casual gamer. So, while their target audience may indeed be a niche from the perspective of the current market, they see the current market itself as a niche in a much broader potential market.
        • Nintendo may be losing the console battle right now. But, just like you said, inovation and gameplay are the things that keep it alive. It's too, at least right now, to be considered a niche thing. I've loved the company for a long time and I'd hate to see that happen.
          However, innovation and such aside, I believe that Nintendo has one very strong advantage in the next set of console wars. Price.
          I've been reading some horribly high prices for development alone. When a game costs upwards of 50 million to

  • Programming Complexity (Score:5, Interesting)

    by HRbnjR ( 12398 ) <chris@hubick.com> on Tuesday August 30, 2005 @02:49PM (#13438785) Homepage
    Increasing programming complexity is becoming an issue developers must tackle regardless of platform. With the move to dual core chips, software is going to have to move to be pervasively multithreaded in the future. I know it took me some time to learn how to program (and think/design) in a threaded fashion - and to quit making stupid synchornization mistakes, race conditions, etc. If anything, as a programmer I welcome these new requirements, as it helps me differentiate myself from less skilled programmers. Like everyone else, these game developers are going to have to learn to cope.

  • And so it begins. (Score:1, Interesting)

    by cornface ( 900179 )
    There have been a lot of posts in the 360 threads about how the choice to use DVDs for storage (compared to Sony's Blu-Ray discs or HD-DVD) didn't matter. Nobody will fill up a dual layer DVD! Impossible! Doom 3 is only 1.5 gigs!

    From the article:

    "The volume of data in Enchant Arms won't fit into a single DVD. It's an RPG, so we're thinking it would be inevitable that we release it on two discs," says Takeuchi. "But to be honest, that's even looking grim."

    Whoops!

    • Re:And so it begins. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by briankoenig ( 853681 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2005 @03:13PM (#13438936)
      Yes, and we all know that multi-disc games are doomed to failure, and that the developer and producer will fail as well, like what happened with Final Fantasy VII, VIII, IX; Arc the Lad Collection; Legend of Dragoon; Gran Turismo 2; Star Ocean Till the End of Time; I could go on but you get the point.

      Pressing a second disc is incredibly cheap compared to the rest of the development process.
      • It's a little disheartening to see it already starting with the first generation of games. Games tend to get bigger, not smaller, as time goes on.

        The last generation of games went from CD size media (original PS2 games, Dreamcast) and ended up filling DVDs.

        If the 360 starts out filling multiple DVDs...where is it going to go?

      • Re:And so it begins. (Score:3, Interesting)

        by badasscat ( 563442 )
        es, and we all know that multi-disc games are doomed to failure, and that the developer and producer will fail as well, like what happened with Final Fantasy VII, VIII, IX; Arc the Lad Collection; Legend of Dragoon; Gran Turismo 2; Star Ocean Till the End of Time; I could go on but you get the point.

        All of those with the exception of FF7 came out very late in the PS1's lifespan. The PS1 was also designed at a time when there was no other choice for what optical format to use. If you wanted to go optical,
    • I dont really see why people care so much about multiple disc games. They cost the same as any single-disc game.
      Is switching discs after Xhrs of play really a problem?
    • My only question is this: What the fuck is the developer doing with that space?

      A dual-layer DVD is 8GB! What could you be doing that takes up more than 16GB of data?

      WMV-HD (which the 360 can decode) can fit at least 2 hours of HD video in 8GB.

      So, where is all the space going? 16GB is more than 6 times larger than KOTOR II.
    • It's an RPG. They always have an insane amount of annoying FMVs, which need to be put into HD resolution now. There's your space right there. Many Xbox games, when included demos and videos are stripped out, could fit on a single CD or single layer DVD.

      With the power of the next generation consoles, I don't know why anyone is still using the prerendered videos anyways.
  • The article was pretty pro-microsoft until the last quote:
    "The volume of data in Enchant Arms won't fit into a single DVD. It's an RPG, so we're thinking it would be inevitable that we release it on two discs," says Takeuchi. "But to be honest, that's even looking grim."
    Multiple disks are one sure fire way to ruin a player's immersion in a game world.
  • Many developers consider the system's graphic capabilities 'double-edged.' The Xbox 360 can handle much better looking graphics than previous consoles, but it also requires a lot more effort in development."

    This is why the capabilities of new consoles aren't fully explored until the 2nd or 3rd generation of games for that console.

    I think that press releases like this (I don't really think it's anything but a press release) are intended to keep us from being underwhelmed when the 360 hits the market.
  • Wow, another day, another article being used to try and bring down the Xbox 360. Is this seriously going to be happening every day till the PS 3 launches? Every 24 hours there's another article griping about something related to the Xbox 360. I mean, I know we're all supposed to just hate MS and anything they release, but come on. This is ludicrous. From reading today's thread, everyone is pissed about not going to either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. Wow, Microsoft is being punished for not trying to force an unprov
    • Nice rant.

      You're missing the points of the "article":

      1. It will take some time for developers to make games that wow us.

      2. Some 360 games will have so much content that they won't fit on two discs!!11!one!

      This "article" is a marketing tool, a disguised press release, and is not really denigrating the 360 at all. They are reminding us that 1st generation games never utilize anything close to the full potential of a system, and that there will be games with a massive amount of content.

      Sure, a lot o
  • I think things are going to rough until good middleware emerges maybe 6 to 12 months after the 360 launches. The PS2 was difficult to get a handle on at first too, but eventually developers got it as their knowledge and tools improved. It's really a big open question though as to whether the 360 and the PS3 could have been designed to be easier to develop for and have greater performance potential. It will be interesting to see how hard or easy the Revolution will be to develop for, but I think from here on
    • I think Unreal Engine 3 is already on its way to become the de-facto standard as next-gen game engine. A lot of projects announced their use of UE3, and from what I could gather it's very competitvely priced, mainly based on share of the sales, and comes with surprisingly good support from Epic allowing even developers just a bit above the absolute indie level to utilize it.

      While indeed the increased performance and data processing capabilities of the next-gen consoles demands more and better art and conte

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