aria
Former Moderator
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- Dec 4, 1977
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Is the X-Box's tech edge going to lay the ground work of future success (i.e. tie-ins with software developers?). Read and decide.
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April 29, 2004
Playing Catch-Up on the Console
By MICHEL MARRIOTT - NY TIMES
IN an inconspicuous Texas office building, doom is being sealed pixel by pixel, polygon by polygon. More precisely, Doom 3, the long-awaited sequel in the enormously successful Doom video game series, is taking shape in the studios of Id Software.
Early glimpses reveal a hellish vision: gut-sucking demons, skeletal spiders topped with inverted human skulls and other assorted grotesqueries skittering and scampering along dark hallways. And Id has not yet settled on a release date for Doom 3 (sometime this year, they say), one thing is clear: the game has been designed to be played on only one console, Microsoft's Xbox.
"Exclusivity has nothing to do with any decision to go with Microsoft for what we could get out of it," said Todd Hollenshead, Id's chief executive. "It was a technology motivation entirely."
Faced with years of game development costing millions of dollars, Id concluded that Microsoft's big black console had critical technology that its rivals - Sony's PlayStation 2, by far the industry leader, and Nintendo's GameCube - did not.
"All three consoles are really good," Mr. Hollenshead said by telephone from Id's base in Mesquite, Tex. "But as far as basic capacity, Xbox just wins out in certain areas. It flat-out offers more capability."
That is a crucial distinction, Id and a number of other game developers are beginning to say aloud. Some, like Mark Rein, vice president of Epic Games, say that Xbox is the only console that can serve as an adequate showcase for the artistry and complexity of his company's graphically complex games. A coming game from Epic, Unreal Championship 2, will be played only on Xbox.
"It has so much graphic power," Mr. Rein said, describing what he says is Xbox's superior ability to process data rapidly and display it as movielike game play, a requirement for the fast-moving shooting-and-mayhem titles on which Epic built its reputation.
Such pronouncements are emerging at a critical point in the competition among game consoles. Unlike personal computers, game consoles remain largely unchanged in power and other capabilities until a successor is released, typically at five-year intervals. While none of the three console makers have publicly committed themselves to a date for the arrival of a next generation, there has been speculation that Microsoft could introduce a new Xbox as early as next year, and that Sony may follow with a new PlayStation in 2006. Their fortunes may hinge on the battle for game developers' allegiance.
Sony has prevailed up to now on symbiotic advantages: it sells more consoles because it has many of the most popular games, often exclusively, and developers of those games are attracted by the sheer number of PlayStation users. If Microsoft can woo more developers to Xbox, the balance of power in the next round could change.
"It's clear that the camps are being aligned for the next-generation consoles," said P. J. McNealy, an analyst with American Technology Research in San Francisco. "Whether or not Microsoft is playing for market dominance is another question. I think they would be pleased with a strong second-place showing."
To topple Sony from its No. 1 position any time soon would be a "titanic event, up there with the fishes and loaves on the all-time miracle list," he said.
Mr. McNealy said that recent sales figures indicate that Xbox will outsell PlayStation 2 in North America this month, by 275,000 units to 200,000, versus 100,000 for the GameCube. If so, it would be the first time any rival has surpassed Sony's console sales in North America in 45 months, he said.
That 45-month period roughly corresponds to the current generation of consoles. About 70 million units of PlayStation 2, released in early 2000, had been sold by January of this year. That compares with fewer than 14 million for Xbox, released in late 2001; GameCube, also released in late 2001, lags further.
Part of Sony's advantage, many experts note, has hinged on its ability to produce blockbuster games or lock up exclusives with third-party game developers. A best-seller like Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, a 2002 release for PlayStation 2 and the PC, can sell six million copies at $50 each. (It later became available for Xbox.)
Yet as the consoles approach the end of their cycle, the question is whether PlayStation 2 is beginning to cede some clout. Sony says no.
"PlayStation 2 is the clear leader in this generation, as demonstrated by the profitable business we have created both for ourselves and our partners," Molly Smith, a spokeswoman for Sony Computer Entertainment America, said by e-mail. "As the category driver, our goal is to continue to facilitate innovation during this product cycle while leading the industry toward the next round."
Microsoft and Sony each have fundamental strengths to exploit in the game arena. Sony is principally a hardware maker. Sony Computer Entertainment America's research and development laboratory, for example, has helped developers take full advantage of its console with hardware peripherals like its successful EyeToy for camera-assisted games. And Sony was established in the console marketplace years before Microsoft arrived there.
Microsoft has a core strength in software. The console's very name was derived from a crucial Microsoft program for game developers, Direct X. The unit is "a Direct X box, a hardware manifestation of our software for games," said J. Allard, Microsoft's chief Xbox officer. The central needs of developers - like the ability to render game play at a higher resolution - were a guiding principle in the console's design.
Many developers say that PlayStation 2, meanwhile, is a more difficult console for creating games. Some complain that its software tools are not as intuitive as the Xbox's, especially for developers who have a long history of developing games for PC's.
And in the end, Xbox is clearly the most powerful console among the three. "On the technical specs it is fairly cut and dried," said Michael Goodman, a senior analyst for the Yankee Group. "Who's got the biggest processor? Microsoft. Who's got the highest-end video card? Microsoft. Who's got the most memory and the greatest flexibility with that memory? Microsoft."
Yet Mr. Allard played down Xbox's hardware advantages. Instead, he focused on software - "Software is the key that unlocks hardware, always has been and always will be," he said - and on tools that Microsoft is introducing to help game makers create sophisticated games for Xbox and PC's.
From the start, Mr. Allard said, Xbox was seen as a device that could benefit from software advances Microsoft had developed in the Windows PC world, which included PC gaming. The ease of crossing over between developing games for Xbox and tailoring them for the PC also makes it easier for some developers (like Id, with Doom 3) to produce releases for both.
Mr. Allard said he hoped to make the game-development process for Xbox more efficient with software packages that help developers accomplish graphics and sound tasks without having to build the tools themselves, as many do.
Microsoft unveiled that initiative last month under the rubric XNA at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose, Calif. Some industry analysts expressed skepticism, though, that XNA would mean much to major developers like Id and Epic, which pride themselves on their own tools.
Whatever the software tools, Xbox's superior processing power (with a 733-megahertz chip, versus PlayStation 2's 295-megahertz variety), along with additional memory, are a draw for developers.
Donald Mustard, the director, lead designer and creator of Advent Rising, due in the fall from Majesco Games, has chosen Xbox as its exclusive console.
He said the game, the first in a planned trilogy, would be strikingly cinematic. Its reliance on bump mapping and pixel shaders, a technique that makes virtual surfaces appear reflective, demands a great deal from a console's hardware, something he said that only Xbox can show off.
"We're trying to create our own style for Advent," Mr. Mustard said. "Doom 3 is very much dark, shadows everywhere. We made our game look like a comic book, a graphic novel. But the way we do our texture maps, it won't look like a cartoon."
Similarly, Jack Sorensen, vice president for product development for THQ, a major video game publisher, said its coming Full Spectrum Warrior would first be released for Xbox because its design team determined that the console could do "certain things" that the others could not.
"We could get better color and lighting," he said, explaining why the designers of the military combat game, scheduled for release on Xbox in June and on PC's in the fall, bypassed PlayStation 2. "We have really maximized for the Xbox. That's why our product looks so good."
But Andy McNamara, editor in chief of Game Informer, a monthly magazine that covers the video game industry, noted that for all the concern about console capacity, many gamers are still playing on ordinary television sets.
"I love Xbox," he said. "I love all the things Xbox can bring, but how many people have high-definition televisions?"
Referring to the protagonist in The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay, an Xbox game expected soon from Vivendi Universal, he added: "Riddick is going to have a lot of detail. But he's going to spend a lot of time in the dark. With a bad TV image, all those grays are going to turn into nothing but blacks, and all the grays are going to be blacks."
------------------------------
April 29, 2004
Playing Catch-Up on the Console
By MICHEL MARRIOTT - NY TIMES
IN an inconspicuous Texas office building, doom is being sealed pixel by pixel, polygon by polygon. More precisely, Doom 3, the long-awaited sequel in the enormously successful Doom video game series, is taking shape in the studios of Id Software.
Early glimpses reveal a hellish vision: gut-sucking demons, skeletal spiders topped with inverted human skulls and other assorted grotesqueries skittering and scampering along dark hallways. And Id has not yet settled on a release date for Doom 3 (sometime this year, they say), one thing is clear: the game has been designed to be played on only one console, Microsoft's Xbox.
"Exclusivity has nothing to do with any decision to go with Microsoft for what we could get out of it," said Todd Hollenshead, Id's chief executive. "It was a technology motivation entirely."
Faced with years of game development costing millions of dollars, Id concluded that Microsoft's big black console had critical technology that its rivals - Sony's PlayStation 2, by far the industry leader, and Nintendo's GameCube - did not.
"All three consoles are really good," Mr. Hollenshead said by telephone from Id's base in Mesquite, Tex. "But as far as basic capacity, Xbox just wins out in certain areas. It flat-out offers more capability."
That is a crucial distinction, Id and a number of other game developers are beginning to say aloud. Some, like Mark Rein, vice president of Epic Games, say that Xbox is the only console that can serve as an adequate showcase for the artistry and complexity of his company's graphically complex games. A coming game from Epic, Unreal Championship 2, will be played only on Xbox.
"It has so much graphic power," Mr. Rein said, describing what he says is Xbox's superior ability to process data rapidly and display it as movielike game play, a requirement for the fast-moving shooting-and-mayhem titles on which Epic built its reputation.
Such pronouncements are emerging at a critical point in the competition among game consoles. Unlike personal computers, game consoles remain largely unchanged in power and other capabilities until a successor is released, typically at five-year intervals. While none of the three console makers have publicly committed themselves to a date for the arrival of a next generation, there has been speculation that Microsoft could introduce a new Xbox as early as next year, and that Sony may follow with a new PlayStation in 2006. Their fortunes may hinge on the battle for game developers' allegiance.
Sony has prevailed up to now on symbiotic advantages: it sells more consoles because it has many of the most popular games, often exclusively, and developers of those games are attracted by the sheer number of PlayStation users. If Microsoft can woo more developers to Xbox, the balance of power in the next round could change.
"It's clear that the camps are being aligned for the next-generation consoles," said P. J. McNealy, an analyst with American Technology Research in San Francisco. "Whether or not Microsoft is playing for market dominance is another question. I think they would be pleased with a strong second-place showing."
To topple Sony from its No. 1 position any time soon would be a "titanic event, up there with the fishes and loaves on the all-time miracle list," he said.
Mr. McNealy said that recent sales figures indicate that Xbox will outsell PlayStation 2 in North America this month, by 275,000 units to 200,000, versus 100,000 for the GameCube. If so, it would be the first time any rival has surpassed Sony's console sales in North America in 45 months, he said.
That 45-month period roughly corresponds to the current generation of consoles. About 70 million units of PlayStation 2, released in early 2000, had been sold by January of this year. That compares with fewer than 14 million for Xbox, released in late 2001; GameCube, also released in late 2001, lags further.
Part of Sony's advantage, many experts note, has hinged on its ability to produce blockbuster games or lock up exclusives with third-party game developers. A best-seller like Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, a 2002 release for PlayStation 2 and the PC, can sell six million copies at $50 each. (It later became available for Xbox.)
Yet as the consoles approach the end of their cycle, the question is whether PlayStation 2 is beginning to cede some clout. Sony says no.
"PlayStation 2 is the clear leader in this generation, as demonstrated by the profitable business we have created both for ourselves and our partners," Molly Smith, a spokeswoman for Sony Computer Entertainment America, said by e-mail. "As the category driver, our goal is to continue to facilitate innovation during this product cycle while leading the industry toward the next round."
Microsoft and Sony each have fundamental strengths to exploit in the game arena. Sony is principally a hardware maker. Sony Computer Entertainment America's research and development laboratory, for example, has helped developers take full advantage of its console with hardware peripherals like its successful EyeToy for camera-assisted games. And Sony was established in the console marketplace years before Microsoft arrived there.
Microsoft has a core strength in software. The console's very name was derived from a crucial Microsoft program for game developers, Direct X. The unit is "a Direct X box, a hardware manifestation of our software for games," said J. Allard, Microsoft's chief Xbox officer. The central needs of developers - like the ability to render game play at a higher resolution - were a guiding principle in the console's design.
Many developers say that PlayStation 2, meanwhile, is a more difficult console for creating games. Some complain that its software tools are not as intuitive as the Xbox's, especially for developers who have a long history of developing games for PC's.
And in the end, Xbox is clearly the most powerful console among the three. "On the technical specs it is fairly cut and dried," said Michael Goodman, a senior analyst for the Yankee Group. "Who's got the biggest processor? Microsoft. Who's got the highest-end video card? Microsoft. Who's got the most memory and the greatest flexibility with that memory? Microsoft."
Yet Mr. Allard played down Xbox's hardware advantages. Instead, he focused on software - "Software is the key that unlocks hardware, always has been and always will be," he said - and on tools that Microsoft is introducing to help game makers create sophisticated games for Xbox and PC's.
From the start, Mr. Allard said, Xbox was seen as a device that could benefit from software advances Microsoft had developed in the Windows PC world, which included PC gaming. The ease of crossing over between developing games for Xbox and tailoring them for the PC also makes it easier for some developers (like Id, with Doom 3) to produce releases for both.
Mr. Allard said he hoped to make the game-development process for Xbox more efficient with software packages that help developers accomplish graphics and sound tasks without having to build the tools themselves, as many do.
Microsoft unveiled that initiative last month under the rubric XNA at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose, Calif. Some industry analysts expressed skepticism, though, that XNA would mean much to major developers like Id and Epic, which pride themselves on their own tools.
Whatever the software tools, Xbox's superior processing power (with a 733-megahertz chip, versus PlayStation 2's 295-megahertz variety), along with additional memory, are a draw for developers.
Donald Mustard, the director, lead designer and creator of Advent Rising, due in the fall from Majesco Games, has chosen Xbox as its exclusive console.
He said the game, the first in a planned trilogy, would be strikingly cinematic. Its reliance on bump mapping and pixel shaders, a technique that makes virtual surfaces appear reflective, demands a great deal from a console's hardware, something he said that only Xbox can show off.
"We're trying to create our own style for Advent," Mr. Mustard said. "Doom 3 is very much dark, shadows everywhere. We made our game look like a comic book, a graphic novel. But the way we do our texture maps, it won't look like a cartoon."
Similarly, Jack Sorensen, vice president for product development for THQ, a major video game publisher, said its coming Full Spectrum Warrior would first be released for Xbox because its design team determined that the console could do "certain things" that the others could not.
"We could get better color and lighting," he said, explaining why the designers of the military combat game, scheduled for release on Xbox in June and on PC's in the fall, bypassed PlayStation 2. "We have really maximized for the Xbox. That's why our product looks so good."
But Andy McNamara, editor in chief of Game Informer, a monthly magazine that covers the video game industry, noted that for all the concern about console capacity, many gamers are still playing on ordinary television sets.
"I love Xbox," he said. "I love all the things Xbox can bring, but how many people have high-definition televisions?"
Referring to the protagonist in The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay, an Xbox game expected soon from Vivendi Universal, he added: "Riddick is going to have a lot of detail. But he's going to spend a lot of time in the dark. With a bad TV image, all those grays are going to turn into nothing but blacks, and all the grays are going to be blacks."
