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Yes, it does. There's the terrain engine, and the foliage engine, and the physics engine, and the AI engine, and the sound engine... And as a game developer, you have to make it all play together.

That's the reason for RenderWare, which is basically a collection of mediocre middleware for all of the above. For everything RenderWare does, there's something else that does it better. But RenderWare has it all in one expensive box, and it sort of plays together.

RenderWare is that it has been bought by Electronic Arts. Other game developers are reluctant to get their crucial middleware from a direct competitor. Yet it gets you onto a new platform faster. Tough decisions lie ahead for game developers, and many of them have little to do with the game itself.

I don't know where you've been for the past 15 years, but nobody does low level programming for games anymore.

Everyone uses Renderware . Just look, over 500 titles released or in development use Renderware and it's not that old. That's 1 in 4 titles (I'm reading this from the site). Grand Theft Auto 3 Vice City uses Renderware. Peter Molyneux's The Movies uses Renderware. Broken Sword 3 Sleeping Dragon uses Renderware. Everyone friggin' uses Renderware. And you know what? They aren't all the same game. Hell, even SEGA, Sony, and Konami and featured clients of Renderware.

Oh, and lets not forget Epic Games or id Software . And don't forget, these are not just for first person shooters. It's a 3D engine with underlying network code. I don't even want to think about how many games used the Quake engines over the years.

To say these development-houses-that-rely-on-high-level-develop ment-tools are suffering would be laughable. I'm laughing right now even. They are the highest profit games companies on the planet you fool!

I don't know where you've been for the past 15 years, but nobody does low level programming for games anymore.

Everyone uses Renderware . Just look, over 500 titles released or in development use Renderware and it's not that old. That's 1 in 4 titles (I'm reading this from the site). Grand Theft Auto 3 Vice City uses Renderware. Peter Molyneux's The Movies uses Renderware. Broken Sword 3 Sleeping Dragon uses Renderware. Everyone friggin' uses Renderware. And you know what? They aren't all the same game. Hell, even SEGA, Sony, and Konami and featured clients of Renderware.

Oh, and lets not forget Epic Games or id Software . And don't forget, these are not just for first person shooters. It's a 3D engine with underlying network code. I don't even want to think about how many games used the Quake engines over the years.

To say these development-houses-that-rely-on-high-level-develop ment-tools are suffering would be laughable. I'm laughing right now even. They are the highest profit games companies on the planet you fool!

You are completely wrong.

Two of the most critically acclaimed games of last year are Grand Theft Auto 3 Vice City and Splinter Cell.

I'll have you know Grand Theft Auto and damn near every other top game uses Criterion's Renderware while Splinter Cell and all the other games use the Unreal Engine .

Last time I checked, those two titles stood out from the pack about... as much as you possibly could. Top reviews, Splinter Cell 2 got top awards at E3, and top sales across all platforms. Oh yeah, that's right, ACROSS ALL PLATFORMS as in their development tools practically port from one platform to the other at the click of a button. No more shitty ports written by half-ass developers that take two years to come out.

You, sir, are completely wrong. Even companies that make their own engine don't do one for a single game and then scrap it anymore. They usually make an engine and use it several times such as Final Fantasy X, X-2, XII which is basically the same as using middleware.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.... Wrong.

If they charge too much, companies just won't use Renderware. *SHOCK!* *SURPRISE!* Most companies don't use it anyway. Please, spread your stupidity elsewhere. Slashdot has enough already.

Clipping happens in hardware on most platforms. Whilst on the PS2 it happen in the micro programs, and RenderWare has some of the most sophisticated micro programs written.

Their collision detection system is mathematically correct for determining primitive, triangle, and ray intersections. It's up to the application to use this data correctly.

But this is just technology - if you want to really understand what Microsoft is looking at - check out RenderWare Studio.

Just browse around their site and see the full spectrum of their technology and partners - you'll be surprised. But developing with RenderWare isn't the same as planting magic beans - crap in still means crap out...

Renderware is billed as a "universal game engine", more or less. Actually, it's the physics engine from Mathengine, an AI engine from Knyogon, a rendering engine, and an audio engine, which more or less play together. There's also a generic level editor, a build tool, and a configuration management system for all the game assets. All the major target platforms are supported.

In general, none of those components are considered the best in their class. When you look at the titles supported, you don't see any of the top 10 games. But there are time-to-market advantages in buying them all your tools from one vendor. That's the sort of thinking that attracts Microsoft.

So if you want to see what XNA would be like, check out Renderware.

Renderware is billed as a "universal game engine", more or less. Actually, it's the physics engine from Mathengine, an AI engine from Knyogon, a rendering engine, and an audio engine, which more or less play together. There's also a generic level editor, a build tool, and a configuration management system for all the game assets. All the major target platforms are supported.

In general, none of those components are considered the best in their class. When you look at the titles supported, you don't see any of the top 10 games. But there are time-to-market advantages in buying them all your tools from one vendor. That's the sort of thinking that attracts Microsoft.

So if you want to see what XNA would be like, check out Renderware.

It may not be popular (yet) on PC/Mac/Linux/whatever environments, but portable toolkits do exist in the video game industry. Renderware is an example of a modular toolkit that is used to make a game that can be ported to several consoles. Just recently, Sega's Sonic Team used it for a high-profile cross-platform project you might have heard about, it's called Sonic Heroes :p . This is getting increasingly popular because of market issues. EA, Konami, Namco, Capcom and many others use this kind of cross-platform toolkits because it can cut development time by an order of magnitude when they want their products to be launched to a wider, multi-platform market.

This is also a problem for the console manufacturers, as they want to push their own, proprietary toolkits and get exclusivity for as many important titles as possible. This is why Microsoft is going to push this XNA thing very hard, it wants developers to stay inside the DirectX world.

Cross-platform, feature-complete, strongly supported APIs and toolkits are a big necessity in today's marketplace to comply with the very high standards the video game industry demands.

By the way, I'll start my little rant about OpenGL. I love the thing very much and it used to be great, but I'm really sad to see it's very outdated now and it doesn't reflect current game developers' needs, for example, fragment shaders support is something not well defined yet and it's a market requirement, you can't just port games from Windows and not support fragment shaders. Then there's the thing about OpenGL supporting SO MUCH F'ng more than just games-related functions (the API is still very strong in the professional apps space), remember the API subset some games had during the Voodoo era? This is also a requirement for today's games, a lightweight, full-featured API without unnecessary bloat.

To make matters worse, OpenGL doesn't include equivalent cross-platform audio and input APIs/toolkits, so you need to rewrite these parts for each new platform, or create your own API (and you still need to write support for it in every platform), or maybe look for some of the half-baked efforts out there.

Here's the reason DirectX smokes everybody else: We don't have a good cross-platform alternative to game development.

id Software, however industry-leading it may be, can't sustain our only true cross-platform open API in existence alone forever.

I wouldn't quite call SDL/DX "middleware." "Lowerware" or "baseware" would be more accurate. What the game industry as a whole (not just Linux gamers) need is an open source real middleware package like Renderware that'll let a team of 5-10 people make an A+ quality game.

Some of my favorite cards were the 'decelerators' such as the Yamaha device. They hadn't yet figured out how to do 'perfect scan' so if you rendered a pair of triangles with a common edge then the pixels on that edge would be rendered in both triangles. If you rendered a square tesselated as triangles in the obvious way then the corner pixels were rendered 6 times. I had arguments with the guys about performance. They told me my drivers sucked as I couldn't match their laboratory performance. It's astonishing that a company could bring a device as far as first silicon without knowing how to rasterize a triangle correctly! Even without such mistakes they were still slow as the PCI bus was no way to send 3D instructions, geometry and textures anywhere. It would often take longer to format the data and send it to the device than simply rasterize directly to screen memory in software - even on early Pentiums!

Then there was the first nvidia card that you may or may not know about. My God this thing was bad. Now I can't remember the exact details (this is many years ago) but it was very like the Sega Saturn's 3D system. (I don't think there's a coincidence here, the card came with a PC version of Virtua Fighter so I guess Sega and Nvidia were working together). Basically it was a sprite renderer. A square sprite renderer. But it had been hacked so the spans of the sprites could be lines that weren't raster aligned. So you could render twisted rectangles. With some deviousness you could render polygons with perspective and you had a 3D renderer. But it basically always 'pushed' an entire sprite. So it was pretty well impossible to do any kind of clipping. It was next to impossible to map the functionality to any kind of 3D API and so could only run applications dedicated to it. Again they complained that we were unable to write proper 3D drivers for their card. Admittedly their design did at least allow some games to run fast but I'm still amazed by the lack of understanding by the early nvidia guys. So when they eventually overtook 3dfx I was completely blown away.

And then there was the question of APIs. In the old days there was no Direct3D. There was OpenGL but most PCs were a long way from having the power for a full OpenGL implementation. Early on only one company was interested in OpenGL - 3dLabs. They were the only company who understood what they were doing on PCs in those early days. So there was a variety of APIs: Renderware, Rendermorphics, and BRender among others. Rendermorphics was eventually bought by MS and became Direct3D. The first few revisions were terrible but as they always do MS eventually 'got it'. Renderware is still going. They are part of Canon. Anyone who knows Canon will be aware that they patent everything. If you dig out the early Canon patents you'll find they patented fast rendering of speculars by a technique which meant they didn't actually move as the viewpoint move. (If you know 3D you should be laughing loudly right about now.) But Renderware did get their act together and now have a 3D API that runs on a few consoles. And some of the earliest and coolest 3D hacks were first patented by them. BRender just disappeared though Jez San, the guy behind it, recently received an OBE for his influence on the British computer games industry. (Gossip tidbit: at one point SGI were looking for a 3D API for PCs and chose BRender over OpenGL for their FireWalker game development system.) If you dig into the pre-pre-history of 3D accelerators you'll see that San's company, Argonaut, developed the first commercial 3D accelerator (though not PC card) - the FX chip for the SNES, used for Starfox.

And this is all from memory so please accept my apologies for errors and post corrections!

Actually, since they use RenderWare, porting isn't such a big issue. It is more the "per$on with the bigge$t pur$e" as you put it. As for losing money from bundling, perhaps they figure that they'll shift more units with the bundle than they would otherwise. Let's face it, even at the cost of a full, new game, it's a pretty sweet bundle. I'd certainly get it if I had an XBox.

Both GTA III and Vice City used the Renderware engine, as do many successful games.

The technology is not an end in and of itself, but a means to better gameplay. That's why I'm looking forward to Doom III; it's engine will allow unprecedented freedom of design to developers making the Next Big Thing.

And old technology does not mean bad games. Download the demo forMoonbase Commander, which came out last year and runs fine on a 486, and see for yourself.

Both GTA III and Vice City used the Renderware engine, as do many successful games.

The technology is not an end in and of itself, but a means to better gameplay. That's why I'm looking forward to Doom III; it's engine will allow unprecedented freedom of design to developers making the Next Big Thing.

And old technology does not mean bad games. Download the demo forMoonbase Commander, which came out last year and runs fine on a 486, and see for yourself.

What you need is 3DS Max, the SDK and DX8. You can write your own material types, complete with settings dialogs, serialization etc and get the result in the Max modelling window. You can then use those settings in your game and it will look the same.

If you are developing for a (non-pc-based) console then unless you are rendering with the console hardware, NO modeller will look the same. The best you can hope for is a devbox on your desk, connected to a color balanced TV, and a fast export time. Criterion could help you with that.

Mass market games are about money. They cost money to develop, to advertise and to distribute. Certainly there are many great community, grass-roots, hobby games out there and java may be ideal for those, but this story was about the xbox, ps2, gamecube etc.

First, Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft will always attempt to strong-arm developers into producing single-console titles. "Only for XBOX" boasts one-time-Mac-developer Bungie about Halo. So who Sun think they are fooling is anyone's idea. In fact, one can find a way that Sun has competed directly or indirectly with all the major players. Sony and Nintendo use MIPS processors, and the N64 used SGI technology. The Xbox, and, for most people, the PC, is owned by Microsoft. Nuff said.

I dont see what Java can do for games that flash, virtools, renderware cant do. Class "A" titles are frankly more concerned by how long it takes to load a level, than by easy of portability. Halo and Jak&Daxter are both touting their "instant-loading" abilities. Imagine if the JITC had to compile the level before loading! I did find it terribly amusing that the clever fellow who pointed out how JITCs can compile for all sorts of different processors ever so well and how I, the developer, can instruct the JITC to compile the code just once, unfortunately forgot, or was blinded by his own brilliance, that neither the ps2, nor gamecube, have a harddrive.

So, if we limit our discussion to the PC, why dont I just use C#? The developement environment is infinitely better than anything for less than $5000 and its guaranteed to run on 99% of all game-playing PCs.

Sorry, Sun, you had your chance at making Java a generic gaming scripting engine, but that was years ago when you were still a bunch of arrogant fuck-heads who thought Java was amazing and we could all bloody well pay $100,000's for it. Now that C# arrives, you're so keen to push Java for games. Hmmm. See ya!

The real strength, however, is CodeWarrior's optimization and code generation.

Hello Metroworks guy!

You may be able to shed light on something which I found odd. You're aware Criterion in the UK distribute Metroworks products in Europe? You may also be aware that they make the Renderware middleware engine also.

I was quite interested to learn that they don't use Metroworks to compile Renderware, despite being the distributors. They use the Intel compiler. Why is that do you think?

I'm just interested, not looking for an arguement on the merits of our respective compilers. Your compiler is lofty goal for us to aim for. We have a version of the interactive demo with Metroworks in it and we were quite surprised by how well Metroworks did in those tests versus Intel and MSVC! I must put that on our site at some point, since it's especially relevant for game dev stuff.

Mat 'Lurks' Bettinson, Codeplay Ltd.

Well I have the SDK so I think I could answer some of your questions:

Real-time only means it meets timing guarantees. Not that it is fast. Real-time only means when I say it'll take 100 days to add two numbers, it absolutely won't take 101 days.

Yes, its true. It only means that it will meet the timing requirements. I'm sure that it doesn't meet them when it is hosted, but for a virtual processor is really fast. I always read here comparisons with Java. Java is slow, very slow. I have the Windows SDK and everything runs as fast as the host. I heard the Linux SDK is even faster. I was really surprised with the speed of the alpha blending demos that come with the SDK.

It is either new or it has a legacy. I don't understand how it can have both. In any case I seriously doubt this statement is anything other than marketing vapor.

You are right, this line is just marketing stuff.

Multiplatform and multimedia-centric are relatively useless buzzwords for game developers. Until Amiga's SDK becomes as powerful as DirectX (not that I'm saying DirectX is perfect, just that it's nice not to have to reinvent the wheel all the time) the Amiga will never be a dream come true for developers.

The Amiga DE will come with RenderWare (according to the manuals) and the framework is used in PS2, Dreamcast, PC and Mac. Don't know anything about sound or input devices but they are supposed to be working on something. We'll see.

That's a lot. The original Playstation only has 2 MB of system memory. The N64 has 4 MB. The Dreamcast has 16 MB. I'm not sure I want the OS eating up over 1/4 of the available memory on my console. Since it doesn't sound like they're talking about consoles, what do they mean when they say "multiplatform"?

The PS1 and the N64 don't count anymore. Everyone will start programming for the Dolphin, PS2, and Dreamcast only. They are talking about consoles and computers as well. The OS can run hosted in other operating systems and native in a lot of chips. Why everyone that posts here doesn't even bother to look for information before posting? Visit TAO which is the basis of the new OS.

Another thing you guys should know. Not everything is 'virtual-assembly'. When you compile a program the extension is program.00 (.00 means VP, the virtual processor instructions). You could compile to native code if you wanted but you will lose the portability. There is an extension for each native processor, for example .04=386, .16=PPC, .24=Pentium2, etc.

The only thing that I actually is a huge, but HUGE mistake is, believe it or not, that it doesn't have memory protection. It only protects the addresses from 0-128. I heard they were going to add it, and that currently it wasn't there because it was an embedded os. I hope is true.

I simply don't think that Indrema can cut the mustard. They just don't have enough money. For a console to succeed, it needs several things:

a) Developer Support: Where is the developer support for Indrema? - even if you've got good hardware, hardly anyone will buy the system without some impressive games to play on it. I've seen hardly any developer support for Indrema.

b) Marketing: To get a new console going, you need a whole load of marketing bucks. People (even lofty /. readers) *are* affected by advertising. What are people going to buy - something they've seen plastered all over the TV and magazines, or something they've heard of once on a website?

c) A viable business model: Most consoles make a loss on the hardware for the first year or two, making all their money on the royalties from the software. As Indrema will have an open system, developers will not have to pay them anything to produce software for it. They'll therfore have to make all their money on the hardware and be at a severe disadvantage to the discounted hardware of Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo and Sega.

d) Brand: Even though Sony stormed the console market with the Playstation, they were still a well known brand. Most people will never have heard of Indrema and will go with a name they know.

Basically, Indrema don't have the money to compete with the other consoles in any big way. If they had vast amounts of money, they could pay developers to write games for them, but at the moment I doubt very many devlopers will. It's just a question of economics: Most console games nowadays require a team of at least 10 people at least 18 months to make. As a devloper gets about £5 for a £40 game, they'd have to sell at least a third of a million copies simply to break even. That's not counting advertising costs. I just can't see Indrema selling enough units to ensure a game could sell that many units, it's as simple as that.

My background: I work for Fiendish Games, which is the Games-Sold-Online division of Criterion Software, who also make cross-platform graphics middleware like Renderware and PC/Console games like Trickstyle.

Please Note: My opinions may not represent the opinions of my employer.

cheers,

Tim

Mail: tim@planettimmy.com
http://www.planettimmy.com/

Okay, here's a press release we released today - basically it means that Renderware and Rendervision will be avaliable on the GSCube - Renderware is a middleware cross-platform graphics library, and RenderVision is this cool system that allows you to preview your scene (and walk through) your scene that you are designing in your 3D package instantly on your target platform (like PS2, for instance...)

(Actually, I work for the Fiendish Games part of Criterion...)

Criterion Software delivers RenderWare on Sony Computer Entertainment's GScube Development System

RenderWare ushers in the future of real-time digital creation in the broadband era

NEW ORLEANS, July 25th, 2000 - Criterion Software today announced a major milestone in its mission to provide a seamless digital content development path from concept to delivery, with the demonstration of its market leading Renderware3 interactive 3D graphics middleware driving Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.'s GScube visualizer prototype for e-cinema and real-time digital content creation.

A subsidiary of Canon, headquartered in Guildford, UK, Criterion Software Ltd. is the leading developer of multimedia middleware for convergence platforms, including next generation videogame consoles, digital televisions and web terminals.

"We reshaped the world of 3D middleware with the invention of our Renderware3 Powerpipe architecture." said David Lau-Kee, President, Criterion Software, "Powerpipe is a uniquely flexible graphics software architecture that allows unprecedented control over content-specific processing, special effects and acceleration. Now, driving the GScube development system, the benefits of this flexibility towards the creation of insanely inventive digital content by studios across all forms of visual entertainment become startling clear."

Subject to agreement, Criterion Software expects to provide its 3D middleware and tools, including Renderware for 3D programmers and RenderVisionTM for 3D artists, to GScube application and content developers in the near future.

"Criterion Software is a valued partner for our PlayStation2 middleware program," said Makoto Hatakenaka, Vice President, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. "and we are pleased that they are providing the same high level of commitment and support to GScube, our next step in pioneering the creation of real-time digital entertainment.

Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.
Recognized as the undisputed global leader and company responsible for the progression of consumer-based computer entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) manufacturers, distributes and markets the PlayStation game console and PlayStation2 computer entertainment system. SCEI, along with its subsidiary divisions Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc. and Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Ltd., develops, publishes, markets and distributes software, and manages the third party licensing programs for these two platforms in the respective markets worldwide. Headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. is an independent business unit of Sony Corporation.

Criterion Software
Criterion Software develops and distributes the market leading 3D middleware tools for convergence platforms, including RenderWare3 for 3D programmers and RenderVision for 3D artists, and distributes complementary 3rd party tools, such as Metrowerks CodeWarrior® game development tools for PlayStation2 computer entertainment system in Europe and North America.

RenderWare is a registered trademark of Canon Inc. RenderVision is a trademark of Criterion Software Ltd. PlayStation is a registered trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. All other company and product names may be registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective companies/holders, and are hereby recognized.

Okay, here's a press release we released today - basically it means that Renderware and Rendervision will be avaliable on the GSCube - Renderware is a middleware cross-platform graphics library, and RenderVision is this cool system that allows you to preview your scene (and walk through) your scene that you are designing in your 3D package instantly on your target platform (like PS2, for instance...)

(Actually, I work for the Fiendish Games part of Criterion...)

Criterion Software delivers RenderWare on Sony Computer Entertainment's GScube Development System

RenderWare ushers in the future of real-time digital creation in the broadband era

NEW ORLEANS, July 25th, 2000 - Criterion Software today announced a major milestone in its mission to provide a seamless digital content development path from concept to delivery, with the demonstration of its market leading Renderware3 interactive 3D graphics middleware driving Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.'s GScube visualizer prototype for e-cinema and real-time digital content creation.

A subsidiary of Canon, headquartered in Guildford, UK, Criterion Software Ltd. is the leading developer of multimedia middleware for convergence platforms, including next generation videogame consoles, digital televisions and web terminals.

"We reshaped the world of 3D middleware with the invention of our Renderware3 Powerpipe architecture." said David Lau-Kee, President, Criterion Software, "Powerpipe is a uniquely flexible graphics software architecture that allows unprecedented control over content-specific processing, special effects and acceleration. Now, driving the GScube development system, the benefits of this flexibility towards the creation of insanely inventive digital content by studios across all forms of visual entertainment become startling clear."

Subject to agreement, Criterion Software expects to provide its 3D middleware and tools, including Renderware for 3D programmers and RenderVisionTM for 3D artists, to GScube application and content developers in the near future.

"Criterion Software is a valued partner for our PlayStation2 middleware program," said Makoto Hatakenaka, Vice President, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. "and we are pleased that they are providing the same high level of commitment and support to GScube, our next step in pioneering the creation of real-time digital entertainment.

Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.
Recognized as the undisputed global leader and company responsible for the progression of consumer-based computer entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) manufacturers, distributes and markets the PlayStation game console and PlayStation2 computer entertainment system. SCEI, along with its subsidiary divisions Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc. and Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Ltd., develops, publishes, markets and distributes software, and manages the third party licensing programs for these two platforms in the respective markets worldwide. Headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. is an independent business unit of Sony Corporation.

Criterion Software
Criterion Software develops and distributes the market leading 3D middleware tools for convergence platforms, including RenderWare3 for 3D programmers and RenderVision for 3D artists, and distributes complementary 3rd party tools, such as Metrowerks CodeWarrior® game development tools for PlayStation2 computer entertainment system in Europe and North America.

RenderWare is a registered trademark of Canon Inc. RenderVision is a trademark of Criterion Software Ltd. PlayStation is a registered trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. All other company and product names may be registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective companies/holders, and are hereby recognized.

Okay, here's a press release we released today - basically it means that Renderware and Rendervision will be avaliable on the GSCube - Renderware is a middleware cross-platform graphics library, and RenderVision is this cool system that allows you to preview your scene (and walk through) your scene that you are designing in your 3D package instantly on your target platform (like PS2, for instance...)

(Actually, I work for the Fiendish Games part of Criterion...)

Criterion Software delivers RenderWare on Sony Computer Entertainment's GScube Development System

RenderWare ushers in the future of real-time digital creation in the broadband era

NEW ORLEANS, July 25th, 2000 - Criterion Software today announced a major milestone in its mission to provide a seamless digital content development path from concept to delivery, with the demonstration of its market leading Renderware3 interactive 3D graphics middleware driving Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.'s GScube visualizer prototype for e-cinema and real-time digital content creation.

A subsidiary of Canon, headquartered in Guildford, UK, Criterion Software Ltd. is the leading developer of multimedia middleware for convergence platforms, including next generation videogame consoles, digital televisions and web terminals.

"We reshaped the world of 3D middleware with the invention of our Renderware3 Powerpipe architecture." said David Lau-Kee, President, Criterion Software, "Powerpipe is a uniquely flexible graphics software architecture that allows unprecedented control over content-specific processing, special effects and acceleration. Now, driving the GScube development system, the benefits of this flexibility towards the creation of insanely inventive digital content by studios across all forms of visual entertainment become startling clear."

Subject to agreement, Criterion Software expects to provide its 3D middleware and tools, including Renderware for 3D programmers and RenderVisionTM for 3D artists, to GScube application and content developers in the near future.

"Criterion Software is a valued partner for our PlayStation2 middleware program," said Makoto Hatakenaka, Vice President, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. "and we are pleased that they are providing the same high level of commitment and support to GScube, our next step in pioneering the creation of real-time digital entertainment.

Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.
Recognized as the undisputed global leader and company responsible for the progression of consumer-based computer entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) manufacturers, distributes and markets the PlayStation game console and PlayStation2 computer entertainment system. SCEI, along with its subsidiary divisions Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc. and Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Ltd., develops, publishes, markets and distributes software, and manages the third party licensing programs for these two platforms in the respective markets worldwide. Headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. is an independent business unit of Sony Corporation.

Criterion Software
Criterion Software develops and distributes the market leading 3D middleware tools for convergence platforms, including RenderWare3 for 3D programmers and RenderVision for 3D artists, and distributes complementary 3rd party tools, such as Metrowerks CodeWarrior® game development tools for PlayStation2 computer entertainment system in Europe and North America.

RenderWare is a registered trademark of Canon Inc. RenderVision is a trademark of Criterion Software Ltd. PlayStation is a registered trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. All other company and product names may be registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective companies/holders, and are hereby recognized.

Okay, here's a press release we released today - basically it means that Renderware and Rendervision will be avaliable on the GSCube - Renderware is a middleware cross-platform graphics library, and RenderVision is this cool system that allows you to preview your scene (and walk through) your scene that you are designing in your 3D package instantly on your target platform (like PS2, for instance...)

(Actually, I work for the Fiendish Games part of Criterion...)

Criterion Software delivers RenderWare on Sony Computer Entertainment's GScube Development System

RenderWare ushers in the future of real-time digital creation in the broadband era

NEW ORLEANS, July 25th, 2000 - Criterion Software today announced a major milestone in its mission to provide a seamless digital content development path from concept to delivery, with the demonstration of its market leading Renderware3 interactive 3D graphics middleware driving Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.'s GScube visualizer prototype for e-cinema and real-time digital content creation.

A subsidiary of Canon, headquartered in Guildford, UK, Criterion Software Ltd. is the leading developer of multimedia middleware for convergence platforms, including next generation videogame consoles, digital televisions and web terminals.

"We reshaped the world of 3D middleware with the invention of our Renderware3 Powerpipe architecture." said David Lau-Kee, President, Criterion Software, "Powerpipe is a uniquely flexible graphics software architecture that allows unprecedented control over content-specific processing, special effects and acceleration. Now, driving the GScube development system, the benefits of this flexibility towards the creation of insanely inventive digital content by studios across all forms of visual entertainment become startling clear."

Subject to agreement, Criterion Software expects to provide its 3D middleware and tools, including Renderware for 3D programmers and RenderVisionTM for 3D artists, to GScube application and content developers in the near future.

"Criterion Software is a valued partner for our PlayStation2 middleware program," said Makoto Hatakenaka, Vice President, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. "and we are pleased that they are providing the same high level of commitment and support to GScube, our next step in pioneering the creation of real-time digital entertainment.

Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.
Recognized as the undisputed global leader and company responsible for the progression of consumer-based computer entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) manufacturers, distributes and markets the PlayStation game console and PlayStation2 computer entertainment system. SCEI, along with its subsidiary divisions Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc. and Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Ltd., develops, publishes, markets and distributes software, and manages the third party licensing programs for these two platforms in the respective markets worldwide. Headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. is an independent business unit of Sony Corporation.

Criterion Software
Criterion Software develops and distributes the market leading 3D middleware tools for convergence platforms, including RenderWare3 for 3D programmers and RenderVision for 3D artists, and distributes complementary 3rd party tools, such as Metrowerks CodeWarrior® game development tools for PlayStation2 computer entertainment system in Europe and North America.

RenderWare is a registered trademark of Canon Inc. RenderVision is a trademark of Criterion Software Ltd. PlayStation is a registered trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. All other company and product names may be registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective companies/holders, and are hereby recognized.