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Could Doom 3 be a Xbox Exclusive?
acehole writes "Doom III, id's latest and greatest in the realm of first-person shooters, may be coming out as an Xbox exclusive... if Microsoft has its way." This story is very brief, has no real evidence, and should be treated as entirely speculative. I'd be sad if Doom 3 required me to use the X-Box's controller. It's just not right without a mouse!
Where Is Doom III Going?
07-APR-03
An article in the current issue of Wired magazine confirms what a lot of gamers were suspecting already: Microsoft is actively courting id Software for the exclusive console rights to Doom III. According to the article--a feature on current developments in the jaw-dropping PC FPS--the company behind the Xbox is offering an undisclosed amount of money to id in exchange for the right to make their latest game an Xbox-only title as far as consoles are concerned. (It'd still come out on the PC, of course.)
The folks at id reportedly haven't made a decision on the matter yet--it seems a reasonable enough assumption (lead programmer John Carmack has made comments in the past that seem to show a preference for the Xbox), but we'll see how it turns out. The PC game will likely be playable at the Electronic Entertainment Expo next month in Los Angeles.
The Wired article also had one more interesting bit on the PC version: in addition to the multiplayer expansion pack Carmack hinted at earlier, plans are also in the works for a new single-player expansion pack, due to be released some time after the final product hits stores. We'll have more details for you soon, so stay tuned.
It's coming to PC no matter what, this is just for exclusivity on consoles. Perhaps you should have read the article...
This makes a lot of sense, as the Xbox is the most like a PC of the 3 consoles. It won't take as much work for id to port, and if Microsoft is willing to pay them a bunch of money on top of that, all the better.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
1) No Mouse
... errr .. heared of.
2) No Keyboard
3) Slow GFX Chip
4) Slow CPU
5) No Hires GFX
If it comes out for xbox it will have nothing to do with the alpha version we have seen
RedShirt
Microsft spel chekar vor sail, worgs grate !!!
It may well be the technology that dictates where DOOM3 can play, as it's going to be very dependent on hardware pixel and vertex shaders. It could likely only make it to Gamecube and Xbox anyway, unless they cripple the engine just to get it running on PS2.
It talks about *console* version only being for the xbox and even says: "It'd still come out on the PC, of course."
Hey, I got a novel idea: How about if the editors acctually read the linked article before they post stories?
And even better yet:
"money to id in exchange for the right to make their latest game an Xbox-only title as far as consoles are concerned. (It'd still come out on the PC, of course.)"
I can live with people commenting without having read the articles, but now the editors add their clever comment without having read (or understood) the article
- We are the slashdot. Resistance is futile. Prepare to be moderated -
... and I highly doubt that Nintendo, with its reputation as a for-kids console maker, would like the idea of making Doom III (which is likely to be the goriest first-person shooter ever created) available on their console anyway.
As opposed to games like Resident Evil, Resident Evil 0, Eternal Darkness, and others?
Christ, just because Nintendo's core titles are pretty much geared for all ages doesn't mean they're not going to go for mature titles as well. Hell, they stopped censoring their games back in 1994, after they tried censoring the original Mortal Kombat and got spanked by Sega in sales as a result.
As far as the subject matter goes, though... this really is a non-story, as Carmack's been saying for a while that the X-Box was pretty much the only console he was planning to release Doom III on. Nothing to see here, folks...
From the May 2003 print edition of Wired, page 153:
"We're being offered a pretty significant amount of money to sit on it until an Xbox port is done." -- John Carmack
"It" meaning Doom 3, of course. So MS is trying to get Id to delay Doom 3 for all platforms until an Xbox port is done. (Presumably, it'd come out for the PC first without any outside influence.) Do you really want to sit around while Id finishes the Xbox port, knowing that the PC version of Doom 3 is done?
2) No Keyboard
FPS suck on consoles because of this. But it can be done. Halo, Goldeneye, and Metroid Prime are good examples. Although you can successfully argue that MP is not an FPS.
There isn't supposed to be a huge multiplayer element to Doom3. So computer gamers blowing away Live! users won't be a concern.
3) Slow GFX Chip
4) Slow CPU
I'm not sure what's sitting in your boxen, but I have an Athlon 1333 and an NV22 (GeForce3 Ti 500). But a game on the XBox should be able to outperform my machine. Mostly because it is easier to optimize for a fixed platform. My machine should be able to play Doom3 at "full impact". Here are a few statements by Carmack himself to that effect.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=33453&cid=3619 372
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=38207&cid=4091 191
Personally, I'll probably get a GeForceFX when Doom3 comes out. Unless ATI drastically improves their Linux drivers.
5) No Hires GFX
I'm assuming you mean High Resolution. Console gamers are weird like that. They call Halo beautiful. I find it butt-ugly because of the crap-assed resolution.
I doubt MS would attempt to lock the engine down to Xbox. The Offsetting cost would too large to make it worth ID's time. But I could see it happening though.. MS still needs to get a better market share to compete with the other consoles.. but once they are really in the ring and on par with the other consoles (as far as unit sales go) I could see them really toss down the gauntlet when it comes to licencing to obtain a monopoly on the market. I don't think the Xbox is anywhere near mature(significant enough of a market share) to make licencing for a game engine Xbox concole exclusive. But I think one of the big purposes of the Xbox was to maintain thier Monopoly on OS's... look at the power of todays consoles... They can easily be Usable computers.. if MS totally let the console market run away and not get into it they would have a serious pontial problem.. as they would have a bunch of platforms which people could compute on that they don't have a foot hold in.. The Xbox gives them 2 advantages as i see it. Firstly Its establishes a foothold in the console market which is another market they can exploit. Secondly it gives them added security of the PC as well as games will still be released on the PC which is thier cash cow since porting from Xbox to the PC is pretty much a no-brainer with virtually minimal cost to the software company. Which will slow down/eliminate the vast ammount of games geting released for consoles only. But in general exclusive licencing is not healthly for a market when done in excess. But when you get down to it... Truely unique games are pretty much unheard of these days.. What makes games these days are pretty graphics, game play and genre.. for the largest pay its game play (Playability.. how fun it is/control setup/game detail ect..) which is the largest factor if a game is successful or not. The only real thing about Doom III is that the title has a history of ground breaking quality of innovation in the FPS genre of games. Any game built on that engine should be able to obtain equivilant sales figures.. Which that is the only thing that MS or 99.9999% of the software development industry really cares about.
Who needs WiFi when we can have Packet Over Sheep! http://datacomm.org/PoS-InternetDraft.txt
Hogwash.
Run setup.exe in the doom folder and it asks you:
Keyboard only
Keyboard & Mouse
Keyboard & Joystick
The XBOX supports whatever software is on the DVD. It would be trivial for Microsoft and NVidia to port NVidia's OpenGL drivers from Win2000 to the XBOX and stick them on the DVD.
DirectX *isn't* built into the XBOX. It is just software libs on the DVD of each game. The OpenGL driver would work exactly the same.
This isn't an issue that Microsoft couldn't fix (with NVidia's help) in the span of a week.
You're forgetting one thing, a GC port is possible, because the CPU is very similar to the Mac. True, it has a custom ArtX (now owned by ATI) gpu, but, assuming that Doom 3 supports macs, porting it to GC is plausible. And the other question is how long is the deal that Id has to sign with microsoft. they could have an exclusive xbox port for a year or two, and maybe then port to GC, which will still be around, as nintendo won't drop support until after they have a next gen console established to replace it.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html