Slashdot Mirror
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!
I am sure Id will make it available for other platforms.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
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.) Please! At least the Submitters should read their stories!
Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect. -- Linus Torvalds
They want XBox to be the only console that gets DoomIII. It would still be available for the PC. It plainly says so in the article.
I wouldn't believe for a minute that the PS2 could handle graphics anything like what Doom III is supposed to have. That even the XBox can handle it without significantly reducing the detail would supprise me. So MS is trying to keep Nintendo from producing a crippled port of their own. We care again...why?
Don't trust the slashdot editors, they usually screw it up. If you RTA, which in this case takes only a few seconds, you'll see that the rumour is only that it will be available on X-Box and no other *consoles* - the deal MS is supposedly offering concerns exclusivity in the console market and nothing else. And if the rumour is true, it's basically free money for id, since they were not planning to port it to any other consoles anyway.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
I hardly see anything wrong with buying exclusive rights for games and development houses in order to make your console more attractive to the consumer. Nintendo did this (bought Rare), and I thought Sony did something similar with Square. This is hardly new behavior, and there's nothing inherently wrong with this. See it as a method of adding value by buying rights to things.
If you want Doom3 on a console, you'll have to buy an Xbox. That's the plan. It's not monopolistic, nor is it morally wrong. It's just a good way of doing business.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
Considering that John Carmack wrote a ways back that the XBox probably _did_ have the hardware to handle Doom3, albeit cut down a touch, I don't really see your theory having much support in reality.
Remember, the console only has to run it at 640x480, no AA, and on only one set of hardware. Hand-tweaked assembly isn't going to happen for each computer platform, but I certainly could see it for a single console. How the leaked Doom3 alpha runs on your P4 2.4ghz is not really a good measure of how the final version might run on an XBox (or PC, for that matter).
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
If Microsoft splashes enough money id would bite. Like everyone id has it's price. When money comes into play everyone is a whore.
-----
One is born into aristocracy, but mediocrity can only be achieved through hard work.
I feel terrible having to say this, as I have long given the slashdot editors the benefit of the doubt, but CmdrTaco's comment here about using the mouse just goes to prove that they don't even read the articles that they're posting. It was said numerous times, as the poster above pointed out, that it would still be out for PC, and if the article was read before being posted on slashdot, CmdrTaco's comment would not be as it is now. I've lost a lot of confidence in this site today. That said, it'd be terrible if Doom III came out for XBox only as far as console is concerned. Still, how many people actually play FPS games on console compared to PC? I don't think it would be a drastic thing.
Keep in mind that Microsoft has a long and rich tradition of buying anyone that makes better products than they do that they can't otherwise quash.
Remember Bungie, once pretty much the only significant Mac-only gaming company?
IIRC, id is a privately-owned company, but what if *you* were Carmack and MS offered to fund *your* rocket-making experiment, plus more Ferraris? Would you at least consider an exclusive license on one game?
I mean, here's what I'm saying. Carmack is a really damn good software engineer, and id is a really good company. Carmack's done tons and tons of work for Linux and other platforms -- he's been a powerful OpenGL ally, he's pushed Linux gaming, wrote large portions of the XFree86 GLX 3d driver for my Matrox card as volunteer work, has released all his games crossplatform (and I think id has consistently lost money on Linux releases). Lots of interest in Linux gaming came about *because* of his work, so he's indirectly responsible for much Linux gaming.
Yet, does him doing all this justify everyone expecting him to say no to lots of money *again*?
May we never see th
Frankly, I don't know if either the PS2 or GC could handle Doom III. The PS2 doesn't have as much horsepower, and the GC's graphics core is rather fixed-function. Frankly, even on the XBox, the graphics will be diminished, as the XBox's GF3 core is a far cry from the GeForceFX and the Radeon 9700/9800 cores, which are more or less required to have decent performance with all the options on. Doom III has a ridiculous list of features, including stencil shadows, which generally triple the polycount of a given scene.
I personally could care less if ANY of the consoles get Doom III. I'm a big console fan, but some genres (namely FPS's and RTS's) are just better with PC-style input devices. By the same token, I'd probably never buy Soul Calibur or DOA or Zelda for the PC, if they ever came out.
Lex orandi, lex credendi.
Exploration of space is much more important than monopoly issues on the entertainment market.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
As long as that clause does not also include "no Linux version" or something similar, I really don't care.
That this is like Sony making GTA PS2 exclusive. It means X-Box will be the only console it is sold on, but come on, the x-Box just doesn't have the gfx card for it. This is bullshit. If it does make it out on X-Box then it's going to look pretty nasty.
CmdrTaco's comment here about using the mouse just goes to prove that they don't even read the articles that they're posting.
This is CmdrTaco we are talking about. He is the king of dupes, he doesn't even read his own site.
You mean MS products like Windows? Id's main market is on Microsoft products.
Exactly! Id Software is John Carmack and John Carmack is Id Software. John Carmack is the kind of guy that has his games ported to Linux out of the goodness of his heart, not because it is making him money.
Furthermore, John Carmack is also the same guy that releases his game engines under the GPL, once they are past their prime. Finally, John Carmack has also worked on open source projects... if I remember correctly, he helped develop Matrox drivers for Linux.
Also throw in the fact that the openness of the PC allows and the openness of Id Software's previous games veritably created the mod scene that spawned such things as Threewave CTF, Team Fortress, Rocket Arena... and arguably Half-Life, Counter-Strike, etc... Not releasing a PC port would kill this aspect of the community, or at least it would leave Id Software out of it.
Well, it *is* monopolistic, but that doesn't implicitly mean it is illegal (moral is another question altogether). Unless of course, the monopoly is *illegal*, and in this case it has been shown that microsoft has used illegal tactics to protect its monopoly from free and fair competition.
It wouldn't even be illegal for MS to take all its profits from selling its OSs and give it to id in order to seal the exclusive console deal - unless MS is shown to have an illegal monopoly in OSs (which they have). Even with the illegal OS monopoly, they could make the deal as long as the funds came from a product where an illegal monopoly wasn't held. For example, if the funds actually came from their console business (which is impossible since it hasn't made any money). The whole point is, are they using the unfair/illegal advantage they have in the OS market to enter markets they would otherwise be unable to enter. And I think it is safe to say that without their OS business they would be unable to continue to fund a console business that has been nothing but a money hole.
What makes you say it's not true? Did you read the article at all anyway? The article states that Microsoft is courting id Software to get Doom 3 to be a console exclusive on XBox. What's so unbelievable on that? I wouldn't doubt that Microsoft is courting them. Why wouldn't they? The game will obviously still be out on PC (as the article also states). Regardless, XBox is the only logical console to port the game to as it would look like ass on a PS2. And id would make a pretty penny off of it from MS, as well.
Doesn't J.C. post here? Might he not be a little miffed at the unnecessary backlash and flood of emails he will likely get due to the editor's inability to RTFA? I hope so.
1) Your analysis is based on bad assumptions so your result is way off. 2) You're a sick bastard for fucking a horse.
If you actually read things, you'd realize that people are talking about the exclusive console version of the game. It's getting released on the PC no matter what. id isn't stupid.
The PS2, OTOH, is about half as capable as the Xbox, and has a graphics system with almost nothing in common with the PC cards Doom3 is programmed for.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.