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Factor 5 Brings DivX To Xbox
The game and game-tool development company Factor 5, well-known for their early Amiga shooter Turrican, as well as Star Wars:Rogue Leader for Gamecube and Nintendo's Musyx sound system, have announced that they're partnering with DivX Networks to make a DivX development kit for Xbox game developers. This means forthcoming Xbox titles can use the efficient DivX for their video streaming. Factor 5 have previously launched a similar SDK for Gamecube - are there any recent/forthcoming GC titles using it yet?
EHEH!
-n
http://www.remix.net/
No.
third post
Rogue Squadron 3: Rebel Strike will featrue DivX on the GCN. And, the rumored Pilotwings game that F5 is developing may use it, as well.
Sounds a little pointless to me with the xbox's DVD9
9GB dvds. Something like this on the gamecube with its paltry 1.5GB sounds like a MUCH better idea.
most video on the gamecube is heavily compressed, almost as if you're watching a gif slideshow, if this came to the gamecube, there would probably be more fmv intensive games like final fantasy etc.
Having directly programmed the fmv components for a recent #1 all formats game on ps2, gamecube and xbox I feel qualified to speak about this.
The gamecube motion-jpeg like player which you can get with the licensed kits can be a little awkward to set up. However, only a days worth of awkward. After that I was very pleased with the quality and compression ratio that I got with it (you have to use a 3rd party jpeg image compressor tool and make some batch processing files).
Same with the x-box player. You have to use horrible windows media 8 tools though, and the documentation is lacking.
I found it harder to control the quality of the movies on the x-box, and there was a bug in the supplied software library which caused occasional freezes if the movie player was run at 30Hz refresh (not a problem for us since we were at 60Hz, but hey...).
Tech support from both Microsoft and Nintendo was great.
Factor 5 have made some great audio tools, having a bundled solution from them is bound to be a win for those dev houses that don't already have their code and tool paths in place.
Now if it does PS2 as well, it is a real winner.
I thought that Factor 5 was considered 2nd party for nintendo? Seems awfully strange that they would do anything for Xbox. I'd feel really bad if Nintendo pulled a Sega. It might be a good idea, but I would be sad
I'm quite curious what prompted Factor 5 to do this. Factor 5 hasn't done any work for a non Nintendo system in at least 5 years - at least as far back as the N64 Rogue Squadron (ignoring PC ports of some of their games).
They've generally been considered to be an unofficial Nintendo second party for years. I think the story is Nintendo made an offer, but they turned it down only because it would've meant they would have to end their relationship with LucasArts and wouldn't be able to make Star Wars games anymore. But they've been very heavily involved with Nintendo - they were the only outside developer to receive the N64 microcode from Nintendo, and they worked with Nintendo to create the sound system for the GameCube.
So why are they touching the Xbox?
What I really would like to see is the ability to play DIVX files burned onto cdrs on my Xbox. Now that would be wonderful. I have so many random Divx files of random junk off of the internet that I'd love to show people on my TV and not drag them to my computer. Let me know when I can play DIVX files as I'll buy games no matter what they use as a medium for their cutscenes.
Give it a look
Google for xbmp / xbox media player. CD-Rs are a bit hit and miss but cdrw's / smb shares work perfectly.
Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
Ok heres a question... why is there no public SDK for the XBox. It seems like that sort of thing only helps the success of a platform.
Plus writing your own XBox games would be sweet
Anyone know of one out there?
they have a few different classic titles that are available for downloading for free, legally...
;P
they even thank the emulator community for keeping them alive all these years.
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away