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Microsoft's Real Plan For XNA Gaming Domination?
h0tblack writes "While many have heard about the XNA 'game software development platform' from Microsoft's announcements at GDC earlier this year, the full scope of their plans are only just becoming clear. Eurogamer has a surprisingly candid interview with J Allard covering the latest plans from Redmond. XNA isn't a rehash of DirectX tools for the Xbox2, PC and WinCE devices after all, it's a full-on assault on the gaming world, with the prize being complete dominance of the market. The site also has a BitTorrent of the interview, since it was originally recorded in video form."
Micrsofts plan is a "complete dominance of the market." This is new...
Because, you know, speculation about Microsoft taking over the world is sooo 90's.
Now is the time, if any, for people to start making games work in Linux as best as possible. If something isn't done soon, all the gaming manufacturers will start building games to work with this system and make them completely unusable in Linux.
Surely MS doesn't want to enable a lot of independent game developers...
...Complete domination is never good for the consumer (at least not often, because competition usually spurs innovation). However, I doubt Microsoft will dominate the video game market that easily. I wonder if it'll lead to better games, at least in the short run?
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Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
Is it just me, or are the folk at microsoft trying to live out some sick demented childhood fantast? "So what are we going to do this week brain?" "The same thing we do every week pinky - take over the world!" Agh
Hasn't it been readily apparent that MS can stand up like Ellsworth Toohey, admit their evil intent, and all we do is gasp and accept it?
How nice of them...trying to swallow another sector. All of you that bought an XBOX, and didn't mod it. For Shame... Everyone go buy a Gamecube now, even if you have one, buy a spare. Don't let M$ gain control of this market, speak with you wallet.
Ubuntu- Linux for human beings.
i'm sure microsoft wants to expand this lineup for the xbox2. but hey, if you have the best product out there, and the best game developers are making the best games for your system... you've got to be doing something right.
...or just spending a ton of cash...
Microsoft is slowly learning in the console arena, but one lesson they absolutely need to do to make the XBox2 the dominant player is to get as far as possible from being a PC-Like system, as far away as possible from PC game ports, and keep every single game they can get their hands on exclusive for the life of that particular console if possible. Not just 3 months, but years. They also need to court Japanese developers, strike deals with the larger companies such as Square/Enix, get more games from KOEI, pay large sums for ATLUS to translate games specifically for them. They need niche RPG titles out the ass to pull in the anime geeks, they need to do a LOT to win the minds of all the Japanese gamers that ultimately drive more than half this market right now. And if they can get teams specifically for adding in Live! support to these devs games, its a good start.
Is that anything like a mosquito making a "full-on assault" on a human foot?
It should be
"Gee, Bill what do you want to do tonight?"
"The same thing we do every night Steve. Try to take over the world!"
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Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
Who cares? Most of the truly innovative games were written by people and teams that made their own development system. Heck, SimCity was a development environment -- it started life as the in-house level editor for Raid on Bungling Bay.
Before the Xbox was released, Microsoft tried to sell Sony a development kit that would allow Sony (and their 3rd party developers) to develop games on a standard platform.
;).
If you read the book "Opening the Xbox", Bill Gates was pretty irritated and confused when Sony turned them down flat. Why would they turn down Microsoft? Oh, sure - it would also make these games easier to port to a MS based system in the future - but MS was trying to help Sony!
Anyway. Sony saw through the game. And while XNA might be the greatest thing in the world to folks who want to port games between the Xbox, the PC, the Pocket PC - it's probably not something that Sony and Nintendo give a big rats ass about.
That's not to say that Microsoft's plan is a bad one. When Thief III comes out, I'll probably get the Xbox version. I've got a Pentium 800 as my old "game" machine, and I haven't turned it on for about 6 months now (I made the OS X switch some time ago). The Gamecube, PS2 and Xbox let me play what I want and I don't have to spend $300 - $600 every 12 months to keep up my video card/ram/processor/motherboard/whatever.
MS probably realizes this; I'm willing to bet their seeing higher Xbox sales on Xbox/PC titles (such as Knights of the Old Republic). So for games, I'll expect to see more of their emphasis to the Xbox.
Which is kind of a problem - it's still a major money loser for MS. It could be a winner in the long run, but will that means they'll have to open it up a bit and start letting people use it as a PC like system, which could eat into their PC sales profits? That could be a dual edged sword, since that means people could get used to using a "console" as a computer.
Eh. Either way, I'll just keep my eye on the situation. The best games will rule (which looks to be Nintendo for the next 9-12 months, with some nice looking gems on the other platforms), and I'm not about to give up my Powerbook any time soon
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
There is going to be a lot in this interview that is going to be taken out of context however the thoughts this then brings is that it moves away from device dependance. Allard is really talking about taking MMO games away from Windows PC's and moving the functions to different devices. Most functions will work on the PC (There is no reason why this wont work on OS:X or *Nix) however simple things like trades could be done via a web interface or via your phone. As one who bought Gold of a Broker in UO This would have made it a lot easier to accomplish if i was at work when the broker was online. Just punch up the limited interface on the P900 or Palm or IPaq and off you go for the trade.
Just some food for thought about the possibilities.
The MyTh - I am a figment of the Imagination - [Im Probably even not here]
The article's author hints that Microsoft's XNA will almost be a "gaming OS". A set of standards that various consumer electronic companies can build consoles for.
This will bring to console gaming the unreliability of the Desktop PC. An often cited benefit Apple has over the PC platform is that it knows its hardware. There are no wild cards. Console game developers have been able to count on this until now. You test and test, on a given company's box and you know your good.
If XNA takes off, look for crashes, due to one Manufacturer cutting corners, or another trying to add a beefier new edition of some chip.
There are some things where standards are great, and being able to commoditize the hardware is a great benefit to consumers. On the other hand gamers, who as a whole have demonstrated a willingness to spend for top of the line systems every few years are probably not looking for a less expensive systems at the cost of quality.
No doubt odds are in favor of something like this winning the mass market. In the mass market, the commodity item always succeeds, VHS over Meta, PC over Mac, etc. _However_, one of the console system may yet survive this if they can succeed in filling a niche in for a superior gaming experience that only a few percent of the market care about and build a fiercly, loyal following. -- Just as Apple Computers exists today.
--Aaron Greenberg
We all no the M$ isn't going to do Linux any favours, but which other company is releasing a complete gaming platform for Linux?
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
I don't like the idea of Microsoft controlling gaming but maybe they're on to something. This could help small developers because they won't have to create a new game for every platform on a limited budget. I think it's an ingenious idea, I just wish it wasn't done with continued world domination in mind.
Currently, the PC games market is dying. Too many poor quality and poorly tested games, high cost of entry for decent performance, and low cost of entry for consoles have all taken their toll.
The console markets are flourishing. While there are still many poor quality games, they are fewer in quantity due to the extra cost involved in making console titles available (platform fees, development kits) as well as the certification requirements for each platform.
To be honest, Microsoft establishing a true "base line" for PC's with DXNext/Longhorn, creating a common controller standard and common API's between the Xbox and PC can only help the gaming consumer in the long run.
Currently, the Xbox API's handle several things that are basically "random" on the PC: save game handling, data caching, controller handling, patching, etc. By making those API's available to PC developers, PC gamers will start getting a consistent feel for games (My Saved Games are here; an update is available...BAM! done; I pop a disk in and it only takes up disk space while it's running.)
The PC Live service will most likely require that participating titles certify themselves, similar to how Gamespy works with titles to integrate their service into new titles.
The common controller standard will ensure a base set of functionality, allow controller manufacturers to utilize the same chipset for console and PC controllers (reducing their COGS), and give OSS projects a stable hardware target to support.
Besides, given that the API's will have to be public (ala DX) in order to propogate, it's not like an OSS version of the API's will be that hard to "WINE" about.
RomSteady - I came, I saw, I tested. GamerTag: RomSteady / http://www.romsteady.net
Who compares themselves to 3DO on purpose? The 3DO idea fell apart specifically because you can't dodge the redundancy cycle. Every X years you have to push out a whole new version. If you don't, you get left behind. The 3DO "we design it, you build it" idea added way to many delays into the process. And if you try incremental upgrades, you piss-off customers and developers. Are they going to make voluntary comparisons to the 32X next?
Microsoft has been kicking a significant amount of ass without following your advice. I think they will survive somehow in the future.
Jesus people! this is competition! It's good that these companies compete. If microsoft blows nintendo and sony out of the console market, then start complaining. last time I checked, both of those companies were still kicking Xbox's ass. I know the idea around here seems to be to bitch whenever microsoft does something, but in this case they're still trying to gain market share, not kick everyone out. I think these complaints are premature.
and no, any replies pointing out how microsoft has taken control of other markets in the past (really only windows and office) are not insightful, they're redundant!
Meta? It's beta as in betamax you twat!
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
I'm serious about this, Microsfot lacks soul. I'd say that Nintendo has the most in the gaming industry, though in recent years they seem to be holding more and more to post successes instead of creating new things which as long as they do it well is not a problem in my book. Even Sony has more soul than MS, there is more heart in their products. One of my favorite games is Halo so don't get me wrong, I do believe MS can turn out good games. I really do doubt however that they will every really dominate in the field.
vampirical
Why is there an assumption that Linux won't be successful if high FPS games aren't available for it ?
I don't care to play games under Linux (as I don't play games in general, they just don't hold my attention for some reason (probably biological)), so I don't care whether commercial games are supported. To me, Linux is already successful, and has been since I first started using it in 1993, as it has done everything I've wanted it to do.
"Success" is a relative word, and is used to measure something against a set of criteria. Change any of those criteria, and the former "success" might become a failure.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
Quoting the article:
J Allard: [...] Fast forward four or five years when every game is online
Maybe it's just me and my 20some-year gaming history, but I don't see single-player games going away anytime soon. Online games are fine if you have a few (or several) hours to blow, but if you just want something to relax with for 15 or 30 minutes I doubt that's what you're looking for.
Plus, of course, there's the entire commuting/riding/etc contingent. This may not be such a big deal in the US, where if you're moving, you're usually driving, but here in Japan, it's typical to have 1-2 hours of "dead time" a day on trains, buses and the like. Plenty of people play games during this time (one of the latest rages is "Gyakuten Saiban"--"Turnaround Court Case", I guess--and I can't decide whether that's a bad thing, but that's a different story); but who's going to go to all the bother of logging into an online service when they'll have to drop out as soon as they leave the train?
The reason why new hardware comes out every so often is because the graphics get better. With better graphics come new ways to program them. If you have completely different hardware, then why use outdated and slow methodologies to program to it when you can make the thing go faster otherwise.
.NET.
Gaming is too tied to the bare metal improvements to warrant a middle layer such as XNA. Microsoft will have to continue to rely upon tactics like buying companies and twisting their arms to get people to play on second-rate machines in terms of technology. XNA doesn't solve shit in terms of upgradeability. It just makes stuff easier for Microsoft, just like
Microsoft has tried to revolutionize the gaming world through radical software redesign once before, in the mid-to-late 90's, with a project called Talisman. Microsoft had assembled a team of CG scientists that ripped the heart out of the industry, and they put them to work on this project.
The idea of Talisman was that each frame of a game is very much like the next one. In fact, rather than render the next frame from scratch, it might be possible to do projection of the previous frames image to get the next frame. Even if this couldn't be done for the whole image, it could certainly be done for part of it. For example, in a flight simulator, even if the ground is not flat, it is piecewise flat, and those pieces could be 2D-transformed from one frame to the next without the expense of full 3D rendering.
Microsoft hired the best people in the field of DVE (digital video effects) including Steve Gabriel and Alvy Ray Smith, almost certainly to work on this project. Steve Gabriel built the Ampex ADO, the first high-quality digital video effects machine, in the early 80's. Alvy Ray Smith wrote the Siggraph paper on 2-pass transforms, the foundation upon which the ADO is built.
Well. It turns out that rendering texture-mapped polygons can be done very very quickly indeed, and the analysis necessary to "save" time using the Talisman ideas was exceedingly complex and expensive. In the best case, Talisman might have sped things up by a factor of 2 -- about six months time given the fervid pace of graphics board development.
I don't think of this as particularly reassuring, though -- Microsoft usually fails a couple of times before achieving domination. Perhaps Talisman was Rev 1, and XBOX is Rev 2...
Thad Beier
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
I can't see why Microsoft are going to charge extortionate fees or demand additional royalties for using something like this. Look at the model for Visual Studio. Does it make development easier? Yes. Do MS expect royalties from distributables? No. Does it tie you in to using Windows? Yes. The purpose of XNA is to make it easier for people to create games on Microsoft platforms. MS then make money on the OS or, in the case of consoles, from the sale of the game itself (just like Playstation get money from every PS game sold). Seems pretty transparent to me and hopefully good news for the smaller development studios.
I'm not so sure. The game industry is having trouble releasing new titles. Now it is more or less accepted by industry that the platforms can do just about anything you need them to do. More fancy graphics, more FPS, more... Whatever, is no longer the issue execpt in them of lead time. It's the game content that matters because people are no longer impressed by incomplete games. As far as i am concerned, if M$ can deliver good game, why not? Their attempt to "control" the gaming market through a techological gimmik is funny at best and shouldn't be something to worry about.
If your into FPS you know how long it's been since a decent shooter has been made by one of the "old school" recognized giants of the field. We are hungry for new victims!
Id has never been the same since they lost that maniac Romero. He needed to be reigned in but not fired. Without his eccentric edge their company lost about 90% of their charisma and talent.
Sierra somehow created a game that was even better than the original Quake, and has yet to recover. It's like Lucas trying to create a film as good as The Empire Strikes Back. It can't realisticly be done without an AMAZING effort.
Looking Glass seemed to be the last glimmer of hope but they buckled soom after their incredible Thief series ( now in the less the capable hands of Ion Storm).
If Microsoft, the company responsible for making dial up networking work so smoothly with Quake making it the FIRST FPS being played by tens of Thousands online, can do a better job at cranking out games, so be it.
Microsoft only got into the console industry because it can smell a good ripoff and Sony/Nintendo/Sega and all the other console designers have been doing it for years with no complaints. When Pac-Man came out for Atari and cost $60 back in 1980 nobody said a word when it didn't look a thing like the arcade game. It was all we had and we loved it because the alternative was spending $60 every other week at the arcade.
If Microsoft can meet the average gamers lust for blood then we will honor them.
When Sony and EA have huge market share it's okay, but as soon as MS wants to be competitive it's sinister? They have to make a profit in gaming or get out and this is just another step in that path. Would it be better to just have Sony or Nintendo running gaming or have strong competition?
Halo was actually Bungee...(a gaming company bought by Microsoft). Originally it was going to be targetted at Mac and PCs as well.
Not really. They're still *very* far behind Sony as far as installed base goes, and I think they're still behind Nintendo by a small margin - though with current sale rates that won't be for long.
But you say "kicking ass" like it's a definitive win for them, which it most definitely is not. The original PlayStation was Sony "kicking a significant amount of ass" back in the day. MS hasn't come close to that sort of coup.
± 29 dB
What's the deal with being online?
Online games are huge but usually equire enormous time commitment. Many occasional gamers like to spend an hour or two a week (say) playing games. With most MMORGs or online FPSs this is impossible, you either play all the time or not at all, especially since there is a monthly fee associated with it. If you play occasionally you either get your butt kicked all the time or you can't keep up with your friends.
My theory is that online multiplayer games will saturate their audience pretty soon, if it hasn't happened already. How many MMORGs can you play at once?
1) How would it be different from Windows? If it's just a set of standards, protocals, and software that can run on a ton of different types of hardware, how exactly is it different from Windows, or Linux? Is the console release cycle replaced by incremental PC-style upgrades? If so, I'd have to mark that has a huge disadvantage. I do not want to have to upgrade my console system. I don't particularly that every 2-5 years I drop another $150-200 on a new console and peripherals, if I don't have to spend $500 and build an entire machine every several years. The beauty of console systems is that they Just Work, no having to check "system requirements", no driver conflicts, ect. Far from creating a "standard" for developers to follow to improve game stability, ect., they now are encouraged to write code that may run on multiple platforms.
2. Do we really need to play Halo on a cellphone, hand-held game console, PDA and refridgerator? For some games I could imagine that having some functionality/interaction with the actual game would be nice, but I would fear this would become a serious distraction to developers who often seem to have a difficult time just creating a single stable, fun game. Even with a set of "standards" being introduced, it's more work for the developer to build the kitchen sink into their game. I question how many gamers would actually have the time and inclination to take advantage most of these features... is it going to increase sales of games that much? I fear it could eat into developer resources that should be spent creating a good game. It shouldn't be that hard to develop a good game for a three different platforms as long as each of those platforms don't vary in terms of hardware or software configuration at all (as is currently the case.)
3. Do we really trust Microsoft to do a good job? Microsoft has a poor track record for producing stable and secure products. Though I've been skeptical of the idea of trojans, ect. that spread through gaming consoles up until now, I would not be surprised if in several years we saw a worm reap havoc because too many people didn't run "XFS Update" often enough.
4. Is this legal? Microsoft is a monopoly. DirectX is a part of Windows, which is essentially the subject of their monopoly. Outright admitting that they are attempting to dominate the market with a standard that they own, and using their existing "clout" with DirectX, ect. seems to me to raise a few red flags. What I find ironic is the guy talks about the consumers not having a choice--since when has that ever been a concern of Microsoft's? And I do think I have a coice. For console systems, I can choose a GameCube, or a PlayStation 2, or an X-Box. On any of those systems I can choose from a multitude of games from a multitude of developers. Or I can choose to game on a PC (which I can build myself or buy from any number of OEMs), running Windows or Linux. Or I can choose to game on a Mac. Is this not choice? If a substantial number of these options were replaced by XNS, just how is my choice broadened? I do not understand.
Not really trying to be a Microsoft basher, but I'd be expressing some serious doubts even if it were Nintendo (and I'm something of a fanboy) proposed something like this. The fact that it's Microsoft makes me even more skeptical.
I got one letter right, at least.
A few of the guys around Microsoft realized that putting out an XBox 2 that isn't compatible with XBox 1 will almost surely cost them whatever market share they have invested billions so far in the money pit known as the XBox division. There's not really anything they can do about it. But they are now wisely looking forward to XBox 2 to XBox 3 (if there will be such a thing) compatibility with the XNA effort.
How exactly is Joe Gamer going to feel when his 500 bucks worth of XBox games (some of which write directly to the metal (around Direct 3D)) won't work in XBox 2?
In light of the fact that XBox 2 won't be compatible with XBox 1 (as both PS2->PS3 and GC->GC3 will be), I would sell my XBox today (if I had one) and buy a PS2 or GC.
"Cell" is the code-name for an advanced microprocessor under development by Sony, IBM and Toshiba. The technology uses massive data bandwidth and floating point capabilities, coupled with a parallel processing architecture, to deliver what IBM said will be a "quantum-leap innovation to entertainment applications."
Through a deal with Sony, IBM said that it plans to develop a digital content creation environment, the first computing application planned for the Cell processor, with the first prototype Cell-based workstations in Q4.
IBM intends to develop the Cell-based workstations to power digital content creation, while Sony will lead the development of the Cell-based operating environment by providing the architecture, algorithms, middleware and data structure for tools needed to create digital content for movies and computer entertainment applications. "
Why use a PC-centered development library like the one for the Xbox, when you can use a set of tools that broadly cover games through to movie production -- tools created by a chip producer (IBM) and for a movie company (Sony)?
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Dominating the gaming market is probably MS's biggest opportunity right now to grow it's market share beyond PCs and operating systems.
The reason for this is simple: Microsoft's proprietary graphics and sound APIs are lightyears ahead of rivals and open source.
Windows destroys Linux when it comes to 3D graphics and sound. It's a combination of hardware support and mature APIs. Windows also destroys the Mac on price/performance ratio because of open hardware.
Now Microsoft wants to essentially take the mature APIs and hardware support that they have under Windows and box that up into a universal gaming standard that can be licensed to Sony, Nintendo, etc. MS also gets to write and sell development tools for this standard and to license the right to distribute games using it. So, they get to collect a toll in three places:
1) Development tools
2) Game distribution
3) Licensing the API to console makers and/or other computer companies like Apple.
Best of all... all three of these places are invisible to the consumer! This is another plus for MS, as they have engendered a lot of ill will by collecting such conspicuous taxes on the IT world with their name and logo plastered everywhere. Nobody likes an egomaniac, and getting "behind the scenes" is one way MS could keep revenue coming in and at the same time shed some of this image through simple invisibility.
If the OSS world wants a piece of the gaming market, then people need to really get up off their butts and start developing a mature 3D graphics and sound API. There's a good start in place in the form of ALSA and OpenGL2, but the follow-through needs to be there. Getting 3D to work right and perform well under X is still painful. It has to work "out of the box" folks. It may already be too late.
This has very little to do with porting games at all -- XNA doesn't particularly make it much easier to port a game to a different platform. The author of the article on Eurogamer makes some far fetched comments to that effect; which seems to indicate he has no idea what development is like, or what XNA will really provide.
The whole point of XNA is provide a solid common library, which focuses on common game development tasks. This allows different platforms to very easily interoperate, but does not make it significantly easier to port games to other platforms. For instance, making a set of games that share the same game world and are all Live aware becomes quite simple, but porting a Xbox version of that same game to PC does not suddenly become a simple task.
I don't see how people are jumping to the conlusion that providing XNA and reference designs is economically infeasible. Certainly Microsoft would like to create a reference design platform in the future. Yes, Microsoft thinks this can start with with XNA. Yes, it's a good idea.
The whole pointing in having a reference design is to increase interoperability, reduce development time, and reduce development cost. If another company makes a device using a reference design, it won't take your suggested 3 months to port a game to run on this new device -- it will take zero months, zero weeks, zero days, zero hours... no time at all since it will run on that device immediately.
You don't have to rewrite anything in a PC game to have your game run a different manufacturer of GeForce 4 cards -- it works on the reference design boards, it works on Asus boards, it works on Hercules Guillemot boards, and it works on everyother board based on the NVIDIA reference design. Does this fact suddenly make NVIDIA foolish for abandoning their board manufacturing business in favour of performing just the design tasks and chip fabrication? ATI seems to be following a similar plan these days as well -- platform and reference design work.
If Bob decides to buy and use a reference design for MasterBlasterSuperConsole, he's essentially creating a MasterBlasterSuperConsole -- not another platform. Say the original MasterBlasterSuperConsole designers still sell their version of the MasterBlasterSuperConsole and everyone likes Bob's MasterBlasterSuperConsole better. The consumers proceed to buy more of Bob's than the original by a large margin. Are the designers of the original sitting on the street crying? No, they're taking in a killing from Bob's MasterBlasterSuperConsole since he has to pay the original designers a very significant percentage of his profits to them. Is Bob upset? Not really, he didn't have to design much -- just copy the reference design and add a few tweaks here and there.
There are a lot of companies that operate in this fashion -- ARM in one of the largest microprocessor developers in the world without even selling microprocessors. IBM also licences out it's microprocessor designs to other companies (the Power architecture seen in PowerPC, amongst others, is a good example). Ericsson isn't loosing any sleep from becoming increasingly a design house, providing specifications and reference designs to companies that specialize in mass production. There has literally thousands of companies that do business in this very fashion with great success.
Microsoft and Sony have been doing this for decades in various different industries -- it's one of the reasons they have been so exceptionally successful. I wholely agree with Allard, it's just a matter of when this will happen.
...are standardization and reliability.
Console graphic programmers know exactly what hardware they will be dealing with, and what that hardware is capable of. They can test and tweak to refine the framerate and level of detail, and push the hardware to its limits.
Likewise, consoles and their games do not require configuration, multiple driver versions, or myriad other things that PC gamers need to deal with.
Having a dozen different consoles that support this standard would mean that games that perform well on some might not do so well on others. Developer testing and standards adheretion should rule out complete incompatibility, but it would still be no small deal of trouble for the consumer.
But then, the consumer is never high on Microsoft's list of concerns. The hardware at this point is largely irrelevant; while the leap from the graphically inadequete Nintendo 64 and Playstation to their next generation counterparts was a marked improvement, the generation after will benefit from no such revolution.
Graphic evolution only props up consoles for so long; eventually the graphics become largely ignored, and the gameplay and art design take the forefront.
I have been on a retro kick lately, and playing 8 and 16 bit games. In those days game designers had just enough machine to have decent graphics but not enough for a game to rely on them without anything interesting behind them, although plenty of games tried.
While graphics have advanced quite rapidly in the past decade, gameplay is progressing much more slowly. Which certainly makes sense; whereas art is a factor of time and hardware, game design is a much more complicated beast to wrangle with.
Hopefully those in charge will realize that graphics are nearing a glass ceiling, and will sllow more freedom to game designers to make interesting and unique gameplay experiences, rather than relying on the old assumption that polygon and texture layers directly relate to sales.
Why use a PC-centered development library like the one for the Xbox, when you can use a set of tools that broadly cover games through to movie production -- tools created by a chip producer (IBM) and for a movie company (Sony)?
because it's looking like it'll require pain staking manual optimization to make ti look good. The PS2 architecture is still competative if your willing to put int he effeort to manage all the proccessors. Having a machine with 4 identical proccessors will be equally complex. Only a few companies bother (hideo and konami in MGS and a handfull of others. Companies liek Bioware have sworn off PS2 developement because it nearly killed their programmers.)
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
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.
"I question how many gamers would actually have the time and inclination to take advantage most of these features... is it going to increase sales of games that much?"
uhhh, yeah it WILL increase the sale of video games that much... you wanna know why? BECAUSE I CAN'T WAIT TO SEE THE GOOSE BUMPS ON A MOTHER FUCKER IN DOOM 167.2!
what's wrong with more work anyway?
fact: microsoft > linux
"The first thing we've learned about Xbox in this dimension is that the average number of rooms in Xbox visits is about 1.85, meaning that a kid will bring it down to the big screen TV when his dad's on a business trip for a week, or bring it over to their mum's house for the weekend or his friend's house for a sleepover, so the console moves."
Going to put on my Microsoft-is-evil hat here and ask, how the heck do they know this? A possibility: when connecting to xbox live, it sends the id of the box along with which video connections you are using. Jimmy's xbox was using analog video yesterday, now it's connected on component video, he must have changed to his dad's plamsa screen.
1.85 rooms... what a bizarre stat to pull out of your ass and throw out there.
Once again, this Microsoft representative is touting choice of hardware platform as a primary advantage of XNA. But in the past Microsoft have also claimed that Windows gives the customer the choice, which is obviously a blatant lie in the same context.
But imagine for a second if Microsoft really did end up getting something like XNA standardised. Then we might see implementations of it on other platforms, even if such implementations are technically illegal (think MP3.) It would make game development cheaper again, and knock-offs of the development environment for these standard games might even open up the market for hobby game development again, which has been more or less shut off for years.
The idea is intriguing but I can't see Microsoft successfully implementing what it looks like they're describing. I suspect that at best, they will tie the damn thing to Direct3D, and everything will fall apart from there.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
because it's looking like it'll require pain staking manual optimization to make ti look good. The PS2 architecture is still competative if your willing to put int he effeort to manage all the proccessors. Having a machine with 4 identical proccessors will be equally complex. Only a few companies bother (hideo and konami in MGS and a handfull of others. Companies liek Bioware have sworn off PS2 developement because it nearly killed their programmers.)
The PS2 doesn't have a Cell processor. The announcements about IBM, Toshiba, and Sony working on Cell *aren't* about the PS2. Cell is about the PS3, movie making, and who knows what else.
It's curious -- OK it's obvious -- why Microsoft jumped in with XNA a few short days after IBM, Toshiba, and Sony talk about plans surrounding Cell (the hardware and the software development environment).
None of these things exist now (XNA or Cell), and only a timeline is given by IBM for Cell. If they can meet a 4th quarter release even in small developer quantities, that will be something.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Wasent the MSX standard in Japan just this - a set of standards that companies could build their game- system to play MSX cartridges.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
I always wondered how one does come to code for a console. I can imagine that today people start at the PC, learning by doing. But what happens if the PC gaming market dies, and 3D PC cards become obsolete because no one plays at the PC? How is this supposed to help new programmers gain skills? I mean, is there something like a free SDK for consoles? With emulator to test, just like it happens to be with cellphones? If not, how could I learn how to program for a PS2? I mean, I cannot imagine that Sony grants the newcomers enough time to gain the needed skills, do they?
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
Microsoft is essentially bored with the current obsession surrounding console cycles, and the obsolescence that happens every five years.
This means one of two things to me: either MS doesn't understand the market which is composed of hardcore gamers (ie, people that like gaming largely because of this so-called obsolescence, and the perpetual upgrades in graphic quality that it causes), or these hard-core gamers are no longer a significant part of the gaming market.
Given the rash of titles I've seen over the last couple of years which are lackluster at best (stuff like "Viking Invasion" or most of the other game that fills the shelves at Best Buy), I'd personally bet my money on there being a fairly large departure of the game companies from focusing on people that enjoy games and live them, to marketing (and thus creating for) the average consumer.
In essence: gaming is dead, folks. Don't expect to see the cycle of new, fun games continue. They haven't continued for some time now.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
DDE
.NET
...again.
OLE
OLE2
COM
ActiveX
COM+
MSDNA
All essentially the same technology, but just different enough to make the PHBs think those new little clicky icons were worth the upgrade, and also different enough to require the programmers to cram several months/years work in a toilet and start over.
WinG
DirectX 1
DirectX 2
DirectX 3
DirectX 4
DirectX 5
DirectX 6
DirectX 7
DirectX 8
DirectX 9
XNA
Same thing. Oh, and game developers: you know all those tool$ that work real well with those half-million $$$$$$ DirectX-based engines? They'll be clogging the toilet too.
Congratulations! Time to start over...
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Online games are huge but usually equire enormous time commitment. [...] If you play occasionally you either get your butt kicked all the time or you can't keep up with your friends.
I'm having exactly that experience in FFXI (which, FWIW, isn't as bad as others since it doesn't have general PvP). To be honest, most of the reason I still play at all is because of friends who also play--even if I can't play with them, I can pretend the game doubles as an IRC client and chat with them while I play with others. And as long as the monthly fee is low enough, it's ignorable, at least for those of us with stable incomes.
Which is why I think there's still room for at least a few more online games. Certainly, any one player will only play a couple of online games at most, but just like there are gazillions of IRC networks and multiple IM networks, different people will be interested in different games.
(That said, I still don't think online games are the ultimate form of gaming--though I have to admit getting kids to interact with other people through online games is probably better than having them playing alone . . .)
Translation: Microsoft failed to dumb down web browsing and email with WebTV, so they're going to try and turn game consoles into dumbed down PCs running their game console OS.
How can so many people say "gaming is dead"? Are you that ignorant? Gaming revenues have been going up exponentially for the past 3/4ths of a decade, surpassing the movie industry long ago, and getting bigger and bigger. While over the past couple of years we have seen the game industry try to produce massive numbers of titles that lack quality, (they are exploring the market) it is certainly going the other way, right now. Look at upcoming games....RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 will be the first truly good one of the series, Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 are coming out, MMORPG's are becoming mainstream, and more. To say gaming is dead, or even dying, is just stupid. Idiotic to say that PC gaming is dead or dying, too - PC's will be able to run games in a superior manner across the board forever, due to the nature of consoles and computers. Looking at what MS is doing with this, they of course are the first ones to see it - games will all be made for the PC, then ported to consoles. It is the easiest way....you program the best graphics, sound, everything for PC games, then you can downscale for consoles. Think this through, people. Microsoft will become huge in this arena, and everyone will bitch about them having a monopoly, because they were smart enough to see where things were going. Sound like a familiar history lesson? :)
The much antipated mmmorpg Vanguard is going to use XNA (as well as the Unreal engine). The devs (same guys who made Everquest, but left the company after Sony took over) have only good things to say about XNA. Sure, MS leaves a bad taste in my mouth, but if it helps good games get made, I'll sell my soul in a heart beat.
Mr. Gates has openly stated that he sees a disappearance of the revenue from hardware (previously ) with it becoming FREE. ('scuse me while I chuckle at his hope that hardware is faced with the same dilema Open Source has present to him in software)
Make a the gaming console common to America's living room entertainment suite, and by wrote, the rest of the world will follow suite.
Over time continue to expand the use of the XBox as a pseudo PC and people stop using the PC and network their Xboxes using said 'free' hardware.
How does his idea account for any recovery of innovation in hardware? Let alone developments in software? Wait, would he actually consider improvements in quality of software coding?
Scientia et Potentia
"Software will be the single most important force in digital entertainment over the next decade." Doesn't digital entertainment imply the use of software? Hell, TV's, VCR's DVD players have microprocessors that all use some sort of software. The menu that's invoked when you click the menu button has to come from somewhere. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Nothing new here. People ahve been pushing different content and different versions of content to business users for years. And in terms of games, it's not that new either. Not sure who started it, but square had the offline/non-heavy side-games for FF for a while, and I believe they aren't the only one. If the big 'news' here is interoperability between devices and development geared toward the different devices...that's not big news.... Especially since he didnt have the balls to come out and say: "We're working on a game server that can interact with multiple clients and game types within a specific universe". microsoft doesn't appear to currently have the skill or infrastructure to produce game servers, especially not massive ones, they couldnt even handle the chat channel for turbine in ac2.
The article seemed very very VERY pie in the sky to me about what MS would be providing to developers. Developer can already reuse/simplify textures, storyline, prop files/i18n coding, etc. Innovation would be a strong, extensible suite of template applications: FPS, RTS, MMP -- but other companies already have developed such systems/tools or are in the process of doing so...
All your preview button are belong to hello kitty.
Grandparent was referring to problems w/ the current PS2, and drawing a likeness with Cell
Fr0dicus meet sarcasm, sarcasm, fr0dicus. I'll leave you two to get acquainted.
To a developer, easy cross-platform compatibility is great. But compatibility among platforms in different markets is priceless.
I love free stuff. If I can get cross-platform development for free (or close), I'll take it. The ability to create a substantial application and have it run well on Windows, Mac OS, and Linux means I can reach a greater audience. But what XNA promises is almost impossible to resist: the ability to develop a substantial game that runs on your desktop, in your livingroom, and on your keychain -- three large markets that do not directly compete.
Applications drive an operating system; a stack of exceptional programs give consumers a reason to buy your OS. A complaint I've long had with Palm is that they haven't made it easier to develop for Palm OS. Microsoft gives its development environment away for free. In fact, it's possible to develop simple games concurrently for Windows Desktop and Pocket PC. If XNA can make it possible for a small studio such as mine to develop our more complex offerings concurrently for Windows and Pocket PC, will I care about Palm OS, Mac OS, or Linux?
What I'd like to see from companies such as Apple and PalmSource are environments like Torque, which makes it possible to write for Windows, Mac OS, and Linux by abstracting each environment. But Torque is really an ad-hoc solution (in both senses of the term); it's not a hollistic system, and it's not supported by the OS vendors. Though an awkward combination, if it were possible to develop substantial applications for Mac OS, Palm OS, and Windows, I might. But if XNA allows me to develop substantial applications for Windows, Pocket PC, and the Xbox concurrently -- three different, juicy markets -- that's even better.
We're indie. We're working on our 14th game.
It wants to own the entire standard of gaming across every platform.
Microsoft's managers still hang on to the silly dream that they can create a single platform that works for everybody. They can't. First, technically, people have needs and interests that are far too diverse to be served by any single platform. Second, even if it was technically feasible, any market like that is far too large not to attract competition--that's, after all, the purpose of a free market economy.
The only way any company can maintain dominance in a market like Microsoft does is through monopolistic practices. Microsoft could get away with that once because they succeeded when people didn't understand what was happening--but that isn't going to work again, under the scrutiny of competitors and anti-trust enforcement.
Well that's a little out of context. This whole topic is about gaming, and therefore Linux's success in gaming. I suggest, in order to make this more useful for you, that gaming has a spill on effect into new markets.
To a small extent, the success of games on Windows has put a lot of Windows PC's into the home, and by extension of familiarity, a lot of Windows PC's on managers desks and throughout companies.
Apple tries very hard at the same tactic - ever wonder why there are so many Macs in schools? Because Apple practically gives them away there.
If Linux was the premiere gaming OS, and only lamerz used Windows for gaming (not the case at the moment), Linux proliferation in single PC families would dramatically increase. Imagine if 80% of homes with PC's were running Linux, because the best gaming experience was on Linux. We can then also imagine a change in the reputation of Linux in other PC industries.
I suggest, then, that Linux would experience more success than currently if it were a better gaming platform.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
And it will use any cludge
Cudgel? Kluge?
To take over the game market, MS would basically have to buy Sony and Nintendo or at least crush them. And since the major draw for XBOX is FPS that is not going to happen since most Japanese gamers dislike or HATE FPS. I personally have seen no motivation to get an XBOX, I have a ps2, my fiance has a gamecube, and I have more games than I can play already! I figure in 20 years I might get caught up.
ok the original was: All you base are belong to us.
so, you're mod should be: All your game are belong to us.
The problem I have is with the game companies themselves because making money from games and having a constant supply of good quality games are mutually exclusive.
For starters, I don't understand why there is a necessity to constantly re-invent the wheel and create gaming engines from scratch just about each time a new game is released. Surely it would be better to throw out the source code to current gaming engines to the Internet community to see what enhancements get added as a result - sure, keep the level design, textures, etc. for a specific commercial game that uses that engine under wraps so that, as a game company, you can make money from it.
One advantage that consoles have over a PC is that developers for a console platform must constantly "push the envelope" to get the console to do more and more as time goes on - this, in turn, creates better, more efficient coding. On the PC, the expectation is that users simply upgrade hardware to meet the requirements of a new game, no games developers get long enough with a particular, say, graphics chipset to fully understand what they can get it to do and, as a result, we, the end users, end up with sloppily coded games that need constant upgrades to get them to work properly.
My point is that we need a return to the good old days of the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum & Amiga when it was possible for "bedroom programmers" to create good quality games. Sure, games were much smaller then but that's why game development environments like XNA, SDL, etc. exist now in order to cut down the development times. What would really put games development back into the hands of single programmers or small groups of game designers, is having access to the core engines as well so that the most important aspect of game design, the initial good idea for a game design, can become tangible much easier.
Incidentally, I don't, for one minute, expect this to happen because there are far too many concerns about making money (which is why money and good games are mutually exclusive in my view) but it would be good to see the games buyers become a lot more discerning when it comes to purchasing games.
Sure, we all own games that we feel were worth the money and that provide us with good entertainment but I guarantee most game players have spent far more money on disappointing games than good ones.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
However it will use a cobbled together multicore design, whereas Cell is a design with 5+ years and 100's of millions of dollars of R&D behind it (mostly done by IBM this time ... not the Japanese).
You would expect XNA to be middleware engine by all the hype surrounding it ... but bringing out an engine is a dangerous proposition, since you are treading on developers feet.
Only Sony has committed to shipping a middleware engine. XNA is just some assorted libraries and tools you can use to build an engine, but in and of itself it is nowhere near.
but i really feel that the console market is different to the PC one in alot of ways, and maybe MS (having not done so well in it) are trying to change it into something they think they know, and have more experience in (i.e. the PC market). all the way that article, that is what was running through my mind.
the thing about the console market is that there is more soul in the games than you will find in PC's (as a rule).
i sometimes feel that console games are more like a collection than pc games - in the same way that a music collector will pay a premium for a rare cd, a games collector will pay for a rare game. good examples of this would some classics for that most ill-fated of consoles, the saturn. you can't pick up Panzer dragoon saga or Radiant silvergun for 5 in a bargin bin.
the point is, there is more to games than just the number of polygons that can be generated, or the crispness of the graphics - it's hard to define, but in some ways i think that the more experienced console game makers have it in spades. AFAIK, gamecube is much less powered than PS2 or XboX, but has still done well enought to lead to talk of GC2
oh, and did you notice that at E3, sony made a big thing about how PSP would be so powerful it could do all this shiny stuff, whereas nintendo tended to focus more on the games they had created. the specs of the DS weren't as important as the software - all sony seemed to promote was the spec.
Perhaps MS have realized that the primary reason for keeping their OS around is to play games, and they want to reinforce that.
Does everything include nothing?
For instance, Splinter Cell. Playable on console, unplayable on PC. You had to click a mouse button to go forward.
WHere did you get that from? I only played through Splinter Cell last month, and you certainly didn't have to hold down a mouse button to move. Can't say I had any problems playing with keyboard + mouse, it all felt pretty natural to me.
Could of course be that they think their is a market, there isn't, could be they think it will win them customers, it doesn't. OR just maybe these companies don't enjoy they idea of being locked onto a OS made by a company that is DIRECTLY competing with them and has a very long history of wiping out competition.
It has far less to do with promoting linux as not ending up in the pockets of Microsoft.
For now DirectX is pretty open and you have the half-life people saying that the PC is for them more profitable because of the lack of license fees wich are needed for console titles. If MS every comes to truly own the gaming world how long do you think this will last?
You are living in a dream world. Small independent game companies are going bust. The Xth rehash of ancient games does NOT count. It is the orignal new stuff that is getting more and more owned by the BIG companies. Companies that can afford a string of money losing titles without going out of business. Would you enjoy a future where games are owned by only the big boys? I wouldn't.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Online gaming isn't restricted to MMORPGs. Online play includes any sort of network gaming, like deathmatches or racing with a bunch of random people. Basically, anything where a second person can pick up a controller and play with you at home can (well, should) be capable of being played online.
Sony really, really need to do something about the quality of their tools. I've spent the last two years on a game that runs on the XBox and PS2. The XBox tools are just amazing -for example you can click on a pixel and see a dissasembly of the shader that produced it.
:(
The Sony tools are hideous. Well, the debugger has a nice graphical frontend provided by a third party and is fairly slick and fast compared to Visual Studio, but the compiler and libraries provided are terrible - a patched up gcc 2.9.5 which has a prediliction for internal errors when the array indexing operator [] is used creatively , and that doesn't always optimise away empty constructors. And the libraries provided - at least initially were slow, and crufty and not suitable for game use. At least now, two years after the release of the PS2, Sony provides some decent middleware.
They MUST get developer tools right from the off with the PS3 - especially if it has 8 CPU's. I really, really hope they do. I'd hate to see my market swallowed by the Beast. At present it's economical to develop for the PS2 without needing a single Windows liscence. I hope it stays that way
/usr/games/fortune > ~/.signature
I believe the current mantra is OpenGL 1.0 should be enough for anybody. Pay no attention to that noise behind the curtain, it's just linux strangling my sound card.
You completely miss what MS is trying to do.
They're trying to make "XNA as universal as DVD". That means mass marketing. Mass marketing means there's not going to be a large percentage of gamers interested in rich titles such as role playing (FF) stuff has the potential to present. It means you're likely to see a lot more Madden games, and a lot more stupid, repetitive games that are like 007, where two people can play head-to-head if there's a second controller.
What MS is envisioning here is the death of quality gaming (as if its not already in its last days of life as it is). We're talking about the "Scary Movie 3" or "Jurassic Park 3" of gaming. I recall something similar during the later years of the NES, when there was a very low cost of entry into the market (cartridges were relatively cheap), and there was a very high saturation of NES systems in homes.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
This is one of the good game interview I have heard in a long time, I think that microsoft guy (J allard)knows what his talking about. So its worth reading it.
I think the XNA may just be the key for indie developers to break into the console and portable market. Yes, one can develop games now-a-days for free using OpenGL/DX, but they can't run on any console.
I actually tried to lay the groundwork for a small console game company with a few friends, and we got shot down once we realized the massive price of the console SDK (in any platform), which not only required their costly development libraries, but also neccessitated a hardware kit.
The two logical options are either
(a) For a system like XNA, somewhat of a write-once, run everywhere type system. Where you can scale your game's visuals and depth to the platform.
(b) For linux to be ported onto consoles, not just by people looking to see a boot screen and run apache, but by people willing to optimize the hell out of the OpenGL subsystem to get the same performance (or better?) than if it were running on it's own custom OS.
"Why is there an assumption that Linux won't be successful if high FPS games aren't available for it ?"
:-)
Because they can't make that argument against the Mac any more.
DirectX covers what a game developer needs programming-wise. XNA is a movement to bring forward a set of cross-platform code and tools that help ease development.
The focus on this movement is not on code, but on the tools. The PC gaming world lacks a certain 'Visual Studio' for games, and Microsoft realised that and they are going to deliver it.
Because alot of people who like linux are gamers
i mean take myself as an example
i have windows on my primary machine for the sole reason that i am a gamer
if games worked on Linux i would never install windows again
and id say that there are a lot of people who are in the same situation so with that in mind making linux better for gaming will make it more successful because you win over the gamers who dislike windows
Why doesn't apple put some resources into furthering the development of libSDL? SDL is a great library, but it really needs some more features to compete with DirectX. Especially with Audio/Input (Force feedback, 4/5 speaker surround (OpenAL?), etc)...
Go Away and leave us alone, we dont want you to completely dominate the console gaming world. Its bad enough having you dominate the PC world just fuck off and leave it alone.
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
This whole XNA run-any-game-anywhere sounds very much like Amiga Inc's AmigaDE platform, which is really just Tao's Intent with some extra APIs. Initially billed as a universal platform, AmigaDE turned into a platform for playing PocketPC games, and little else - it was an interesting idea that was technically unfeasable (even Tao said that it wouldn't do what Amiga said it would).
Damien
I think the idea of microsoft is this:
.NET technology. It's potentially platform indepedent. Today Java is used in cellular phones. So it's possible to use this.
- They have this
- At a certain point in the future better sound and video cards are not possible to develop for a price that is affordable for customers.
At this point in the future, there is only innovation in the games itself, but not on the hardware. So at this point, there will be a request for a common platform.
Okay... I let's wait and look if MS still exits at that point.
I'm sick of hearing about how similar the games industry is now to the early film industry. Films have never been driven by technology as much as games. Sure there were breakthroughs like colour, sound then the ability for people to watch movies in their homes. The medium's technology is still evolving too with digital projectors and home theatre etc, but you can still rent a movie on VHS and watch it on a set-up at home which is 20 years old without really missing much. I don't see games technology reaching a similar zenith anytime soon and this is where the analogy breaks down. I like consoles because you can just pick up a game, shove it in the machine and you know that you're going to get pretty much what the developer intended. Surely a development like XNA would reduce console gaming to the level of a lot of PC games where developers never really have to push the hardware they just wait till the horsepower's available to make their sloppy code run ok. Then you buy the game, it runs like a slideshow so you have to start upgrading. Come to think of it that's probably the whole idea.
So once again the basis is to reduce every aspect of gaming to a commodity - except theirs. In this case, I'm sure Microsoft wants to make sure *every* aspect of gaming hardware becomes a commodity, and avoid repeating this mistake of allowing Intel to be so pesky and uppity. (I know, it wasn't a case of 'allowing' because Microsoft and Intel became pesky and uppity together. But this is Microsoft's chance/attempt to fix that situation.)
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
To a small extent, the success of games on Windows has put a lot of Windows PC's into the home, and by extension of familiarity, a lot of Windows PC's on managers desks and throughout companies.
From my experience, the machines at work dictate what people buy for home, not the other way around. In fact, a very large club the DOS/Windows market used against Macs and other systems were that they were "toy" systems focused mainly on gaming, whereas the PC was a "business" system that tacked on gaming as an afterthought.
I skimmed through the article, but still believes it's simply a game development API / abstraction layer that's the same for Windows and Xbox 2. Was there anything more to it? How is it a full-on assault on the gaming world?
Isn't it just natural for them to do this thing? Can't say it's particularly evil... If I were in their place, I wouldn't think it would be such a great idea to keep game development for your different platforms incompatible. How horribly stupid that would be, actually.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
The battle for most units sold was over just when the xbox and gamecube were released. Being at e3 this year though, Microsoft seemed to be the favorite at the show. the xbox (nor gamecube) will ever catch up to the ps2, but you can sense a bit of a momentum swing on the side of Micrsoft, which will no doubt play a role in the next generation release.
I had a ps2, then traded it in last year and got an xbox. I couldnt be happier with the games. Yes there are games i would like to play on the ps2, and if I feel a game is good enough to warrant a console purchase then i will do that. It was the same thing back during the nintendo and sega heydays, only difference was people cared more about the games.
Now everyone seems to care about who is on top and who is trying to take over the world.
This time it is to compete with the game engines from game manufacturers themselves. Sure, it might start as more of a hardware abstraction layer to begin with, but eventually, it will morph and become a full fledged game engine. Game manufacturers should take note, if they rely upon revenue from licensing out their own engines, Microsoft is the fox after their engines' sheepish revenues.
I know, though there's little chance that the two will be similar. I'd expect PS2/PS1 game support, though the Cell likely won't even do that. They will probably have a seperate chip with PS2/PS1 hardware in it. We're talking 2006, here.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Maybe in the world you are from...
My First PC was a Windows Based PC because of the games that were available on that platform. I was hooked on the PC as a gaming platform ever since I was exposed to the original Wing Commander. From that day forward the games console I had simply didn't have the same shine to me anymore.
I needed a PC, I craved a PC... One day, I got my PC... (Years and years later unfortunately...)
Because of that PC, I ended up learning the MS way of networking back with Win95OSR2. In time, I learned enough to build and run a small Peer-2-peer network in a very small office with 5 computers. (Again, all the MS Way.)
Without games on the PC, I honestly would never have gotten sucked into learning much about PCs. Without games on the PCs I wouldn't have had a rather lucky chain of jobs change events that lead me to where I am today. That is running a 20 PC and four server network for a sheetmetal prototype facility. Two servers run Linux, the other two are print server boxes.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
The whole pointing in having a reference design is to increase interoperability, reduce development time, and reduce development cost. If another company makes a device using a reference design, it won't take your suggested 3 months to port a game to run on this new device -- it will take zero months, zero weeks, zero days, zero hours... no time at all since it will run on that device immediately.
Writing cross platform code doesn't quite work like that, even with a library available for all the platforms you are targetting.
Even if MS did provide a royalty-free, IETF or ISO-standardised spec and provided base libraries across all the platforms you are interested (and wake me up if that ever happens!) you are still facing time spent moving your current project to a new platform. Cross platform is more than just a buzzword - you really need to think ahead with your data structures, your communication mechanisms between threads/processes and your approach to designing the whole project early in the design so you don't get screwed over by changes in pointer sizes as you switch from 32 bit to 64 bit platforms or changes in endian-ness as you port from x86 to PowerPC. You can easily get caught out by marginally different floating point behaviour as you change architectures or even libraries - at least one game available on Linux and Windows doesn't have networking between Linux and Windows because the networking code uses floating point.
The problem a lot of developers for Windows platforms have is that they do not have to think about multi-platform portability because essentially every Windows platform they are likely to run on looks like x86. At least open source developers who post their sources on Sourceforge are likely, sooner or later, to have a PowerPC owner try and compile the sources and send the developer a problem report, so if they haven't considered portability right at the start, they stand some chance of being exposed to another platform earlier in development before a lot of code is set in stone. If you are really serious about cross platform work, it should be your first consideration in the first design you do and it should inform all of your subsequent work.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
Currently, the PC games market is dying.
Ah the console fanboy's cry! Halo forever! Nobody wants to play complex RTS, Simulation, RPG games anyway.
Ok, yes fine console games make lots of money and they are eating into the PC game market. Well what do you expect? Them to eat into the board game market?
People are not that bright as a whole. They like mindless games that are easy to play and have lots of flashy graphics. However that does not mean that they are the only ones playing games, much like the way that the TV has not killed books. (Though I'm quite sure fools like yourself ran around during the early days of TV screaming "Print is Dying!")
Anyway, please, by all means have your console. Have 2 or 3 for all I care. But if you must spout off about how the gameing market is changeing try not to ignore the fact that few things ever truely die; they rather change and adapt.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
"Eurogamer: But this requires other hardware manufacturers to make consoles compatible with your technology...
J Allard: Well, it requires that, but it also requires you to start building enough software distraction that the creators aren't focused on the hardware limitations because they're focused on the software. This is what happened in the PC space if you dial back a hundred years ago, in the PC space, the operating systems were customised to the hardware, the applications were customised to the operating systems, it was a complete mess, prices were incredibly high, adoption was incredibly low, innovation was incredibly low, and it just wasn't a very efficient market."
hahahahaha..I can't stop laughing long enough to realize I don't even know where to begin...hahahahaha...
-- "Do you even know your daughter? There's no way she likes that song. Oop, is she in a coma?"
Halo 7 Minimum Specs
XNA 9 Compatible console
7ghz Cell Processor (or higher)
5gb Superfast DDRRAM (or higher)
100gb Hard Disc
Dolby 12 point Surround sound system (or higher)
(etc)
Please note this game will not work with consoles that do not meet the minimum specifications. For Console upgrades please see your nearest XNA-Box dealer.
Over zealous, i know... But i wonder if this scenario might happen? Once XNA gets deployed and we get "OEM" Consoles the diversity of different consoles is going to be a complete headache for developers. Just as game studios test PC games on a range of different spec PC's, now they are going to end up doing it for different consoles. If this technology becomes a success a couple of years down the line game studios are going to regret the decision to go with it. From a consumers perspective I think that this might also drive to cost of consoles higher, id expect the super fast, expensive juicy consoles to be more expensive than the not-quite-as good ones. Gone are the days where one-game-fits-all (which IMHO is one of the great benefits of console gaming). And I really dont like the idea of having to check to see if my console meets the specs of the latest game each time i go in the store. The only people here that win are Microsoft and OEM Manufacturers. I wish that Microsoft had never got into the console arena because they are going to f*kin ruin it.
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
The online game i've played the most is Project Gotham 2.
It literally is something you can pick up, do a few races, and then sign off. It doesn't require an enormous time commitment to get good at - you either know how to drive according to the gotham physics engine or you dont.
I'm a huge racing game fan. PGR2 is pretty arcadey in some aspects, but picking up its quirks and getting fast was pretty easy. I've never been in a race where other people just outclassed me completely.
splinter cell 2 is another one where you can just hop online play a few matches, and then you're done.
These are xbox live games, so theres no per-game monthly fee, and if i dont play the game for a month i dont feel like i'm not staying competitive, i don't feel like i'm wasting my money.
The ability to voice chat with people on my friends list and just turn on the machine and race some of them for a few runs is really compelling.
The biggest issue with online gaming is not that it's a flawed model. The implementatinos need to get better (and they will). It's still faster/easier to start a single player race on PGR2 than it is to get into a multi-player race that you like. But not by much.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Sony is a Japanese company. Nintendo is a Japanese company. For all they have international branches, you damn well better believe the Japanese market still has importance.
If anything, I'd say Microsoft is tapping the market of people who don't play the kind of games available on the Sony/Nintendo(/Sega) systems, so I doubt Sony or Nintendo have anything to worry about anyway. I have no problem with Microsoft going after their own market. After all, the majority of games released on Japanese consoles have been from Japanese publishers--who tend to publish with a Japanese audience in mind--so if Microsoft can get its hands on Western publishers, I wouldn't be surprised if its games were more widely accepted in the West.
So? What's wrong with having specialized machines for specialized jobs? a lot of people that like toast are gamers i mean take myself as an example i have a game console at home for the sole reason that i am a gamer if games worked on my toaster i would never need a console again
The scheme that I saw (sorry, didn't RTFA) Microsoft tout before was that, in addition to the software API, the hardware interfaces would be standardized too. Which means... you can take your XBox controller and plug it into your PC (In a way, with a little tweaking, you can already do this... it is USB afterall) to play that adventure game; or, you can take your pc mouse/keyboard and plug it into your XBox to play generic-RTS game. The interface is already considered.
Of course, this doesn't solve the context issue of console vs PC. Certainly, even though you can plug in a mouse/keyboard to your console... if your console is on a large screen tv in front of a sofa, it isn't necessarily desirable to do so. Playing Warcraft on a coffee table isn't my idea of fun.
A "standard gaming platform" would be nice for consumers, definitely.
But it would be DEATH for Sony's Playstation brand, and it would just about kill Nintendo, also.
Don't forget that the ONLY reason that Sony and Nintendo still make consoles is because they then get to charge licensing fees to EVERY game developer for EVERY game sold. That's where they make their money. Sony in particular, since they don't have the huge-selling first-party titles that Nintendo does.
So, if XNA took off, Sony would have to rely on sales of Sony-developed games for revenue. Sony is not known for their in-house games to any large degree.
Nintendo could almost get away with being nothing but a software company, but if XNA started moving to portables and tapping into their Gameboy sales, they would be in bad, bad shape.
Basically, XNA is a great idea that the Big Boys will never, ever allow. Though an argument could be made that Microsoft is the biggest boy of all, and with enough will (they've got enough money) could make it happen, regardless.
You have a funny definition of competitive. Sony has given us new chips, software and other cool stuff wrapped in innovative consoles. Microsoft has given us a sub spec PC wrapped in ugly plastic. Oh yeah, they are also promissing world domination after losing money on said ugly plastic box and slipping delivery dates on it's follow up. That's not really competing, it's blowing smoke and it's pathetic.
The only difference between this smoke and the smoke they blow up big dumb company ass is that they don't have a leg to stand on. Microsoft can get away with grand pronouncements where they have built some effective data roach motels for the suckers. Their pennetration of the gaming market, however, remains low due to poor performance and bad reputation. Anyone who thinks that successful companies are going to start paying a loser money deserves an xbox. Microsoft's usual bluster does not work when they don't have expensive lockins and an effective monoploy.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The whole point of XNA is provide a solid common library, which focuses on common game development tasks.
You mean like OpenGL, OpenAL, and SDL? Who would ever have thought of it. The real question is: why isn't Microsoft supporting such standards? Why do they have to re-invent the wheel? Well, you know the answer yourself, and that's why people are complaining about XNA.
Sony and EA have huge market shares, but they are not monopolies! It is illegal for a monopoly to use its monopoly power to gain dominance in another industry. Sony is far from innocent, but it's not a monopoly and is not subject to the same rules as other companies. Microsoft does not "compete." They embrace, extend, and extinguish.
I'm appalled that Slashdotters continue to think Microsoft isn't doing something seriously wrong. Sony, EA, and Microsoft are all immoral, most companies are. However, Microsoft is breaking laws, microsoft is making money at the expense of consumers, because they do NOT allow competition. Get that through your head!
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
though I have to admit getting kids to interact with other people through online games is probably better than having them playing alone . . .
... reading.
Yah, playing alone. It's dangerously close to that silly activity
The main issue with the PS2 is it's multi chip architecture and the weird ways you have to utilize the processors. Most sources say the cell chip is going to eb the same. 4 chips and you divide the work between them.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Microsoft just wants to do what they did with the pocket PC, and the PC before it. Create an OS (or in this case a graphics API that will run on anything, provided anything is a Windows PC, or a XBox clone), allow anyone to develop hardware for it, and make money off of the software. Microsoft would probably garnish more profit selling a gaming OS and letting other people pick up the cost of hardware, then selling the hardware as well. Not to mention cheap clones would allow for quick market dominance.
do you think the x86 architecture would be this successful had IBM been teh sole distributer?
not to mention the pocket pc dominating in the pda market (my poor zaurus)
unfortunatly microsofts plan is a pretty sound one. The only thing i can't understand is, why on earth they'd use the 3do as inspiration...
The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist
I agree that the differences in peripherals makes games ports problematic. However one of the major themes of this interview is that this new gaming software platform will emphasize different tasks for different hardware platforms.
A game could have several different interfaces depending on the available hardware. A PC or a console with keyboard and mouse attached could have access to all functions. A console with gamepads could give access to everything except data entry and mouse-optimized functions. And a phone could access simple menu based functions.
This could even work with some current games. Knights of the Old Republic has an interface that works on both consoles and PCs. It looks like it could be translated into a MMORPG. There are some mini-games like racing that would work on more limited consoles. And the card-playing game would even work on the phone.
This sounds like a cool idea, but a game developer would have to take a big risk to implement it. Microsoft will have to dig deep into their pockets to fund a developer to do this.
Great idea... except for their complete lack of understanding of the game market, as illustrated by Halo, which is total crap. The only thing interesting to come from Halo is Red vs. Blue.
He waxes on about how consumers don't care about the platform they watch movies on, and the way they are ubiquitous. Both points I would disagree with, in addition to disagreement over the idea that emulating the Movie Industry is a worthwhile proposition. BTW NPR had a little snippet that said the video game industry makes more money than the Movie Industry. So why should they emulate a mediocre business that is most likely in its death throes?
It seems that Microsoft wants to create a gaming brand called XNA. Which misses the point that what makes gaming consoles work. Gamers require specialized hardware, that gets refreshed every few years, and is pushed to its limit. The point of a game console is to provide an identical experience on each console. That experience should be original or a good twist on an old idea and state of the art in speed, gameplay and graphics/sound. When you say a game can be played on any platform, including an airport kiosk you are never going to achieve an equality of game play. Which is the number one complaint in online gaming. Lag, cheating and glitching. People want everyone they are playing with to be on that proverbial level playing field.
It would be great if someone would write this guy's life as a video game. Online Video Entertainment Tycoon.
Spell cheek you've failed me four the last thyme!
Have you ever heard of Counter Strike? Natural Selection? Team Fortress? Science & Industry? Day of Defeat? Hostile Intent?
And that's just the few *I* can think of off the top of my head, most of which are based on a single engine.
Hobby marked = CHANGED maybe, but certainly not dead.
We're having a discussion about XNA over on the GameDev.net forums. It might be worth reading, even if you don't have an account there and can't post.
Christopher S. 'coldacid' Charabaruk -- coldacid.net
What I suspect Allard means by that statement is that we will see more games like Project Gotham 2. Sure you can play it online in a conventional sense, but online elements also apply during single player mode. Via Xbox Live you see how your scores compare to other people playing, you can download ghost racers to see how the best did what they did, etc. Sure, Zelda 11 may not have competitive multiplayer, but it might keep track of how fast you complete the dungeons, so you can compare/compete with your friends, or maybe you can trade special rare items with your friends, etc.
Having a game online doesn't mean you can't integrate a great single player experience into it. The online elements can just be used to add to that experience.
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
Yah, playing alone. It's dangerously close to that silly activity ... reading.
Except that reading isn't (as) bad for your eyes, reading encourages thinking and imagination, reading expands knowledge, reading . . .
. . . HIBT?
The same film industry that has apparently been waning as the gaming industry waxes?
As Allard points out, gaming is the only major form of electronic entertainment that doesn't offer consumers choice.
How is having three competing platforms not choice?
If the problem lies in competing hardware formats, why doesn't Microsoft put its money where its mouth is and throw in with one of the current manufacturers? Why does it need to be an MS standard? If it's the consumers that they care about, why not produce software for whichever happens to be the strongest seller on the market?
It's clear why Microsoft doesn't view its tactics as monopolistic; it's defined the term to mean something radically different from what everyone else holds.
A business releasing something with a business strategy in mind. You gus never cease to amaze me.
I don't have to write C...
.py and have Psyco do a DASM on it for C speeds.
I code regular
And you are living in a REALLY date time zone to think that only low-level langs run fast.
That is definately the way things used to be. But now the market has changed in such a significant way that companies like Lian Li, Antec and Alienware have an entire business model that only survives because of PC's designed specifically for gaming. This is only a recent development since S3 released the first of the true 3D accelerators for X86 platforms.
Before that, every X86 was more or less the same, file servers would have the same components as workstations as personal computers as family PC's for the home. Now, the differences between a file server and a highly tuned gaming rig are tremendous.
The same applies to an extent to operating systems. People will choose the operating system that enables the best gaming performance (or in the case of Windows, that allows 90% of gaming to work at all).
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
Except that reading isn't (as) bad for your eyes
.
You've never read in low light conditions? How is that worse?
reading encourages thinking and imagination
reading expands knowledge, reading . .
This is different from any videogame with a decent plot... how?
You've never read in low light conditions?
As a matter of fact, no, I haven't. It strains my eyes.
This is different from any videogame with a decent plot... how?
Count the number of people who primarily play such games. Then count the number of people who play things like Doom, Quake, Super Mario, or Tetris. Come back when you've compared the two populations.
As a matter of fact, no, I haven't. It strains my eyes.
Good for you. There are many who have - including me. We should all take better care of ourselves. Thankfully there are also ways to play video games without straining your eyes, also. Just because most people don't do them doesn't make the activity bad.
Count the number of people who primarily play such games. Then count the number of people who play things like Doom, Quake, Super Mario, or Tetris. Come back when you've compared the two populations.
That's like saying reading isn't valuable because there are more people who read those crap harlequin novels than who read Hemingway.
Don't blame the medium for the existence of chaff.