Doom 3 Expansion and Xbox Version

id Software revealed today that early April will see the release of Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil, and an Xbox port of the original Doom 3 shooter. From the article: "This is DOOM 3 built for the Xbox, including 480p and wide-screen support, full Xbox Live multiplayer, and the Xbox exclusive 2-player co-op campaign. For fans of DOOM 3 on the PC, Resurrection of Evil takes you to the undiscovered depths of the UAC's Mars base and back to Hell itself for a vicious new battle with the forces of evil and the most ferocious demons imaginable."

Comments

hmm

[Staplerh]

Wow, on one level the URL leads to a press release-esque article, trumpeting the successes of Doom III and predicting great things for the future. No criticism or critical thought is apparent there, but I have some problems.

I've seen screenshots of the doom III proposed port to the XBox, and I've also wondered how the XBox will run Doom III - given the XBox's technical inferiority to top-end systems.

My money would say that Doom III will be a failure as an Xbox port, after the intial surge of players that are interested in playing. Any opposing thoughts, or insight into the Xbox graphical system that would allow Doom III on Xbox to look anywhere near as good as it does on a top-end PC?

Cheers.

Re:hmm

[X0563511]

Doom III runs nearly fine on my 900mhz, 312MB PC100 ram, GeForce2 MX system.

Im sure the XBOX can handle it, especially if they turn off some of the mandatory settings (that i would have turned down - for instance LOW detail looked pretty friggin high to me)

Re:hmm

[The Evil Couch]

one of the problems with PC games versus console games is that console developers can tweak all the settings to make their game squeeze every ounce of power out of the console.

in developing PC games, you can't tweak your code that finely, because you have to support a wide variety of machines.

take as an example, Splinter Cell for Xbox. A game that was incredibly graphics intensive, featuring quite a few effects that would choke a machine with the exact same specs.

I think doom3 will be successful on the xbox, but not nearly to the extent that it was on the PC.

Re:hmm

[Nerd Cooties]

Nope, a PC with equivilent hardware is still a PC. The video card might have an nVidia chip in it, but it could be from one of many manufacturers. So could the motherboard, HDD, sound card, etc. The drivers and firmware would be different, as would the operating environment.

On the console, the hardware is consistant and known to the programmers. They can optimize the code of the game to take full advantage of this. Try that with a PC game and it might work great on some computers, but would probably not run at all on most others.

Unconfirmed title-rumors.

[rylin]

Doom 3: Bigger and Blacker
Doom 3: The hunt for more Black
Doom 3: Monitor Standby
Doom 3: The Missing Flashlight

anyone else have any?

Re:Unconfirmed title-rumors.

[Anonymous Coward]

Doom 3: Don't Bother Playing If You're A Soppy, Wet Pussy

Interesting

[opposume]

Is this microsofts attempt to corner the FPS market in the console gaming industry? First Halo now this? I'm not big on console gaming so I'm not sure what's available for the others but this seems to be a huge thing for the xbox that the other consoles don't have yet...

PC getting the shaft.... again.....

[dousk]

Not including co-operative mode for the PC is beyond my comprehension :-/ Do they think that PC users are all lone freaks?

Online Co-op??

[aztektum]

It doesn't say if it's online co-op or have a friend over co-op I know this engine will be stripped down, but it's still the Doom 3 engine. If it is online, then Bungie's excuse for no online co-op (in Halo 2) b/c the engine is too complex and gameplay would suffer is weak at best.

Excellent

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if there will be a part where you pick up an item and some monsters jump out at you?

A bear in the forest

[2nd Post!]

When you and your best bud see a bear in the forest, it's best to run fast... but not necessarily faster than the bear, just faster than your bud.

So in this case, why does Doom3 have to look anywhere near as good as on a top end PC? It only has to look as good as on a $200 PC.

What? No $200 PC will play Doom 3?

Well, then it only has to look as good as Halo2 on XBox. Do you think that's possible? Will it look better?

xBox specifications

[Dixie Flatliner]

I'm tired of hearing the argument that a 733mhz nvidia nv30 chipset is incapable of performing to the calibur of a new pc. This is a bunk conclusion for a couple of reasons.

1. The xBox is not stock hardware, it's a dedicated task machine built around it's own instruction sets, that can handle tasks that require processor (cpu or gpu) on a pc, automatically.

2. The xBox only need output at resolutions ranging from (tv resolutions converted to pc resoltions) 640x480 to 1024x768, and can achieve much higher preceived detail with lower resolution textures (for a easy way to experience this, simply hook up the video out on your graphics card to your tv, and run your favorite game, you'll notice while the resolution is low, the textures seem richer then normal)

3. The xBox does not run a shell OS, only a runtime environment, without added resources.

4. The xBox need only be configured to run one application.

5. Games on the xBox can be optimized to the extreme, since there is no need to ensure compatibility.

Re:xBox specifications

[sonamchauhan]

Good post, and the rest of your points are interesting. However point number #1 isn't correct: "can handle tasks that require processor (cpu or gpu) on a pc, automatically".

The XBox has similar chips to a regular PC: GPU, CPUs, TV output chips... and the instruction set on the chips isn't that different from regular ones too. I think the key is the hypertransport link - which PCs contemporary to the XBox did not have (now, Apple motherboards, and AMD 64 motherboards do). From what I recall, the hypertransport link allowed system RAM to be used as video RAM, (or something like that). That, plus the task-centric tight integration of the XBox made it perform faster at its job than higher specc-ed PCs of the day.

I'd be surprised if the XBox still smokes a top of the line PC today though.

Wow! This should be a great expansion!

[snuf23]

...undiscovered depths of the UAC's Mars base"

Wow! What an amazing and unique choice of setting! I wonder if it will look like the discovered depths of the Mars base.

Re:Console success

[Schnapple]

The Sims. #1 game of all time in terms of units sold

On the PC. Sold over 8 million copies. Super Mario Bros. 3 on the NES sold like 17 million.