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Factor 5 To Be PS3 Exclusive
1up.com is reporting that Rogue Leader and Rogue Squadron developer Factor 5 has signed an exclusivity deal with Sony and the PlayStation 3 console. From the article: "Factor 5 has already played with Microsoft's Xbox 360, but said the PlayStation 3's 3.2GHz Cell chip offered more processing power over the other hardware options. The added power, allowing for a more realistic gaming experience, fueled the company's decision. Factor 5 made no comment on Nintendo's Revolution in the story."
!@$%^!^!%! Does this mean no Rogue Squadron on Revolution? :( Or will Nintendo have to find someone else for the license? I have no idea what the deal was in that particular case. In either case it sucks!
Does this mean that they're going to branch out past Star Wars-related games? Or are we going to see something of a Star Wars exclusivity on the PS3?
I'll go get the marshmallows.
for enough money, people will say the damndest things.
Nintendo just lost another 3rd party developer. Knowing the current 3rd party environment for the Gamecube, and seeing how small it is, we can now see that it's just gotten smaller for the Revolution.
I guess Nintendo will just need even more 1st and 2nd party games to compensate, although I don't think Rogue Squadron is dead. A PS3 exclusive, but not dead.
Derive Politics
If they confirmed exclusivity for the PS3, then the Revolution is out of the question too, no?
I can understand what they say to a degree. 8 Cell CPUs probably is much more powerful than 3 PPC CPUs. It is pretty obvious there is some pro-Sony bias in that statement (they are overstating it to be dramatic for the announcement).
That said, I can't WAIT to see what they do. When I saw some of the sequences in Rogue Squadron 2 and 3 on the 'Cube where you had seemingly hundreds of Ties in the sky as you were fighting. Not only did it look amazing (and was it fun), but I couldn't believe they could push the 'Cube to do that. If they can do that with the 'Cube, I can't wait to see what they can make the PS3 do. Should make one hell of a game. How 'bout an update to X-Wing and Tie Fighter? A massivly multiplayer space combat sim using the Star Wars license that also had missions and such, that would be so cool.
That said, I hope they don't mess it up either. I tried to play through RS 3, but just gave up. The 3rd person levels were just so clunky and the animation and movement was so stiff. It also felt like gravity was 3Gs. It just didn't play right. The space combat is amazing, the 3rd person levels were terrible.
Still, no matter what all these companies proclaim that their system can do, and no matter what publishers say, there should be some cool looking stuff and some very interesting possiblities appearing on the new consoles. I can't wait to see what Nintendo can do. I'd love to see them make a comeback to number 1 (I kinda doubt it, I love 'em anyway, and they won't go anywhere, but it would be great). Then again, with all this "We'll do everything from play games to watch movies to make toast" stuff, Nintendo has a real chance to use their "We're just about games, great games" stance to take a great lead.
PS: I've been playing Wario Ware: Twisted!, and the play mechanic is great. They should use gyros in the Revolution's controller. Imagine being able to make quick movements of the controller (physically) and having that translate into movements of a boxer's hands. Shove right side quick, get a right jab. Shove both, it's an uppercut. Pull back for a block, etc. Could be very cool.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Factor 5 produced Rogue Leader: Rogue Squadron II and III for the Gamecube and both were visually stunning. The control scheme was frustrating though and had me wishing for the control setup of Jedi: Starfighter (on the Xbox), which had gameplay similar to Xwing and Tie Fighter for the PC. Graphically, though, Jedi: Starfighter could not compare to Rogue Leader and in the years since Rogue Leader's release I haven't seen any space sim on any console that comes close.
I've seen what Factor 5 can do with the "limited" Gamecube, so I can only assume the results will be that much more stunning with all the horse power of the PS3.
Factor 5 is a pretty good developer, and this is probably a pretty good thing for Sony. To a certain extent I think that this may be a bad move for Factor 5.
Factor 5 has really became a "known" developer because they were producing technically impressive, above average, games on a platform that didn't have too many games to choose from (that is they're a big fish in a small pond). If Sony continues to hold onto third parties then they will have to go against a lot of developers that are several times their size, that can produce above agerage technically impressive games (they will be an average fish in a very large ocean).
This is part of Nintendo's R3v0luti0nZ. I can see the future slogan:
"Games for the Nintendo only by Nintendo. Can you feel the Revolution?"
Maybe we'll have turrican on the PS3 now.
Will finally come out after 10 freakin years? One of the reasons I bought a n64 was for Thornado. Factor 5 even released a Chris Hulsbeck mp3 track for the game on IGN. I'm really getting fed up waiting for a next generation multiplayer Turrican. I've so wanted to kick the Machine's anus in 3D. I just hope Factor 5 isn't put on SWROTSD (Star Wars Revenge of the Sith duty)for the PS3.
They signed an exclusivity deal because the PS3 hardware is better. Money played no part in the decision.
am looking forward to the innovative new gameplay they will bring to the PS3. Innovative gameplay such as taking part in the defense of Hoth for the 18,647th time, or assaulting the Death Star for the 7,344th time.
The "limited" Gamecube is the second most powerful console out. Plus I am pretty sure that Factor 5 lost their star wars game license. This is really a non story. Some company that put out 2 games in 3 years, that has lost it's major license and is now been mis-quoted.
Also the way that it's reported is shocking, they never said that the PS3 was best thing out there. Damn fanboy media.
"I was shocked by how powerful the new consoles are," Julian Eggebrecht
I know people always whine about exclusives, but I'm starting to think they are a good thing for hardcore players. I'm probably going to own 2 out of 3 next gen. consoles at the minimum so I don't lose very many games. In return the games get customized for one particular console instead of wasting the developers time getting it to run on all of them.
Xbox 360 has hardware support for procedural synthesis going on and PS3 has all those SPEs to schedule. Games that push the edge will make use of these instead of just targeting PPC architecture in general.
Factor 5 has historically gravitated towards the console with the highest specs. They are a very technologically oriented company, and their previous choices of platform has always been the one with the best technology. SNES, N64, and GCN.
SNES because it had great music capability, and high colour depth. It was a little slower than the Genesis, but more capable in other ways. It resulted in a better LOOKING picture than the Genesis.
N64 because it was quite obviously more powerful than the PSX in every way. End of story.
GCN because it's the most technologically powerful console of this generation. (Xbox fans, if you want to dispute this, please provide evidence beyond clock speeds (and an explanation of unified memory, and why it doesn't hinder Xbox's performance). And perhaps an actual Xbox game that provides better graphics (polys, effects, AI) than Rogue Squadron III).
Nintendo already has problems getting 3rd party games onto their platforms. Especially 3rd party exclusive games.
This particular loss is not a fatal one, but they cannot afford to lose 3rd party support. Its hard to convince retailers to give you shelf space if you cannot guarantee them something worth selling.
END COMMUNICATION
Developers are getting a shock just how weak and difficult to program the 360 is. The difficulty programming the 360 compared to PS3 and Revolution is going to make it difficult for MS to even retain the existing xbox developers, and forget about the mainline PS2 and GameCube developers doing anything but ports to the 360.
MS seems to be in full scale damage control mode right now as developers start to abandon the platform. I guess developers abandoning the platform isn't too big a deal though since there seems to be a fairly large group of people willing just play Halo games.
In a few days we will hear another 3rd party developer say exactly the same, but that time in favour of the Xbox 360.
I think one has to wait till the new gaming platforms hit the shops before one can tell if they are worth their money or not.
And who knows, maybe Nintendo's Revolution will actually be that outstanding that they will dominate the next generation of gaming consoles.
Anyway, there are still lots of titles coming out for this generations gaming consoles that I don't think I will buy a new system before 2007 - and at that time prices will have dropped and it will be clear which console has what to offer and is worth its money.
Cell is harder to develop for fool, you have no idea what your talking about.
"Cell is harder to develop"
Bzzztt!
The 360 is turning out to be a nightmare to code for. Being stuck with DirectX and a multi-threaded environment is a fucking disaster. I don't even want to think what it's going to be like when, maybe even if, the real 360 dev hardware arrives. Hand tuning code for three in order cores. Yeeech!
Cell is j u s t f u c k i n g a m a z i n g. I doubt Factor 5 will be the only console developer to come right out and say they are not even going to bother with the 360 difficult to program, weak, and tiny installed base compared to the PS3 which is a fucking dream come true for any graphics coder combined with the enormous installed base that will be out there over the next five years.
It is funny as hell watching the entire Dreamcast/Xbox/x86 fanboy community collectively wet their pants over the PS3. It can't really be that good...
Oh god, it is...
I mean do you have a cell development system?
How about a 360 Development system with actual 360 hardware?
If you do please share.
If not HOW THE HECK DO YOU KNOW?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
And the Cell has 8 cores doesn't it? (1 main + 7 vector) something like that. Cell is a completly new architecture. Sure its PPC like the 360 at its core, but its still a whole new arch. Have you ever programmed before? DirectX is *easy* to program for, super easy (Althout i Use linux/OSX so I never use dx) Hand tuning code for three cores? You obviously don't know what hell PS* development is. the PS1 PS2 and PSP have all required so much assembly coding, their devtools are shit (and theyre are using the same (modified obviously) toolset for the PS3. Oh and what do you mean when the real x360 dev hardware arrives? Developers got their devkits A LONG time ago (PowerMac G5's) what about PS3? The nvidia graphics chip isn't even finished yet, so devs have to guess when theyre coding (or do it all on Cell, which the demos were)
Don't post a bunch of fanboy crap when you obviously have no clue what your talking about.
send us another insider hit man.. i am adicted to your news letter...
please these major sites are not providing the information fast enough or in much detail. If you are a developer with on or all of the SDKs slip us some naked details of these things...
" I doubt Factor 5 will be the only console developer to come right out and say they are not even going to bother with the 360 difficult to program,"
It'd be interesting to see developers that don't have an exclusive arrangement with Sony say that.
"It can't really be that good..."
Given Sony's boasts in the past and the fact that we've seen little video actually rendered on the hardware, skepticism is warranted.
"Derp de derp."
Boggle, I guess there really are retards who get their entire console news from www.teamxbox.com.
Sad.
Sony's boasts???
Wait, let me guess clown...
The bogus "Toy Story" claim made by some reporter that dimwits like you just love to latch on to and parrot.
Or maybe it's the PS2's floating point performance being high enough to be classified as a super computer.
Poor little Sony, their 'hype' isn't fooling smart guys like you...
BTW, I can't seem to find any of those 100-125 million poly/sec games on the store shelves that Microsoft claimed the xbox could pump out...got any recommendations?
"Boggle, I guess there really are retards who get their entire console news from www.teamxbox.com.
...just like how there are some who are willing to suck the cum straight from Kaz's mouth...
Sad."
"Poor little Sony, their 'hype' isn't fooling smart guys like you..."
Yeah, the games just didn't live up to their claims.
"BTW, I can't seem to find any of those 100-125 million poly/sec games on the store shelves that Microsoft claimed the xbox could pump out...got any recommendations?"
That's an interesting rebuttal. (That's what I would have said if I said MS wasn't guilty of it.)
"Derp de derp."
The 360's OS is a port of the original OS, which is a port of the windows kernel. ('port' doesn't fully describe it, but the heritage is there). That alone indicates that developing for the 360 might be complicated.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
I think the real problem with the 360 is it basically direct-x thrown on top of a multi-core chip.
If you ignore PS3 ports, the bulk of the 360 developers are going to be pc development houses with no experience writing concurrent game engines like console developer house are used to. There are most likely going to be a lot of stuff that is just naive direct-x coders splitting things up into render thread, sound thread and so on. I wouldn't be shocked to see a lot of the 360 performing below today's desktop machines.
From the info on the Sony PS3 dev tools and API, it looks like they have really tackled multi-core programming and are going to make PS3 development incredibly easy.
Not according to developers.
Except it's Nintendo that they just dumped, not Microsoft. All we know is that they'd toyed with the idea of X-Box development and then decided on the PS3. On the other hand, they've released two decent third party games for the Gamecube, meaning that they make up a significant part of the 3rd party library actually worth playing on it. Worse news for Nintendo than for MS.
It's funny that they have never made a game for the XBOX, in fact, they were Nintendo exclusive - but the story is written like Sony stole them away from Microsoft.
This is PR hype, but the fact of the matter is that Microsoft probably pinched the better ex-Nintendo developers from last generation. We all know they picked up Rare but they also have Silicon Knights signed up for some exclusive games.
They've been releasing the same game three time. Something tells me we're only going to see more Rogue Squadron sequels on PS3.
Did anyone watch the video where this guy from silicon knights explains why they broke the second party contract with Nintendo? I have a feeling there is more to it then he says. I expect it is something similar to RARE, that Nintendo didn't want to buy and Microsoft paid a ridiculously high amount of money for. I think by now we've seen how much value they actually are for Microsoft. Let's see what Factor 5 and Silicon Knights do independently of Nintendo. Grabbed by the Squadrons or Too Ghoulies?
What console were these "console developer houses" developing for, where they received their "experience writing concurrent game engines"?
Are you really so fucking clueless of console hardware to ask such an inane question...
I could understand if your everyday windows fanboy didn't have much knowledge about specialized game hardware outside of home computers and consoles.
Yes, us console/arcade engineers have been writing 'teh scary parallel/multi-threaded engines' for a long,long time.
It is hilarious to watch the dimwits in the tiny x86 game market wetting their pants over this 'industry shift towards parallelism'
You rock, dude. Seriously. Hard. Which console again, tiger? Hold on a second, let me get that Windows buttplug out of my ass, then I can listen better.
while I certainly not give a damn about star wars games in general, it must be pointed out that factor 5 HASN'T the exclusive rights on star wars or the rogue squadron/leader series. lucasarts do, factor 5 were just contracted to do the job since they're pretty good programmers. personally I'd gladly wait for another turrican title instead of more starwars shooters. hell, a good turrican done like a god of war wouldn't be bad. anyway, if lucasarts still feels that nintendo will have to have its share of exclusive star wars titles, factor 5's jump shouldn't give them much to think about.
MS seems to be in full scale damage control mode right now as developers start to abandon the platform.
Not that I love Microsoft, nor do I have plans to buy a 360 at all, but back your statement up with some facts, please. Last I or anyone else heard, there were some pretty major developers working for games on the 360.
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I mean, is it something about the purple chrome? I'm thinking that has to be it. You know, people spend a lot of time lamenting about the state of games journalism, but look around: this is the audience. It makes IGN sound like Gravity's Fucking Rainbow.
That is all.
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For me, the term "Revolution(s)" now conjures a root of that word... Revolt .... or more specifically ... revolting.
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