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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."
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
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.
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?"
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.
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).
Cell is harder to develop for fool, you have no idea what your talking about.
Why is it that the URL games.slashdot.org can turn even the most seasoned, brilliant Slashdot poster (yeah, I know - there are a few of them, though) into a drooling idiot?
YRO: You know, I'm not a lawyer, but in my experience, I've found the following to be true...
Games: J00 sUx0r.
Apple: What Apple is trying to do isn't worry about existing markets, inasmuch as they're trying to create new ones. It's not that they're not interested in a video store, they just want to do one right, when the market can really support it.
Games: u r a console lamer.
Hardware: In order to properly evaluate the Intel 80333 technology, we need a sketched comparison of its core engine (a LUT-based byte-wide Galois Field multiplier) with a corresponding XOR accumulator. For our purposes, it suffices to sketch an individual unit on the transistor level, analyze the transistor behavior by cycles, and summarize the resource requirements of each.
Games: with xbox 360 m$ is dead lol devlopers r jumping ship ps3 0wns@#
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.
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.