Revolution Easy To Port To

Despite suggestions that the Revolution will not be as powerful as the other next-gen systems, 1up is reporting the system will be easy to port games to. From the article: "It's easy to see Nintendo's logic, though. Even though Revolution won't have the same memory bandwidth as Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, the familiarity with current generation development and tools that Revolution takes advantage of means most companies shouldn't have much trouble working Revolution into the mix."

Comments

Re:Why?

[Eightyford]

Sure it might be easy to get the games onto the Revolution platform, but due to the lower specs they obviously won't be as good, so why bother? Go with the PS3 or 360 and get the same game in all its graphical glory.

Because it's more expensive maybe? And because not everyone buys all 3 systems! And because without an HD TV, you wont see a huge difference.

Think about it. The X-Box had the best specs of the last generation, but the lowest spec machine (ps2) had the most sales.

Re:Why?

[TD-2779]

Won't be as good? I suppose they won't look as good graphically, but that did't stop people from purchasing inferior looking games on the PS2.(less powerful than both gamecube & xbox) Still, ease of programming is probably not the problem. With games targeting hi-def on the PS3 & 360, how much time will it take to tailor the art resources to work on the Revolution?

Re:Why?

[yurnotsoeviltwin]

This is true, but the fact that it's easy to port games to the Revolution doesn't mean it'll have better games like the PS2 did, it just ensures that it'll have the same games, or at least most of the same games. Unless developers FOCUS their game-making on the Revolution, it'll be stuck with ports of games made primarily for the other platforms, which will make it equal to the others at the very most. Not better. You do have a point about the pricing, but my personal viewpoint is that unless I'm getting somethin a LOT better, I'm going to stick with my PC and PS2. I'd rather spend $400 on a huge improvement than $200 on a marginal one. That might be different for other people, of course.

Re:Why?

[MindStalker]

Personally from the xbox 360 being played. It appears as though many games developers really stretched to come up with hidef content. Realistically it will be a rare game that actually needs the hidef resolution and can't simply be displayed in a lower resolution. I do worry though if Revolution will have enough power to handle high end AI and physics simulations.

Re:Why?

[MindStalker]

People are still making games for midrange computers and cellphones. As long as there is a market games will be made. There is a drastic demographic difference between these systems so no don't expect many of the high end games to be cross ported. But do expect many developers to make some very interesting games aimed at the Nintendo demographics made especially for the revolution controller.

Rare?

[tepples]

Realistically it will be a rare game that actually needs the hidef resolution and can't simply be displayed in a lower resolution

I thought rare games were supposed to be Xbox 360 exclusive.

I do worry though if Revolution will have enough power to handle high end AI and physics simulations.

Given that its rumored CPU specs are similar to those of Xbox 360 (a few PowerPC cores), physics and AI shouldn't be a problem.

Besides, simple stylized physics can be more fun for players. Compare the cylindrical hitboxes of Counter-Strike classic to the more detailed ragdoll hit regions of Counter-Strike: Source to see people clumsily bumping into each other in crowded areas because ragdolls don't slide around one another as easily as cylinders do.

Easy To Port To?

[El_Muerte_TDS]

I though it would be somewhat backwards compatible. So porting old games isn't needed. Then what is there to port?

Re:Easy To Port To?

[conigs]

How about third party titles that haven't been released on the GameCube yet?

Re:Easy To Port To?

[WaterBreath]

I think when they say "port", they are really just talking about a multi-platform release.

The impression I got was that they were referring to the much-talked-about claim that games designed for the XBox 360 and PS3 will be too demanding for the Revolution hardware. This article seems to refute that.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

I honestly don't know how much 'weaker' the Revolution will be; the handful of people I know who are game developers are mostly programming peons so they don't have too much information. One of my friends did say he thinks that a lot of people are under a serious misconception about the system because of what Nintendo has released as a 'Pre-Alpha' development kit to certain companies. He claims that Nintendo has released an improved Tri-Force based (for those that don't know, that's the Gamecube's arcade platform that is ~2X as powerful as the Gamecube) development kit that emulates the new features of the Revolution (like per-pixel shading); the purpose of this kit is not to produce something that performs in the same range as the Revolution but is to enable developers to Port/Develop the engine and test new features on a small scale. I'm told that it is not that uncommon for companies like Nintendo, Microsoft, or Sony to provide the developers with different hardware inorder to allow them to progress so I think that this sounds reasonable.

The only other thing I have heard from developers is that Nintendo is undercutting their performance on purpose in order to send the message to developers that they're not going to pressure them to produce games which they can not afford to make and to send the message that they want more creative and enjoyable games rather than prettier games.

Now, everything I have been told could have been a pack of lies but none of it sounds unreasonable; the initial development kits for the 360 were just Power Macs (and in a tight NDA agreement several people might be under the impression that this is the final hardware and leak it to news sites), and Nintendo announced that the Gamecube would only produce 12-15 Million Polygons per second (While Microsoft promised 155 Million with the XBox and Sony Promised 66 Million with the PS2; the XBox 360 may approach 40-60 Million and the PS3 may get into the 60-100 Million range but no hardware can sustain 100 Million + Polygons per second in a game situation) so it's not unreasonable to say Nintendo may make claims at the lower end of what is possible on their system.

This has always been the case

[rAiNsT0rm]

Every single point in console history has had two or three systems all of varying horsepower and porting has always happened and generally the ports were so close it made no massive difference.

Why do people still want to believe that the extra cores and slightly better GPU's in the 360/PS3 are so massively different? THEY AREN'T. They offer a DIFFERENT way of accomplishing things, but they really are only about 2-3x as powerful as current gen systems in REALITY. The Revolution will be about 2-3x the power as the Gamecube and that keeps it right in line as the current systems and porting has been no issue.

Let's all end the hype now, the 360 is out and even though MS is still making excuses and promises, the games are not that spectacularly different. Don't expect things to be that much different with the PS3. HD textures are about it, that is what all the hubub is about. Give it a rest now. The three systems will be competitive and no different than the current offerings.

Re:This has always been the case

[jinzumkei]

Let's all end the hype now, the 360 is out and even though MS is still making excuses and promises, the games are not that spectacularly different. Don't expect things to be that much different with the PS3. HD textures are about it, that is what all the hubub is about. Give it a rest now. The three systems will be competitive and no different than the current offerings.

I would agree with you that the games aren't spectacularly different...NOW. There is a reason for that: Just about every single 360 launch title was originally targetted at an older console, then a few tweaks were added here and there for next gen (HD specifically). But to when the 2nd+ generation 360 games come out, you're going to notice a pretty big difference. I know from first hand experience that the 360 is an incredibly powerful machine that is a huuuuge leap from the original xbox. You will definately see some amazing things come out for it in the future.

Re:This has always been the case

[rAiNsT0rm]

I'm not sure who you're trying to sell on that, but I'm not buying. I work in the industry and have friends who develop for consoles including the 360. I am well aware of what the system is capable of and while it is a step in the HD direction, I have yet to be wowed. Just because the term HD is thrown around like it is something new, it isn't. PC titles had far surpassed the resolution levels that the Xbox 360 tops out at for some years now. While they are great for a console, they really aren't all that amazing once the hype is done away with.

They will get better, but my PC has been able to do the same or better for quite some time and with no real AAA titles even on the local radar for the 360, I'm not getting too excited.

Re:This has always been the case

[NeMon'ess]

The 360 is only 2-3x as powerful as the xbox? Think for a moment. 3.6GHz vs 733MHz, and there's 3 cores. Just one core is at least 3x as fast, and 2nd gen games will take advantage of all the cores. Now look at the video card. A GeForce4 Ultra was twice as powerful as a GeForce 2 or 3, which was in the xbox. The GeForce6800 was more than 2x as powerful as the GF4. The GF7800 is about 2x as powerful as the 6800. Meaning the 360's video card can render over EIGHT times as many polygons and effects as the xbox. Don't believe me? Look at the latest computer games running on 7800s and remember these games are limited by having to be compatible with so many different CPUs and cards.

So the 360 and PS3 will be at least about 4 to 6 times as powerful for second and third generation games.

Re:This has always been the case

[rAiNsT0rm]

heh, well think what you will but you are not even close. Theoretically you are correct, in reality you are wrong. You are looking at the individual components, not the whole. Look at I/O speeds, ram speeds, drive speeds. Now tak einto account the data transfer rate of HD content. You are forgetting that the 360 is having to process over 8 times the data with the new content, so even with component increases the overall speed is about 2-3x the original Xbox. You left out all of that. If it was the 360 running an Xbox level title it would be 7-8x, but it isn't and even Xbox titles need to be emulated and as such suffer from slowdowns. I have tried numerous original Xbox titles and at times the FPS slows to crawls.

You need to take more factors into account than what you are doing now to get the real numbers, 2-3x is right on.

Re:This has always been the case

[justchris]

There's also the construction of the hardware to take into account. One of the reasons the GC was able to produce visuals so nearly matching what the Xbox did was because even though all it's numbers were less, the actual components it used were superior to what the Xbox had. Specifically, it had faster RAM and the Flipper video card which did all the effects on the fly, so you were only loading about 10% as much stuff into RAM as you were on the Xbox or PS2.

The 360 is using an ATI video card this time around, and if it's able to do effects on the fly, even with slower RAM than what the Rev will be using it will prove to be more than 2-3 times as powerful, maybe 4-5 times as powerful as the original Xbox. Then again, maybe not, guess we'll see.

Re:This has always been the case

[NeMon'ess]

There's no point bringing emulated xbox titles into this since the 360 is spending so much power just translating the game. Drive speeds also don't matter much once data is loaded into RAM. For memory bandwidth, the xbox has 6.4GB/s, and the 360 has 22.4 GB/s memory interface bus bandwidth, 256 GB/s memory bandwidth to EDRAM, 21.6 GB/s frontside bus. So that's almost 4x.

You are correct that at 1280x720 the 360 may not be able to render 8x as many polygons compared to 640x480. However since the card has been optimized for 720p rendering, it probably can. It can also do some shader effects with little to no performance hit. So while there might not necessarily be 8x as many polygons, the overall power of the machine in reality should be 4-6x.

Suppose we benchmarked games on a 733MHz PC with a GF3 and an Alienware machine today with PC games from 5 years ago. I expect the new machine to get at least 8x the frames. Isn't that what we're talking about here? And if we use todays more complex games, the 733 won't even be able to run them. The combination of increased graphical complexity and better image quality is what makes the 360 4-6x more powerful.

Re:This has always been the case

[rAiNsT0rm]

While your numbers are correct, again you are only looking at THEORETICAL performance. Not real life performance. Theoretical numbers are always deceiving.

You are making the same errors in reasoning in regards to the CPU and it's cores. Each core is not a whole new CPU... it is just like hypertrhreading except LESS efficient. Also if you do the math for HD texture size and resolution and effects you will quickly see that I/O bandwidth becomes a limiting factor quite quickly. Same with the GPU. While it is impressive, look at the numbers for the Geforces you quote running say Doom3 or Farcry at the resolutions the 360 does... they are nowhere near 4x as fast let alone 6x!

The 360 is an impressive bit o kit for the money, but it is not this amazing marvel as many are apt to make it out to be. You also have to remember that the CPU is NOT a finely tuned CPU like Intel or AMD puts out... it is a fairly inefficient and crude design compared to some of the more robust and mature technologies. There is no doubt that at some point in it's lifecycle Dev's will figure out some tricks but you will NEVER see 6x the power of the xbox 1. Could some features and applications see 4x improvements? Yes. Will entire games run at 4x? No way.

Also remember how MS stated the 4x AA was "free"? Then why is it that the first run games are only 2x AA? Hmm... Something doesn't add up, now does it.

Re:This has always been the case

[NeMon'ess]

I'm being conservative with the CPU. Compare the 733MHz to the 3.6GHz in almost any benchmark, and the 3.6 will be at least 3 times as fast. But I didn't claim the 3 cores would make it 9 times as fast.

Now I found some benchmarks for those games tested with cards from a GF4200 to a 6800. Keep in mind that the GF3 was even slower and paired with a 733 chip, not the latest and greatest. Also remember that the 7800 can do twice as many frames as the 6800. So just from the benchmarks alone, the 6800 on Farcry get 83fps at 1024x768, and the 4200 gets 34.5 at 800x600.

I'm not sure we've agreed to this, but I consider the increase in resolution and effects a hard to quantify increase in power. So the fact that the 360 can take an xbox scene and render it in HD with new effects and still get at least 3x the frames makes it 8x as powerful.

For Doom 3 a 6800 Ultra Extreme at 1024x768 High quality gets 100.2fps. A GF4200 Ti at 640x480 Medium quality gets 36.7fps

So taking these fps's and doubling for the 7800, then doubling again because the GF3 was half as powerful, and that appears to show that even with increasing the resolution and effects, the 7800 is 8x as powerful. This still doesn't consider how much worse the fps's would have been with a 733MHz chip.

So if the PC can do 8x better at high res, why can't the 360? If memory bandwidth really is such a bottleneck, what was MS thinking?

Re:This has always been the case

[rAiNsT0rm]

As your numbers show, the actual FPS increase is about 2-3x. Which is exactly my point.

Consoles are not computers (except for the Xbox 1) and do not work even remotely similar. The fact is that you can take the three cores and throw that right out the window. The system will run as a single 3GHz CPU, the extra cores will take some load off once utilized but the net gain is minimal.

So now we are comparing a 733MHz CPU to a 3GHz CPU. While this alone is a 4X theoretical increase, we all know that it is not a 4x real increase. More like 2-3x as I stated.

Consoles are all about I/O. The Xbox 360 has decent I/O specs. but in reality, once all of the system is taken into account, the net gain is about 2-2.5x increase. Now when you are ramming HD textures and high poly counts through, every single usable bit of bandwidth will be utilized very quickly.

Companies keep claiming that these initial titles are so under utilizing the system, but I don't see it. And as I stated I do have friends who are game programmers and two working on Xbox 360 titles, they claim there is a lot of oppotunity to eek out extra power, but that each one is a relatively small gain. Including threading. The titles you are seeing now are comparable to the first gen games on any system, and just like every system they will improve but it is never Night and Day from the 1st gen to the last. There are noticeable differences but not wholesale changes in quality.

People keep eating up the hype that they haven't seen what the 360 is "really" capable of yet... well, actually we have. The system is what it is, games will get a bit smoother and refined but not by leaps and bounds to where 1st gen titles will be laughable.

Also, please don't forget that this is NOT an Intel CPU. Comparing numbers is not relevant. That is why I said to look at GPU dependent games like Doom3 and Farcry to show the FPS difference. Just as PPC and Intel comparisons show weaknesses and strengths, the same here.

I'm not trying to argue, or say that you are "wrong", I just want you to realize the true story. We will all see quite clearly with the 2nd string of releases, I'm not expecting magic to happen based on what I've seen on the dev side.

Re:This has always been the case

[NeMon'ess]

Read it again. The actual FPS increase was 2-3x using a 4200 and 6800, insted of a GF3 and 7800, and while using the same CPU for both GPUs. Factor those in and it's more like 4-8x.

Now I know both CPUs aren't made by Intel, but clock for clock the PPC is supposed to be faster than than the P4. Furthermore, take any benchmark and a 3.2GHz P4 or PPC will be at least 3x as fast as a 733MHz P3. Photoshop filters, mp3 compression, AI routines, it will be 3x or faster. Not 2x. I can find pages on the net for this too.

So why did MS hamstring themselves with the I/O?

Re:This has always been the case

[MeanderingMind]

Answer: CPU/GPU specs sounds more impressive.

It's just like how the number of bits a console had was a huge deal in the days before and shortly after the SNES. However, after the playstation and n64, no one really cared about them anymore because they were obviously not really that important.

The same thing will happen after this generation, as people will realize the CPU/GPU are not all there is to a console, important as they may be.

Re:This has always been the case

[NeMon'ess]

Some developers took advantage of the xbox's greater power and made better looking versions of games that also came out on the PS2. It seems like those developers would appreciate the more powerful system and therefore MS would be doing themselves a disservice; particularly if the PS3 has more bandwidth.

Re:This has always been the case

[jinzumkei]

Just out of curiosity what do you do in the industry? I'm programmer and a game studio and have a dev kit sitting right on my desk, I've seen some pretty amazing things on it. I'm just wondering because I haven't met ONE developer who wasn't atleast somewhat amazed at the pwoer of the console. Hell looking past just the technical details, Xbox Live is a great service that has huuuuge potential.

Sure HD on a console doesnt beat the resolution on a PC, but what size is you're monitor? 19"? 21"? On avg, HDTVs are over 30". High resolution isn't everything you need screen real estate to appreciate it. 720p/1080i looks pretty damn good on a 37" TV.

As for games, i've already said nothing right now is worth getting too excited, but if you are basing the entire console off the games right now, that's pretty foolish. The potential on this console is huge.

Lets bring a whole sack of salt for this.

[AzraelKans]

First of all, 1up has become an extremely unreliable and biased source for info for some reason (money probably) second: IGN showed some of the technical info for the console and it seems it has been pretty constricted in terms of CPU, memory and even video power compared to the PS3 and the xbox360 add that to the fact that it uses a completely unstandard controller and you get a console that is extremely difficult to port to. But dont take my word for it, several publishers have already confirmed their ports to Xbox 360 and Ps3 but not to revolution. (including capcom, konami, ea, etc)

On the bright side, for most fans thats not really important, if you buy a revolution you want to play Nintendo original games, not ports.

Re:Lets bring a whole sack of salt for this.

[Guppy06]

" it has been pretty constricted in terms of CPU, memory and even video power compared to the PS3 and the xbox360"

"Pretty constricted" is subjective at best. The PS2 is "pretty constricted" compared to the GCN and Xbox.

"add that to the fact that it uses a completely unstandard controller"

They've already stated the system comes with the thumbstick dongle, giving you a pretty standard controller for unoriginal ports.

Re:Lets bring a whole sack of salt for this.

[rAiNsT0rm]

No offense, but the reason that no third party companies have come out to say wether they will or won' tport to the Revolution.. is because it hasn't even been officially announced yet. NO company is going to begin to speculate in the media about a system they haven't even seen official specs or stats on.

Give it time, ports will be very common actually among these next-gen systems due to the high development costs, they need as much exposure as possible to even begin to recoup costs.

Won't be nearly as easy to port to ..

[torpor]

.. as this machine is. And yes, this machine is very, very easy to port to .. it was designed to be so..

GameCube?

[metamatic]

The GameCube was easier to port to than the PS2, and look at how well that worked.

[I own one of each, thanks.]

Re:GameCube?

[fujiman]

It worked well for the following reason: PS2's market share made releasing on that platform MANDATORY. It didn't matter how hard porting to PS2 was... there were 4x the amount of PS2s than XBoxes or GCs. In fact, most cross-platform games were coded PRIMARILY for PS2, since it was the hardest to port to.

I dare say Sony won't have that big of a lead this generation, so yes, now it is relevant for them.

Re:GameCube?

[metamatic]

Assuming the PS3 has the 100% back-compatibility with PS2 and PS1 that's promised, I can see it becoming market leader very rapidly. One of the reasons I bought a PS2 first was I already had a bunch of favorite PS1 games, as opposed to having to start from scratch with a GameCube.

Yes, console market share leads to manufacturers making games for the console.. but equally, games for the console lead to console market share.

Courting Third Party Vendors

[DrWho520]

According to the Nintendo mastermind (psssst, Miyamoto!), Revolution software development can take place on existing GameCube development kits.

This is a key fact to keep in mind. The preliminary development kits were actually tweaked 'Cube kits. I cannot speak to the fulfledged dev kits, but they should be very similar in practice. Nintendo is hoping to see their efforts at courting to third party vendors to start coming to fruition here. If it is easy to develop for, third party vendors will develop for it, right? This generation should begin to answer that question.

Early release games are always inferior to late lifecycle games. This is partially due to the learning curve inherent in new development kits. If a developer has learned the 'Cube dev kit, they should be able to easily come up to speed on a Revolution dev kit. Hardware optimizations will take some time. This could also explain why the current 360 games are so similar to current Xbox games. The development kits must have changed drastically from one console to the next. It is an entirely different chipset. I am making some assumptions and have no personal experience with either dev kit.

As for the controller, if you have not read about the controller shells that will be available for the control stick, you have not business commenting on any story about Next Generation consoles. I am sure a Wavebird shell, 360 shell and a Dual Shock shell (or something very similar to each, probably released by MadCatz or someone similar) will be available soon after the console launch. Ironically enough, the Revoltion may have a traditional Playstation controller before the PS3 if Sony sticks with that boomerang design.

I always liked the N64 controller. It was big enough for my ginormous bear paws.

Re:Courting Third Party Vendors

[rAiNsT0rm]

It's actually very simple. The GC had a GPU that offered 8 layer texture mapping... *8*. However the surrounding hardware could not do anything meaningful with a screen full of 8 layered polys. I've seen some dev studio demo's on the GC hardware and they would stagger you at the beauty... but then there was no headrrom for AI/gameplay.

The Revolution will finally have the hardware to handle these graphics so really nothing needs to change as far as the dev kit goes. The GC had the better graphics chip of both the PS2 and the Xbox, it just couldn't be utilized even at 50% capacity due to hardware constraints.

People keep seeing the fact that dev's are currently using GC dev systems... this is actually very exciting news and will prove to be a great thing in the end. The GC is a dream to develop for, and with Nintendo pledging to work with the independent developer, this news is some of the least covered and underrated news of the next gen consoles.

It will become clear soon enough.

Re:Courting Third Party Vendors

[justchris]

The impressive thing was that the GPU could do 8 layer texture mapping, bump mapping, lighting and shadow effects on the fly. Unfortunately, the processor and frame buffer weren't able to handle those kind of effects while also calculating physics and AI. I'm still hoping for a seperate PPU in the Rev, that would make the other listed specs a non-issue.

Re:Why?

[Gulthek]

And the worst games ever made were all made in the 80s on low bit chips. Good and bad don't depend on the hardware, but good hardware can make crap games playable.

But a crap game with crap graphics with a crap controller: nightmare in a box. Would you rather play 18 Wheeler or Smurf Rescue?

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Microsoft claimed 125 million for the XBOX and Sony claimed 75 million FLAT SHADED polys on the ps2 with real world being between 10-15 million. Sony was at least somewhat honest (can we get Sony circa 1999 back please?) while it looks like Microsoft was trying to pass off a theoretical maximum as something that we will see in the real world.

The best part is the MS still claim 125 million judging by the comparison chart in the official xbox360 launch guide and now they claim that the 360 can do 500 million polys. Seeing that in microsoft world 20-30 million polys actually equals 125 the is it possible by this math to deduce that teh 360 will be capable of slightly over 100 million polys.

BTW, you estimates on the 360 are little low and on the PS3 are little high based on what developers, ATI and Nvidia have to say about the actual hardware (360 and ps3 respectively).

Re:Why?

[David Nabbit]

And the worst games ever made were all made in the 80s on low bit chips.

I think Superman 64 begs to differ.

I will say that the more system resources available, the lazier programmers are allowed to be. I'm not saying that's necessarily a good or bad thing, but it is pretty ridiculous to be hearing that a DVD-9 is not enough room to store a game.

But is that a good thing?

[Castar]

Hmm. I don't know if I *like* the idea of easy ports. One of the strengths of the DS, in my opinion, is that it forces developers to think at least somewhat about the new games they're making, and NOT just port over GBA games or N64 games.

I wonder, do I really want to play the games that are going to be coming out for all three platforms? Or would I rather play games that have been designed from the ground up to take advantage of the exciting new features of the Revolution?

About the only benefit I can see is that cross-platform ports will help the system survive if there aren't enough fantastic unique games made for it.

Re:But is that a good thing?

[MeanderingMind]

Honestly, I think it's perfectly fine. It will keep unoriginal developers who have no business even trying to do something new (read EA) from making games that will be posterchildren for Revolution controller naysayers.

Re:Why?

[TD-2779]

If you head over to revolution.ign.com they have rough specs according to the latest SDK's.