Bungie Hiring PC Developers

Gamespot reports that Halo-maker Bungie Studios is seeking PC developers for an unnamed project. From the article: "Taken in and of themselves, the listings are merely interesting. However, the wording of the graphics programmer job description has many positively convinced that Bungie is porting Halo 2 to the PC, in-house. 'This is an opportunity to influence the direction of Windows gaming technology in MGS [Microsoft Game Studios],' reads the post after first teasing, 'Want to work on the biggest franchises for Microsoft Game Studios?' Since becoming part of Microsoft Game Studios, Bungie has worked on only one franchise for the division--Halo."

Comments

Unfounded Speculation

[TychoCelchuuu]

This is silly. My bet is that they're hiring PC developers to not only port Halo 2 but also because PC developers are better suited for next gen consoles. Current gen console developers have dealt their whole lives with limits waaaaay under next gen, while PC games are already there. Just like PC companies like Valve hired movie people when they first started working on their high end next gen content (HL2), a developer like Bungie would have an interest in people who are experienced with advanced technology just around the corner.

Re:Unfounded Speculation

[Valdrax]

No, actually old school programmers are going to be able to squeeze a lot more power out of the Cell and Xenon architectures and are far better suited to understand the limits of in-order execution and the memory timings involved. They know what coding for the specific hardware means, and they're used to limitations not typically present in a PC.

Programming for a single-processor, general purpose machine with gobs of slow RAM gives you very little applicable expertise for these multiprocessor or massively parallel SIMD monsters with limited high-speed RAM. Honestly, Cell is NOTHING like a regular PC architecture. You'd be better off with a background in programming Crays than PCs.

The best thing that PC programming will prepare you for is working with the graphics hardware on both platforms, and even there most people are used to generalizing their code.

Re:Unfounded Speculation

[TheNetAvenger]

No, actually old school programmers are going to be able to squeeze a lot more power out of the Cell and Xenon architectures and are far better suited to understand the limits of in-order execution and the memory timings involved. They know what coding for the specific hardware means, and they're used to limitations not typically present in a PC.

Although I completely agree with you, it should be noted that XBox 360 is basically DirectX/XNA development, and a good PC developer that is familiar with DirectX technologies would do well in both environments.

MS was fairly smart to continue to use the PC metaphor for the consoles, as developers have that level of hardware abstraction that they are getting use to with DirectX and OpenGL for Video.

Sony has tried to bridge this gap with their technologies as well, but all they are providing is development technologies and not the level of hardware abstract that an underlying OS and DirectX provide.

It would be easier to take advantage of scaling out the Cells for example, if the basic technology set Sony provides supported traversing more of this than relying on the developer to do it. Bascially letting an OS technology that already knows how to split threads off would be a bonus to the Sony tools to compensate for developers that even don't consider things from a single process perspective.

But I agree with your argument.

Even though the XBox 360 is able to recompile PC games to it fairly easily that were developed in DirectX technologies, there will still be all the console issues to deal with, from basic things like a limited memory set, storage constraints, to controls via controllers and load performance with DVD driven loading times - all the little fun stuff that is the gap between consoles and PCs, even if the Console is running a PC OS like the 360.

Re:Why wouldn't they port Halo 2 to Windows?

[inio]

Programming for Windows DirectX and Xbox DirectX have about as much in common as plunging a toilet and performing liposuction. Same general motions but the details are completely different.

Actually this is because

[snuf23]

Bungie is planning an MMO based in the Halo universe. In order to make the game successful, they will need both PC and Xbox 360 clients. The game will be more action based than most MMOs and will take advantage of integrated voice.

P.S. I'm full of crap