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Oblivion Confirmed for PS3 Launch
1up reports that Elder Scroll IV: Oblivion will be a PlayStation 3 launch title. From the article: "Yes, the rumors are true: Oblivion is heading to PlayStation 3, and an upcoming cover story in Official PlayStation Magazine has the exclusive first look. Here's what we know so far. The game will introduce a new faction to the Oblivion world, one that's available right at the beginning called Knights of the Nine and described by the developers as 'the good Dark Brotherhood.' The goal here is to become the Divine Crusader (think part warrior, part priest), and the quest features new locations, characters, armor and weapons."
I knew it, the PS3 is going to bring about the apocalypse.
I would assume that everyone who was interested in Oblivion would have already purchased it. I'm not sure how this will be a big selling point for the PS3 when it will be $10-20 more (depending on price drop) than the PC or 360.
It's a port, so most of the assets are already done. Why not do a port of a 'big' title for a launch which is most likely going to be low on games, and take in some easy cash?
Every new console launch has it's share of easy ports raking in the launch madness - when people buy just about anything just to get another game for their shiny new thingy (since there's like 5 titles to choose from)
It would be interesting to see how well Oblivion runs on a PS3 in comparison to a PC or Xbox 360. Is the PS3 really that much better than an Xbox 360? This would show. On some settings Oblivion can humble a Quad SLI setup (usually max settings outdoors), so it won't be a case of the PS3 maxing out Oblivion. I wonder whether it will come on a Blu Ray disc or a DVD because it clearly doesn't need the Blu Ray's capacity. That Blu Ray drive sure is worth the extra cost. Maybe a lot of pre-rendered video will be thrown on for fun.
This is only for people who are completely devoted to the Playstation brand. Anyone else who wanted it, already owns it.
I'm getting sick of reading "the PS3 is harder to program for" from people who've never written code on it.
You do realize the PS3 dev kids come with a huge number of SDKs including massive middleware options for physics, 3D rendering, audio, etc. and a great toolchain? It may not be as idiot-friendly as MS's tools (something Microsoft has always been good at -- their tools that is), but its very thorough. Its not like Bethseda had to sit down and write Cell assembly all day every day. The Unreal engine is available for use (although I doubt they used that), the same tree engine they use on the XBox360 is available, movie codecs are already written, etc.
Sure, optimizing for the low levels of a PS3 engine would be more challenging perhaps than the simpler XBox360 core, most of this can be written in high level languages and compiled easily (with GCC no less) to work quite well out of the box. Go read some real developper information on what Sony provides with a dev kit. The major complaint was that the dev kits weren't as plentiful as hoped -- which indicates that quite a few companies wanted them.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
"PS3 launch is destined for Oblivion"
Meta will eat itself
Why? Even PS3 and Sony haters should want the system to be moderately successful - because otherwise there is no competition. And as the FUD about the PS3 (way too much of it generated by the talking heads at Sony making off-the-cuff remarks and guesses) begins to clear up and actual information begins to solidify, it looks like the system will actually be viable.
i lasted about 45 minutes with this game on the xbox 360. load times and frame rates were excrutiating. it got the point where i didn't open doors due to the loads. an adventure game that discourages exploring..that's rich. maybe the 'feature' that the ps3 port will add will be...wait for it...playability!
Go read some bible: nubible.com
Off on a tangent perhaps, but anywho...
I started playing Oblivion (on PC) again a few nights ago because I was jonesing for an RPG. But I've quickly remembered why I left Oblivion unfinished a few months ago. It's big, it's beautiful, but it's repetitive and boring. It can't decide if it wants to be an RPG or a 3D action game, so it doesn't do a very good job of being either one.
I'm sure it's going to look stunning on a PS3. It looks like it has more horsepower, and 1080p output will just be beautiful. But, I think Oblivion will be a great example of what's wrong with the PS3. Pretty graphics are nice, but there's a lot more to a game than that.
If the PS3 had a real, old-school style RPG that used modern technology coming, I'd probably be willing to shell out the bucks for one. Something party-based like a Baldur's Gate or an Ultima that was as expansive as Oblivion (but with hopefully more unique locations) would be awesome. As it stands, the remake of Ultima 5 using the Dungeon Siege engine is the best RPG I've played recently. It made up for the fact that I actually spent money on Dungeon Siege.
...I had the same thing happening...constant slowdowns outdoors, horrific load times. Most other titles worked great execept for King Kong, which locked up a lot. Got the dvd drive replaced and it works much much better. I'm guessing Oblivion is constantly trying to prefetch assets while your're outside....and when it has to do mulitple retries to the dvd, it looks like low framerate. I WISH they would just let you dump the whole mess to the hd while you were playing it...