The Downloadable Content Rumourmill

Despite the high hopes of Xbox 360 fans Gamespot pegs it as unlikely that Lumines Live will drop this week, or that there will be a Gears of War Demo on the Xbox Live service. In news that does seem to be legit, though, you can see screenshots of the first downloadable games for the PS3 service over at Game|Life. Titles include the previously mentioned fl0w, Lemmings 2, Blast Factor, and Go Sudoku. Commentary on the games available at GameSetWatch.

Comments

Will the slashdot game be ported?

[LiquidCoooled]

How can I write first post using a gamepad?
Can we level up the same as on a "regular" pc?

Re:Will the slashdot game be ported?

[Opportunist]

Kids write faster on their cellphones than secretaries on typewriters, there'll be that feature if there's a need for it.

And you can level much faster, you'll never be modded redundant!

Re:Will the slashdot game be ported?

[edmicman]

Kids write faster on their cellphones than secretaries on typewriters, there'll be that feature if there's a need for it.

I would argue against that, unless the world's business documents want to say "u wnt 2 c me? l8r!" or some such crap. I want to see a kid type legible sentences on a cell phone faster than any computer geek can type on a keyboard.

Re:Will the slashdot game be ported?

[MBGMorden]

Kids write faster on their cellphones than secretaries on typewriters, there'll be that feature if there's a need for it.

Those secretaries must be some terribly slow typists. Show me a kid that can do 100+ WPM on a cellphone and I'll be impressed.

That's the problem I see with most "convergent" technologies. When you get down to it the input devices mostly suck. Palm's graffiti system is faster than a cellphone for me (I know that's subjective), but still nowhere close to touch typing. I'll hobble myself only so much.

PS3 greater than 360?

[slib]

I hate to admit it, but the PS3 is looking better all the time. Aside from Gears of War and a few other select X360 games, content on that system seems to be running dry, and the trend seems to be bleeding over into the Xbox Live Marketplace as well. Launch titles downloadable and non, the PS3 seems to have a much more (hate to use the buzzword) "NEXT GEN" approach so far. And outside the launch window, the potential is better than Microsoft's. Too bad nobody will be able to afford a PS3 until 2009.

Re:PS3 greater than 360?

[PrescriptionWarning]

"Too bad nobody will be able to afford a PS3 until 2009."

that is precisely what will kill them. Unless they take the price down drastically after 1 year, it'll take 2, 3, or even more years just to pick up sales for what is supposed to bring the money in (the games and accessories)

Re:PS3 greater than 360?

[twistedsymphony]

I'll agree that's not nearly as doom and gloom as everyone has been making it out to be but honestly, I don't know how you can categorize the 360 game line up as "running dry" in the same breath you claim the PS3 is somehow doing better in that department. Lets take a look at what's being released between now and the end of November in terms of titles exclusive between the 3 next gen contenders: Xbox 360:

• Phantasy Star Universe
• Spliter Cell Double Agent
• Fuzion Frenzy 2
• Gears of War
• Viva Piniata
• FIFA 07
• Pro Evo Soccer 6
• Star Trek Legacy
• WWE SvR
• Rayman 4
• Dead or Alive Xtreme 2
• Cabela's African Safari

PS3:

• Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom
• Full Auto 2: Battlelines*
• Mobile Suit Gundam: Crossfire
• Ridge Racer 7*
• Resistance: Fall of Man
• Genji: Days of the Blade

*Also I should note that the predecessors to both of theses games were exclusive to the 360 and bombed horribly.

Wii:

• Barnyard
• Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2
• Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors
• Elebits
• Excite Truck
• GT Pro Series
• Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers
• The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
• Metal Slug Anthology
• Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
• Monster 4x4 World Circuit
• Rayman Raving Rabbids
• Red Steel
• SpongeBob SquarePants: Creature from the Krusty Krab
• Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz
• Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam
• Trauma Center: Second Opinion
• Wii Sports

If anything the Wii has the most impressive lineup of games through November, AFAIK there are no Wii or PS3 titles schedueld for December... if anything it will play to those titles who's release date slips. As far as I can tell there is no point in buying a PS3 this year unless you REALLY want to play Resistance or fight Giant Crabs(TM) in Genji. There are 20 something great 3rd party titles coming out as well that I didn't mention here, but you can get any of those on either 360 or PS3 (though most of those on the PS3 wont arrive until next year). The rest of the PS3's launch line up are games that came out on the 360 months ago.

I guess I just don't see why the PS3 is suddenly "looking better all the time" while the 360 is "drying up" If anything the PS3's launch line up is just playing catch up to the 360.

Re:PS3 greater than 360?

[docrmc]

There are the lucky ones who will afford to PS3 as it drops, and what little games they have; and it wouldnt be a stretch of my imagination that someone might really want to play Resistance, or, if like me, feel like RR and Warhawk for nostalgia's sake. But, let me sit halfway in this argument- PS3 is looking better all the time. Ive no idea why but 'Go Sudoku' excited me. (perhaps its some innate geek quality ive yet to understand :P) But that doesnt mean that theyre lookin better than Wii or 360- lets not get those matters confused.

And twisted is right, games drying up on other consoles is absolute rubbish. PS3 is busy playing catchup for titles already on market, and developing few new ones.

Re:FIRST POST

[slib]

DENIED!

Only the Wii is truly next gen...

[Channard]

A developer or someone made the point that only the Wii is truly next gen, with its controller that could - to use another buzzword - take gaming to the next level. Both the 360 (I have one myself) and the PS3 are really processor upgrades.

Re:Only the Wii is truly next gen...

[Erwos]

You seem to assume that CPU and GPU upgrades can't enable new gameplay ideas. Here's a counter-example to that thesis: Dead Rising. Dead Rising would not seem to be possible with the previous CPUs and GPUs present on "last-gen" consoles (or "next-gen" Wii's, for that matter). The gameplay is completely influenced by the several hundred zombies milling around you constantly, and ends up creating a totally new experience.

You don't even need more power to create this kind of paradigm shift, either. Xbox Live, especially the better version for the 360, totally changed the way console gamers thought about online services, with integrated chat, matchmaking, and content downloads. There's a lot of room to improve without a fancy new GPU, CPU, or controller. (It's worth noting here that the Wii takes a giant leap backwards on this front with the generally maligned Friends Code system. Does that make it "not next-gen"? I think not, but it's worth thinking about.)

Further, a controller is just an input. It doesn't magically make things more fun or "take gaming to the next level". Good developers do that, and a good developer can work with whatever inputs they have access to. A wiimote is not more fun than a steering wheel, a gamepad is not more fun than a DDR mat, a joystick is not more fun than a mouse and keyboard. They're just inputs. That's it. Ascribing mystical properties of "fun-ness" to them is silly.

So, I disagree with your idea that a new controller is somehow more next-gen than anything else. It's a self-serving rationalization by Nintendo fanbots, in my experience. What makes something "this generation" is relative release date, nothing else.

Re:Only the Wii is truly next gen...

[Purity Of Essence]

Dead Rising would not seem to be possible with the previous CPUs and GPUs present on "last-gen" consoles (or "next-gen" Wii's, for that matter). The gameplay is completely influenced by the several hundred zombies milling around you constantly, and ends up creating a totally new experience.

You've obviously never played Robotron:2084.

Re:Only the Wii is truly next gen...

[kafka47]

Yeah. Next-Gen. Right.

You seem to assume that CPU and GPU upgrades can't enable new gameplay ideas.

And you seem to assume that they do.

Lets just say, by your citation of the exemplary ("Dead Rising"), that the current iteration of CPU ("the Xeon CPU") is heralding gameplay like we've never seen before. That it is definitively "Next Gen", taking us in directions that even the Wii cannot touch.

Trouble is, that your belief in Next-Gen is entirely predicated on one aspect of gaming : high fidelity cinematics. That this cinematic quality truly represents the next level in your interactive entertainment. Your enthusiastic missive could be correctly expressed as, "[Dead Rising] constitutes [an] example to [the] thesis [that next-gen == lots of good graphics]". Yet, there is nothing in the gameplay mechanics of Dead Rising that emerge if you replaced all of those high-poly Zombie models with symbolic ASCII squares or circles. There are just lots and lots of them, translating your gameplay experience into one of an endurance race.

It's a foregone conclusion that we will look back in the next, next, next generation and shrug at the graphics on the XBox 360 and it's Pepsi flavoured counterpart, the Playstation 3. Just as we do the Playstation, the Dreamcast, the Gamecube, the Colecovision, the Intellivision, the Atari. Its an inexorable path towards more of the same. The same gameplay elements, the same RPGs, the same FPS', the same fighters. I see no revolution in this, I see a constant trend of evolution.

Better and better graphics. Wicked sound. We know this path, and in a zillion ways, its been fully explored. We've witnessed the potential, and in seeing each successive refinement, we rarely question whether it represents a new direction in gaming. It's a certainly a known one. Better cinematic quality, better all-round media-centric creations are the bread and butter of the major figures of the videogame business. It's practically risk-free. Yet, it's almost axiomatic in hardcore gaming circles now : "Better graphics do not equal better gameplay." Most of Walmart's customers do not really understand this, but that's because their expectations have been managed with the consummate skill of big-media masters.

When I turn on VH1, I hear them talk about "NextGen Games" featuring the most "realistic environments ever seen". When I feel the push this hard, I suspect that there is more to it.

To put it simply, the Xbox 360 and PS3 have been architected such that their very innards are bent towards the greater realisation of streaming and dynamic graphics capabilities. What is most surprising however, is that these advancements have been done at the expense of greater advances in controllers, physics, A.I., interactivity and story. In the parlance of programming code, their chip configuration enhances the processor's ability to "write-stream" visual info into a somewhat limited storage cache area. Things like physics and A.I. are brazenly handed off to the deftness of the programmers themselves. Left to cram all of the unravelled, highyl branchy, decision code into a limited storage region, we can easily see where the 360's and PS3's emphasis lay. Certainly not in the realm of highly destructible environments, finely grained control or intelligent opponents. In other words, the new systems are whispering, "Look, but don't touch". Even with these amazing processors under the covers.

Next-gen is a marketing tune that you're dancing to, and that tune is "Baby, High-Fidelity is My Novelty".

So, I disagree with your idea that a new controller is somehow more next-gen... It's a self-serving rationalization by Nintendo fanbots...

And your "zombie-like" devotion to your surface-level examination of games and that silly term, "next gen" isn't just self-serving, it serves the interests of the marketdroids that have you convinced that next gen is anything BUT new ideas, innovation, dynamic environments, autho

Re:Only the Wii is truly next gen...

[brkello]

First, how is this relevant? The article has nothing to do with the Wii. Second, you could easily argue that the Wii is the only console that isn't next gen. Both the 360 and the PS3 can make their own controllers that do something similar to the Wii...but the Wii won't ever have any more horsepower. Really, all you are is offtopic and flamebait. All the consoles are "next-gen". The moderators are on crack this morning.

To make this on topic...this is about games that won't be released this iteration on the 360 and SCREENSHOTS of games for a console that isn't out yet. How can we contain our excitement?

Re:Only the Wii is truly next gen...

[KDR_11k]

Hundreds of enemies aren't possible on current gen consoles? Ever played Earth Defence Force?

Re:Only the Wii is truly next gen...

[Erwos]

"Trouble is, that your belief in Next-Gen is entirely predicated on one aspect of gaming : high fidelity cinematics. That this cinematic quality truly represents the next level in your interactive entertainment. Your enthusiastic missive could be correctly expressed as, "[Dead Rising] constitutes [an] example to [the] thesis [that next-gen == lots of good graphics]". Yet, there is nothing in the gameplay mechanics of Dead Rising that emerge if you replaced all of those high-poly Zombie models with symbolic ASCII squares or circles. There are just lots and lots of them, translating your gameplay experience into one of an endurance race."

You misread what I was trying to say. I didn't say that Dead Rising's graphics were its great advance, although they are indeed pretty. I'm saying that controlling hundreds of zombies simultaneously in a "realistic" fashion was something that couldn't be done before the advent of multi-core processors - even in ASCII. Trying to make comparisons to, say, Geometry Wars is silly, because Geometry Wars doesn't have any real amount of AI, only very, very simplistic control algorithms, which are indeed trivial to run through.

However, I realized you were full of it when I got down to your "highly destructible environments, finely grained control or intelligent opponents" rant. None of these require any hardware that's not already included with the Xbox 360 or PS3, or even the Wii. They are _all_ functions of existing hardware capabilities and algorithms. I'm amazed at the amount of things you crammed into my mouth that I didn't say, and didn't even imply - indeed, I even made a point of noting that you didn't need anything new but ideas and good engineering to make significant jumps in usability and fun.

I suspect you're a flaming Wii fanboy, to be honest, and that you were just looking for an excuse to rip on anyone who _dared_ contradict the idea that some new controller is the best thing since sliced bread. Sorry.

Re:Only the Wii is truly next gen...

[Aladrin]

You can't make a commercial first person hack and slash in ASCII. Graphics are needed for that, whatever you think. The experience simply isn't the same. So games like Dynasty Warriors 3/4/5 and Dead Rising couldn't exist on the NES.

So good CPUs and GPUs DID create a new genre, and thus gameplay ideas.

Maybe they aren't likely to create a lot more, but it's not an 'assumption' on anyone's part that they did it.

As for the Wiimote creating new gameplay ideas... So far, there's nothing on the Wii that couldn't be done on the standard gamepad. Maybe it's a little more fun, and a little more intuitive and easy... But they already exist.

Okami is a prime example... The celestial brush would have been perfect for the Wiimote... But the ps2's analog controls handle it fine. If it had been conceived after the Wii was announced, people would claim it couldn't have been done on a gamepad. And they would have been wrong.

Because next gen

[falcon5768]

starts with "Lemmings 2, Blast Factor, and Go Sudoku"

Re:Because next gen

[SoapDish]

Finding out that sony owns Lemmings saddens me greatly. I have fond memories of Lemmings and Lemmings 2 on the Amiga.

Re:Because next gen

[dlim]

No, next gen starts with 1080p "Lemmings 2, Blast Factor and Go Sudoku".

I have a bad feeling about this...

[Opportunist]

Maybe it won't happen right away, but I'm quite sure we'll soon see previews streamed to our consoles, but not in the way we might want and enjoy it. I forsee the same development as with movies, that you HAVE to play at least a few minutes of a preview before you may play the game you actually want to play.

Re:Gears of War Demo Would Be Suicide

[jonwil]

I thought the GPU in the xbox 360 was supposed to have fancy technology that made anti-aliasing essentially "zero cost"...

Re:Gears of War Demo Would Be Suicide

[Anonymous Coward]

There's nothing 'fancy' about the fucked up 360 graphics system.

It is an architecture designed for 480p that Microsoft is forcing 360 developers to try to write 720p games for. There is only 10megs of EDRAM in the 360. That is the right size for a 4XAA 480p framebuffer to sit in. If you are forced to write you game to support 720p you have to either give up decent AA or implement a tedious to write and performance degrading tile renderer to fit your framebuffer into the too small EDRAM on the 360.

So what you get on the 360 is 720p games without any decent AA leading to jaggies all over the place. Which leads to developers putting out bullshit marketing shots that have massive amounts of AA that isn't in the real 360 game. The two most egregious offenders are Gears of War and PGR3. The difference between the bullshit marketing shots that everyone sees posted on the net and the real in game graphics is criminal.

None of this would be a problem if Microsoft would let 360 developers write to a resolution the 360 can handle - 480p. Instead they want a bulletpoint to try to portray the system as more powerful than it really is. So you end up with a library of 360 games with:

* Jaggies everywhere on most games
* Sub 30 framerates leading to...
* Screen tearing due to vsync having to be turned off because 30fps not being able to be consistently maintained
* Affine texture filtering being turned off to try to get the frame rate up to 30fps

The 360 is a nightmare for developers to work with.

nope!

[Killcrone]

I think just the opposite, the preveiws are good because people will actully KNOW what they are getting themselves into, thus getting rid of actully bad video games being played but if they force us to play the previews, THAT would suck, I mean that ruins part of the gme for you doesn't it? It just doesn't make sense!

Re:nope!

[Opportunist]

Who cares about ruining that game for you? You already bought it, so why do you think the company would care if you like it or not?

Go Sudoku?

[Anonymous Coward]

Rounding out the pack is Go Sudoku, which seems to be a mix of Sudoku and Global Thermonuclear War. wE ARE AT DEFCON FIVE SIR. I REPEAT: WHAT GOES IN THAT SQUARE. IT CAN'T BE A NINE BECAUSE THERE'S A NINE UP THERE I lol'd afterthought: I tried to post the real quote, but for some raisin /. is racist against CAPS, tards.

Re:Gears of War Demo Would Be Suicide

[LukeCage]

That's interesting that you say that the 360 is a nightmare to work with...because John Carmack is on record as saying that it has the best IDE and programatic support of any console he has ever seen. I think I will take Mr. Carmack's opinion over that of an anonymous coward, no offense.

Re:Gears of War Demo Would Be Suicide

[iainl]

That's odd. I was playing PGR3 last night, and I didn't see any framedropping below 30fps, nor aliasing problems for that matter. It's a problem with some games, but I haven't seen it there.

Re:Gears of War Demo Would Be Suicide

[KDR_11k]

Why would you want AA at 720p? AA makes the image look higher resolution while 720p IS higher resolution. I never use antialiasing in PC games since that means I can set them to a higher resolution without encountering framerate drops.

funny though

[Ender Ryan]

Yeah, Carmack has said the 360 is nice and easy to develop for, but what's kinda funny about that is Quake 4 has some not insignificant framerate problems on the 360.

I have no idea if that's indicative of any problems whatsoever with the 360 in general, I am only pointing it out for the sake of fairness here.

But, honestly, I don't think AA is too important for 720p and up. OTOH, I agree with the AC that Gears of War doesn't look so hot.

Re:Gears of War Demo Would Be Suicide

[drinkypoo]

I don't know about you but I can sit at my IBM stinkpad with a 1600x1200 15" display (133ppi) and I can still see jaggies when they exist. On a fairly-large 720p display I can see them from across the room. Just because 720p looks better than 420p doesn't mean 720p with AA won't look better than 720p without it - it will. I turn on antialiasing any time I have enough horsepower.

He was being sarcastic

[PaulMorel]

I think he was being sarcastic.... so.... uh, chill.