Devil May Cry 4 Going Multi-platform! (Xbox 360/PS3/PC) *Confirmed

[TheChefO]

It's a chicken and egg situation...

Selling PS3's isn't good for its own sake, it's good because it provides an avenue via which they might purchase PS3 software and services (in the near future I'm sure). Now, havign software 'hooks' to spur the initial purchase in the first place is of course a great thing, but it's always too chancy to rely on external leverage. It absolutely *was* the key enabler of Playstation and Playstation 2 - but strange market dynamics conspired tomake it of mutual benefit to both Sony and developers. Over the past five years Sony has been expanding their internal software efforts in leaps and bounds, and personally I think their best shot at it all comes in the form of creating a Halo-esque hit to set them apart. I don't think it's Killzone, and it may not come at all, but whatever the short term pain of it... I do think it's better in the longrun to invest in yourself and your exported system tools than to invest in the efforts of others.

Agreed, I just think they are extremely late in this regard. With better tools they would not have lost the "lead platform sku" they had lats gen and seemed to have early this gen. This should have been priority number 1 and continuously refined while they secured the exclusives.

Idealy they would have also let themselves a back door for a BRless ps3 but they cornered themselves in their current high price which only adds to their current problems with key exclusives being lost.

We'll see how it turnes out.

IMO:
route 1: ps3 is relegated to a close 3rd place WW and is accepted at Sony HQ for this gen with the hopes of regaining their position with an early ps4 launch.
route 2: Playstation brand is sold based on continued losses and pressure from stockholders

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Idealy they would have also let themselves a back door for a BRless ps3 but they cornered themselves in their current high price which only adds to their current problems with key exclusives being lost.

We'll see how it turnes out.

You're doing the whole grandious 'biggest seller at the end of the gen' talk again! Please take this back to exclusives, rather than discussing outcome on 'who wins this gen'.

I'm totally with xbd on the implementation of tools being a priority for Sony. Games are going to be cross-platform. Perhaps only if PS3 launched alongside XB360 without BRD, at comparable price, and somehow with the software at a state that it's out now, one year later, could they hope to secure 3rd party exclusives on faith of the platform, snowballing into massive sales and exclusivity a la PS2. That was never likely though. What Sony need to be sure of is, if they have more able hardware, devs can and do utilise that hardware to make those cross-platform games superior on PS3. Also leveraging those tools to create unique first-party titles, Sony will have the best of both worlds. Buying up a few exclusive franchises won't turn the sales around. They're not going to sell 300,000 more PS3s per month than XB360s just because they have DMC and FF and MGS. Not even if they add exclusive GTA into the mix. To sell many more consoles, at the higher price-point, they need the whole system to be perceived as better, which means all the cross-platform games need to be seen as superior on PS3. Devs can't be relied upon in that respect themselves, so Sony need to invest in coaxing that out of them. DIRT will be a great case-study. They're using a cross-platform engine that is optimised for PS3. XB360 is looking good - will PS3 look noticeably better?

 

[Carl B]

IMO:
route 1: ps3 is relegated to a close 3rd place WW and is accepted at Sony HQ for this gen with the hopes of regaining their position with an early ps4 launch.
route 2: Playstation brand is sold based on continued losses and pressure from stockholders

Ok, these are seriously your only two possble scenarios?

I think that people need to seriously start thinking about staying power in terms of net income and future prospects rather than in terms of immediate install base. Chef you weren't one of those people that two years ago felt Nintendo should get out of making home consoles were you? Because they were 'losing'?

SCEI has a target to reach income neutrality this coming fiscal year ('08), and profitability again for the next and beyond. So... let's wait for that before we start writing obituaries for the Sony gaming division, shall we?

 

[Inane_Dork]

That's a bit of a leap isn't it? I haven't checked the link (which may come back to bite me in the bottom) but was there any mention of the PS3 version at all?

I don't recall reading a specific reference, but chances of one platform having better physics than the other is quite small just due to difficulty, handling and other gameplay balancing. They said the physics are as good as anything else they've seen, and MotorStorm is fresh in their minds as a comparison point. So I'd say that DIRT is pretty clear evidence (note: evidence is not proof) of equality.

It's certainly much better evidence than citing the lack of a MotorStorm type game on the 360 as though the lack of that game type implies impossibility.

 

[Tap In]

....They're not going to sell 300,000 more PS3s per month than XB360s just because they have DMC and FF and MGS. Not even if they add exclusive GTA into the mix. To sell many more consoles, at the higher price-point, they need the whole system to be perceived as better, which means all the cross-platform games need to be seen as superior on PS3. Devs can't be relied upon in that respect themselves, so Sony need to invest in coaxing that out of them. ....

Based on what we know now, I agree. Previously the 3rd party "party" that people had in regard to PS3 dominating this gen was just some icing on the cake. that icing is slowly crumbling off (they still have Blu Ray and Cell to leverage but to what extent is unknown as we are discussing) and we are left with cake alone. they need to make PS3 games, features and services play/appear better than the competition.

 

[Tap In]

...and MotorStorm is fresh in their minds as a comparison point. So I'd say that DIRT is pretty clear evidence (note: evidence is not proof) of equality.

It's certainly much better evidence than citing the lack of a MotorStorm type game on the 360 as though the lack of that game type implies impossibility.

that's how i read it as well.

 

[Carl B]

I don't recall reading a specific reference, but chances of one platform having better physics than the other is quite small just due to difficulty, handling and other gameplay balancing. They said the physics are as good as anything else they've seen, and MotorStorm is fresh in their minds as a comparison point. So I'd say that DIRT is pretty clear evidence (note: evidence is not proof) of equality.

It's certainly much better evidence than citing the lack of a MotorStorm type game on the 360 as though the lack of that game type implies impossibility.

I agree that in developing gameplay for this title, it would be unlikely that the two differ greatly in the actual physics implementation. There is some irony of course in the 'Motorstorm-killer' potentially being a multiplatform title built from Sony tools, but hey... irony always makes things interesting.

That said, although I completely agree with you that it shows 360 up to at least the previous arbitrary Motorstorm bar I set wrt physics, it shows also that Sony is at work in a big way at enabling and accentuating such elements in their titles and in their tools. So... I'm still excited about mid-to-late gen efforts on that front relative to current early gen efforts.

 

[TheChefO]

Ok, these are seriously your only two possble scenarios?

I think that people need to seriously start thinking about staying power in terms of net income and future prospects rather than in terms of immediate install base. Chef you weren't one of those people that two years ago felt Nintendo should get out of making home consoles were you? Because they were 'losing'?

SCEI has a target to reach income neutrality this coming fiscal year ('08), and profitability again for the next and beyond. So... let's wait for that before we start writing obituaries for the Sony gaming division, shall we?

I see these as the two most likely IMO. Based on how the market is shaping up now (limited info, but info none the less)

Regarding Nintendo: They hit the right moves based on their situation. IF Wii had the same defacto control scheme, I'd say wii had little chance of success with severly underpowerd hardware. They would still do ok if they priced it low but N fans can only keep them afloat by themselves for so long.

IMO: Wii minus the Wiimote = dead (<10m)

I know Sony has timetable targets for Profiablility, but they also targeted 6 million flying off the shelf "without games". Reality doesn't jive with their projections but things change. Those two routes are my opinion for how ps3 will end up based on the current market data and how I see things trending from this point.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

The 360 is selling in 3 territories.. The PS3 is currently selling in two (The missing one being traditionally Sony's strongest)..

Strongest in relative terms, but in absolute numbers the most PS2s were sold in the US.

 

[betan]

A pyramid of oragnes is like a pyramid of LocoRoco's in LocoRoco. If you're only testing collisions in 2D, the maths is simple and fast. The physics interactivity is entirely 2D. 3D only works in the position of Sack Boy and collision of fabrics, from what's shown.

2D physics is obviously easier than 3D, but nowhere simple nor fast, especially deformable (and elastic objects which we have seen in the demo).

It looks like gamers have low expectations of physics simulations in games, possible after years of absence of physics.

As for PS3 vs. XB360 physics, perhaps a good place to look will be Lucas Arts? If their Digital Molecular Matter scales well per system, it should show the difference in capabilities between the machines, and more importantly how much those differences affect the actual game. If XB360 can handle smashed buildings, breaking beams, and so forth, any technical advantages PS3 has are moot.

I don't know about Molecular Matter, obviously it is not doing calculations on molecular scale. They probably have preset material patterns that are quickly tweaked with respect to rigid objects physical parameters (size velocity etc). I wouldn't be surprised if it can be done without much CPU overhead, that is with linear complexity.

FWIW, Forza Motorsport 2 has 8 cars with 9,000 car parts simulated 360 times per second for accurate, real world physics that interact with eachother. At face value one could argue that sort of number and detail is substantially ahead of other PR numbers...

Don't know about other numbers, but those mean nothing. When there is a huge accident will we be able to see 9000 car parts on air, and they will be stack up on top of each other eventually, with collusions and everything? Congrats to them if they can do that at 360 Hz. Then we will know for sure 360 is the real supercomputer out there.

That said, I believe they can easily suppress Motorstorm as fast approximate gaming physics is a field yet to be conquered. Just to much to explore. But I cannot imagine any sane person would claim 360 has more cpu muscles for physics or whatever physics it is doing is enough.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

2D physics is obviously easier than 3D, but nowhere simple nor fast, especially deformable (and elastic objects which we have seen in the demo).

I disagree. Soft-body physics in 2D isn't that complicated. There's evidence for this real applications : 1) I've seen a complex (30-40 bodies) 2D soft-body simulator running on my AthlonXP 2500. I haven't found a link unfortunately as it was a long time ago. 2) A 200 MHz MIPS in PSP manages some good results in LocoRoco.

I see no reason why these 3 GHz processors with vector units aren't going to laugh at 2D physics. The reason it's not widespread isn't because it's difficult, but because few people have been incorporating 2D physics into games, mostly because games tend to be almost exclusively 3D these days.

 

[Crossbar]

I disagree. Soft-body physics in 2D isn't that complicated. There's evidence for this real applications : 1) I've seen a complex (30-40 bodies) 2D soft-body simulator running on my AthlonXP 2500. I haven't found a link unfortunately as it was a long time ago. 2) A 200 MHz MIPS in PSP manages some good results in LocoRoco.

Not arguing your 2D physics claim, but are the soft-body objects in LBP just 2D, they seem more like 3D objects that can move in just 2 dimensions (maybe a little more).

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The physics are, IMO, 2D, with 3D physical modelling. So a sack that they stand on will have a central 2D curve calculated via 2D engine, in a plane of interactivity, and the 3D impression in the body will be derived from that. This assumes a 2D engine (suggested, though not confirmed, from the interview about discussions they've had). That's how I'd do it anyway.

 

[infinity4]

Strongest in relative terms, but in absolute numbers the most PS2s were sold in the US.

but its been selling in US for longer period of time

 

[Crossbar]

The physics are, IMO, 2D, with 3D physical modelling. So a sack that they stand on will have a central 2D curve calculated via 2D engine, in a plane of interactivity, and the 3D impression in the body will be derived from that. This assumes a 2D engine (suggested, though not confirmed, from the interview about discussions they've had). That's how I'd do it anyway.

OK, I see your point.
Still I think there are details of the objects that deal with physics in 3D, like the swinging antennas on the head of Phils creature.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

OK, I see your point.
Still I think there are details of the objects that deal with physics in 3D, like the swinging antennas on the head of Phils creature.

Sure, but now we're in the gameplay physics versus eye-candy phsyics realm. Hypothetically speaking, what if XB360 can't handle the cloth physics of the scenery and capes, and the wavy flowers, etc. It can still handle the key gameplay very nicely. Thus the Cell doesn't enable something unique gamewise to PS3 because of a technology advantage. The best you'd get seems to be a visual advantage. That may be a big deal, but the idea LBP offers a PS3 unique gameplay experience doesn't pan out.

Perhaps there's some situations like a fluid-dynamics engine that only Cell can manage, but it's bound to be marginalized in niche titles (though I'd love to see that tech applied in things like flame-breath or napalm. Volumetric fluid rendering and behaviour would be an awesome next-gen improvement)

 

[nonamer]

Does anyone remember that massive AI demo shown on a Cell processor? It was discussed on this board at one time. It is quite possible that such a game, such as Supreme Commander, may be infeasible on Xbox 360 but possible on a PS3.

 

[Carl B]

You're thinking of RapidMind's 'chickens' demo.

 

[Crossbar]

Sure, but now we're in the gameplay physics versus eye-candy phsyics realm. Hypothetically speaking, what if XB360 can't handle the cloth physics of the scenery and capes, and the wavy flowers, etc. It can still handle the key gameplay very nicely. Thus the Cell doesn't enable something unique gamewise to PS3 because of a technology advantage. The best you'd get seems to be a visual advantage. That may be a big deal, but the idea LBP offers a PS3 unique gameplay experience doesn't pan out.

Yes the EyeCandy does not really change the gameplay and yes, to some people that may be a big deal.

Perhaps there's some situations like a fluid-dynamics engine that only Cell can manage, but it's bound to be marginalized in niche titles (though I'd love to see that tech applied in things like flame-breath or napalm. Volumetric fluid rendering and behaviour would be an awesome next-gen improvement)

That may make the Cell the differentiator gameplay wise, but to me the Blu-Ray drive is the most obvious differentiator maybe in combination with the streaming capabilities of Cell. A lot of people downplay the value of storage space, but I think it can play a big role.

Just imagine how much more detailed the environment in "TestDrive Unlimited" could get or how much larger area you could roam if you spend 50 GB of data on it.

I am really curious about the next GetAway game, that may be the first showcase of the BD drive.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Does anyone remember that massive AI demo shown on a Cell processor? It was discussed on this board at one time. It is quite possible that such a game, such as Supreme Commander, may be infeasible on Xbox 360 but possible on a PS3.

Utterly infeasible, or only to a degree? eg. If PS3 can handle 32000 units, and XB360 can 'only' handle 4000, will that make the game impossible? Or will the game be ported with a few cutbacks, like AI applying to 4 units instead of individuals? Or just capping the max number of units and using smaller maps so they're not spread out too thin?

Any technical limits can generally be worked around, as shown last gen with PS2 implementations. RE4 was possible on PS2, even if in reduced form.