JC Keynote talks consoles

[jvd]

I agree .... many people don't know that World of WarCraft's development budget was $40-50 million [source: http://www.wclegacy.com/sectionentry.php?contentid=42 ]

yea eq2 was clost to 36m i believe . So the titles are up there .


I believe shenmue was at 20 something million and that was back in 2000

 

[one]

"There will be the developers that go ahead and have a miserable time and do get good performance out of some of these multi-core approaches, and the Cell is worse than others in some respects here"

Carmack said that the original Xbox was easy to develop for thanks to solid dev tools and the Xbox 360 is the same way but that the PS3 will allow developers to get closer to the hardware performance.

Are these the same thing under different interepretation...? It seems we need a complete transcript.

 

[Titanio]

Are these the same thing under different interepretation...? It seems we need a complete transcript.

I think the first quote is saying that getting best performance out of Cell will in some ways require even more investment.

The second is saying, I think, that Sony is letting devs get closer to the metal than MS.

 

[Richard]

Video here: http://www.filerush.com/download.php?target=QuakeConCarmackKeynote.zip

 

[Confidence-Man]

It seems the guys at Bethesda aren't too worried about it:

Finger: The Xbox 360 is quite a unique piece of hardware when compared to modern PCs, since it basically has three CPUs working at all times inside a single chip. What challenges does this multiple-core architecture create for Bethesda and what is it like working with the Xbox 360 versus the PC?

Todd Howard: We see it more of an opportunity than a challenge. Multi-threaded code is not a new concept, you can do it on the PC easily too. But having a console now, that takes advantage of that, and is built for speed around that, it really opens up the possibilities of what you can do. 360 is a great system with great dev tools. We love it.

http://www.telefragged.com/interviews/oblivion/

 

[tEd]

Carmack stopped being of any importance a long time ago. Apart from the fans hailing him as this "genius". The novelty's gone now.
In the console world, he never did matter.

i agree

 

[ShootMyMonkey]

He can't be serious. $100 million? He must be freaking out over the multi-core architecture thinking he'd have to sink in more money than feasible. Besides, you could just license UE3. 1 million + game production... no engine work what-so-ever.

I don't see why $100 million is so crazy. There were already games that reached around halfway there in the current-gen. Mainly because of extreme production values. And I also think, though, that he's talking about complete cost, which can be very high.

Also, don't kid yourself about licensing engine technology. You take a commercial engine out of the box, and the number of games it is suitable for is precisely zero. There is no such thing as zero tech/engine development no matter how complete you think an engine is. You can spend your million on UE3, and it will be completely worthless until you tinker with the innards for a while. And if the conditions are anything like the older Unreal engines, you'll have to play with things conforming to Epic's coding standards, or they won't provide any support.

 

[Richard]

More transcript here: http://www.amdzone.com/modules.php?...s&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=169&page=1

 

[ERP]

He can't be serious. $100 million? He must be freaking out over the multi-core architecture thinking he'd have to sink in more money than feasible. Besides, you could just license UE3. 1 million + game production... no engine work what-so-ever.

I'll bet this happens inside 3 years.
It isn't the tech that costs the money.

 

[Barbarian]

There were times when JC was the Man. He was hardcore, squeezing the HW, writing assembly routines, going for esoteric technology (BSP before he made it famous), coming up with creative solutions and single handedly creating the FPS genre.
Aparently, he has gone soft nowadays. Writing all high level shader code and all, and when things get tough he gets nVidia or ATi to put it in the hardware.
And I'm mad for that, dammit. I remember being in awe of how freakin incredibly fast Wolfenstein ran on my 386. I learned assembly 10 years ago just so I can write fast code like that. And once on the dark side, assembly is still king. Nothing else gives me that much fun, pride and satisfaction as a programmer. Suffering? Haha, no way ...
Come on! Give me back my 8th SPU god dammit! That's what I want.

 

[mckmas8808]

If wishes were horses.

Also what has good looking games to do with multi-core a bad choice for gaming line of thought ? I missed you there completely

I guess you missed the whole physics interaction with the mud in Motorstorm. Killzone has at least 20 to 30 guys on the screen with terrific A.I. in the video. All the terrific post processing effects going on with these next gen games that I named are not happening on the PC scene today.

Its more than just graphics. But I know you recognize that.
[/color]

 

[jvd]

I guess you missed the whole physics interaction with the mud in Motorstorm. Killzone has at least 20 to 30 guys on the screen with terrific A.I. in the video. All the terrific post processing effects going on with these next gen games that I named are not happening on the PC scene today.

Its more than just graphics. But I know you recognize that.
[/color]

you mean in next gen console cgi

 

[dukmahsik]

i dunno it seemed that he learned more towards the 360

 

[jvd]

i dunno it seemed that he learned more towards the 360

Well the xenon has 1 type of core in it . So once you master that one core its only a matter of time till you master using the 3 of them together.

The ps3 has 2 diffrent cores . Then you have to master using the 7 of them together .

I would assume that the ps3 will be slightly harder to develop for simply because there are more cores and there are two diffrent types

 

[blakjedi]

i dunno it seemed that he learned more towards the 360

i found that strange too... i swear rumour was he loved the PS3... oh well devs are fickle i guess

 

[dukmahsik]

he does say both consoles are relatively equal in terms of power and 360 is easier to develop for. even though he doens't like MS trying to kill openGL he prefers the 360

 

[wco81]

Didn't people speculate here that GT4 may have cost $80 million to develop?

What is the most used for CGI in motion pictures? Was it T3 that reportedly had a $75 mllion CG budget?

So maybe the art can really get up there. But they're not producing cinema-quality art, are they?

 

[blakjedi]

he does say both consoles are relatively equal in terms of power and 360 is easier to develop for. even though he doens't like MS trying to kill openGL he prefers the 360

i think he prefers the xbox 1 not the x360...

 

[jvd]

Didn't people speculate here that GT4 may have cost $80 million to develop?

What is the most used for CGI in motion pictures? Was it T3 that reportedly had a $75 mllion CG budget?

So maybe the art can really get up there. But they're not producing cinema-quality art, are they?

i thought cgi was getting dirt cheap ?

Anyay the main diffrence between hollywood and games is that in a game everything needs art work . Every single object is made by artists . IN hollywood its normaly 1 or 2 objects that are made by artists

 

[Wunderchu]

i thought cgi was getting dirt cheap ?

Anyay the main diffrence between hollywood and games is that in a game everything needs art work . Every single object is made by artists . IN hollywood its normaly 1 or 2 objects that are made by artists

ya .. in Hollwood movies there are LOTS of procedural generated stuff + LOT of shader effects