Multiplatform Assassin's Creed--si or no?

[Hardknock]

And Jesus said:
Edit: There is a hint in Assassins webpage:
"This title has not yet been concept approved by Sony Computer Entertainment America"
Maybe neither party can officially announce an exclusivity in case it fails the concept approval.
Though I do wonder what is taking so long to get that approval?

Huh? Be realistic here. Do you honestly think a "concept approval" of a game that's already over 50 % complete is the reason why they haven't announced it exclusive? The concept of the game is already well known.

 

[scooby_dooby]

By your logic, there wouldn't be any exclusives at all, as Sony would have to pay all of them serious amount of cash to ignore the xbox360 userbase.

My logic is simply the logic of business, publishers like making money.

You think ubisoft will ignore a potential millions of units sold for no reason? Get real.

Yes, the era of 3rd party exclusives is coming to a close, the market being split much more evenly, and the rising cost of development will virtually ensure that there are extremely few 3rd party exclusives, at least from western developers.

 

[rabidrabbit]

Huh? Be realistic here. Do you honestly think a "concept approval" of a game that's already over 50 % complete is the reason why they haven't announced it exclusive? The concept of the game is already well known.

What exactly are you saying? That it should be concept approved already because it's over 50% complete and the game concept is already well known?
The website says different... or was that your point, can't really follow your reasoning.

 

[nintenho]

What exactly are you saying? That it should be concept approved already because it's over 50% complete and the game concept is already well known?
The website says different... or was that your point, can't really follow your reasoning.

I think he meant that the general gameplay and atmosphere is already planned enough to be shown as a concept.

 

[rabidrabbit]

My logic is simply the logic of business, publishers like making money.

You think ubisoft will ignore a potential millions of units sold for no reason? Get real.

Yes, the era of 3rd party exclusives is coming to a close, the market being split much more evenly, and the rising cost of development will virtually ensure that there are extremely few 3rd party exclusives, at least from western developers.

How about all the xbox360 exclusives? Dead Rising, Saint's Row, Enchant Arm, Chrome Hounds, Mass Effect, Oblivion, DoA4, Lost Planet, Bio Shock, Bullet Witch, Prey... Are they a funboi fantasy too?
It's true a few of them are likely to end up on other platforms, but there's still a healthy amount of non MS published exclusives.

I agree we'll see a drop in the quantity of 3rd party exclusive games, but that's no proof at all for Assassins Creed being multiformat.
It gives hope, if publishing the game follows that general trend, but it is no proof either way.

There will still be 3rd party exclusives, and Assassins Creeed could as well be one of them, or then again not, but it's silly to try and find "proof" where there is none but wish.

 

[rabidrabbit]

I think he meant that the general gameplay and atmosphere is already planned enough to be shown as a concept.

I understood that, but he basically claimed the game is concept approved already.
I didn't as much claim the lack of exclusivity announcement is due to the game awaiting concept approval from SCEA, but ask it.
If there's a person who knows more about this concept approval and what limitations if any it presents to PR'ing, please stand up and speak! (or sit down and type)

 

[nintenho]

I understood that, but he basically claimed the game is concept approved already.
I didn't as much claim the lack of exclusivity announcement is due to the game awaiting concept approval from SCEA, but ask it.
If there's a person who knows more about this concept approval and what limitations if any it presents to PR'ing, please stand up and speak! (or sit down and type)

I don't know shit but I'm assuming they don't announce it officially until the last second before they announce to the game sites what system get the game when.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

As part of this long drawn out investigation, there's a little more info regards the reference point Blazing Angels. It was mentioned that this game is multiplatform where the website only lists the XB logos. An announcement on Eurogamer of BA using PS3's motion controller points out that the game is out for XB360, and coming to other platforms. Thus the logos on the website show what platform it's available for now. So, um, it can't be used as precedent that a game that is coming to multiple platforms will only show one set of logos.

Looking at the Ubisoft site, we have two more bits of inconclusive info.

Assassin's Creed is listed for PS3 only.
http://www.ubi.com/UK/Games/Info.aspx?pId=4488

Compare that to BIA that is listed for three paltforms
http://www.ubi.com/UK/Games/Info.aspx?pId=4491

Implies AC is PS3 exclusive, no? However, Blazing Angels is listed as an XB360 (and XB) game and isn't listed for any other platform, despite coming to PS3 and PC and Wii (the official website has a PC demo)
http://www.ubi.com/UK/Games/Info.aspx?pId=4261

In summary, game listings don't tell us much and no matter how much more investigation is made, it's unlikely we'll find anything out before an official announcement.

 

[scooby_dooby]

How about all the xbox360 exclusives? Dead Rising, Saint's Row, Enchant Arm, Chrome Hounds, Mass Effect, Oblivion, DoA4, Lost Planet, Bio Shock, Bullet Witch, Prey... Are they a funboi fantasy too?
It's true a few of them are likely to end up on other platforms, but there's still a healthy amount of non MS published exclusives.

I agree we'll see a drop in the quantity of 3rd party exclusive games, but that's no proof at all for Assassins Creed being multiformat.
It gives hope, if publishing the game follows that general trend, but it is no proof either way.

There will still be 3rd party exclusives, and Assassins Creeed could as well be one of them, or then again not, but it's silly to try and find "proof" where there is none but wish.

No one ever claimed there was "proof", just common sense and many signs pointing towards it. The majority of those games you list will probably end up on PS3 if there is still money to be made by porting them 12months+ after their release. And obviously, in the case of the majority of your examples, all these games came out when there was no other system available, hardly comparable to AC which will launch when the 360 has a 10-15million user install base.

But back to AC:

You were saying?
http://www.4gamer.net/news.php?url=/news/history/2006.08/20060827150212detail.html

 

[Bad_Boy]

I'm not 100% sure but I think that presentation may have been running on a PC, like what happened at e3. It's a ubisoft booth so 360's being there wouldnt be a stretch. But I'm just going off a bablefish translation. Though one can probably clear it up, his translation skills seem better than most of us.

 

[one]

I'm not 100% sure but I think that presentation may have been running on a PC, like what happened at e3. It's a ubisoft booth so 360's being there wouldnt be a stretch. But I'm just going off a bablefish translation. Though one can probably clear it up, his translation skills seem better than most of us.

The article actually says it was demonstrated on a development PC at the event

 

[Bad_Boy]

Thanks one. A true translator you are.

Is there any other details in the article, I think it also mentions the AC engine will be used for another next gen IP, but I'm not sure.

 

[one]

Is there any other details in the article, I think it also mentions the AC engine will be used for another next gen IP, but I'm not sure.

Not much, apparently it's easily playable with an analogue stick and a crowd of 100 people have each AI etc. That 4gamer news site is for PC gamers, so the closing comment by the reporter is naturally his hope for the release of the PC version in 2007 after the release of the PS3 version.

 

[Mefisutoferesu]

Not much, apparently it's easily playable with an analogue stick and a crowd of 100 people have each AI etc. That 4gamer news site is for PC gamers, so the closing comment by the reporter is naturally his hope for the release of the PC version in 2007 after the release of the PS3 version.

One thing I found interesting was the phrase "path finding"... wasn't there an Scee tech thing on path finding and so forth with fishes and such? If they're using that tech it could explain why they haven't yet announced it for the 360. Perhaps, they're waiting on their own internal version of the code before they announce it?

Let's see, what else... it's in Jerusalem and the Assasin's guild is called "Messiah" (let's hope we don't get any crazies riled -_-) and there's "eagle vision" for spotting someone, like the target, in a crowd... and... that's about it I guess.

 

[one]

One thing I found interesting was the phrase "path finding"... wasn't there an Scee tech thing on path finding and so forth with fishes and such? If they're using that tech it could explain why they haven't yet announced it for the 360. Perhaps, they're waiting on their own internal version of the code before they announce it?

You mean PSCrowd
http://research.scea.com/pscrowd/
http://www.research.scea.com/research/pdfs/GDC2006ReynoldsTemp.pdf
But I guess each pedestrian in AC is a bit more intelligent than those fishes in the PSCrowd demo while AC's crowd simulation itself with 100 pedestrians may not be as sophisticated as PSCrowd with thousands of agents.

From the newer paper for PSCrowd,

The autonomous pedestrian model in [Shao and Terzopoulos 2005] exhibits both high performance and sophisticated goaldriven behavior models of people at a train station. Without graphics they can simulate 1400 pedestrians at 30 fps on a modern PC. With humanoid character animation and rendering of the complex environment results in rates of 3.8 fps for 500 individuals. Similarly, [Pelechano et al. 2005] presents a detailed model of high density crowds in emergency building evacuation scenarios, with cognitive modeling of agent knowledge, communication and psychology. Without graphics it simulates 1800 agents at 25 fps.

PSCrowd can produce crowds of up to 15,000 individuals at 60 fps including both simulation and graphics. These results were measured while running on a PS3 development system (DEHR1015 with SDK 0.8.4) generating video output at HD 720p. The the 2D Crowd demo mentioned in Section 5 supports 15,000 individuals at 60 fps. The 3D demos (Chameleon and Species) run slower, they can handle 10,000 of the same characters at 60 fps. (Measured another way: with a population of 10,000 for all three cases, the average load, expressed in compute time as a percentage of 1/60 second: 2d crowd: 70%, chameleon: 80% and species 90%)

Tapping the unused RSX power is easy, it simply requires more complicated geometric modeling and advanced rendering techniques as shown in Figure 7 from Phil Harrison’s GDC 2006 Keynote. Those fish have bodies composed of up to 400 triangles (plus two lower levels of detail for each of three species). The scene uses realistic underwater lighting and haze effects. High dynamic range lighting refracts through an animated water surface. Gabor Nagy wrote the software for graphics, rendering, procedural water and art path. Plus he hooked PSCrowd into his framework while I was off on vacation. Care Michaud-Wideman created all of the art for this project. This PSCrowd simulation of 5000 fish plus all the underwater rendering effects runs at 30 fps.

 

[Acert93]

Opps, seems Assassin's Creed is PC bound:

http://pc.ign.com/articles/728/728932p1.html

Last time I checked PC mags don't run spots on PS3 games. Ubi is still holding the line though with "We cannot confirm" blah blah blah.

 

[Tap In]

too bad MS doesn't have any tools that allow transfer of games from Windows to 360 less painful.

 

[Bad_Boy]

http://ps3.ign.com/articles/729/729420p1.html

"Ubisoft fesses up to Assassin's multiple targets."

"Assassin's Creed PC will indeed see the light some day. Details will be provided at a later date."

well that settles that. question is, timed exclusive or not at all?

It is likely that Assassin's Creed will initially be available exclusively on the PS3. Gamers may remember that Resident Evil 4 was exclusive to the GameCube -- for about a year. Indeed, that may be what "exclusive" increasingly means in the industry today. Game makers want to spread their titles across as many platforms as possible in an attempt to minimize risk.

 

[Darkon]

Wait a sec , i thought AC was already announced for PC a long time ago .

 

[Bad_Boy]

Wait a sec , i thought AC was already announced for PC a long time ago .

So was the 360 version lol. (X05)
I suspect we will see more on AC at X06 or TGS...or both.