New Mark Rein interview

[mckmas8808]

The question is if that is a good thing or not. While the answer is apparently obvious, the consequence is that all (or almost all) the parts are producable at full settings. That means they were not necessarily cutting edge at E3 and they're quite likely not cutting-edge at launch..

Not really though. To me that fact that Sony pushed back there release date for the PS3 is what gave devs the extra time. That has nothing to do with if something is cutting edge or not.

 

[Qroach]

Not necessarily. The renderer was not multi-threaded, doesn't speak for what else might have been running on seperate threads.

Well what he considers the renderer could mean a whole lot of things. I think he stated in the past that GOW was running on one thread and the multi threaded render would split tasks up, like sound, physics, particle system, scripting, and AI to different CPU cores. I don't have time to search for Mark Rein Quotes, so if someone wants to, feel free.

Anyway, I don't know if he means renderer in the sense of "graphics only".

 

[elementOfpower]

That means they were not necessarily cutting edge at E3 and they're quite likely not cutting-edge at launch..

Agreed. I've yet to really see anything on the PS3 that impresses me other than Resistance: Fall of Man, and even that doesn't look as good as many 360 titles that I've played.

To be honest, I'm quite perturbed right now at Sony for showing the Motor Storm demo last year at E3 and claiming that is how the game would look given how crappy recent pictures of the game look to me by comparison. It's clear that there's a huge difference in visuals between that and what we're seeing now.

KillZone 2 will probably fall in that same pool.

I'm sure that he PS3 will have some great looking games come out for it, but, in my opinion, they really tried to pull a fast one on everybody last year at E3 and may have lost a potential customer because of it.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

To be honest, I'm quite perturbed right now at Sony for showing the Motor Storm demo last year at E3 and claiming that is how the game would look.

That's not exactly how it was. Sony showcased a load of tech demos, nVidia showed tech demos, and then Sony introduced the final clips as 'we asked our devs to visualise what they will be producing on PS3'. In essence they were previs renders for those companies. Perhaps Evolution Studios overrated what they'd be able to do with the machine? Perhaps when targetting the specs, they were targetting the whole specs and not just the smallish percentage of available power they would be able to harness for launch titles?

As for cutting edge, i wouldn't expect anyone to harness cutting edge tech in the first ever attempts. Kinda like cutting edge GPUs where the cutting-edge features generally don't get used. It'll be a couple of years before all those 'cutting edge' features of your machine are properly used (by which point they're not cutting edge! )

 

[elementOfpower]

Shifty--You could be right, but don't you think that in the back of Sony's mind they knew these could make the stuff Microsoft was showing at E3 (actual gameplay, that is, which is never as impressive as rendered cinemas) look pale by comparison?

It's hard for me to believe they weren't aware of this and had no intentions of using it to their advantage.

I didn't keep up with every single statement from E3, and as such, I assumed what they were showing to be actual gameplay. Heck, every game they showed just about had the same kind of look to it--look at Killzone. They outright claimed that one was achievable; did they not?

My bottom line is that I hate it when companies pass off pre-rendered cinemas in order to "WOW" the public and then the public is let down when the actual game comes out looking nothing like it.

 

[Arwin]

Agreed. I've yet to really see anything on the PS3 that impresses me other than Resistance: Fall of Man, and even that doesn't look as good as many 360 titles that I've played.

So, how many 360 titles have you played 4.5 months before launch? I've got my own opinion of Resistance (slightly more positive at that), but let's wait until the game is actually out before final judgment, ok?

To be honest, I'm quite perturbed right now at Sony for showing the Motor Storm demo last year at E3 and claiming that is how the game would look given how crappy recent pictures of the game look to me by comparison. It's clear that there's a huge difference in visuals between that and what we're seeing now.

KillZone 2 will probably fall in that same pool.

Actually, the latest trailer of Motorstorm (see Motorstorm thread elsewhere on the site) does seem to match the target render surprisingly well, although only in the on-board camera, where great blur effects have been used. Again, let's wait until the game is actually out.

More importantly though, Sony never actually lied here and the movies you saw where, as Shifty said, target renders.

I'm sure that he PS3 will have some great looking games come out for it, but, in my opinion, they really tried to pull a fast one on everybody last year at E3 and may have lost a potential customer because of it.

Hey, everyone who doesn't want to buy one at launch increases the chance that I will be able to.

 

[ZiFF]

They outright claimed that one was achievable; did they not?

I have no problem seeing Killzone PS3 achievable. Just not as a lauchtitle.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Shifty--You could be right, but don't you think that in the back of Sony's mind they knew these could make the stuff Microsoft was showing at E3 (actual gameplay, that is, which is never as impressive as rendered cinemas) look pale by comparison?

Of course, but that's marketting, not promises They never made any such claims - everyone else filled in the deliberate blanks.

They outright claimed that one was achievable; did they not?

To be fair, we don't yet know whether they are or aren't. eg. Looking at Motorstorm now, it's not as good as the E3 trailer. But it's a first ever attempt an a very different architecture. Things can only get better, which means Motorstorm 2 might be a lot closer to E3 05's showing. At which point, it wasn't a false claim. It was a previsualization of what the developer believed was possible on PS3 created to give an idea of what the PS3 would be capable of at a time when there was very little to actually demonstrate.

My bottom line is that I hate it when companies pass off pre-rendered cinemas in order to "WOW" the public and then the public is let down when the actual game comes out looking nothing like it.

It gets on my wick too. You get it a lot in adverts these days, and the likes of FFX where many screenshots are from CGI rather than the actual games that doesn't look anywhere near as good. It's a nasty product of competitive marketting that looks set to only get worse . I still think the infamous E3 showings are rather different though. A 'previs' by it's very nature may be wrong, and you're more likely going to aim too high than not in order to generate interest. Look at EA's NFL footage, and then the game. World's apart. By the time of NFL 2008/9, maybe they'll be a lot closer to that original vision though?

We can't judge any hardware by it's first titles. Neither can we fairly judge CGI promo's as totally misleading until such time as those promos have had a chance to be proven unattainable. In essence, if Sony had a hand in those movies to make them marketting tools rather than letting the developers freely imagine what might be possible, it'll only count as a lie towards the end of the PS3's life if that quality wasn't attained. Until then we just don't know how close devs will get or not, and by then no-one will care!

BTW : This looks to be veering way off topic.

 

[expletive]

My bottom line is that I hate it when companies pass off pre-rendered cinemas in order to "WOW" the public and then the public is let down when the actual game comes out looking nothing like it.

You may want to switch hobbies then.

 

[rabidrabbit]

My bottom line is that I hate it when companies pass off pre-rendered cinemas in order to "WOW" the public and then the public is let down when the actual game comes out looking nothing like it.

Then you really shouldn't single out just Sony and PS3, because the others are doing it just as much.
Besides, that issue of prerendered cgi being used as PR footage has already been argued to death for years, and nothing good has come off those threads, so can we drop that here? It just degenerates into a f^nboy guarrle with averybody trying to convince their hated console manufacturer is doing it more, or in a more outrageous manner.

 

[AlNom]

On a side note (or is it on-topic? ), Mark Rein mentioned on their GoW forums that there will be some sort of "BIG" announcement soon.

BIG announcement coming next week!

And there may be some viral marketing occurring on XBL; a user reported receiving an IM from an "MFenix";backed up with a couple photos and a video of the message existing (but apparently, still not enough confirmation that it's real). Rein and CliffyB even responded in the thread:

relevent quotes:

I got other reports of this same thing happening today. I think you should wait until tomorrow and see if this MFenix character, whoever it is, sends you another post. If he does please come back here and let us know what he says as soon as possible.

Not really sure what this is about...

Both threads are absolutely enormous, filled with hundreds and hundreds of replies. Thank goodness for 40 posts per page. (Now I'm wishing there'd be 100!)

 

[s1lverbak]

Well what he considers the renderer could mean a whole lot of things. I think he stated in the past that GOW was running on one thread and the multi threaded render would split tasks up, like sound, physics, particle system, scripting, and AI to different CPU cores. I don't have time to search for Mark Rein Quotes, so if someone wants to, feel free.

Anyway, I don't know if he means renderer in the sense of "graphics only".

GS: Will the framerate be improving?

MR: Well we've been working on this (actual hardware) like I say, for about two weeks [as of Tokyo Game Show]. We've done very little optimization, I'd like to say the lowest of low-hanging fruit optimization. We're only running on a single core now, so we'll get at least double that, it'll be super smooth. We didn't even expect to get onto the final box until X05, and here we are. So the Xbox 360 really exceeded our expectations.

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20051021/sheffield_01.shtml

I know there is another article where CliffyB says it too, and I know that article came out after/around Christmas, but I cant seem to find it.

 

[Sis]

given how crappy recent pictures of the game look to me by comparison.

I think we are past the point where a screenshot gives an accurate indication of what a game actually looks like in motion. I've even gone as far as to suggest that we are at the point that unless you have played the game in your own home on your own HDTV, you really don't have a good idea of what the game looks like (in the same way that you wouldn't judge the cinematic quality of a movie based on taking it into a Best Buy and playing it on one of their demo sets).

 

[Inane_Dork]

Not really though. To me that fact that Sony pushed back there release date for the PS3 is what gave devs the extra time. That has nothing to do with if something is cutting edge or not.

Tangential. Whatever the cause of the situation is, the effect of the situation is that some of the hardware will not be cutting edge at launch.

 

[mckmas8808]

Tangential. Whatever the cause of the situation is, the effect of the situation is that some of the hardware will not be cutting edge at launch.

This much is true. The true cutting edge tech is whats pushed them back (i.e. Blu-ray player). But to be honest the CELL processor is kinda cutting edge if you think about it. At least to me it is.

 

[Titanio]

This is sort of a silly line of discussion. This is supposed to be a high volume product with relatively tight cost restrictions (if you think about it). The components going into a system can only be as cutting edge as those - and other - constraints allow. If you wanted to include bleeding edge components in the system without any compromise, you'd be talking about a very different kind of a product with a very different kind of target market. The late(r) arrival of components wouldn't necessarily indicate more "cutting-edge-ness" either.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

That's not exactly how it was. Sony showcased a load of tech demos, nVidia showed tech demos, and then Sony introduced the final clips as 'we asked our devs to visualise what they will be producing on PS3'. In essence they were previs renders for those companies. Perhaps Evolution Studios overrated what they'd be able to do with the machine? Perhaps when targetting the specs, they were targetting the whole specs and not just the smallish percentage of available power they would be able to harness for launch titles?

We both remember that it wasn't like that.

Should I start to dig up the old PR quotes thread? They outright claimed that Killzone and Motorstorm videos were 'gameplay'...

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Actually, the latest trailer of Motorstorm (see Motorstorm thread elsewhere on the site) does seem to match the target render surprisingly well, although only in the on-board camera, where great blur effects have been used. Again, let's wait until the game is actually out.

It does not. Come on people, are you really fooling yourselves here?

More importantly though, Sony never actually lied here and the movies you saw where, as Shifty said, target renders.

They have never, ever, to this day, admitted that those videos were target CG renders.

 

[Inane_Dork]

This is sort of a silly line of discussion. This is supposed to be a high volume product with relatively tight cost restrictions (if you think about it). The components going into a system can only be as cutting edge as those - and other - constraints allow. If you wanted to include bleeding edge components in the system without any compromise, you'd be talking about a very different kind of a product with a very different kind of target market. The late(r) arrival of components wouldn't necessarily indicate more "cutting-edge-ness" either.

Well, obviously, there's a cost/performance balance. I didn't think I needed to explain the boringly obvious.

I'm simply explaining why it's not necessarily a good thing to have final dev kits months in advance. The earlier you can make them, the less powerful they are (as a rule). The X360 had issues with getting final SDKs into developers' hands, but on the other hand, the system is comparing pretty comparably to a much newer system (at running games, not other tasks).

 

[Laa-Yosh]

I think we are past the point where a screenshot gives an accurate indication of what a game actually looks like in motion.

The target render we're comparing it to is also viewed as a still image on a monitor, so the circumstances are the same. It is IMHO fair to make a judgement on a simple comparision - all that's lost from the ingame image is also lost from the CG video.