Pgr3 with only 30 Frames/s.....

[jvd]

So what there is a magical thing that prevents games on video game systems from being made that quickly ?

Please tell me what stops them from putting out a title around a week of going gold ?

When a console game is gold, you have first to be greenlighted by the console manufacturer Q&A before entering into the duplication phase.

that happens before going gold . Gold means its the copy that goes to press

Diffrent things your talking about . q&a should also be done through out the course of the game .

 

[PC-Engine]

During QA, there will be many builds, followed by alpha then beta then final then gold.

 

[Farid]

During QA, there will be many builds, followed by alpha then beta then final then gold.

That's internal Q&A. I'm talking about the console manufacturer Q&A (Maybe there's a precise english word for it, though).

 

[ralexand]

What a stupid thread title.

 

[jvd]

During QA, there will be many builds, followed by alpha then beta then final then gold.

That's internal Q&A. I'm talking about the console manufacturer Q&A (Maybe there's a precise english word for it, though).

Your talking about the game being sent to say sony to make sure it meets thier quality lvl correct ?

This is done before going gold . Its called a release canidate

 

[Farid]

Your talking about the game being sent to say sony to make sure it meets thier quality lvl correct ?

This is done before going gold . Its called a release canidate

I was talking about duplication agreement, but my original point was that you can't produce, and distribute a major tittle in one week. You'd need at least 2 or 3 weeks.

 

[Phil]

without reading all the comments in this thread (why should I, defenders will defend the stance that 30 Hz is all one can see, despite the rather obvious opposite) - I am ready to predict that PGR on Xenon will most definately run at 30 Hz. Why? Sadly, I'm not overwhelmed by Bizarre Creations track-record on the issue of framerate, neither am I entirely convinced about their cheap remark about "unexpected bugs and other miracles that may happen". I wonder how many developers rely on good faith to reach their targets - I certainly don't. Of course, I don't think Bizarre Creation do either - but it does show that framerate is not one of their priorities or else they'd pretty damn make sure that no miracles will make them sacrifice framerate for graphics.

And before you think about replying to this - it's merely my opinion. Time will show who's right.

 

[_phil_]

What a stupid thread title.

yes ,pages of discutions for obvious things .
I'm happy we don't have to chop trees to make the paper for such discussions,...

 

[Johnny Awesome]

Pointless thread speculating about developer speculation.

 

[Iron Tiger]

Your talking about the game being sent to say sony to make sure it meets thier quality lvl correct ?

This is done before going gold . Its called a release canidate

I was talking about duplication agreement, but my original point was that you can't produce, and distribute a major tittle in one week. You'd need at least 2 or 3 weeks.

Didn't Halo 2 have about a 2 month window between the game's "completion" and the Nov. 9 release date? A major launch will have a longer time between development completion and release so they can manufacture enough discs to stock the store shelves with.

 

[therealskywolf]

Your talking about the game being sent to say sony to make sure it meets thier quality lvl correct ?

This is done before going gold . Its called a release canidate

I was talking about duplication agreement, but my original point was that you can't produce, and distribute a major tittle in one week. You'd need at least 2 or 3 weeks.

Didn't Halo 2 have about a 2 month window between the game's "completion" and the Nov. 9 release date? A major launch will have a longer time between development completion and release so they can manufacture enough discs to stock the store shelves with.

1 month, and it was pretty much a WorldWide Launch.

 

[mckmas8808]

Its not everyday that I'm agreeing with jvd, but he is right. What did I just say that. Normal games do usually take 1 to 3 weeks to be in stores after going gold. The first guy saying something about 2 or 3 months is way way off. It almost funny with how wrong he is.

 

[jvd]

why thank you .

Lots of games go in one week. Perhaps for a aworld wide launc h it will take longer . Of course there will be a few weeks between each of the launchs for the xbox

 

[therealskywolf]

Uh, 1 week? Try 2 to 3

Even if we use your time scale which is bs , it would still leave them with over 3 months , closer to 4 months

Hey easy there. Why all offensive?

Anyway, Games gone "Gold", for reference:

http://www.gamespot.com/xbox/driving/forzamotorsport/news_6122276.html
http://www.gamespot.com/xbox/action/area51/news_6122165.html
http://www.gamespot.com/xbox/action/unrealchampionship2theliandriconflict/news_6121759.html
http://www.gamespot.com/xbox/action/conkerliveanduncut/news_6126934.html
http://www.gamespot.com/xbox/action/splintercell3/news_6120913.html

And Halo2
http://www.gamespot.com/xbox/action/halo2/news_6110185.html

 

[richardpfeil]

As long as controller input, physics simulation and game logic is running at 60 fps I'd be perfectly happy with a screen refresh of 30 fps. Especially if there is some motion blur to the rendering.

 

[jvd]

Anyway, Games gone "Gold", for reference:

Froza went gold on 4/14 and was released 5/03 . About 2 weeks .

area 51 took over a month but was released on 3 systems at the same time .

unreal championship took 14 days to go from gold to shelves

conkers took 18 days

splinter sell was on 4 platforms in less than week of going gold

halo 2 took one month


Don't forget that none of the xbox titles will ship in the numbers that these games will ship in . I highly doubt ms will ship more than a million consoles launch day , So i don't see why they would make more than a million copys of each title . Halo 2 needed over 10 million copies on launch day

 

[AlNom]

As long as controller input, physics simulation and game logic is running at 60 fps I'd be perfectly happy with a screen refresh of 30 fps. Especially if there is some motion blur to the rendering.

Actually, this was the case for PGR2. All the internal stuff was done with 60Hz tic rate. I suppose you would liken it to playing Doom 3 at 30fps (everything like physics etc is done at 60Hz).

 

[Inane_Dork]

Bizarre is just covering their backsides as any smart developer will do nowadays. Why would they promise something that may not be able to deliver? It's just common sense.

I find it odd that people are so religious in their fervor about 60 fps when they advocate the developer picking the resolution the game renders to. Hey, shouldn't the developer have control over both? Why in heaven's name would I want to force a developer into 60 fps when I could get a 2x prettier game at 30 fps and the framerate drop be negligible?

That's internal Q&A. I'm talking about the console manufacturer Q&A (Maybe there's a precise english word for it, though).

I think I've usually heard it called "<platform> certification."

 

[Tsmit42]

Gold-Release Date is not a very good candidate to measure how much time a game has left in "optimization". As you guys admit, alot of things has to be for a title to go gold. So 2-4 weeks before the game actually goes gold, developers has stopped working on the game optimizations probably, and internally have a alpha/beta/rc1/rc2 cylce. So the game is pretty much finished with programming when rc1 comes out, even beta sometimes(very rare). Everything from beta+ is bug fixes, so the release of beta/rc1 is the time you should refer to and not the gold date. So it could be 2 weeks(gold to release) + 2 weeks(final rc to gold) + 2 - 4 weeks(beta - final rc). So that is 6-8 weeks without engine optimizations and just bug fixes.

 

[Acert93]

Anyway, Games gone "Gold", for reference:

The problem with looking at Gold dates as a determination of time to market is that some games already have a release date long before their Gold (or RC) date... sometimes 6 months in advance.

Other times games are strategically released to pad publisher profits OR to fit into specific release windows. e.g. if EA has 6 titles to release in Sept, Oct, and Nov, they wont release them all on the same date--even if they are all done. They will space them to maximize sales, the bigger titles getting the better dates.

Frequently a team will move on to other projects before a title is shipped; indeed, frequently certain members of a team may have completed all they can do on a game MONTHS before release (even as the rest of the team works) and may be tasked with working on future titles, additional content, etc.

As for the specific subject at hand about time to live... well, they have their work cut out for them. They JUST got the final HW. Unlike the Xbox that was a PC CPU + PC GPU + HDD + Optical drive + LAN (for all practical purposes) Xbox 360 is a new beast. Tricore PPC CPU different than the dev kits, radically new GPU design never tested in the open market. Even worse, until a few months ago they were working under the assumption the 360 would have 256MB of memory.

So they have 5-6 months to get a handle on radically different hardware, finish all their game content, optimize their engines, debug their entire game, make sure Live works, balance out the game play, and then get it approved, pressed, and shipped.

Now they can do a lot of that at one time (and I am pretty sure more titles aiming for 2005 release are feature/content complete at this point, or at least VERY close) but it is going to be a VERY hard next 6 months.

And, like most launches, most games will stink. A lot of potentially great titles will underwhelm, some will really stink (ruined by 1 aspect of the game that is obviously bad and could have been fixed in 3 months), and 2 or 3 gems.

Welcome to early adopter hell. Next ride begins Spring 2006 (PS3 launch).