spectrum48k

Football is a game of split second decisions, and simulating the sport on the Xbox 360 will soon let you split those seconds more finely. 1UP is reporting that this summer's major pigskin simulators -- EA's Madden NFL 08 and NCAA Football 2008 and 2K Sports' All-Pro Football 2K8 -- will run at 60 frames per second on the Xbox 360 and 30 frames per second on the PS3. The move represents a jump from previous Madden games, which ran at 30 frames per second on all platforms, including the Xbox 360 and PS3.

While the additional frames mean smoother, more fluid animation in the 360 versions, it's still unclear how the jump will impact graphical fidelity or resolution. A comparison between both versions of last year's Madden 07 conducted by Gamespot showed the 360 version had "sharper textures on the character models in the close-up shots shown between plays." In comparing this year's games, 1UP simply stated that "All-Pro Football 2K8 definitely runs better on Xbox 360."

The reasons behind this frame rate difference are hard to pin down. Todd Sitrin, EA Vice President of Marketing Sports Branding, told 1UP that there are trade offs in designing football simulations and that "every company making a football game this year made a decision that the best experience for the Xbox 360 included 60fps whereas the best experience for the PS3 was 30fps." Extra time and familiarity with the Xbox 360 hardware could have influenced the development, as could the purported difficulty in programming for the PS3's multi-processor architecture.

messiah

Some elements of EA can really show what a console of capable of - Burnout Revenge is one one the most visually impressive games on the 360, I dont think you could put Madden in the same graphical bracket - but then none of the games labelled as EA Sports tend to be impressive - they tend to be the previous years game rehashed with updated squads - none of the games ever seem to go through a revolution, and I think part of it comes down the team behind it being, how should I put it... not as good as their peers?

The last sentence, reading between the lines means that the 360 is the easy answer and they cant be bothered / dont want to pay for the time it takes to get the best out of the PS3 - they'll probably buy the talented coders in a few years time like they did with Criterion.

There's a similar thing going at Free Radical with Haze. They're doing PS3 & 360 versions together but have found that they can do much more with the PS3 than they can with the 360. However, trying to keep the game visually identical on both platforms has meant they are hold back on the PS3 version as Ubisoft doesnt want the game to vastly different. As a result Free Radical have started work on an as yet un-named FPS which is to be a PS3 exclusive - there's strong rumours that the game is TimeSplitters 4.

spectrum48k

From a development point of view, it appears the Xbox360 is a hell of a lot friendlier.

Form a project management point of view, it would appear that developing for Xbox360 currently, would help your game get finished on schedule.

From a financial point of view, its best to do a Wii version! ;-)

DJ Dunk

iTrader: (5)

Also . . .

Game | Life - Wired Blogs

messiah

Seems a bit strange when Koei were making Fatal Inertia 2 years ago as a PS3 exclusive, it was only recently announced it was coming to the 360.

MS hardware will always be easier to code for, the 360 is basically a common old PC

DJ Dunk

iTrader: (5)

Which of course is proving to be a good thing.

messiah

Not when it's full of bad habits, dodgy components, and a Microsoft OS it isnt!

DJ Dunk

iTrader: (5)

It just needs a little tweaking, thats all

Edcase

Pretty much everyone we work with (and that includes pretty much everyone) says that, right now at this moment, if you are doing both 360 and PS3 in parallel, it's hard to get the code running as quickly/smoothly on PS3.

But, that if you were developing just on PS3, it would kick ***.

However, when you bear in mind how long they have had to get to grips with 360 and how long the tools have been around, versus PS3 where the kits and tools are much more embryonic, it's only natural.

STi wanna Subaru

iTrader: (1)

would it be fair to say that they've not yet extracted the full ability out of the 360 as well or are they already pushing it as far as it can go?

Iain Young

They'll still be extracting more out of the machines for some time to come. It's an ever evolving process, only limited by the talent of the developers. You only have to look at the stuff they were getting out of the Amiga and ST at the end of the 16bit era to see this...

Iain Young

That has to be a bit worrying for Sony. The future for the majority of the entertainment software industry is going to be multi-platform, (the costs make platform exclusives financially unviable unless they get a big cheque from Sony/MS). So this suggests that the majority of games will look better on the 360.

I'm a little confused by that. I remember ages ago hearing that Sony had got development (emulated) environments / tools out to developers just before MS managed it. Long before the relase of either machine in fact. They've had plenty of time to get the PS3 kits and tools to a post-embryonic state...

bob269

I was speaking to a mate yesterday about the old amiga scene and came across this, developers these days are getting lazy, partly due to release deadlines, partly down to having 9gig at their disposal. Anyways this is what we found.

This pc demo is 177k, and it puts most 3d engines to shame.

youtube link YouTube - FR-041: Debris by Farbrausch

actual exe demo link http://www.trackmania.org/fr-041_debris.zip

enjoy.

messiah

I think one of the main flaws of the 360 is its OS, half of the hang ups I get are caused by notifications. Now if the thing is suppsed to have 3 cores and PGR3 only utilised 1 of them, why couldnt they make 1 core specific to the dashboard? Haven't Sony done something like this with one of SPE's in the PS3?

I think Sony have learned their lesson, they acknowledged that the PS3 is a bugger to code for compared to the 360, but the devs who take the time to exploit its power will reap rewards, to the extent that some games will look a hell of a lot better than others - Metal Gear Solid series has always been a good indicator of just what is capable on a given platform - so wait for No.4 to appear in September and I'll bet there's a notable graphical improvement over one of the launch titles.

STi wanna Subaru

iTrader: (1)

I thought the 360 has specific memory and processor power allocated permanently for the dashboard?

Iain Young

That's the problem though. The fact that it's so much harder makes it financially unviable for anyone other than in-house (or heavily subsidised) developers to exploit.

I expect so. But if the previews / rumours are to be believed, it'll be 70% cut-scene, 20% loading screens, and 10% actual game. I'm not holding my breath for that one, (if I want to watch a movie, I'll buy a dvd).

It's easy to make impressive looking games when the gameplay is so simplistic, (look at Gears of War for example - all style and no substance). It's when there are more calculations going on that the true power of a machine is revealed.

StickyMicky

i do remember the old amiga days and such were it was all about streamlining stuff to make it better/faster

nowadays people just expect to have to add another stick of ram or clock the cpu a bit more to run the latest games

StickyMicky

i think gears is a multiplayer game with a short single player mode added, just to sell copies to be honest.

messiah

Gears worked so much better as a co-op game than it did as a single player, the gameplay was OK I thought - but it was just too short, whether or not the rumours of it being so short were a result of a lack of storage space on the DVD are true (5 acts instead of a planned 8). Gears 2 is rumoured to be announced at this years E3 (is it still E3 or have Ms & Sony decided to do their own thing from now on?), now if Epic did make an extra 3 acts, you could suggest that Gears 2 (or the gameworld at least) was more than 50% complete when the original came out on november - although I wouldnt have expected the sequel to appear until probably nearer the end of the 360's lifespan.

Incidentally, anyone seen the top 100 games from the latest Edge? only 1 xbox title makes the list, along with 1 pc title and only 5 games from the current gen of machines - so Iain has a point with his style over substance comment, but that could be said about most games soon after a consoles launch - they have to look better than the previous gen or most peeps will think "whats the point?"

messiah

Gears contained what I think is the single worst pi55 poor excuse for a multiplayer game I've ever played - I got a better multiplayer experience from Just Cause and it doesnt even have a multiplayer option... seriously, a mate and I played it together in a race to grab 1000G from it while in chat, sound a bit naff but was huge fun.

STi wanna Subaru

iTrader: (1)

Rose tinted specs certainly help with some games though.

messiah

yep - the top ten is littered with Nintendo - it even includes Tetris! Dont get me wrong, I loved Tetris on the gameboy but I wouldnt say it was a deep & meaningful experience.

Never really been a big N fan to be honest though - and bit happy-nicey-disneyesque for my liking, bought an N64 for GoldenEye and that was brilliant, but there was very little else available for it, Zelda & Final Fantasy are both huge franchises but just not my cup of tea.

Neanderthal

iTrader: (6)

Why didn't Epic release the extra 3 acts as DLC though?
Oh scrap that, it's prolly cause the story wouldn't make sense would it! LOL

I had a great time playing though Gears co-op with a mate. Tried solo afterwards but got bored pretty quickly and don't enjoy the multiplayer aspect of it at all.

StickyMicky

i must be a freak

i prefer the multiplayer mode. never at first as i was crap andwas always killed

story was ok, did a few chapters in co-op with a mate, but i had the best fun with 7 mates playing multiplayer matches to be honest! especially when working as a proper team, had some good games last night with everybody covering everybody elses back

messiah

Its a shame that despite MS making a big thing about online gaming they and devs go and make it difficult to set up and organise ranked clan matches - I wish they'd pull their finger out and sort it becuase its ruining the enjoyment of some games for me - I'd even go back to GOW if I could play as a team with people I know rather than the great unwashed...

Neanderthal

iTrader: (6)

I think that's the key, if you're playing multiplayer against mates then it's fine.
Same with Forza 2, give me 1 race against Scoobynet people rather than 10 against no names that ram the poo poo out of you!
And carrying over from the other "failure rate" thread, this is probably why we still love the 360, it's simple the best online multiplayer platform at the mo

StickyMicky

you can with the player matches?

although i can understand why you cant with the ranked stuff, the potential for somebody to cheat and get higher rankings is harder

although i have found out that a few people will host a game with a bizzare rounds number, ike 14 or 16 etc etc, you join the game and can see a "clan" allready in there, most of the time waiting in the middle for somebody to pick the locust side so they can all be cogs

had a few games like that in the past few days, i even ended up in some random germans clan match last night, which was funny, as i couldnt understand them at all but they all stomped around in a line like they do on holiday

messiah

yeah its the rank ****** that ruin it for everybody else - but playing as a team with world rankings at stake gives a bigger buzz than if you'd put money on it.

I think GRAW 2 was a step in the right direction though - you only got some acheivements dependant upon having a certain no. of players in the lobby, but get a big enough group and you can get around most of this kind of restriction - NFS Carbon was a bit similar where it was near on impossible to be put into a lobby than contained someone else that was on your friends list.

spectrum48k

Isn't it ironic the one thing that gave Sony their first "foot in the door" and contributed to the success of the Playstation 1, was their friendly development tools ? Back then, the competition was the Sega Saturn and N64 and both were fraught with developement problems, that saw Playstation welcomed with open arms by developers.

How times change.