Topic: EA Comments on Revolution Development

[WindyMan]

"One of the challenges for the Revolution is that it's not HD."

Gamasutra got a chance to talk to a lot of industry big-wigs at Game Developer's Confrence last month.  Among them was the vice president and general manger of EA's Los Angeles Studio, Neil Young.    

He confirmed the obvious--there are Revolution titles in development at Electronic Arts.  Specifics weren't mentioned, but he did have a few things to comment on about the Revolution hardware itself.    

"One of the challenges for the Revolution is that it's not HD," Young said.  EALA is currently finishing up Battle for Middle Earth II on the Xbox 360, a real-time strategy game.  Young referenced the fact that HD graphics allow for smaller objects to stand out more when sitting further away from the screen, as opposed to sitting up close like a computer monitor.    

After discussing the advantages that the 360 has with its HD graphics, Young continued, "The [Revolution's] hardware performance is sort of current gen plus, versus the 10x or 20x multiple that you get on next-gen. I mean, EA is building stuff for it, but I kind of prefer the DS. It makes the most sense to me."    

Electronic Arts will likely reveal its Revolution lineup at E3, two weeks from now.

[Knoxxville]

EA's gonna be eatin' crow once the Revolution is televised.

[Infernal Monkey]

So this explains why the majority of EA games have been horse piss all these years, they haven't been in HD!

[Bloodworth]

I hope he enjoys explaining himself when all the 360 owners without HDTVs can't see anything.  

Ubisoft had trouble when they took HD for granted in King Kong and now EA's making the same mistake.  There's no guarantee that users are going to have the option.  I think that Nintendo not going to HD may actually help 360 and PS3 owners if it means developers are forced to consider standard resolutions when designing their games.

[King of Twitch]

It's hard work not having to add a feature

[Bloodworth]

Another thought - could this be a "challenge" because this team usually develops PC games and hasn't had to work with lower resolutions in the past?

[ruby_onix]

I've heard a number of people saying that the reason the DS isn't being stormed by RTS games is because (despite the touchscreen, which should make them awesome), the screen's 256x192 resolution just can't accomodate something like an RTS very well.

While I do think Nintendo's "no HD" position is somewhat shortsighted and might bite them in the ass (and I'd like to know how much money they actually saved on the Rev hardware because of it), 640x480 should be adequate for something like a RTS.

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Young referenced the fact that HD graphics allow for smaller objects to stand out more when sitting further away from the screen, as opposed to sitting up close like a computer monitor.

This doesn't seem to make much sense to me. Isn't it just "screen size" that lets you see details at a distance? And with bigscreen TV's you could see too much detail, so it looked blocky, so they decided to improve the resolution (in a rather disorganized manner)?  

[GoldenPhoenix]

"One of the challenges for the Revolution is that it's not HD,"

Translation: Since we cannot mask poor gameplay with pretty HD graphics, it actually means we have to think about the gameplay for Revolution games and have to utilize the controller to make them unique. At least EA now has an excuse for poor Revolution games. Really though, I find it laughable that one of the few companies to blast Revolution for HD, is the one known for lazy ports or rehashed games.

[GoldenPhoenix]

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While I do think Nintendo's "no HD" position is somewhat shortsighted and might bite them in the ass (and I'd like to know how much money they actually saved on the Rev hardware because of it), 640x480 should be adequate for something like a RTS.

From what I gathered you need alot more horsepower for HD, so Nintendo probaly did save quite a bit by not going HD.

[wandering]

This isn't surprising. EA wants to suppport Revolution, sure...but they also want games on the 360 and PS3 to sell. And to have that happen, I imagine they need people to buy into the whole idea that HD is the next big, necessary step in gaming.

[Mario]

It's a pretty sad scenario what EA's gonna have to do now... Revolution will force them to shake up their precious sports franchises, which they've strategically been slowly upgrading to get the most cash out of consumers for as long as they can.

Revolution will mean a big leap for those franchises if EA wants to be taken as a serious publisher on Revolution. They can either make a full fledged Madden / Fifa game that uses the Revmote to the max (gamers win), or give the Rev a bunch of sloppy GameCube ports (gamers lose).

What I think they'll do is go the obvious conservative EA route, just chuck in a few new controller features at first just to say "hey look we're using the new controller!" then slowly add one new bit of revmote gameplay every year. They also risk making the cashcow PS3 and Xbox 360 versions look outdated if they utilise the brand new controller fully.

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While I do think Nintendo's "no HD" position is somewhat shortsighted and might bite them in the ass (and I'd like to know how much money they actually saved on the Rev hardware because of it)

I don't think that really had much to do with the decision, it's mainly about focusing on the normal TV market so we aren't left behind, plus they don't want any "Battlefield 360" scenarios happening (the game is ONLY playable in HD).  

[Nephilim]

Clearly down porting games isnt fun, COD2 for xbox and ps2
FEAR 2 for console, wont be the same game as PC version
Half-life 2 was raped too hell
I could go on all day, of Graphic card/cpu heavy games that have been a problem

"plus they don't want any "Battlefield 360" scenarios happening (the game is ONLY playable in HD)."
Sorry to say, that statement is false
Iv seen it been played on a small normal tv, both demo and full version

[ruby_onix]

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Originally posted by: VGrevolution
From what I gathered you need alot more horsepower for HD, so Nintendo probaly did save quite a bit by not going HD.

If some developer were to say "I don't care if the graphics suck, I NEEEED tiny little fine details (at least for those gamers who can take advantage of them)." That would cost Nintendo nothing. All they'd need is maybe an HDMI port or something.

Iwata tells developers "I'll save you money. You don't really want HD. So now you can't have it." Some developers are obviously going to say "No Iwata, I'll save you some money. I'll bring my wares to Sony/MS."

I don't think Nintendo is looking after the gamers with Standard Definition TV sets. I don't think they're particularly trying to save developers some money (although maybe they are). I think they're just being their usual Nintendo-cheapo selves. Cutting any costs they think they can get away with, even if sometimes the benefits outweigh the cost on things.  

[couchmonkey]

Oh noes, it's the great HDTV debate again!  If it's as easy to add as Ruby Onix suggests, then maybe Nintendo will add it when it becomes a big feature.  If it's not that easy to add, then Nintendo is probably saving lots of money.  I think it's a shame the system doesn't support HDTV, but I don't really care anymore since the company showed the system's other features.

It is probably a bit of a pain to port games down from the XBox 360 / PS3 standard, but as far as I'm concerned EA can suck it up and get to work!  The Revolution doesn't really have to undo EA's hard work on making the games slightly better each year, in fact the company can be extra sneaky and sell games on the merit of the new controller while taking some unrelated features out.  Blame it on the system's lack of power, and give yourself several more years worth of incremental imrpovements that you already know how to implement.

[Ceric]

I'm going to say this again to everyone.  Nintendo already stated that they have spent a lot of money on the Revolutions controller R&D and I'm almost convinced that it was originally slated to be a Cube accessory but Nintendo noticed they needed to do something more 2-3 years ago, especial since MS came to play the game.  That beingt said if HD was as simple as adding a port Nintendo would be all for that.  It's not.  There are changes that they would probably have to make to there whole underlying API to compensate.  These changes don't necessarily have anything to do with the HD graphic rendering but maybe device drivers and interaction to random arrays sizes.  All this equals more R&D money.

[Knoxxville]

Does anyone in this forum even care or buy Madden?  I know I don't.....

[Rize]

To do HD, a port would have been required, a much larger frame buffer and a GPU with more fillrate.  Collectively, these things would have significantly increased R&D and final part costs.

[BigJim]

In other words, compete with competitors that've chipped away at them for 15 years. Oh noes!

[SgtShiversBen]

...I bought NFL2K5 for five dollars at Hollywood Video...

Am I a bad person?

[Ian Sane]

"...I bought NFL2K5 for five dollars at Hollywood Video...

Am I a bad person?"

That's a Sega game so it's okay.

EA can't rely on people having HDTVs for their games so this comment is either stupid or they're just making excuses.  I wanted Nintendo to provide HD as an option for consumers that can use it but their shouldn't be games being made that REQUIRE it.  If the issue was that the hardware difference didn't allow a game to work right on the Rev then it would be a perfectly valid point but "no HD" isn't.

[UncleBob]

Looking at my 'Cube collection, I have one EA game... The Sims.

And it's unopened.

I bought it for my wife (on clearance at Toys R Us) who hasn't really gotten around to playing it.

Poor EA...

[trip1eX]

There are thousands of EA employees out there and so I'm sure a couple of them don't like the idea of the Revolution especially those who have rts games that use the standard controller on the 360 in HiDef to promote.

Also let's not forget that most folks using the 360 have regular TVs and somehow EA won't turn those guys away when it comes to their Battle for Middle Earth rts game.  

[EasyCure]

i think you're all missing something from that article....the guys name is Neil Young!!!

[Ian Sane]

"i think you're all missing something from that article....the guys name is Neil Young!!!"

He keeps searching for a heart of gold... because the Rev doesn't have HD and thus he can't find it on the screen.

[KDR_11k]

I think the DS could very well run an RTS, you'd just have to make sprites that can be told apart at VERY low resolution. Of course you'd still have harvesters driving into the enemy base...