Author Topic: XNA-Sony and Nintendo's doom? (Read 6880 times)

theRPGFreak · « **on:** July 09, 2004, 05:57:20 PM »

After watching an article on www.microsoft.com/xna Microsoft may have a huge advantage in the next line of consoles. What is XNA? It is a development program that Microsoft is giving developers to make games faster and easier. The program takes care of the major problems that developers have been having while making a game, and allows them to have more time to make a good game. I was stunned when I saw in full motion a demo of 2 race cars go full force into eachother on how great the graphics looked. Iwata said that "the graphics wont matter" in the next systems, but I really think after watching that video they still may matter. The program will also give developers the oppurtunity to make creative and unique games easier. That is why people have been woundering why the heck Square-Enix would consider developing for XBox's next system.
What I'm worried about is how Nintendo will be able to compete against this.

Koopa Troopa · « **Reply #1 on:** July 09, 2004, 07:22:03 PM »

1. Microsoft has asked Sony and Nintendo to use the XNA system.
2. Of course the tech demo looked good, it is a tech demo.
3. There is no cure-all for easing game development. XNA may ease the process somewhat, but I'll be surprised if it is at all revolutionary.
4. If no one but Microsoft adopts XNA then it won't really matter.

Uglydot · « **Reply #2 on:** July 09, 2004, 07:28:45 PM »

The developers will still rush games, this just means they can rush them even faster and easier.

Chongman · « **Reply #3 on:** July 09, 2004, 08:30:53 PM »

no one thing can determine who comes out on top

how difficult it is to create software, in the end, is noticable but farely insignificant. afterall, ps2 is the most difficult to develop for (at leasts thats what I've been under the impression of) but it still remains a strong market leader.

Caillan · « **Reply #4 on:** July 09, 2004, 08:41:14 PM »

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Microsoft may have a huge advantage in the next line of consoles. What is XNA?

They already have it this generation, at least over Nintendo. There was a game developer's conference here recently, and hardly any developers there made anything for the Cube. They said they weren't prepared to pay twice the normal price for a crap development kit. Fair enough.

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how difficult it is to create software, in the end, is noticable but farely insignificant. afterall, ps2 is the most difficult to develop for (at leasts thats what I've been under the impression of) but it still remains a strong market leader.

Well, the PS2's dual processors make it time-consuming to program for, but it's development kit is alright.

Ian Sane · « **Reply #5 on:** July 09, 2004, 09:15:57 PM »

"They said they weren't prepared to pay twice the normal price for a crap development kit."

Ouch! You figure Nintendo would clue in one of these days. "Hey our games cost more to make and we have sh!tty third party support. What's the deal with that?" You figure a company that used to be the market leader would understand some basic business concepts like price matching. Some of their Player's Choice titles cost $30 instead of $20 so ripping others off seems to be a practice they're having difficulty dropping.

I think the Revolution's third party support will be entirely up to Nintendo. If they continue to treat third parties like tax payers it'll be just as crappy as it is now or worse. If they actually match licensing fees and use a medium that's the same price for the same amount of storage space and they make a real effort to get some exclusive titles then they'll do just fine. In other words the key to healthy Nintendo third party support is for Nintendo to learn from their mistakes for once and make a SERIOUS effort to fix things.

XNA may be an advantage to MS (or not if third parties feel it's an attempt to give MS more power which I think it is) but any "doom" for Nintendo in regards to third party support will entirely be their own fault.

Caillan · « **Reply #6 on:** July 09, 2004, 09:34:25 PM »

Yeah, and it's a shame since the GC has some nice archetecture as well.

My theory is that the X-Box should have bombed, by rights, but because if it's excellent development kit and PC-like archetecture it got support. The develoepers make games for the PC, then port them to consoles afterwards. If it only costs a few thousand to port a game to the X-Box, why not?

The car demo in XNA is nice, but by far the most amazing graphics I've seen are done in the Unreal 3 engine. I've only seen a camcorder recording of the screening at E3, but it truely was brilliant, far better than the car demo. Most of all, they had a technique that allowed a model of about 8 500 triangles to look like a model 20 000 000 triangles. That's 20 million. It still sucks up processing power, of course, but it looks really nice. I guess all next-gen graphics engines are looking really nice right now, and no doubt they'll be surpassed when more and more companies begin to develope them.

theRPGFreak · « **Reply #7 on:** July 09, 2004, 09:34:49 PM »

What I mainly think that is good about the XNA is that games wont have to be delayed so much, and gives developers less of an excuse for making crappy games. I would like to see Nintendo use this if they could as Koopa Troopa was saying that they were offered to, and to use the technology to make the unique games that they want to make.

KDR_11k · « **Reply #8 on:** July 09, 2004, 10:19:06 PM »

Caillan: That "20 Million on 8.5k" is called normal mapping and already included in games like Doom 3, Far Cry and AFAIK Battlefield: Vietnam. As Doom 3 shows, that is possible on current gen technology, but only very ugly (texture resolutions become more important with normal maps). It's pretty useless for less detailled styles (cel shading, for example), though.

RPGFreak: Why would XNA give them no excuse for bad games? It only provides the user interface and graphics/sound stuff. It gives them less of an excuse to make bad engines, but crappy, buggy games will exist even with XNA (it's not a magical "make it fun" toolkit).

XNA speeds up the engine coding, but many devs already use toolkits, either developed in-house or licensed, that essentially do the same. Just because no Renderware game matches those XNA demos (since they're built on older hardware and are actual games) doesn't mean it can't do the same as XNA.
The point of XNA, AFAIK, is the synchronisation of tech specs and input devices. XNA games will be designed for a reference controller design Microsoft supplies and will likely work like crap on other controllers or need to be adjusted for each device independently (which is exactly what XNA is supposed to prevent). In other words, they expect Sony, Nintendo and PC gamers to use their gamepads.
esides, I wouldn't trust Microsoft when it comes to standard libraries. They have proven over and over again that they are capable of adding "features" that allow for quick virus spread and serve no legitimate purpose. I still don't get why the RPC manager accepts outside calls without requesting authentication or why ActiveX doesn't run in a sandbox (that was even an official feature and "advantage" over Javascript, ie. "You cannot format the user's harddrive with Javascript, but you can with ActveX! Hooray, feature!"). MS calls it trustworthy computing, I say it means "I'll trust you that this file is completely harmless and run it without asking my user".
You can patch an OS, but patching your console every month to not get infected by virii over the internet is a bit much.

Also, the bottleneck in game development isn't engine development or game logic, it's the art assets and unless they include that magic "make art" button that EA has been trying to code for such a long time now, they won't be able to speed that up.

NinGurl69 *huggles · « **Reply #9 on:** July 09, 2004, 10:54:48 PM »

Yay, generic games can hit the market faster.

Mario · « **Reply #10 on:** July 09, 2004, 11:15:02 PM »

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unannounced xbox hardware > unannounced sony and nintendo hardware?

YOU WIN THE PRIZE

Chongman · « **Reply #11 on:** July 10, 2004, 05:09:54 AM »

microsoft really is putting all their cards on their table...

aaaaagh, Nintendo better be watching...I love the company to death but one thing they need is some humility. I think they've been learning...but I hope they adapt fast enough to pull themselves out of the shoddy position they've been in most of this gen

Koopa Troopa · « **Reply #12 on:** July 10, 2004, 09:23:51 AM »

Quote

The car demo in XNA is nice, but by far the most amazing graphics I've seen are done in the Unreal 3 engine. I've only seen a camcorder recording of the screening at E3, but it truely was brilliant, far better than the car demo. Most of all, they had a technique that allowed a model of about 8 500 triangles to look like a model 20 000 000 triangles. That's 20 million. It still sucks up processing power, of course, but it looks really nice. I guess all next-gen graphics engines are looking really nice right now, and no doubt they'll be surpassed when more and more companies begin to develope them.

KDR already beat me to it, but like he said DOOM III among others is already doing the same thing. I'd bet Half-Life 2 does it also.

However, Unreal Engine 3 does have other things going for it that are just as impressive. It is a brilliant engine, but so is DOOM III and others. All of them are going to require some serious hardware, though.

NinGurl69 *huggles · « **Reply #13 on:** July 10, 2004, 12:32:06 PM »

Serious hardware is quite expensive.

theRPGFreak · « **Reply #14 on:** July 10, 2004, 03:46:35 PM »

Im not saying that bad games will become extinct, I am just saying there may be less bad and more good games. Usually the excusses I hear when bad games are made is that they never had the time to finish the game. This tool will help the problem a bit. As long as there are games, there will be bad ones......

darknight06 · « **Reply #15 on:** July 10, 2004, 06:27:31 PM »

They'll still rush them out, if not now even faster than before. If a CEO finds a way to make more money faster they're gonna take it, which is exactly what this sounds like.

mouse_clicker · « **Reply #16 on:** July 10, 2004, 06:42:04 PM »

It's restrictions from publishers that generally create bad games. XNA will help alleviate that problem, but unless publishers stop being overbearing and concerned purely with sales and demographics, XNA won't do much of anything. At the very least it's a step in the right direction.

Mumei · « **Reply #17 on:** July 10, 2004, 07:11:51 PM »

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You figure a company that used to be the market leader would understand some basic business concepts like price matching.

You have to remember that when they were the market leader, they had about 90% of the market; they dictated the terms. They could have games censored, could control content, could tell the price of royalties without negotiations, etc. because there wasnt' another viable option because of Nintendo's near-monopoly. That is one of the big reasons why they lost a ton of third-party support when Sony came and offered lower royalty rates (and the fact that the PSX cost less to develop for, was easier to develop for and that CDs were cheaper than cartridges.)

But basically, Nintendo never had to deal with this and it would appear that they have a lot to learn >_>.

Ian Sane · « **Reply #18 on:** July 10, 2004, 08:44:44 PM »

"They'll still rush them out, if not now even faster than before. If a CEO finds a way to make more money faster they're gonna take it, which is exactly what this sounds like."

I agree. I think all this will do will give pushy publishers the excuse to push for even smaller dev times. If they're asking for something silly like six months now with XNA they'll ask for three month dev times. While this may help good games come out faster it will make bad games come out faster too. It's like how when a certain size hard drive becomes too small and bigger ones are made instead of using this space to store more files and programs in many situations files and programs just bloat to take up more space so you end up with the exact same situation you had before.

KDR_11k · « **Reply #19 on:** July 10, 2004, 09:28:12 PM »

I don't think XNA will shorten dev cycles a lot. Most use already made engines that offer the same (or even more) functionality. I don't think Acclaim, for example, wrote a new engine for evey game they made. Some say EA has one dev platform that automatically compiles the game they make for all platforms.

Nsoldier · « **Reply #20 on:** July 11, 2004, 09:19:59 AM »

How exactly is nintendo doomed from the announcement of XNA dude you are stupid as hell .

theRPGFreak · « **Reply #21 on:** July 11, 2004, 08:15:16 PM »

"How exactly is nintendo doomed from the announcement of XNA dude you are stupid as hell ."

OK fine I deserved that, I think I went a little too far when I said it would be nintendo's doom. I just was still on the theory that the next system made by nintendo would not care as much for graphical updates, and when I saw the video, I got real excited.

mouse_clicker · « **Reply #22 on:** July 11, 2004, 08:45:20 PM »

Sensationalist titles attract readers.

DrZoidberg · « **Reply #23 on:** July 11, 2004, 09:12:54 PM »

Spiderman eats babies and steals walking sticks from the elderly, page 23.

Nsoldier · « **Reply #24 on:** July 12, 2004, 10:36:34 AM »

RPG queer or whatever keep your mouth shut because you have no idea what you are talking about maybe you are praying and hoping for nintendo's doom but it won't happen dumbass .

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Author Topic: XNA-Sony and Nintendo's doom? (Read 6880 times)