Archive for 2005

Engadget has always been pretty Xbox 360 happy. (I refuse to use the term fanboys – I don’t like it.) And that’s fine. They can like the Xbox 360 all they want. But when the start to say things like the following, I get annoyed.

Yeah, so the PS3 will probably have the edge over the Xbox 360 in graphics and sheer computational power, but after actually playing some of these games it’s hard to imagine all but the most diehard Sony fanboys holding out for the 5 – 7 months that’ll pass before Sony introduces their console.

Why is that so hard to imagine? Do they think that Xbox 360 games will be so superior to PS3 games that Sony fans will fall over themselves switching sides? Why is that? Do Xbox 360 developers have a monopoly on cool game ideas? Does the Xbox 360 have such cool hardware that it makes its games de facto superior? Is an American product inherently better than a Japanese product? Or maybe Sony fans like us are so week-willed that all the hype Microsoft is forcing down our throats will actually get digested and enter our blood streams?

I don’t think so. I think I’ll just let the hype pass through, thank-you very little.

I’m not saying the PS3 will have better games than the Xbox 360, nor vice versa. What I am saying is that you can’t judge the games until you’ve played them. How many folks at Engadget have played a PS3 game? I think the answer might hover around zero.

Personally, while I think that releasing first gives Microsoft one kind of advantage, it gives Sony another. Sony can see everything Microsoft is doing right and wrong, and respond to it in time for the PS3 launch.

The proof is in the pudding, and I haven’t eaten either yet. Personally, I think they’ll both be good. Anyone else think the way I do?

engadget – Xbox 360 hands-on preview

Yesterday Autodesk announced that it was shipping 3ds max 8, the next version of its 3D content creation package. In a previous life I developed plugins for 3ds max, and it was work that I quite enjoyed. Autodesk. Hmmm. Doesn’t that sound familiar? Yup, it should. They recently purchased Alias, the makers of Maya, probably the leading 3D content creation package in Hollywood. Now Autodesk owns the 3D package most used by game artists, and the 3D package most used by movie artists. Nice position to be in.

“When our artists got their hands on the 3ds Max 8 beta, there was no turning back. The time savings from silver-bullet features like Pelt Mapping meant that we immediately put the beta in production for Gears of War and Unreal Tournament 2007,” said Michael Capps, Ph.D., president, Epic Games. “We’ve been working with the 3ds Max team since the Microsoft DOS days, collaborating on ways to make the Unreal Engine’s content pipeline more efficient. We dream up a few crazy features, and they turn around a new version in no time.”

How does this relate to the PS3? Directly if you’re a PS3 game developer. It looks like 3ds max is used by Epic Games. Epic sells the Unreal Engine 3, to be available for the PS3. And Epic uses 3ds max. Ah, there’s the connection. You knew there must be one, right?

GameSHOUT – Autodesk Ships 3ds Max 8 Software

Our friends over at Aelon have a blurb about PhysX, AGEIA’s physics API. It looks to be gaining in popularity. Not only has it been announced by Sony to be a support API in the PS3 dev kits, but others are using it too:

Indeed, Epic has announced that the next Unreal games will be able to make use of it, FutureMark has licensed the technology for future benchmark programs, and the tech demos provided have shown some impressive performance. After reading an interesting article on X-bit Labs just the other day though, it looks like AGEIA’s attempt at controlling an as-yet uninhabited section of the market could be at an end pretty soon.

Why do you care? Hm. Have you been reading? I said that Sony will offer PhysX in the PS3′s development kit! Sheesh!

Aelon.net – Getting Physical with Graphics