How about talking alittle about John Carmacks interview with GameInformer about his upcoming game Rage where he made some interesting comments on developing for multiple platforms, and I quote:
There’s no doubt that with all of the platforms that we have running here PS3 is the most challenging to develop on. That’s what I’ve been saying from the beginning. It’s not that it was a boneheaded decision because they’re a lot closer the fact that they can run like this [points to the 4 different gaming stations running Rage] – they’re a lot closer than they’ve ever been before. It’s a hell of a lot better than PS2 versus Xbox. But given the choice, we’d rather develop on the Xbox 360. The PS3 still does have in theory more power that could be extracted but it’s not smart. We don’t feel it’s smart to head down that rat hole. In fact, the biggest thing we worry about right now is memory. Microsoft extracts 32 megs for their system stuff and Sony takes 96. That’s a big deal because the PS3 is already partitioned memory where the 360 is 512 megs of unified and on the PS3 is 256 of video, 256 of memory minus 96 for their system…stuff. Stuff is not the first thing that came to my mind there. (laughs)
The PS3 is not the favorite platform but it’s going to run the game just as good. To some degree there’s going to be some lowest common denominator effect because we’re going to be testing these every day on all of the platforms, and it’s going to be “Dammit it’s out of memory on the PS3 again, go crunch some things down” That’s probably going to be the sore spot for all of this but because we’re continuous builds on all of these we’re going to be fighting these battles as we go rather than build these things out and go, “Oh my God we’re so far away from running on there.”
source: http://www.gameinformer.com/News/Story/200….1731.12214.htm
As well as the game supposedly will be on 2 DVDs for everything except the PS3.
source: http://www.gamespot.com/news/6176188.html
Is the PS3 holding this game back? Is John Carmack lazy for not optimizing it for each platform by instead creating it by the standards for the lowest common denominator?
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Nintendo Wii Firmware Update 3.0
link: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=177983
The fan will now go when the system is off and in WiiConnect24 mode.
Channels:
-Digital Clock added to the Wii Menu right under the channel bar
-Forecast Channel now displays the current condition (cloudy, raining, etc.) directly in the Wii Menu in the Forecast Channel box
-News Channel can now show 2 scrolling headlines at a time in the Wii Menu, 3 when you click on the button (supposedly this requires occasional downloading of the headlines to keep the ticker updated)
-Message Board now has the “Today’s Accomplishments” message as a white message which allows it to stand out from other messages
-Address Book entries can now be shifted around using A+B (supposed to be a launch feature) but only to empty spaces. Not too convenient.
-Calendar in Message Board no longer shows “Today’s Accomplishment” only days as having messages
-Scrolling messages in the Message Board now uses a different sound
-Today’s Accomplishments in Message Boards now includes the names of people to whom messages were sent out
Wii Shop Channel Overhauled (Visual aesthetic is the same, changes made to organization and browsing methods mostly)
-New Welcome screen detailing 4 Recommended Titles and the points they cost (gone is the title screen bar that had linkable games). The title bar can be clicked on to bring up a list of 20 recommended games.
-Titles You’ve Downloaded was moved to the main shop menu
-New ways to browse
-Popular Titles (2 pages of 10 and includes launch games so not only based on recent info)
-Newest Additions remains the same
-Search for a title which can use partial names
-Search by Category
-System shows the different systems and how many titles have been released under each
-Publisher showing different publishers and amount of titles released (Nice logos!)
-Genre (different genres listed and amount of titles under each)
Accessibility
-Load times in interchannel loading has supposedly decreased (TheGreatDave)
-Password fields filled in using the keyboard (like on the Internet Channel) now display asterisks (VOOK)
Settings
-Warning added pre-system update detailing that technically modified consoles may cease to function upon being updated. Also the only way to not accept an update is to power down the console by holding the button for 4 seconds (the user can’t back out of hitting I Accept w/o powering down)
-Ability to quickly scroll the different options pages using the +,- keys (Myke Greywolf)
-Blue disc light lights up when inserting or removing a game (thefro)
-Light also comes on when starting the Forecast or News Channels (CreatureX3)
