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Ready at Dawn releasing self-titled middleware engine
Fact: Ready at Dawn has never made a bad game. Sure, the company's repertoire, which includes Daxter and God of War: Chains of Olympus for PSP and Okami for Wii, is limited. Still, look at those games. Not exactly the worst developer to take a cue from, right? Soon, developers large and small will be able to do just that when Ready at Dawn releases its own game development platform for the Xbox 360, PS3 and PSP, appropriately titled the Ready at Dawn Engine. (How delightfully narcissistic!) The new engine will attempt to set itself apart from competing middleware services by offering a one-stop shop for cross-platform game development, merging its "proprietary code-base with the top providers of 3D content editing, audio, user interface and asset management systems." We suggest checking out Gamasutra's recent interview with Dawn co-founder Didier Malenfant to learn about the brazenness required to inspire a company, with three games under its belt, to make its own game-crafting engine.
Ready at Dawn CEO talks up PSP, says online distribution is key
Judging by last week's torrent of PSP headlines, clearly Sony has big plans in store for its handheld in the coming year. One popular rumor making the rounds of late centers on a possible redesign in the works for the portable, one which purports to drop the UMD format altogether. It's an idea that Ready at Dawn boss Didier Malenfant seems wholly in favor of seeing, if only because it looks to point towards a platform dedicated to digital distribution.The exec admits that he doesn't have the inside track on what Sony is up to with the PSP, though he told Edge in a recent interview that he'd "love to see anything that can help distribution move quicker toward a 100 percent online model." Like Bungie's Marty O'Donnell before him, Malenfant has been feeling the financial crunch put on the industry by the used game market, and confessed that "it's not piracy but used games that are killing us."Ready at Dawn may have a more personal stake in a possible PSP redesign as well, with rumors of a PSP sequel to God of War: Chains of Olympus in the pipeline at the Irvine, CA studio. Unfortunately, Edge wasn't ably to pry any details out of the company co-founder, with Malenfant saying only that "the PSP was a great platform to work on and it's certainly been really good to us, so we have no complaint there." However, if Ready at Dawn is back to working with the PSP, we suggest maybe holding onto a few of those dev kits after the project is out the door instead of spending all of the company profits on stamps.
Rumorong: Ready at Dawn not going Wii-exclusive
A snippet from the latest issue of GamePro claims that Daxter and God of War: Chains of Olympus dev Ready at Dawn has ditched PSP development in favor of producing Wii-only titles. Joystiq contacted RAD (pretty cool acronym, huh?) president Didier Malenfant, who was quick to squash the report (although we can't be sure he didn't thwap it with a Wii remote left over from porting Okami to Nintendo's console). Malenfant further tells Joystiq that his company "[doesn't] have any Wii titles currently in development." RAD had previously hinted at plans to create games for current-gen consoles after finishing Okami Wii, and just today confirmed that it has two all-new games underway. So, two new games in development, none for Wii ... rumorong!
Chance meeting at Game Developers Conference led to Okami Wii
Our waggle-loving friends at Nintendo Wii Fanboy had a chance to sit down with Didier Malenfant, Ready at Dawn's president and co-founder, to talk about the developer's port of Okami for Wii (also dubbed "Okam-Wii"). Malenfant talked about, among other parts of the porting process, the origins of the project -- turns out it was a chance meeting with Capcom's Christian Svensson at a Game Developers Conference party. Behold the power of an industry-wide networking opportunity, folks.
Wii Fanboy interview: Ready at Dawn's Didier Malenfant on Okami
var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/nintendo/Ready_at_Dawn_talks_Wii_Okami'; Complaining about ports has become increasingly common amongst Wii owners, but few would have anything bad to say about Okami, which will complete its transition from PlayStation 2 to Wii next week when it launches in the U.S.If anything, Okami is the perfect example of how porting games can be a force for good. One of the most notable critical darlings of the last few years, sales of the title were sluggish on Sony's platform, yet its appearance on Nintendo's console will give it another opportunity to attain commercial success. We can't think of many other games that are so deserving of a second chance.Recently, Wii Fanboy got a chance to chat with Didier Malenfant, President and co-founder of developer Ready at Dawn, who filled us in on why those who played the PS2 version should return to the Wii edition, on how his company ended up working on the project, and on the future of lengthy adventure games.%Gallery-16485%
Okami Wii an 'exact port' of PS2 game
Okami on the Wii was confirmed by Capcom just a few days ago, along with the news that Daxter developer Ready at Dawn would get the game up-and-running on Nintendo's system. Men roared their approval and punched the air, women wept and howled with joy, and all was well with the world. As anybody who's played it will know, Okami is all kinds of awesome. But Okami with Wiimote-engineered brushstrokes? Finally, we could die happy.But hold the hearse, because here's Ready At Dawn president Didier Malenfant on what else will be new in the Wii version: "The game on Wii is going to be an exact port of the PS2 version and I think that's what fans of the franchise want to see. This game has such a huge following throughout the world that people would probably send us death-threats if we messed it up by trying to add things that don't have their place in the Okami universe."An "exact port," he says, and you know how we feel about those, so immediately there are important questions raised by this. Questions such as: if you've completed the PS2 game, will the promise of added Wiimote functionality alone lure you back? Is it ungrateful to expect a little more than "just" Wiimote brushstrokes (as excellent as that addition might be)? And did Didier really just put "Okami" and "huge following" in the same sentence?[Via Siliconera]
Ready at Dawn explains PSP's power; prepares PS2 Daxter?
Ready at Dawn has been getting a lot of attention lately. Their first game, Daxter, is considered one of PSP's best: not only does it feature solid gameplay, but it features truly impressive graphics technology, and completely invisible load times. Obviously, the team has learned new tricks, and has managed to squeeze more power out of our handheld for their upcoming God of War game. According to co-founder Didier Malenfant, Daxter doesn't come close to taking advantage of the system's true capabilities: "[We] made the conscious decision not to push the hardware as far as we could ... mainly because we wanted to ship the game in a timely manner."Obviously, the talented team is unlocking even more of PSP's power in God of War. However, "the biggest frustration right now, in a way, is the limitation on the clock speed. We'd love to run our games at 333Mhz (we do internally just for kicks) because it does make a big difference in how much stuff you can push on the platform."So, how does Ready at Dawn feel about being responsible for two of Sony's biggest franchises? "The truth is," Malenfant explained, "we built Ready At Dawn Studios to create original IP, but ... I don't think anyone here regrets working on two of the world's biggest franchises in the meantime."The future is bright for this Santa Ana-based team. The single most wanted request the team receives, though, is a PS2 version of Daxter. "I think everyone here would love to do it, and it actually wouldn't be that hard because Daxter was never designed as a handheld game, we could even add a few things for the PS2 version."[Via Gamasutra; Thanks, Joe!]
Ready at Dawn ready to develop another PSP game
Didier Malenfant, President of Ready at Dawn Studios, was recently interviewed by QJ.net. The team is famous for development on the technological marvel Daxter, and he had a lot of great things to say: "I think people were quite shocked to see what we pulled off on the PSP so far and our next game is already lightyears away from what Daxter achieved in terms of performance."Other interesting tidbits: If the PSP were running at full speed (333 MHz), Daxter would be able to hit 60 frames per second. The team is now providing their engine, "Ready at Dawn Engine," as a middleware solution. A lot of studios seem interested in harnassing the power of the no-load-time engine. This is a very good thing. The next game that the team is working on is a continuation of an already established franchise, akin to Daxter. Time to start guessing. Feel free to continue reading the interview over at QJ.
