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Eidos exec says more innovation is what we need
Eidos bigwig, industry vet, and all around gaming guru Ian Livingstone recently lashed out at the stagnant state of gaming during Tim Wapshott's Games Central podcast. He criticized the industry as a whole, stating that most studios weren't interested in taking risks, and that's resulted in a few genres, owned by a few big titles and a legion of knock-offs. One of the few areas in which we do see innovation is in technology, and it's no surprise he lauded Nintendo's DS and Wii in that area. "Nintendo has demonstrated that you can carve out a new market through innovation. The DS and the Wii will demonstrate that gameplay, gameplay and gameplay are the three most important aspects of a game, and that technology and graphics support that experience." And we fully agree. Slick and stunning graphics are one thing, but the game should drive the graphics, not the other way around. Though speaking of companies doing the same ol' thing, we kinda want to bring up that whole Tomb Raider thing they have going on over at Eidos ... but since Legend was a vast improvement, we'll let it slide.
ATI R600 graphics card benchmarked, cruises by NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 GTX
If one of your New Year's resolutions involved spending a massive chunk of change to kick out as many frames per second as technologically possible, you may want to put the brakes on that impending NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX purchase. Lvl505 got their palms on a pre-release ATI R600 graphics card and put it up against the best NVIDIA currently has to offer, and the results thus far show ATI's device as "the clear winner." Of course, these benchmarks have to be taken with a certain grain of salt, as the drivers used were "a modified version of a 32-bit Vista pre-build version," which should have yielded less-than-optimal results; interestingly, the R600 still ran all over the optimized NVIDIA setup. Testing the cards on an Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700-powered machine with 2GB of RAM, the single R600 card bested the solo 8800 GTX in basically every benchmark they tried, with common applications seeing minimal gains, but games saw between ten-percent (Half-Life 2: Lost Coast) and 42-percent (1701 A.D.) hikes. Apparently, the R600 was exceedingly impressive, as reviewers actually suggested that you "return your NVIDIA" card as soon as humanly possible while patiently waiting for January 22nd, when you can gleefully drop your $630 or so to pick up your very own R600. Oh, and you might end up paying somewhat of a monthly surcharge to use this bad boy too, as the 230-watts (which beats the estimations, actually) it'll require to operate could kick your power bill up a notch or two. Nevertheless, it's not exactly shocking to see a newer graphics card outgun one that's been on the shelf a moment or so, but we're still holding out for a finalized unit before making any final judgments on the combatants.[Via Inquirer]
Crysis crisis averted: heading to Xbox 360? [update 1]
Update -- Joystiq (translation: this writer) got punked by the Spanish and the Day of the Innocents. Thanks to all the commenters who chimed in to let us know that this was indeed an April's Fools type hoax, and that it's not to be believed. Aye, dios mio!First Crytek said that their first upcoming graphical overload game Crysis couldn't be ported to the Xbox 360 or the PlayStation 3. Then they switched gears and said, "Oops ... looks like we were wrong." Now we have some evidence that confirms it'll be coming to the 360 sooner than you think.Granted, the proof is translated from todoxbox360.com, but if the Google translator is to be believed, then it looks like Crysis will be hitting Microsoft's bad boy at some point. The article doesn't say when, but it's tantalizing enough to make us drool. Crysis is visually amazing, and 360 owners would be happy to see it on their screens. Hopefully we'll have official word from Electronic Arts soon, although they're probably getting ready to ring in the New Year with millions of microtransactions.[Thanks, MECHAN1ZED and Janx]
Six axis controller constructed from three mice
We've seen some rather interesting mouse mods in our day, with some admittedly being more worthwhile than others, but an engineering mind over at LushProjects has definitely raised the bar quite a bit with his latest. Dubbed Three Blind Mice, the project consisted of two waves and more work than he ever expected, but yielded a very successful six axis (not that SIXAXIS) controller to use in 3D graphics applications such as VVVV. After realizing that panning and shuffling around camera angles with a 2D mouse / keyboard tandem was wasting entirely too much of his life, he embarked on a journey to "run three threads round three rollers from old mechanical mice." After realizing that Windows wasn't exactly keen on making things easy, he diverted his efforts into connecting the mice to the PC via an AVR microcontroller connected to the serial bus. By adding weights to an "opto-mechanical mouse with two horizontal rollers," as well as mounting a shaft and shaft-encoder through the middle of a mouse, he was able to realize all axes and utilize "mind bending math" to translate the mice data to on-screen orientation. While the full skinny is entirely too complex to be covered here, be sure to hit the link if this stuff suits your fancy, but make sure you've got oodles of time before even considering duplicating this one at home.[Thanks, Harry]
TUAW Gives Thanks: Ginza Elevator Graphics
On this day of excess tryptophan and annoying relatives, it's important to take a minute and give thanks for the things we enjoy, yet take for granted the rest of the year. This year, I'm thankful that I get to sit around and blog about a company that cares enough about design to go that extra step in everything it does, including elevators. Where other companies would put simple buttons, Apple placed an elegant masterpiece of interaction design in front of the elevator at its flagship Ginza store in Tokyo. I've long been impressed by the motion graphics work produced by Apple, but I have to say that this is by far one of my favorites. Enjoy, and happy turkey day![via Cult of Mac]
Nintendo Wii review roundup
Alright, so you've seen the photos surface, watched us unwrap it, checked out the setup, and longed to be on the tactile end of our gameplay video, and now you need someone reliable to convince you that surviving all that pre-order madness was worth it. We've got a collection of early adopter reviews to tide you over until Saturday night (or Sunday morning), and the general consensus is that you'll be pleased. Admittedly, the Wii's graphical output isn't up to snuff with its HD-toutin' brethren, but as PC Mag states, "within a half hour, you won't care." The big N apparently did everything right with its newfangled Wiimote, leaving reviewers "amazed" and craving just one more round of Bowling, but some folks did point out that the built-in software "lacked some promising features" and "felt unpolished" in some areas. Nevertheless, CNET probably said it best when they recommended that pixel freaks let the Xbox 360 or PS3 win over their hearts, while those clamoring for innovative, fresh gameplay should be more than pleased with Nintendo's $250 machine.Read - CNET (8 out of 10; Excellent)Read - PC Mag (4 out of 5; Editor's Choice)Read - Time (Recommended)Read - CNN Money ("A heck of a lot of fun.")
Graphics for dummies: PS3 vs. Xbox 360
Dpad's Michael "Optimus" Perry has posted an extremely technical (and eleven page long) article detailing in non-layman's terms what makes the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 tick, graphically speaking. It's all RSXs, GPUs, pipelines, vertex shaders, and ops per clock and oh my god we're blind. The guy even has a freakin' bibliography, for pete's sake. Still, it's the best "here it is in black and white" article we've read about the graphic capabilities of the two.However, Perry is smart enough (as if this article isn't proof enough) to say, "What it TRULY boils down to for the vast majority of people out there is that they don't care about the specs of a console. All most people care about is 'How good are the games available for it?'" He doesn't mean this to be a pissing contest between the two consoles, he just wants to explain what each console is capable of ...... of course, thereby allowing you to throw down the "Oh yeah, well Sony's RSX is clocked at 74,800,000,000 shader operations per second" card. Go on, throw it down.[Thanks, Lost_Watcher]
Factor 5 scoffs at the Wii, fanboys shed one tear
During a recent interview with gaming magazine EGM (people still buy print gaming magazines?), the folks at Factor 5 randomly got down on the Wii, calling it "GameCube 1.5" and ragging on the graphics and sound capabilities. So, alright. No Rogue Squadron for us, and that'll just have to be fine. Yeah, the Wii isn't as powerful as the PS3 and the Xbox 360. That's old news. But so what? There are already two systems prepared to tumble into that uncanny valley as they race to try and create close-but-no-cigar photorealistic graphics. Do all three systems have to chase that same carrot? What's so terribly bad about Nintendo going a different route? Obviously, you don't have much of a problem with it if you're here at Wii Fanboy, but really. Graphics -- is that all there is to gaming? We're leaning toward no.[Via Codename Revolution]
New Pally buff graphics leaked from BC
Well we've seen new armor, we've seen new mounts, and now we even see new animations from BC. Pallysucks points us to this forum thread in which Aireon from Arthas shows us a bunch of leaked animation graphics that look pretty sweet if you ask me. I've mirrored the files here for everyone to check out. First, as a bonus, here's what's purported to be the Pally PVP set. Nice shield! New Pally seal animations: Wisdom, Command, Crusader (I like that one, reminds me of the DAoC graphics) And others: Holy Shield, Blessing of Wisdom (think that one looks cool too, can't wait to see the other blessings), and Judgement. And perhaps the best thing about this leak is that this probably means there's lots more new graphics in store for all the different buffs and heals. I wouldn't even have though Blizzard was going to revamp the current game this intensively, but it looks like they weren't kidding around when they numbered the expansion WoW 2.0. Can't wait to see it in action.
Seeing Azeroth with the options turned up
Frostbolt went out and got himself one of those shiny new 20" iMacs, and he says wow, WoW looks good on it. One of my favorite things about WoW is how well it seems to run on almost any hardware, but I know what Frosty means-- there's a big difference between playing with all the options off and turning on the underwater, drunk, and glowy effects. Spells, buffs, and instances look so much better when you have a nice rig and all the effects turned on.Right now I'm running WoW on a PC I've had for a while-- it doesn't look too bad chugging along at 1.8ghz, 512mb of RAM and a GeForce 5200, but by the time Burning Crusade hits, I'll be done building my new monster: overclocked to 4ghz with a watercooled processor, 2gb of RAM (that's right, baby), and a GeForce 7900 GS in the PCI-e slot. All I need is to find a deal on a case and the RAM, and I'll be set to build my monster WoW machine.But sometimes you don't even need a whole computer-- a few months ago I went ahead and invested in a sweet 24" Dell widescreen monitor, and that, as Robert Frost says, "has made all the difference." I couldn't imagine healing a 40 man raid with a 15" or even a 17" monitor-- all those meters would cloud up the place before long. Then again, I've seen screenshots around of people playing WoW at 800x600 resolution. I'd consider that unplayable, but maybe I'm being elitist. According to the latest Steam survey, 1024x768 is still the standard for Half-Life players-- Blizzard doesn't track the same info (or at least they don't release it), but I wonder if WoWers tend to skew their tech faster or slower than that. Thoughts? What kind of rig are you playing this game on?
Peakstream software taps into GPU for supercomputing power
While building a supercomputer has been whittled down to a science, Peakstream has developed a suite of applications that look towards those speedy PCI Express slots -- not the CPU socket -- for an extra boost of power. The company boldly states that a supercomputer can be created by harnessing the power of "common CPUs combined with the resources of modern graphics cards" to increase performance by "20x." This extreme form of load balancing exploits the tremendous potential housed in today's GPUs in order to schedule workloads, offload tasks onto the optimal processor(s), and manage calculations to minimize the queue of tasks to be completed. Granted, the biggest boon of a graphics processor is the extraordinary floating-point performance; for instance, ATi's X1950 XTX pumps out 750 GFLOPS in dual-graphics mode, while it'd take 31 Intel Xeon 5100 CPUs to crank out those same figures -- thus Peakstream feels that mathematical and computational applications (sorry, Doom fans) are best suited for its software. While having your own personal supercomputer churning those Engadget Folding@home cycles would be mighty impressive, the average joe isn't apt to drop $2,000 (per node) for Peakstream's suite, but maybe this explains the real intentions behind those 200 watt, energy sucking, externally-housed graphics cards after all.
iMac 24-inch surprise: graphics card is upgradeable?
MacsimumNews broke down a MacGeneration post (a French publication) revealing that the new 24-inch iMac Apple introduced this week could quite possibly be the first iMac with a truly upgradeable graphics card. Thanks to a new Mobile PCI Express Module (MXM - originally designed for high-end notebooks) standard in the biggest iMac of 'em all, owners might be able to upgrade their own graphics card and (finally) ditch that old just throw it out when you want to upgrade stigma - if this is true, of course. You can also thank NVIDIA and their partnership with some of the industry leading notebook manufacturers (we would imagine Alienware and even Dell, believe it or not) for this standard that was quite a long time coming. Why this much-requested feature isn't getting any spotlight time on the new iMac's graphics page, or why the 24-inch is the only model to receive the coveted upgrade-ability treatment, definitely doesn't help our skeptical side. We'll be investigating this further, as it could easily be that Apple adopted the standard for one reason or another (like cheaper manufacturing costs), but still soldered the card (which will most surely cause an uproar, if true).We'd also like to echo MacsimumNews' observation that it would be stellar if Apple could work this standard into the next MacBook Pro revision, as the company kinda dropped the ball with their current lineup.Thanks Michael!
New Bounty Hounds screens revealed, ships Sept. 12
IGN has just posted nearly 40 new screens of Namco's upcoming Bounty Hounds. The screens show some nice levels and more mouth-watering battles that we've come to expect from this game.From these screens, Bounty Hounds is shaping up to the best-looking PSP game to date, with maybe the exception of Killzone. And with the recent news of infrastructure multi-player support, this game just keeps getting better and better.What makes this all even better is the game comes out in a few days come Sept. 12, and you can bet I'll be there picking up my copy first thing in the morning.(Via IGN)
Red Steel: better things to come
Yesterday, we told you about a nasty, nasty rumor concerning the graphics of the Wii games we've seen so far. Could it be true that the "real" versions of some of the most anticipated games were being withheld so that the Wii, when revealed in full at last, could make a bigger splash than even we could hope for?Seems silly ... but according to an IGN blog, that could be the case. After they posted videos of Red Steel from Leipzig, Ubisoft apparently contacted IGN to let them know that the footage still didn't reflect the latest build of the game. What we saw at E3 was version 1.0. Let's call LGC v1.5, then, with the amorphous v2.0 still unseen. Why haven't we seen it?If this is true -- and according to the same post, other tweaks are being considered for Activision's Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam as well -- then this begs the question of what, exactly, is going on with the Wii? Here, in the tag end of August, with Nintendo's Fusion Tour just around the corner, and the event on the 14th, as well as the release date coming in November at the latest ... isn't it time to let us know what the real deal is?[Thanks, vidGuy!]
Bloody beautiful Silent Hill trailer [Update 3]
A few hours ago, we revealed the very first footage of the game in motion. Now, Konami has revealed an official trailer from the Games Convention in Germany Konami's Gamer Day, and it is absolutely mind-blowingly beautiful. Comparing the game to Resident Evil 4 seems apt, not only because of the gameplay, but because of the insane quality of the graphics. Watch and be amazed.[Update 1: Footage actually from Konami's Gamer Day, not Games Convention. Also, Gamespot has added two excellent gameplay videos to their site. They seem to feature some awkward hit detection and camera, but hopefully that'll be worked out soon. Check out video 1 here and video 2 here.][Update 2: A video interview with the producer reveals that the playable build is very early, with most everything being placeholders. So, yes... the graphics and the animations are going to be much better. Players of the original Silent Hill be able to experience how the town became the way it did, but the main character of the game is not responsible for it. The town will be a mix of old and new, with two thirds of it being new. The game will be large: "a good size PSP game." The game features 4 vocal tracks, one of them being featured in the trailer.][Update 3: Another video of the game in motion, now featured after the cut.]
Next-gen nVidia and ATI GPUs to require 200 watts?
So we've got CPUs moving towards more efficient designs, a (somewhat) general consensus that there should be energy-saving methods applied wherever possible, and yet somehow we see a steady increase in power usage from graphics processing units each time they're updated. It doesn't take a circuitry engineer (although that qualification could be helpful) to understand that higher clock speeds lead to higher frame rates, at least generally speaking, and companies like nVidia and ATI have apparently been taking the high road in order to boost those FPS figures. Current top-end graphic cards can easily suck down 100 watts (or more) when under full load, but it appears that requirement could nearly double -- the two graphical big shots are reportedly looking to offer powerhouse cards that almost need to be wired straight in to the power station to function. Japan's PC Watch has reported that the forthcoming G80 from nVidia may consume up to 175 watts, while ATI's R600 could demand an unprecedented 200 watts to produce its eye-candy. While these figures may be a bit staggering, they aren't exactly shocking -- we've already heard rumors that ATI's next major chipset may be released in an external form, at least partially for power-related reasons. While we can't say for sure what's happening behind the tightly-sealed doors at nVidia or ATI AMD, we hope someone in there is paying attention to these concerns, because we're not exactly cool with needing a separate power strip (and an additional occupation) to feed our gaming habits.
A closer look at Red Steel
So how did a game like Red Steel come about? IGN has the answers, in a new in-depth feature that covers the artistic side of the development process. There's some discussion as well of the power of the console, and the artistic director, Stephane Bachelet, reports that while the graphical capabilities of the Wii were somewhat limiting, it spurred them to create a slick 'game noir' style that is heavy with shadows and framed in bright neon lights. Artistically, Bachelet says, they were shooting for something that would communicate the culture shock of a Western man thrust into a foreign environment, and how that shaped the atmosphere and setting. Look for a lot of traditional Japanese symbols not from a Japanese perspective, but from a Western perspective. Sounds a lot like what we've come to expect from Hollywood -- which is perfect for an action game so obviously inspired by action films.
ATI to release power-hungry external video card?
As microprocessors increase in efficiency and semiconductors diminish in size, the power required for them to function would also decrease -- in an ideal world, anyway. Unfortunately, this hasn't exactly been the case. If we're to believe the rumors, ATI's next major graphics core, dubbed the R600, will be packed to the brim with pixel pipelines and shader processors to handle the tasks that lie ahead in Windows Vista (if it ever comes out, of course), and, you know, games. But the crazy part here is that the chipset will supposedly require so much power that only an external implementation could provide the level of power necessary to satisfy those demands. An outboard graphics card, however, would one-up internal boards by providing a new level of flexibility. For starters, the same board could power your notebook and desktop, and laptop gamers would have access to bleeding-edge graphics that could turn a relatively weak notebook into a suitable LAN-party machine without the expense of an entirely new rig. Of course, there's still the issue of an external interface that could handle the multi-gigabit bandwidth required to make this system feasible not yet existing, but who knows, maybe those microchip wizards from AMD can give ATI a hand in bringing this to fruition without kicking our kilowatt meters into overdrive -- for now though, our quad-SLI setups are doing just fine, thanks.[Thanks, Mack S.]
AMD acquires ATI for $5.4 billion
AMD, the #2 CPU maker in the world, has announced a purchase of ATI, a leading graphics card manufacturer, for $5.4 billion. IMG has more details on the buyout and the business end of things, but we're more interested in finding out what exactly this means for the Mac market. ATI currently supplies the graphics hardware in a good portion of Apple's machines, including the MacBook Pro I'm typing this on and my wife's iMac, so here's hoping ATI makes enough money from working with Apple to keep AMD - an arch rival to Intel - happy. Stay tuned for more details as they develop.
Wii and the psychology of cartoony graphics
To devoted fans, Nintendo's frequent use of cartoony graphics is comfortable and familiar. To others, they represent the company's biggest hurdle when it comes to dominating the American market (again). Over at Next-Gen, however, there's an interesting look at the psychology of cartoon graphics even beyond the issue of the uncanny valley. The Next-Gen piece focuses on "big heads" in Japanese games and points out that for many, those are familiar images associated with happy childhood memories -- and that association is a lock when it comes to selling games, whereas the discerning Japanese consumer might turn their collective noses (and wallets) up at a game that falls short of photorealism. With the imminent release of Wii -- and Wii Sports -- the question of pure fantasy graphics versus near-photorealism becomes more important. Nintendo is marketing Wii Sports toward a huge all-ages audience, but how will big heads play at grandma's house in Peoria? Some might point at the response to Gamecube offerings like Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, but that may not be entirely accurate. To most gamers, the business of Zelda is a deadly serious one, after all; we care about Link and we want to see him grow up and get some Princess action. Childlike (or Hermey-like?) Link didn't do it for a lot of dedicated Zelda fans. But what if we'd had a Wiimote to keep us company on the high seas? The Wii controller seems designed to remind us that hey, these video game things are supposed to be fun! Sure, you can simulate real movements in a golf game, but that doesn't translate to real skill on the green. So forget about that and just have a good time.The Next-Gen article is largely speculative, and doesn't have much bearing on those of us slavering for the Wii release, but it does raise some questions about the cultural gap between gamers of the East and West. Wii Sports may not have true big-head avatars, but they are definitely cartoony. Can these blocky characters break down the walls that separate gamers and everyone else? That may be the first challenge for Nintendo's Wii philosophy.[Via Joystiq]
