respawnentertainment
Latest
Titanfall: The Joystiq Review
Titanfall is strictly coiled around the player. You couldn't excise even one piece without slackening it like a ruined kidnapper's rope. The serpentine level design, the liberating sense of movement, the flawless controls and yes, the enormous bipedal tanks dropping from the sky, are equally indispensable in this arresting shooter. Given the studio's splintered status as a former Call of Duty custodian, Respawn Entertainment has made a multiplayer game fit for those who have spent years peering through the eyes of a speedy killing machine – a seasoned six against six in battles for land or a higher kill count. A history with rapid-fire aim and fleet-footed 3D movement is not essential here, but recommended. Click here for more
Respawn Entertainment's Jon Shiring on Titanfall and using Microsoft's cloud
Jon Shiring, Respawn engineer When in the development cycle did the relationship between Microsoft and Respawn form? Early on, we were trying to figure out what game we were trying to make. We had a good relationship with people at Microsoft from working on Call of Duty, so we got in touch with them. I was pushing really hard on dedicated servers for all platforms. I talked to Microsoft about that, and I talked to Sony as well. Microsoft got really interested in that idea, and that was pretty early on. I'd say I started to nudge them in late 2010. It was really 2011 when we were coming at Microsoft like, "What can you do? We can't afford this, but we want to have dedicated servers for everything because we're trying to do new and interesting things." Did you get the feeling that this was something it already had in mind? The feeling I got from it is that we kind of brought it up and they came back with an idea of how to do it because they weren't originally planning to do it. At the time, I think they were looking for interesting things to do for the Xbox One; they were trying to get a bearing on what would be a new, interesting way for Live to go. We hit them at the right time. How intrinsic is Azure to Titanfall? Having these servers with a significant amount of CPU power and bandwidth available is absolutely essential to our game: Having these machines that are regional and servers that have good ping -- that's huge. That completely changes the way we make games. Really, the biggest thing with that is that it has uncapped our designers and let them do things that were previously impossible to do. That far back, we were letting the designers run and just do whatever was cool and it was really, really key to making Titanfall what it is right now. What will a player notice that's different between Titanfall and another game that's using dedicated servers? There are other games like Battlefield that have dedicated servers, but they haven't gone in the same direction that we have with them, though. We have all of this AI and things flying around in the world; that has obviously let us build a different game than we would have if we'd have gone in with the constraints of it having to be player-hosted. All of these things that make it a much more lively world are actually the really big win. With all the platforms that are using Azure (PC, Xbox 360 Xbox One), was cross-platform play ever considered? Not really. Mostly, the reason for that is with the 360 version -- we're not developing it. My expectation (and this is an engineering answer) is that we're going to be patching all of these but we're not going to be the ones doing the patching on 360. We could get ourselves into a very bad spot where if we patched all the servers, the 360 people couldn't play for a while until Bluepoint (the studio behind the Xbox 360 version) applies the patch and gets it through cert. Just on a purely practical level with three different methods of getting a patch out there, it's not going to work. Just on a purely practical level with three different methods of getting a patch out there, it's [cross-platform play] not going to work. Then there [are] a lot of other problems you get, like if you were playing against a PC guy and you were looking at his player info. He's not on Xbox; I can't bring up the Origin info for him; you can't add him as a friend and send an invite to him. It's not one huge technical thing stopping us; it's a lot of little ones. What does the connection flowchart look like from a user's network access point to the servers? With Azure coming in, it seems like a chance for more ping or latency. In a traditional player-hosted game, you're still connecting to the player acting as a host, but you have to punch through all these networks to get there. I'm kind of getting into the gears here, but what I've found is that a lot of the latency in consumer broadband is at the edges: Getting to another user is a lot slower than getting to a hub and back again. Since we're talking to these servers in big regional data centers, the latency is a lot lower than what you would get if [the connection] was exactly the same, except it was a consumer on the other end of that pipe. We have somewhere around a 19ms to 20ms ping to this data center and it's up in San Francisco [from LA]. We're talking barely more than one rendering frame to get a message to the server and back again, which is outstanding. It has a lot of wins. Longterm, what kind of benefits do you think consumers will reap with the groundwork that Respawn has laid? Back when we started talking to Microsoft about it, everyone thought it was kind of crazy and a lot of publishers were terrified of even doing it. I've heard that since our beta, they've been pounding down the doors at Microsoft because they're realizing that it really is a real thing right now. We can scale high, and, if you do it right, the experience can be awesome. Working with Microsoft is great, but we're kind of taking a bullet with doing the pain of proving that it'll scale up, and finding bugs that every system has at launch. After Titanfall comes out, we're just going to have a lot more confidence that the early system-type problems are solved. From then on, it's probably a simpler solution than building something yourself. My expectation is that within a few years, this will be the new normal. Not necessarily Azure specifically, but a centralization of the hosting so it'll be big systems that are being used rather than all of these homegrown things that people have done in the past. At the Xbox One's reveal, Microsoft said the new Xbox Live has 300,000 dedicated servers, how many does Respawn have access to? We're trying to figure out how many people will be playing and trying to make sure the servers will be there for that. One of the really nice things about it is that isn't my problem, right? We just say [to Microsoft] here are our estimates, aim for more than that, plan for problems and make sure there are more than enough servers available. To go back to your development experience, how has Respawn's approach to multiplayer changed since Call of Duty? We're still client/server, but we re-approached every problem and solved it in a new way. Some of the high-level stuff matches up, like the client/server and the service that connects the clients, but everything else is very different from a network architecture standpoint. I've been making multiplayer games (Call of Duty 2, Call of Duty 4, Modern Warfare 2) for a long time. A lot of it is just people here and even people at EA having faith in us that we know what we're doing. That has led us to things that were new, different and crazy. What's the contingency plan in case the servers start melting? This is one of the things we made ourselves deal with during the beta. The way it ends up working is that peak time in Europe is going to be much ahead of the US. We moved some Europeans over to East Coast US data centers, which is not ideal, but it at least let them play. We don't look forward to doing that at all, but if we have a bunch of people sitting unable to play the game, then we're going to make sure that the experience is good enough -- maybe not ideal -- to get them playing. We do have capacity at these other data centers that are a little bit farther away. If we have a situation like that, that's going to be my fault. If we fill up every data center out there, then we'll be there at Microsoft -- they'll know the whole time that they need to bring more servers online. When Forza Motorsport 5 launched, it used Azure for the Drivatar system. By all accounts it shouldn't have worked: It was a brand-new feature running on new software using then-unproven Azure tech. If Titanfall launches successfully too, it could galvanize Azure's reputation. What I actually think will happen, is if we come out and it works great and people play the game and see that it's a really good experience, [developers] will have a lot of serious discussions about "my publisher has their own system for hosting, but I don't know if it will work. We have a lot of confidence in Azure because Titanfall did." Suddenly, the publisher solution becomes more risky than the cloud solution.
A closer look at Titanfall's not-so-secret weapon: Microsoft's cloud
While you were busy running along walls and throwing missiles back at your opponents during the Titanfall beta, countless data centers across the world were making sure that each AI-controlled Titan bodyguard had your back. Much of the frenetic action in Respawn Entertainment's debut game rests on one thing: Microsoft's Azure cloud infrastructure. Up until last November, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's baby was mostly used for business applications, like virtualization and acting as an enterprise-level email host. With the Xbox One, though, the company opened up its global server farms to game developers, giving them access to more computing power than could reasonably be stuffed into a $500 game console. Since the Xbox One's debut, Microsoft has been crowing about how Azure would let designers create gaming experiences players have never seen before. Now it's time for the product to speak for itself.
Titanfall's ode to 8-bit gaming is proof that robots make everything better
Need further evidence that robots improve just about everything? EA and Respawn are more than happy to provide it. They've launched Titanfall Arcade, a promotional gaming website that thrusts Titanfall's namesake giant machines into classic 8-bit Atari titles. The only working game at present is an Asteroids remake, but it proves the point -- the typically nerve-wracking space shooter becomes easy once a Titan's weaponry comes into play. Tributes to Centipede and Missile Command are coming in the future. The arcade is primarily meant to whet your appetite ahead of Titanfall's release next week, but we'd say it's worth a visit even if you don't plan to buy the game -- it's a nostalgic gaming experience without the frustrating difficulty levels that often come along for the ride.
Titanfall collector's edition is titan-sized, sadly doesn't include jump jets (video)
For half the price of an Xbox One, you can have your very own titan mech! Well, an 18-inch "Atlas Titan statue," care of the folks behind Titanfall. And yes, that means it doesn't move. And no, there aren't any jump jets in the massive "Collector's Edition" box, which holds the aforementioned statue, your copy of Titanfall, a big fancy art book and a poster. Dammit! Again, to be clear, that's $250. Take a look at a video from Respawn Entertainment tearing apart the "very limited" edition of Titanfall just below; it's available on March 11th in North America, March 13th in Europe.
Xbox One gets its first price drop, now £400 in the UK
The Xbox One hasn't been selling as well as the PlayStation 4 on a global level, and that's partly due to pricing -- in the UK, Microsoft's system costs a lofty £429 ($713) versus Sony's £349 ($580). That gap is about to narrow, though, as Microsoft plans to cut the Xbox's price to a slightly more reasonable £400 ($665) on February 28th. The company isn't leaning solely on that lower price tag to attract gamers, either. It's also releasing a special Titanfall Xbox One bundle (shown here) that includes both a download code for Respawn's shooter and a month of Xbox Live Gold for the same price as the regular console. Americans can expect this limited edition system to ship alongside the game on March 11th, while Brits should get it on March 14th.
Titanfall beta sign-up list is open now for PC and Xbox One gamers (update)
Titanfall has become something bigger than a multiplayer mech game. It's the reason many people decided to invest in an Xbox One, and the reason why many others decided to postpone their next-gen console purchase altogether -- the finished title won't arrive until March 11th, and it's coming to the PC and 360 (360 is slightly delayed until March 25th) too. In the meantime though, the developer behind Titanfall, Respawn Entertainment, is providing early access via a beta and you can sign up for access starting tonight at 9PM ET. The good news is that you don't need to pre-order the game to get in, but the bad news is that it's not open to all, so we don't know how many slots there are to go around. Go ahead and try your luck at the sign-up page -- we'll let you know the URL once it's posted "shortly before" 9PM ET, according to Respawn founder Vince Zampella. Update: The beta sign-up page is live a bit early, interested Xbox One and PC (with an EA Origin account) gamers can apply here (protip: The USA is actually near the top of the country list, not all the way at the bottom). The accompanying FAQ answers a few questions you might have about the beta. There's no Xbox 360 beta planned, once the game is installed on an Xbox One any user on that console can play it, and the beta is available to gamers around the world, although all text will be in English. If you weren't first to sign up don't worry, it doesn't appear to be first-come, first- served. Sign-ups close on the 14th at 7PM ET, and those admitted will be notified via email by midnight pacific time on February 17th. Update 2: EA has sent out a quick press release advertising the beta and dispensing a few more details, specifically the start date: February 14th. It also details the game modes available to testers, named Attrition, Hardpoint Domination and Last Titan standing -- essentially Team Deathmatch, a control point capture mode and variant on Team Deathmatch that ends when all of a team's Titans are destroyed.
Titanfall special edition Xbox One controller drops this March
Hey, Xbox One Day One Edition owner, we get it: you're into special editions. So how about if we told you there's another opportunity to own yet another piece of "limited edition" swag for your Xbox One? That's exactly the news we've got today, as Microsoft and Respawn Entertainment worked together to create the limited edition Titanfall-themed Xbox One gamepad seen above. Like Titanfall, it'll be available this March and it'll cost over $60. There are some flowery quotes about how it's supposed to look like military tech from the game and stuff, but you really just wanna ogle the gamepad from every angle, right? We thought so. Gallery's below, Vine's after the break.
Titanfall reaches Xbox One, Xbox 360 and PC on March 11th
The many gamers buying an Xbox One for Titanfall (or don't mind the Xbox 360 and PC versions) can now mark a date on their calendars: EA says that the shooter will reach North America on March 11th, 2014. While that's more than four months away, the company is offering a Collector's Edition that just might encourage a few pre-orders among well-off players. If you can spend $250 -- yes, that's half as much as an Xbox One -- you'll get an 18-inch, LED-lit Atlas Titan figurine that's likely to be the centerpiece of your gaming den. You'll also receive an art book and a large schematic poster. You'll want to act quickly if you like the idea of a miniature (albeit stationary) robot, though. EA says that the Collector's Edition is available in "extremely limited" numbers, which suggests that supply will run out by launch day.
Respawn Entertainment talks Xbox Live Cloud, praises its multiplayer servers
Microsoft's been quick to point out how it's beefing up the Xbox Live Cloud in preparation for its next wunderconsole, and now Respawn Entertainment is stepping in to detail just what Redmond's architecture means for multiplayer on Titanfall. The firm's Jon Shiring, who works with the game's cloud computing integration, says that the next-gen title boasts vastly improved online play since it leans on Ballmer and Company's cloud hardware instead of users to host sessions. By taking advantage of Microsoft's servers, the futuristic shooter benefits from more reliable bandwidth, snappier matchmaking times, extra CPU power and the elimination of latency-based host advantage and hacked-host cheating, to boot. Naturally, using dedicated servers can cost a ton, but Respawn says Microsoft managed to keep things comparatively inexpensive for developers, in part thanks to its Azure tech. For the dev's comprehensive write-up on just what this revamped Xbox Live architecture may mean for gaming, click the source link below.
Respawn Entertainment unveils Titanfall, an Xbox One exclusive (update: Xbox 360 and PC too)
We've been wondering exactly what former Infinity Ward founder Vince Zampella was up to at Respawn Entertainment, and now he's finally shown off the fruits of his team's labor: an Xbox One exclusive called Titanfall. The Call of Duty veterans have concocted a futuristic FPS that lets you fight on foot or hop into mechs. With factions of the bots and humans battling each other, it's clear there's a heavy multiplayer focus. Spring 2014 will see the title arrive on Microsoft's next-gen console, but you can expect to find out more details about it as E3 progresses. Check out the unveiling trailer embedded after the break.%Gallery-190912% Update: Sure, Titanfall might've been announced as an Xbox One exclusive, but Microsoft's Xbox Wire portal has clarified that it's coming to the Xbox 360 and PCs, in addition to Redmond's next-gen console. Follow all of our E3 2013 coverage at our event hub.
