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[LESTAT]

head over to xbox.ign.com and read the interview they did with 2 m$ guys, if you havent already and lets hear some noise.

im not a programmer but i am around them alot.

here's my thoughts from a non programming stand point please give your own thoughts as programmer, im really interested in hearing them.


my thought is as much as it sounds like a great idea,, the cross platform next generation aperture.
i just cant help but get sick from the thought they they are, once again forcing companies to use their stuff,, as they force pc makers to install windows.(they dont force them but how you gunna sell a pc with no windows, or a non windows os,, you wouldnt last long. or NOT giving discounts to those who make pc's yet wont install windows on it.)

sounds like they are telling creative minds "If you want to be creative, then be creative OUR way, with OUR tools,, or your not gunna be creative at all"

am i right or am i just seeing too much.
just sounds like M$ doing what they have always done, force people to do things their way or not at all.

[LESTAT]

QUOTE

For instance, imagine having modelling tools A, B, C, animation tools E, F, G, and level editors X, Y, Z.  Now imagine being able to create your models in any of the modelling tools, then export to any of your animation tools, then export to any of your level editors and then export all of that straight into your game and have it just work. That's much better than what we have today, where we're constantly developing exporters and converters and whatnot for every 3rd party piece of software we want to use

yes i did get that idea,, that they were streamlining the entire process. Instead of having a 5 step process to create a map for a game its now a 2 step process so to speak.
and this, from a non programming standpoint is a welcome thing, and i imagine its a welcome thing from a programming standpoint.
on the flip side wouldnt it require that said programmer go back to school, so to speak, and learn all the processes that his co-developers did ?
wouldnt it concievably cause game houses to rid themselves of those other 3 people that are no longer needed? if said game house did adopt the XNA standard.?
causing an influx of programmers into the unemployment line.

streamlining is always happening, andnow more than ever, i was part of such a streamlining process when i worked at gateway. i did my job and did it well, but alas, being kicked to the curb and streamlining took precidence over assuring clients products were repaired properly.


i understand and see your viewpoint 100%.

i just fear ms is up to no good, that there is much more here than meets the eye, that they are moving their strong hold on the PC OS market into the console gaming world.

there was mentioning in the article about "has sony replied?". To me that was an absolutely absurd question to ask as neither sony nor nintendo would join ms. MS isnt going to do this for free, and i imagine there will be never heard of fee's and licensing costs attached to this Xross Platform NextGeneration thingamajig.

they also mentioned ther ehas been a standard for $50 games for 10 yrs now yet production costs have gone up significantly.
i fear, although not wholeheartedly, that there are plans to increase the costs of games. however much, its not welcome nor will it be greeted with enthusiasm.
too often, FAR FAR too often $50 games are $20 or $10 games, regardless of the time and money put into them, they are B titles.
we will never get away from these B titles, and we will never have enough AAA titles as they mentioned. this is just an honest view on the gaming market.
And I hope Ms decides once and for all to put their foot down on these mediocre titles that we see month after month being released.
ive said many times, that there are, only a small handfull of xbox games that are even worth buying and keeping. thats not a choice made because i only like a small genre of games, its a simple choice because i am always open to new games. But far far too often those new games are not worth the exploration.


and lastly, those tech demo's -

i am greatly saddened that those demo's werent MORE. they were simply put, no better than the nvidia or ATI demo's that we have seen and were put out over a year ago.

the only thing i saw that wowed me was the B&W demo of the woman in the cafe, albeit black and white, and absolutely no stress on a video chipset, it was a beatiful beautiful demo non the less.
the morphing was done in a quick hurry and was nothing new, we've seen it before in the Nvidia Wolfman demo, in fact it appeared as if the Gorilla in the demo moved the exact same way, with a loping run, as the wolfman did in the nvidia demo.
the Car demo was beautiful and the physics model i think was what was being showcased, and it appears beautiful, but again nothing i dont think we havent seen already, and from what ive seen of Burnout 3, i think we will be seeing those same types of crash physics in that game.(i cant wait that game looks like it could possibly be a record breaker).

i hate always sounding so negative, and im not a conspiracy theororist(sp) but we all know that the hype of such things as this get way way out of hand and people like MS need to step up and confirm or dispell the hype. they will eventually, but they are waiting for Sony to go public with the spec's for the PS3, well, i hate to say it, but i doubt highly that Sony has time to make any changes in their hardware, that would involve possibly a vast amount of reprogramming for sony and those developmetn houses who already have the specs and are investing time and money into game development for the ps3.

i hope they go public at E3. the lifespan of the xbox is far from over. we have nothing to worry about, even with the ps3 not far off, there is too large of a user base of ps2 system, a release of a ps3 would cause minimal impact on the gaming world in whole.

[P_v]

I disagree that streamlining will put programmers out of work.  In a large software project there's always more work to be done.  If anything, streamlining processes will eliminate the "grunt work" that always has to be done up front and free up programmers for more important tasks.  If you were managing a game project wouldn't you rather have your programmers writing kick-ass AI or awesome new shader effects than toiling over some stupid file format converter?  

But I can see where you're coming from because I know there are simple-minded project managers out there thinking exactly the same thing you are: streamlining = fewer people = lower costs = more profit.  These sorts of people aren't interested in creating great games as much as they are interested in taking your money.  And this is exactly the reason there are so many $50 "B" games, like you said.  And sadly, such is the nature of business.  But on the other side of the coin, companies wouldn't make crappy games if people didn't keep buying them.

You raise a good point about the licensing costs, however.  I was kind of surprised that they mentioned licensing.  They compared XNA to other MS technologies like Win32 and DirectX.  Except that there's no cost of entry with those technologies and it sounds like there will be with XNA.  If that turns out to be the case then I'll be pretty disappointed.  As a hobbiest game developer I rarely pay for tools.  (support blender and the gimp!   )

As for the demo movies, I consider those to be flashy hand-waving for the share-holders.  I think any technical-minded person knows that we're not talking about a revolution of technology, but one of workflow.

But in the end all we can do is wait-and-see.  If there's one thing I've learned about MS over the years is that, for better or worse, they never fail to surprise me.  With all the speculation I'd been hearing about Xbox 2 I was starting to think that they had gotten lazy and were making big mistakes.  If this whole XNA things pans out for them it could be a very different story.  I think XNA has a lot of potential, if it's handled right.