Blu-Ray wins on Black Friday week.

[Mornelithe]

Hey Lotus, have you been following GDC??? I remembered you saying your wife programs for your 3 consoles, was wondering if you'd heard about Insomniac's Nocturnal Initiative, going open source and all. Is she going to be checking that stuff out?? Sounds like a pretty cool idea (on paper at least!) hehe.

Morne

[Lotus]

Originally Posted by Mornelithe

Hey Lotus, have you been following GDC??? I remembered you saying your wife programs for your 3 consoles, was wondering if you'd heard about Insomniac's Nocturnal Initiative, going open source and all. Is she going to be checking that stuff out?? Sounds like a pretty cool idea (on paper at least!) hehe.

Morne

I was actually out there. My wife still is. There was actually a lot of people making fun of Insomniac. It basically went like this "They want to share their code in hopes that others will improve it for free." They want others to share their code too so they can make their games better. They just want to do it without paying good coders.

Resistance 2 needs all the help it can get from what I hear. The other rumors were that it was a last ditch effort by Insomniac to "stay Sony." If they can't limit costs they may have to start supporting the idea of multi-platform release. This is something Insomniac has never done (they've always only released to Sony consoles).

The coolest thing I saw at GDC was the Unreal code updates being shown for "Gears of War 2," for the 360. They are going all out on that title, and it looks to be the first really amazing looking NextGen game. For the first time someone is taking advantage of the 360's graphics. The VP even mentioned that they could not do the same graphics on the PS3.

Now I'd just like to see a PS3 developer take advantage of the Physics capabilities of the PS3. You could have better action if someone would fully take advantage of it. The guys at LucasArts mentioned that if they'd designed their new Force game for just the PS3 they could have gone much, much, much further in the Physics realm.

[Mornelithe]

Well, from their keynote, didn't sound like they were looking for free developement, sounded like they were trying to give other companies who're struggling on PS3 coding a leg up. Since..you know..Ratchet and Clank and Resistance kicked the crap out of anything that's been a 360/PC port.

IMO all companies should be working towards this, the more information out there, as Insomniac said, the better the games. And that's all it's really about.

As for Gears, hopefully one improvement they'll make is actually having head shots count. Unloading a clip into someone's head and having it have the same effect as a single BB to armor, is pretty lame.

[Lotus]

Originally Posted by Mornelithe

Well, from their keynote, didn't sound like they were looking for free developement, sounded like they were trying to give other companies who're struggling on PS3 coding a leg up. Since..you know..Ratchet and Clank and Resistance kicked the crap out of anything that's been a 360/PC port.

They would be idiots to claim their true purpose. What kind of company would be that dumb? Trust me word by insiders there wasn't that it was a big deal. Insomniac is financially hurting because the PS3 isn't selling the number of games that their PS2 or even PS1 titles sold.

[Mornelithe]

That may be true, but it's also obviously a changing metric given the PS3's continuing performance in Japan and European countries. As the PS3 continues to increase it's market penetration and decrease the lead that the 360 has, the return for such companies is going to increase. And with the PS3 beating out the 360 in sales in January in NA, it's only a sign of things to come. Looks like the long-term strategy of the PS3 is actually starting to work in Sony's favor.

However, I digress, my initial message had nothing to do with PS3 vs 360 vs PC vs Wii, I was merely curious about Insomniac's move, and how open the info was to people, IE had your wife picked up anything. Whether helping other developers was their sole intent, this will help other developers, because they just don't seem to get how to optimize on the PS3. So, hopefully more companies will make this decision. Polyphony Digital, Konami, Square Enix, heck, even though it pains me to say it Infinity Ward and Activision, all of those developers have figured out how to develope properly on the PS3, well, they're making brilliant headway at least. And, since the PS3 requires multi-core thinking when developing for, it should only help the PC gaming industry as we move towards 4-8-12 core CPU's. So yeah, anyway, just curious.


Morne

[deacongreg]

One thing I will continue to say. When looking at and comparing all related issues and problems, the SONY PS3 is in my opinion the best Blu-Ray player out there.

I`m sure that was not Sonys hope, but it has relatively for lack of a better word, been a real gamer and trooper of a Blu-Ray player and game console.

Maybe they should scrap all the other Blu-Ray players and make a SONY PS4!!!!