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| A Peek Inside Vita’s Development Posted: 19 Feb 2012 02:27 AM PST As the man in charge of Sony’s Worldwide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida (above) oversees the teams behind Uncharted, Gran Turismo, Little Big Planet, and many others. And for the past few years he’s also played a key role on Vita, serving as a sort of middleman between the company’s software teams and its hardware division. At last week’s DICE conference, I asked him a handful of questions about Vita’s development history to date. 1UP: Do you remember the first meeting you ever had talking about Vita? Shuhei Yoshida: Actually I do. Thank you. That’s a great question. It was April or March, around that timeframe, of 2008… It’s always the chip, the CPU or GPU, that takes the longest in terms of the development cycle. But it first started with RD. After the PSP, they moved onto RD for the next thing. So early spring 2008, there was a management offsite meeting. And at the time, I was based here in the U.S. as head of Worldwide Studios America. I called in to that meeting and saw the unveiling of the portable project for the next generation. And actually, for this project, Kaz [Hirai, now Sony president and CEO] said, “We want Worldwide Studios [to be involved] from the beginning to the end.” So that was a total change. That was about the time Phil Harrison announced his departure to Atari, and eventually I succeeded him as the president of Worldwide Studios, so I discussed with Kaz that maybe I should move to Japan… Running our studios, the main activity is in the U.S. and Europe; we have much bigger development [staff numbers] outside Japan. But because of this new way to work between hardware guys and the software side [it made sense for me to be closer to the hardware team]. There was very limited communication in the past, especially when it comes to new hardware, because of the secrecy involved. They had very tight security in terms of sharing information with us up through PS3 days, so I saw a big sea change of culture and process. That has to be developed, right? It just doesn’t happen when Kaz says “You two, talk!” It’s not like that, so someone like me needed to be embedded in Tokyo and attend every platform discussion meeting… They might talk about, “Oh we have this new technology that might be great for the next thing,” then I could relate them to the proper Worldwide Studios teams… So specifically, hardware ideas. There’s a long list of features that we could have put into this system that eventually we cut down. So with that, we have the target price range for the hardware — we said, “$250, this is the price” — and the size of the unit, and the power consumption. Cost of goods, of course. Everything has to fit. So it’s great that people say PS Vita has everything, but it doesn’t. We cut a lot of potential features. But the process of doing so was in the past in total secrecy, because of the hardware engineering-driven approach. How their guys kind of imagined “this is more important than that,” or “this performance is needed this much.” But for the first time with PS Vita for them, instead of answering those questions themselves, now they were able to ask us directly. And not only would we voice opinions or give them ideas — you know, “if you have a touch panel on the back of the unit maybe we could use this,” and that’s a start — but the best part is they created prototypes. For example they created a PS3 controller that had a screen and touch on the top and bottom. So our guys that created PS3 games experimented to use it to simulate what it would feel like to touch with a screen, and gave that code back to them to let them try, so that we could together decide about the performance and what size is necessary to do. For every single piece of tech, we have gone through this process. So there are two big benefits to that. One is the hardware feature choices — we are very confident we presented what software developers want for a game system. The other benefit, I hope, is that because they were involved in the process, our teams know why each feature for PS Vita was included. We had lots of time thinking about and prototyping ideas, so hopefully in the launch titles, the new features of PS Vita can be integrated in our titles. 1UP: Were there certain Worldwide Studios teams that put more input in than others? I would assume Bend would since they were making one of the first big games [Uncharted: Golden Abyss, seen below]. SY: Bend was a big part. Their position was to push the graphical limit, right, and break the SDK drivers. [Laughs] They had the hardest time, I imagine, because they were pushing the limit and they had to create a high-end game for the launch, so they worked really closely with especially the graphics and library teams. The other teams had a different kind of focus… The Wipeout guys came up with this idea of letting [people play cross-platform], and when we announced that at E3 we had very good positive reactions. And Warrior’s Lair — the “Ruin” game — you can save to the cloud server and continue the game. So many different teams came up with interesting use cases for PS Vita. Bend [made] a big effort, but different teams contributed. And let’s not forget Bigbig Studios. They are the reason we decided to have the rear touch pad… Before the Little Deviants demo, I was skeptical about having a rear touch panel, but when I tried that and saw the game world push up as I touched, I thought this was so fresh, so new… 1UP: Do you remember what the first game you guys greenlit was? SY: [Long pause] It’s hard to remember. Some games were concepted after this project was revealed. Like Uncharted was started after they finished Resistance: Retribution — it was the beginning of 2009, so sometime late 2008 they already were having conversations about the next thing. So that should be one of the early ones. And Little Deviants, because of that tech demo, we said “Let’s make it a game.” And possibly Wipeout, because people in the UK say it’s a UK law to have Wipeout when you launch a PlayStation platform. And Gravity Daze — I’m so excited. It just came out yesterday in Japan, [and is known as] Gravity Rush in America. That game was in early concepts and prototypes on PS3, actually. That project started on PS3, but as soon as this concept of having a very high-end gyro sensor included came along, we went “this should be made for PS Vita.” So that game concept existed before PS Vita [and therefore wasn't necessarily "greenlit" first, but the developers were likely working on it the longest]. 1UP: Looking back now, is there anything that you would do differently if you were making Vita all over again? SY: Because it was the very first process for the new SCE under Kaz to involve Worldwide Studios with the hardware development team, he didn’t go so far as to invite the marketing or business side — what we call our HQs, like SCEA or SCEE, to SCE Japan’s side from the beginning. He wanted to take it one step at a time. So Worldwide Studios had daily contact with our HQs and marketing teams and talking about portfolios, and they are very important in the process for making sure what we are making can match with the marketing platform business side’s expectations. But for Vita at the early stage we had to keep it kind of secret, so we were part of SCE Japan from that standpoint. It was only after two years or so that Kaz said, “OK, now let’s bring in the marketing side to the project.” And at that point, there were certain things more business related that we were not looking at. So as soon as the marketing side entered the project…certain key issues were raised. So we had to go back and re-do some of the work. So to answer your question, going forward, because we are a more integrated company, we should and we will involve the business and marketing side earlier in the process. Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. |
| Posted: 19 Feb 2012 02:27 AM PST
Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. |
| Posted: 19 Feb 2012 01:27 AM PST
日本のオンラインゲームファンの皆様、こんにちは。 Below are some awesome screenshots taken from the Closed Beta phases of Blade Soul Korea. For more videos and game footage, visit my YouTube Blade Soul collection here (link). Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. |
| Metal Gear Solid 3: The Boss of Stealth Action Games Posted: 18 Feb 2012 02:27 PM PST Hideo Kojima has been trying to make a video game for 25 years now. With Metal Gear Solid 3, he very nearly succeeded. This isn’t to say Kojima hasn’t overseen the creation of quite a few games in his time — from whimsical penguin racers to vampiric spaghetti westerns with overtones of Norse legend, he’s had his hand in several greats. But he’s best known for the Metal Gear series, the ongoing saga of a guy named Dave who constantly, reluctantly finds himself as the world’s last resort against utter nuclear armageddon, and all just because he happens to possess an acute genetic disposition to be adept at killing people. (He inherited it from his dad. Whom he killed. Twice. Once with hairspray.) Over the course of half a dozen games — we’ll disregard the spin-offs and ports, as Kojima handed the directorial reins to his lackeys for those — Konami’s most visible auteur appears to have been struggling to create a game that conforms to his grand inner vision. Granted, it’s a vision that seems to have evolved along with the games; the original Metal Gear, for instance, featured a game design motivated primarily by the noble, artistic desire not to choke the MSX’s hardware by juggling too many sprites at once. (Pure action was out of the question, so he turned to avoiding action as a solution.) His vision began to coalesce in the sequel, even if he kind of cheated by copying his answers straight from the notes he’d cribbed from Hollywood. Still, the ambition was all there, its realization choked somewhat by occasionally questionable design choices — the conflicted hero, the double-crosses, the brief but intense grief (quickly forgotten) at the death of someone you’d met for the very first time a couple of hours prior. And most of all, the tricksy, innovative use of things, such as guns, cigarettes, cardboard boxes and rubber duckies. With each subsequent sequel, Kojima has been drawing closer to realizing some platonic ideal of “video games” that exists only in his mind — well, except perhaps for Metal Gear Solid 2, which comes off less as Kojima making the game he’s longed to create and more like Kojima very deliberately not making the game everyone else wanted him to create. Gamers weren’t too amused by MGS2′s ten-hour face-slap and decided that perhaps the series had taken a good running jump over a pool of sharks, meaning that a good deal of gamers missed out on its sequel. And too bad, because with MGS3 Kojima came closer to creating a game that seems to obey what we can only assume are his criteria for excellence while also falling right in line with what the kids want. The truest, clearest picture of the series’ steady evolution can be found in its boss battles. On MSX, they were pretty unimaginative: Stand out of the guy’s line of sight, shoot him with guided missiles, or toss grenades, or whatever. Basic stuff, and rarely challenging. Later, despite the fact that Metal Gear Solid was basically a high-spec remake of Metal Gear 2, the move to 3D allowed the boss encounters to take on new life: A dynamic fistfight in a cluttered office, the violence of your struggle against a stealth-cloaked ninja disturbing papers and destroying computers. A game of cat-and-mouse against a human giant with a deadly accurate minigun. A tense sniper duel, a race against time, physical damage, and your nerves (which could only be steadied until you ran out of diazepam). Impressive stuff, only slightly overshadowed by the other, more impressive details, like the discovery that dogs would pee on you if you hid in a cardboard box for too long. MGS2′s bosses took a step back in quality, though apparently everything bad about the game was done quite deliberately. Dead Cell’s warriors focused less on doing new and unexpected thing than on rehashing their predecessors’ legendary fights in order to make a Very Important Point. Yet even then, the fights could still thrill — particularly the final battle, in which the player’s silver-haired Solid Snake Simulation finally took control of his own destiny by killing his own “father”, mimicking Snake’s legacy… but with a sword rather than a makeshift flamethrower. But Metal Gear Solid 3′s bosses? Now those are some fights. At worst, MGS3 offers slick renditions of the bog-standard video game tropes: find a pattern or weakness, use a certain weapon to exploit it, lay into the boss while he’s stunned, repeat until you’re sick of it. At best, though, the protagonist’s struggles against the warriors of Cobra Squad make you completely reconsider what a boss fight can actually be. And I’m pretty sure that, in the end, that’s all Kojima really wants: To come up with a game packed with ideas so clever, so counter to the expectations and clichés of the medium, that he’ll forever be regarded as the ultimate genius of game design. Any director who would pull the “HIDEO” trick from the Psycho Mantis fight, interrupting a gimmick battle with a blank screen displaying nothing but his own name, is clearly a man driven by ego. But if that ego results in more boss encounters like The Joy or The End, he’s welcome to hire a team of skywriters to scribble his name from horizon to horizon over Tokyo every morning for all we care. Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. |
| Weekend Deals: The Witcher II, Game of Thrones, and Blood Bowl Posted: 18 Feb 2012 01:27 PM PST The Witcher II is being offered on the cheap at a number of places, though Amazon seems to have the best price at $23.99. Steam, GamersGate, and Good Old Games all have it for $29.99. Steam is offering 80% off the Legendary Edition of Blood Bowl this weekend, bringing its price down to just $8.00 from $39.99. Also of note is Good Old Games giving away Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templar until tomorrow morning, so be sure to jump on that deal as quickly as possible. Read on for a look at this week’s deals. Amazon
Direct2Drive
GamersGate
GameStop
Good Old Games
Impulse
Steam
Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. |
Other info in the picture shows how many staff each studio has, with the recently purchased Ndoors tops with 205 employees.
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