Final Fantasy creator joins Microsoft

[jmood88]

Re: Final Fantasy creator joins Microsoft

Good move, but don't look too much into it the FF games will still be made on PS. Hes making original games for MS thats about it. This should help them a "bit" in Japan but they still have a long way to go in the land of the rising sun.

I don't think that anyone is expecting a new final fantasy game for the xbox, at least the people who read the announcement.

[jmood88]

Re: Final Fantasy creator joins Microsoft

Good move, but don't look too much into it the FF games will still be made on PS. Hes making original games for MS thats about it. This should help them a "bit" in Japan but they still have a long way to go in the land of the rising sun.

I don't think that anyone is expecting a new final fantasy game for the xbox, at least the people who read the announcement.

[Skyboxer]

Re: Final Fantasy creator joins Microsoft

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7022618/

[Skyboxer]

Re: Final Fantasy creator joins Microsoft

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7022618/

[jmood88]

Re: Final Fantasy creator joins Microsoft

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7022618/

What does that have to do with anything?

[jmood88]

Re: Final Fantasy creator joins Microsoft

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7022618/

What does that have to do with anything?

[BatsareBugs]

Re: Final Fantasy creator joins Microsoft

I got to wonder... so many big name people are leaving Square Enix.

[BatsareBugs]

Re: Final Fantasy creator joins Microsoft

I got to wonder... so many big name people are leaving Square Enix.

[Flawless]

Re: Final Fantasy creator joins Microsoft

Xbox 2 in motion
Someone who's seen an Xbox 2 game describes the wonder.

Final Fantasy father Hironobu Sakaguchi made a surprise announcement last week that his new development studio, Mistwalker, would be working with Microsoft on the development of two RPGs for the next-generation Xbox. Upon hearing the news, we immediately started imagining what we could expect from the new titles.

One individual far more privileged than team IGN Xbox was able to do more than just imagine. Sakaguchi gave Hirokazu Hamamura, president of Famitsu publisher Enterbrain and one of the most respected names in the Japanese videogame scene, a private first look at a video of the game in motion.

Heres the rest of the article

http://xbox.ign.com/articles/592/592372p1.html

[Flawless]

Re: Final Fantasy creator joins Microsoft

Xbox 2 in motion
Someone who's seen an Xbox 2 game describes the wonder.

Final Fantasy father Hironobu Sakaguchi made a surprise announcement last week that his new development studio, Mistwalker, would be working with Microsoft on the development of two RPGs for the next-generation Xbox. Upon hearing the news, we immediately started imagining what we could expect from the new titles.

One individual far more privileged than team IGN Xbox was able to do more than just imagine. Sakaguchi gave Hirokazu Hamamura, president of Famitsu publisher Enterbrain and one of the most respected names in the Japanese videogame scene, a private first look at a video of the game in motion.

Heres the rest of the article

http://xbox.ign.com/articles/592/592372p1.html

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: Final Fantasy creator joins Microsoft

"It's possible to show a camera outside the Earth's atmosphere approach a forest on the Earth's surface, then show leaves on a tree one at a time

Wow, that would kick ***.

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: Final Fantasy creator joins Microsoft

"It's possible to show a camera outside the Earth's atmosphere approach a forest on the Earth's surface, then show leaves on a tree one at a time

Wow, that would kick ***.

[Flawless]

Re: Final Fantasy creator joins Microsoft

I thought this was a rather interesting post. I read on the Team Xbox forums about Hamamura's comments. I have a hard time understanding what some say on those furums, they're very techy.

**Posted by The GameMaster on Team Xbox forums**

It really sounds like Microsoft managed to pull off procedural geometry and this article makes me think back to a previous article about Microsoft developing this new rendering technique and how they are designing the XBox2 around this concept. What Hamanura is describing is the most absolute form of dynamic loading of the enviroment, where the enviroment is not modeled by hand, but rather is being generated in real time and processed into a picture based on a program. He basically described a world that was generated by a program and not by conventional means.

The way he described it was this as far as I can tell, you start off with a scene where the camera (you) is floating above a planet such as Earth, fully rendered, but not everything is being rendered (you don't need to because you won't even see things like a single tree from orbit). From there you can fly to any one point on the planet and the landscape is being generated in real time in greater and greater detail as you get closer to the ground, and once you get near the ground you can start seeing trees, and from there you fly to any one tree and see leaves on those trees, and each tree being different. All of this being done with no loading or scene transistions between the point you are in orbit to the time you are looking at a single tree directly.

Think of this as an example...
You have a Star Wars game, where you can go from planet to planet, being able to do various things on each planet's surface and you can go between planets. Previously you would have to have the space part seperate from the planet part and you would not have any choice where you can land on said planet, and you would have a load transistion between the space and planetary parts. With this technology you can freely go between planets and land anywhere on those planets whenever you want and without any load time or scene transistion whatsoever.

The problem with this kind of technology is that you need extra processing power, seperate from the CPU and GPU, to actually generate the geometry that is to be sent to the GPU. This is probably part of the reason why Microsoft *MAY*(not confirmed) include more than one CPU in the XBox2, where you have one CPU handling normal tasks, the GPU rendering the geometry, and one or more CPUs that is generating the geometry for the GPU to render. I would like to emphasize that the extra CPU would *NOT* handle geometry rendering, but is actually creating geometry based on the procedural program that will be sent to the GPU to be rendered. But, of course, if you are dealing with applications that do not deal with prodecural generation then you probably could use those extra CPU(s) to assist the GPU in rendering. I am beginning to believe that the reason for the extra CPUs in the XBox2 is exactly for the reason of prodecural rendering and not so it could compete against the PS3 for total CPU power.

This goes back to a question I asked not long ago...

How do you create a realistic looking forest, where you have thousands of detailed trees with leaves, each tree being different, from only 45 polygons?

The example of this demo of a planet and flying down to the planet's surface to view an individual tree on that planet in real time and without any transistion or load is related to that question. Again, if Microsoft managed to pull this off, this would be a major step forward in graphics rendering and I will be very impressed... and I am not one that is impressed easly.

The GameMaster...

[Flawless]

Re: Final Fantasy creator joins Microsoft

I thought this was a rather interesting post. I read on the Team Xbox forums about Hamamura's comments. I have a hard time understanding what some say on those furums, they're very techy.

**Posted by The GameMaster on Team Xbox forums**

It really sounds like Microsoft managed to pull off procedural geometry and this article makes me think back to a previous article about Microsoft developing this new rendering technique and how they are designing the XBox2 around this concept. What Hamanura is describing is the most absolute form of dynamic loading of the enviroment, where the enviroment is not modeled by hand, but rather is being generated in real time and processed into a picture based on a program. He basically described a world that was generated by a program and not by conventional means.

The way he described it was this as far as I can tell, you start off with a scene where the camera (you) is floating above a planet such as Earth, fully rendered, but not everything is being rendered (you don't need to because you won't even see things like a single tree from orbit). From there you can fly to any one point on the planet and the landscape is being generated in real time in greater and greater detail as you get closer to the ground, and once you get near the ground you can start seeing trees, and from there you fly to any one tree and see leaves on those trees, and each tree being different. All of this being done with no loading or scene transistions between the point you are in orbit to the time you are looking at a single tree directly.

Think of this as an example...
You have a Star Wars game, where you can go from planet to planet, being able to do various things on each planet's surface and you can go between planets. Previously you would have to have the space part seperate from the planet part and you would not have any choice where you can land on said planet, and you would have a load transistion between the space and planetary parts. With this technology you can freely go between planets and land anywhere on those planets whenever you want and without any load time or scene transistion whatsoever.

The problem with this kind of technology is that you need extra processing power, seperate from the CPU and GPU, to actually generate the geometry that is to be sent to the GPU. This is probably part of the reason why Microsoft *MAY*(not confirmed) include more than one CPU in the XBox2, where you have one CPU handling normal tasks, the GPU rendering the geometry, and one or more CPUs that is generating the geometry for the GPU to render. I would like to emphasize that the extra CPU would *NOT* handle geometry rendering, but is actually creating geometry based on the procedural program that will be sent to the GPU to be rendered. But, of course, if you are dealing with applications that do not deal with prodecural generation then you probably could use those extra CPU(s) to assist the GPU in rendering. I am beginning to believe that the reason for the extra CPUs in the XBox2 is exactly for the reason of prodecural rendering and not so it could compete against the PS3 for total CPU power.

This goes back to a question I asked not long ago...

How do you create a realistic looking forest, where you have thousands of detailed trees with leaves, each tree being different, from only 45 polygons?

The example of this demo of a planet and flying down to the planet's surface to view an individual tree on that planet in real time and without any transistion or load is related to that question. Again, if Microsoft managed to pull this off, this would be a major step forward in graphics rendering and I will be very impressed... and I am not one that is impressed easly.

The GameMaster...

[Flawless]

Re: Final Fantasy creator joins Microsoft

Microsoft Signs More Japanese Game Luminaries for Next-Gen Xbox

In another creative coup for its next generation Xbox platform, Microsoft today announced that esteemed videogame developers Yoshiki Okamoto, President & CEO of Game Republic, Inc., and Tetsuya Mizuguchi, Creator and Co-founder, Q Entertainment Inc. have aligned with Microsoft Game Studios to develop exclusive next-generation Xbox games. The announcement comes on the heels of last week's news that video game legend Hironobu Sakaguchi, president of Mistwalker game studio, has joined with Microsoft Game Studios to develop role-playing games exclusively for the next-generation Xbox platform.

For more than 20 years, Okamoto has been thrilling gamers with franchises like Street Fighter and Resident Evil. Widely considered an industry pioneer, Okamoto is best known for his ability to conceive and drive completely new game genres.

Read the rest
http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/7747/M...k-NextGen-Xbox