• Carmack's Rage Over Xbox 360 Storage

    Carmack's Rage Over Xbox 360 Storage

    Techtree News Staff, Aug 04, 2008 0847 hrs IST

    The Xbox 360 version of id's Rage might be the lesser port, if a storage issue is not resolved

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At the QuakeCon 2008 keynote, John Carmack, game designer and co-founder of id software, shared information on their upcoming first person shooter titled Rage. Carmack commented on a storage problem related to Microsoft's XBOX 360 platform.

Carmark believes that compressing Rage textures such that the game data fits on to two XBOX 360 DVDs would result in loss of visual quality. He added that including a third disc would shoot up the royalties that id would need to pay Microsoft. Carmack is therefore seeking a concession on the royalties from Microsoft, otherwise the Xbox 360 version of Rage could be a lesser port, he stated.

One of the key features of the Tech 5 engine used to power Rage is the use of so-called "megatextures" -- huge textures that bring in detail while allowing the polygon count of a 3d-surface to be kept low. These large textures need greater space to store. It is due to this that Carmack is facing storage problems on the Xbox 360.



On the other hand Sony's PS3 might get an upper hand with its Blu-ray drive. The game Rage will also be available on multiple DVDs and Blu-ray discs for the PC and Mac platforms.

Now all eyes are on Microsoft to how this problem would be addressed. Despite of the fact that compression technologies over optical media have taken us far, DVD media seems to have hit a wall.

While you are here, check out Rage's extended trailer.

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Discussion Board
(16) Comments
dfdfhdfh
,gjty56tr, on Jan 02, 2010 02:53 PM
gdf ggdf gdfg fgdf g dfgg vbcvbgdfgg
pwned
,mill creek, on Aug 06, 2008 10:58 AM
wow, what a waste for buying a 360. now it wont be able to handle the most optical games in the future. i'm glad i got a PS3 though. say hello to craigslist 360.
Sergio L.
,SJ, on Aug 05, 2008 11:40 PM
sCREWED_YOU, I bet you, when you turn on your PS3, it says ?hey baby?. You tweaked it so much that you even have a name for her =o). well Etart, I don?t care about your DDR, GIV, or your STD. PS3 does not have enough memory & it will cause issues in the feature. Just like 360 is gonna have issues with storage. Again storage can be somewhat be fixed. Memory, there is no way around it. Why don?t you go on a date or something =o)
Dale Prescod
,Woonsocket, on Aug 05, 2008 06:19 PM
Why all of the sudden that memory has become an issue. MassEffect, Gears and Grid, are all great looking games. Try using a new engine, or get some better devs.
jim
,sheffield, on Aug 05, 2008 01:52 PM
perhaps if the game was better programmed?
allajunaki
,B'lore, on Aug 05, 2008 06:54 AM
Hmm... Even if it is on 3 DVD, well, we guys will have to keep swapping discs... Sorta dampens the gaming. But MS is just lame for charging per media, rather than charging per title... Maybe they wanna discourage muli disc games.
Doogie
,columbia, on Aug 05, 2008 03:25 AM
release the game on hddvd lol
Anonymous
,ICT, on Aug 05, 2008 12:06 AM
Carmack is just publicly posturing. Standard business practice. Put Microsoft on the defensive before talks begin. (By the way I feel there should be no extra royalties paid to MS for a company putting a game on multi DVDs)
GC328
,Norman, on Aug 04, 2008 11:54 PM
Teaming up with EA is probably the worst thing that Carmack made.
sCREWED_YOU
,WAKEY, on Aug 04, 2008 10:31 PM
Sergio L look up stuff up next time.It has 256 MB of XDR main memory and 256 MB of GDDR3 video memory for the RSX. AND THE XBOX IS Graphics processing is handled by the ATI Xenos which has 10 MB of embedded eDRAM. Its main memory pool is 512 MB in size. WOW THE XBOX360 HAS 10MB MORE. NEXT TIME U LIL FAN BOY LOOK STUFF UP. JUST SO U NO AM A PC GAMER BUT A FAN OV THE PS3 AS I LIKE THE GAMES WHAT ARE COMING OUT FORE IT BUT I CAN NOT BUY ON PC
Sergio L.
,SJ, on Aug 04, 2008 09:45 PM
I wonder how PS3 gonna deal with memory issue, im sure all this hard core software is gonna need a pretty big Ram to run it. 256MB is not gonna cut it for PS3.
tgrass21
,nunaurbusiness, on Aug 04, 2008 08:38 PM
Carmack needs to try making a good game before he worries about how pretty it is. DOOM 3 sucked balls.
sdfsdf
,sdfsdf, on Aug 04, 2008 01:47 PM
sdfsdf
ASJ DED
,Mumbai, on Aug 04, 2008 05:45 PM
This is again a test comment. Pklease delete it
Tom
,New York, on Aug 04, 2008 03:35 PM
It looks like John Carmack just found a use for the defunct Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive! Since I was only able to get 12 movies for mine before HD lost to Blu-Ray, it would be nice to get some further use out of it.
ahm
,mum, on Aug 04, 2008 03:41 PM
haaha. you wish :P

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