Source for Xbox 360 Now Available

[CSN NewsBot]

Just announced, the Source engine is now available for developers to use on the Xbox 360 console. The Source technologies are a new, official middleware solution for all 360 game developers.

Source, the technology that powered Valve's Half-Life 2, is already the benchmark game technology on Microsoft's Windows platform, offering state of the art performance in graphics, networking, artificial intelligence, physics simulation and more. The version of Source, available for Xbox 360, is optimized to utilize the platform's advance graphics hardware and offer full support for Xbox Live.



"The combination of Source and the Xbox 360 provides game designers throughout the industry the chance to create powerful entertainment experiences," said Gabe Newell, president and co-founder of Valve. "Whether they're pursuing a traditional FPS, RTS, RPG or delving into new genres, Source and the Xbox 360 are designed to offer the flexibility and tools to allow designers to pursue any design imaginable."

For more information, be sure and read the official press release or visit Valve's website.

[rizzuh]

I wonder if they multi-threaded the engine, since that would definitely be useful for the Xbox 360 and even on the PC as dual- and quad-core CPUs begin to take hold.

[Manji]

What about this for the plot of portal? Apature Science labs are run by the combine, and you're a test subject for them, to test how well everything works, and at the end, they plan on killing you, but at the end of the game, you escape, and bring the portal gun to Gordan for use in defeating the combine forces across the world. Eh? I think that's not too unlikely, and would be a pretty sweet plot. I wonder if we see the G-man anywhere in there...

[wolf8218]

"The version of Source, available for Xbox 360, is optimized to utilize the platform's advance graphics hardware and offer full support for Xbox Live."



In other words, they had to cut down on the visual effects so the Xbox 360's sh!tty graphics processor could handle it, as well as making it run with the networking horror known as "Xbox Live"



omg NEXT-GEN FTW!

[Csplayer089]

lol. HDR?

[borsdy]

XBL and XBLMarketplace are excellent services for console. Wii60 FTW!

[wolf8218]

Heh, I hate the Wii as well.

[ph03nix(k)]

Edited by [user="246117"] @ [time="1161044099"]

I guarentee the 360 has better specs than your computer.



It has 512mb GDDR3 (500mhz GFX proc. not that amazing but still), and a tri-core 3.2 ghz processor.

[Gpig]

Is the source engine still like $500,000 or is it more like a million now?

[Ryosuke T]

im sure microsoft paid valve a big load of $ for that. google bought out youtube.com for 1.68 BILLION DOLLARS!

[Bokuho]

wolf8218 wrote..

In other words, they had to cut down on the visual effects so the Xbox 360's sh!tty graphics processor could handle it, as well as making it run with the networking horror known as "Xbox Live"



omg NEXT-GEN FTW!

Please kindly STFU, your lack of knowledge makes FireFox crash out of despair.





Anyway, although the 360 is indeed more powerful than the average home PC, and XBoxLive is actually a genuinely brilliant service, I'm struggling to see how having the Source engine available to developers is going to change or help anything. Aside from the Havok engine which is used for ragdoll effects and suchlike in a few games, most of the time developers want to make their own engines from scratch, rather than pay out for an engine already made by someone else and which will natively have some limitations in less they modify it heavily in which case it's more often than not worth them starting from scratch in the first place.

Not to mention, there's just no need for the Source engine, of all. If you look at a game like GRAW, Tomb Raider Legend or Dead Or Alive 4 on the 360, you can see that the devs are all doing just fine so far - hell, they've even already surpassed Source (and in fact those games all reportedly only use a small part of the 360's power, so by the time that devs get used to working with the 360 more and have 'opened it up' more, Source will look like sheer turd in comparison). And especially now that CryENGINE and Polybump has been released to devs (including console devs), and since CryENGINE2 is expected to be released to devs just a short while after Crysis has been released (for those that don't know - go look up screenshots of Crysis, and proceed to drool), I can't really see how Source being released to 360 devs is going to help or change anything.

Or hell, just go look at the preview shots and videos of Final Fantasy XIII on the PS3 - what used to be pre-rendered FMV graphics are now real-time graphics. Okay so it's a short way off, but for a first gen PS3 game it's hugely impressive, here's nothing to say that the 360 couldn't also do similar stuff a year or two down the line, and that also is on an in-house engine developed by SquareEnix, which will at some point probably be released to devs, at least for console use anyway. Yet another reason why having the Source engine available really isn't going to matter.



Reall, good for Valve for milking it for all it's worth, but shame on Microsoft for bothering to pay out, and shame on any dev that actually goes ahead and uses it.

[ph03nix(k)]

I dont think any of those engines are as flexible or as upgradable as source though. Portal and TF2 look very good graphics wise. Of course I dont really know anything for sure.

[duhhhh]

Edited by [user="408141"] @ [time="1161052439"]

I hope most people reading this understand that Microsoft never paid Valve to use the source engine, and Microsoft will never pay Valve except maybe to buy them out.



Valve is offering to independent developers the right to license the source engine, which is now compatible with the xbox360. Valve is selling it to 3rd party people(like the people who will make Natural Seleciton:source), not Microsoft.



Valve and Microsoft are competitors, and when Vista coms along, Valve is going to have trouble because now everyone will want to play XBOX games on the PC, so they will have no money to spend on HL2. When Vista is released, Microsoft will expand XBOX live to work on the PC. Microsoft will also create a system that allows you to play all xbox games on the pc for a small fee.

[Bokuho]

- the ability to play Xbox games on PC already exists via legal third party software, it's hellishly expensive though.

- Microsoft pay up for anything and everything which can at some point in theory be used across XBox Live. There is nothing which could be used on XBox live which they haven't paid out for. Nothing.

[entRo]

Awesome. I can't wait to play CS:S on Xbox360 so I can be reminded of how inferior consoles are, just like when CS came out for Xbox!



Oh how I love the total lack of control.