Bethesda Softworks Announces Oblivion" Yet another Launch title!

September 28, 2006 (Rockville, MD) -- Bethesda Softworks® announced today that its blockbuster role-playing game, The Elder Scrolls® IV: Oblivion™ will be a launch title for the PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system this November in North America, and next March in Europe when the new console is expected to be released there. In addition, The Elder Scrolls® Travels: Oblivion™ will be released on the PSP®(PlayStation®Portable) system in the Spring 2007 in North America and Europe.

Both the PLAYSTATION 3 and PSP system titles will be published exclusively in North America by Bethesda Softworks, while in Europe, Ubisoft will serve as co-publisher. Complete details on both games are available in Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine's (OPM) exclusive cover story (November issue), which hits newsstands Oct. 10. In its article OPM previews the gameplay, graphics, and new content in Oblivion and concludes: "If any game is worth the price of the PS3, Oblivion is it."

Released in March for Xbox 360™ video game and entertainment system from Microsoft and Windows, Oblivion has already earned high praises and awards from publications around the world. Official Xbox Magazine (US) gave Oblivion a 9.5 out of 10 and an Editor’s Choice award, calling Oblivion "An Absolute Masterpiece." G4 TV named it the Best Game of 2006, and PC Gamer (UK) ranked Oblivion #1 on its list of the Top 100 PC games of all time.

Metracritic.com lists Oblivion as the highest rated game of all time on Xbox 360. Oblivion has also been nominated for numerous awards in upcoming events, including the Golden Joystick Awards (five nominations) and The British Academy of Film and Television Arts awards (five nominations).

"We're very excited to be able to bring a game like Oblivion out for launch for the PLAYSTATION 3," said Bethesda Softworks president, Vlatko Andonov. “Oblivion's countless awards and commercial success to date make it clear that PLAYSTATION 3 owners are in for a real treat this November."

Oblivion features a powerful combination of free-form gameplay, unprecedented graphics, cutting edge AI, character voices by acting legends Patrick Stewart, Sean Bean, Terrance Stamp, and Lynda Carter, and an award-winning soundtrack. Gamers can choose to unravel Oblivion's epic narrative at their own pace or explore the vast world in search of their own unique challenges.

After the mysterious and untimely death of the Emperor, the throne of Tamriel lies empty. With the Empire ready to crumble, the gates of Oblivion open and demons march upon the land -- laying waste to everything in their path. To turn the tide of darkness, you must find the lost heir to the throne and unravel the sinister plot that threatens to destroy all of Tamriel.

Source: Bethesda

[Silverwolf]

to refine this game. Even though I won't be buying a PS3 I sure hope they have taken the time to work out the glitches they left on the Xbox 360. I would love to see how everthing looks with a more stable frame rate.

[lalaland]

Just like when they made the X360 version they have had to make the engine optimized for the PS3, and finetuning once they've got final dev kits. I would guess they've probably spent most of the time doing just that and therefore an improvement in graphic quality doesn't necessarily come from the added development time. If there is any, it would probably be more likely to come from the power of their firstgen PS3 engine compared to their firstgen X360 engine.

[Marty8370]

It does say they are updating it and making full use of Blu-ray.

[BIadestarX]

I agree. They have to, let's not forget about "procedural synthesis" which this game heavily used for most of the world objects. procedural synthesis it's uniqued to the 360 which mean that all these game assets will have to be added to the PS3 version. It wouldn't surprice me if this game is 3-4 times larger than the 360 version. Not because of any new content but simply because of the lack of procedural synthesis in the PS3. Well, this shouldn't be a problem for the PS3 since it has plenty of disk space. Hopefully the loading time it's not increased.

[kmis87]

Of course the ps3 does procedural synthesis. We've even seen it in use in games like Warhawk (it was utilized to create the water effects).

[OutpostCommand]

It also does Raytracing which I THINK (! (Please dont flame me. I THINK)) is superior to Procedural Synthesis. I may be wrong.

[kmis87]

You're right, the Cell processor is capable of performing raytracing algorithms, but raytracing is different from procedural genesis.

[lalaland]

Have you got absolutely no clue what you are talking about? Procedural synthesis, raytracing and all that stuff are just algorithms that you could do on a calculator if you wanted to. It would be a slow process, but it would be feasable.

Some developers might choose to use one or the other algorithm in their game, but that is always after a cost/benefit analysis -- how much resources does it take compared to the user experience. How slow will the framerate be? How much memory would it take? How much of an effect does it have on gameplay? How big is the visual impact?

What you may be mistaking is the fact that MS has hyped procedural synthesis because of the X360's lack of storage and the reduced need of artist creating the entire gameworld from the ground up. But that doesn't mean the PS3 can't handle it. Infact the Cell processor is superior to the X360 in almost any job requiring vector processing.

For now there are multiple examples of raytraced voxelclouds, geometry water and physics driven cloths and hair in PS3 games and few if any on the X360. That doesn't mean that they will be impossible to do on the X360 -- just that it is easier to find the spare processing power on the Cell in this first generation batch of games.

Now, the X360 is better for some tasks and the PS3 is better at others. It all depends on the mindset of the developer, and his skills ofcourse.

[BIadestarX]

No need to jump on me. I just agreed. Now tell me why should developers use procedural synthesis for the PS3 when they have all the space not to? The fact is that PS3 developers do not need to optimize their code or game assets when they have blu-ray. It's this a good thing for the gamer? Not really. We all know that this game looked nice for the 360 and yet it was not using 1/2 the capacity of the DVD. Now why would they say they will be taking full advantage of the blu-ray when the game for the 360 does not use that much? For this statement to be true then this game must be more than 9GB which is 2X bigger than the 360 version and the PC. You people defend sony for everything, but it is common cense, why should sony spend time depeloping tools for procedural synthesis or code optimization when their blu-ray format allow them to not need it.

[Deceased]

Has an extra piece of hardware specifically design to improve the performance of procedural synthesis, that is why microsoft is pushing it so hard.

[ElementX]

I think the 360 version looked fine, because I haven't seen any footage from PC or PS3 for comparison. Personally, I'd rather play the game 8 months sooner than see some jazzed up graphics.

[Jay da 2KBalla]

Agreed.

[kmis87]

Yeah, I won't be picking this up on ps3 either. I already have it on the pc, but if someone missed out on it for the 360 and doesn't have a good gaming pc, then this is good news for them.

[Donkey Slayer]

but still curious as to how it will be different.

[Eternal E 808]

i hope you guys enjoy this game like i did :)

[EnforcerOfTheTruth]

...with the better graphics, more quests and without framerate issues and pop ups ;-)
If the 360 would be capable of better graphics, Bethesda would surely release an update. Fact is 360 barerely handled this game and Bethesda gave hell to release a patch that helped a little with the framerate and pop ups.

[TheMART]

It was a freaking port man. Stop the stupid talk.

And go watch all the other trailers. Like Assassins Creed that always ran on a 360. And in the beginning, Sony fans were crying: see the graphics done on the PS3! While it was actually on the 360. Just plain dumb Sony fanboy comments.

[EnforcerOfTheTruth]

...but it wasn't a port, it was developed simultaneously for PC and 360 and actually the PS3 version is a port. Because of Blu and more powerful hardware, a polished port ;-)

Any facts to back your claims up? This game was running on a PC that simulated the PS3. Funny how MS fanboys always try to turn rumours into facts lol

[M3RCUTIO]

Can I get a refund on the IQ points and precious time that I'll now never get back on account of this silly bickering? Who cares whose console can beat up whose. If you hadn't noticed, you're just digging each other's trenches here. Remember, gaming should be fun. Stop killing it.

[FadeToBlack]

It was more like bad code from a pc port. You obviously havent seen the in game demo of assains creed running flawlessly on the 360 with much better visuals than oblivion.

[M3RCUTIO]

This is a great game to have available at launch, so kudos to you. I know a lot of you are genuinely thrilled. I will say it's funny that some of the Sony crowd I've seen posting on this suddenly think Oblivion's worth having now that it's coming their way, when before it was, "Who needs Oblivion?! That game sucks. Gimme FFXIII." Oh, how the worm has turned. I'll just say that if I were in Sony's camp, I'd be stoked to have this one coming my way.

[HiSpeedSoldier61]

I'm just wondering about how this game could be done on PSP. I know that, Pixel for Pixel, its not going to be the same game, maybe they will morph it into a top-down action adventure title, similar to Diablo or something like that.

[M3RCUTIO]

You're absolutely right. I think they'll go the route they did with the mobile version: http://www.elderscrolls.com...

[ApocalypseShadow]

there will be american and japanese style rpgs on the ps3.now i wonder what else will turn out to be true from this "scrivener" guy who said a lot in his post about ps3?

[Gamer13]

If the ps3 comes clean ill get it.

[TR0N]

the 360 version had some issues like hiccups and freezing that were fixed for the most part with the update patch but i cant imagine this game looking any better than it already does even if the ps3 has more power. as a matter of fact I already notice that those screenshots dont look as colorfull as the game looked on the 360 which has always been the difference between xbox and playstation look for example at soul calibur 3 its essentially the same game but the xbox graphics were brighter and more colorfull. Anyways to the sony drones, this game is so awesome that you can spend your time just galloping around on your horse looking for fights and enjoying the scenery and youll still be entertained. you can also just ride around looking for ingredients for potions. Bethesda says that the game is 200 hours long but believe me this game can be stretched to thousands of hours. It is truly one of the best games ever made so enjoy.

[lalaland]

It has nothing to do with the consoles... purely design choice...

Last gen it had more to do with the game engines, but not this gen.

The overly saturated look of games make for a less realistic image quality. If you take a look at a well calibrated TV or a random magazine spread, you'll find everything is less saturated compared to most videogames. Movies are always colourgraded and often some kind of colour tint is used to enhance the storytelling in one way or the other. Look at movies like Payback, Black Hawk Down, Traffic etc etc.

It is a design choice...