GDC 09: MS Shows off New Developer Tools

IGN writes: "If you thought game makers have eked every last bit of juice out of the Xbox 360, Microsoft is about to give them the tools needed to take at least one more step. A new piece of debugging hardware, called the Xbox 360 Development and Test Kit hardware is on its way to professional developers soon. This new piece of hardware has 1 GB of RAM inside of it -- more than a retail Xbox 360. This will give developers some extra room to work with while making a game that will allow them to push the limits of the Xbox 360 memory while still running debugging software that would normally eat up space on the dev kit."

[panasonic23]

Awesome

[Jockamo]

Killzone...

such a negative name...

I like Victory Zone. Or Winner Zone. Adrenaline Zone.

Happy Zone.

not Killzone. so... negative.

[DelbertGrady]

How about Bible Zone? Or Jack Thompson Zone?

[HDgamer]

Or open zone

[ThanatosDMC]

So i guess i shouldnt write a joke about M$ making us buy 512mb ram sticks later on for $100, huh?

[AAACE5]

Example: When you use Windows Vista, you may have 1 Gb of ram in your system. But the system only recognizes 800 and something Mb's of Ram, because part of it is being used for other operations.

If I am understanding this right, the 360's 512 Mb's of Ram are probably only using about 300 for the actual game, with the rest being used for other operations.

This new set up could help them use everything the system has, without wasting space. Overall, it could help the games out tremendously and might make disc space slightly less of a problem for now.

[Zeus Lee]

Perhaps FunZone 3:Wars of Joy would be better suited to your tastes?

[Jockamo]

now you're talkin!

[LeonSKennedy4Life]

An hero has appeared!

[Bnet343]

Disagrees because you keep referencing anon and 4chan bullsh*t.

[SSJSubgeta]

Thats some funny time wasting website.

[Sarcasm]

"FunZone 3:Wars of Joy"

Leave Halo 3 out of this

:)

[Sangria]

There's something i don't get. Microsoft will provide new dev kits with 1GB memory "to push the Xbox 360's limits". But if developers make a game developed for 1GB RAM Xbox 360, how can it fit in a 512MB Xbox 360?

There are maybe things i will never get, but if it's good for developers, i'm on it. When i see how much Mass Effect is laggy sometimes (especially in the Citadel and Noveria) or Ninja Gaiden 2 (when there are more than 10 enemies), i hope Mass Effect 2 and further games will benefit of those hardware enhancements.

[PirateThom]

They'll be locked to 512 for games.

However, dev kits run debugging in the background which can hurt game performance in testing and maybe cause things to be missed. The debugging won't be on home versions.

It will allow them to see, without running on standard 360s, how their game is performing, while debugging.

[GhostofHorizon]

Developers just get some breathing room, it doesn't affect the games as much as they make it sound...

[tudors]

the extra ram is to allow the developers to access to more tools and debuging facilities, and other extras such as animation tools for avatars, but it while it might inovate I don't think people should confuse it with a new engine, but if the debugging is better, perfect example DLC Fallout the pitt then maybe better performance equals better looking? but Cry-engine 3 is where you should be looking for a Killzone killer.

[Godmars290]

MS is looking to 3rd parties to show off what their kits can do, instead of showing them themselves?

[v1c1ous]

that you like to troll any 360 related topics whenever you can? *looks at posting history*

[eagle21]

DVD9 will always hold it back. :)

[mintaro]

How so?

[DJ]

And is (ironically) about 6 times faster in terms of data transfer speed. There's some big advantages there. Just look at Killzone 2. That game's 40 Gigabytes.

[mintaro]

But what exactly does that extra space do?

Because people are touting that DVD will hold this gen back, and that it is not able to produce graphics,sound, etc that are capable on Blu-Ray, like Killzone 2.

But I only have to look at Crysis,(which is on DVD) and then I get confused again.

[heyheyhey]

@Minatro

it will become more and more evident as time goes on, there is already evidence now

-MGS4 filling up 50 gigs
-MLB 2K8, couldn't fit on DVD.. had to DL the rest
-360 RPG's on multi-disk, LO on a whopping 4 disks! is this the 360 or the Playstation?
-id saying Rage won't fit on DVD
-2 Days 2 Vegas devs saying DVD is too small
-more

[mintaro]

So....to ask again....what does the extra space add?

[cmrbe]

I am surprise you are asking that question. More space means more room to store uncompressed game assets like audio files and hi res textures etc.

Which every way you look at it. Blu-ray is an advantage. Disc swapping is last gen.

You refer to Crysis but you know dam well that crysis is installed on a harddrive and it needs a fairly good processor and video card to run it. If Crysis is running on console at its current state then your argument would be valid.

[Doctor_Doom]

"about 6 times faster in terms of data transfer speed." >>>>> *IF* they used 4X drive instead of 2X

"So....to ask again....what does the extra space add? "

5Gb to your HDD ???? XD

[mintaro]

There we go, so the added space helps with textures, audio, and uncompressed things of that nature.

Thanks for the info.

I just wanted to know what the added space was used for. lol.

[beardpapa]

NG Sigma 2 w/ extra play modes, extra characters, and coop mode. You can fit all that on blu-ray. Assuming NG 2 filled up the dvd, then you'd need to get those extras as dlc.

[Godmars290]

That proabbly has more to do with extra dev time, and minus Itagaki's ego.

[Conan997]

killzone 2 fits on a single layer blu ray disk,
which means 25 GB or less. The lead programmer said this.

The added space is mostly used for uncompressed 7.1 audio, which takes up a looooot more space than dolby 5.1 sound.

MGS4 is on a dual layer disk (50GB) because of the 7.1 audio and the HD commercials thats in the game

[XLiveGamer]

Question how much space Crysis take of your HDD? 12gb right?

¿So what if Microsoft Xbox360 decide to bring all games in more than 1 disc and you install for example 3 disc (7gb each = 21gb) on the HDD but only use the disc 1 just like on PC its that good for X360 or Bad?

¿Its that possible?

I know you are going to bring the Arcade excuse but the good thing about the arcade its that you can buy the HDD of whatever quantity you want.

[Xi]

I know that sound takes up 'a lot' of space, and is pretty much the main reason why blu-ray is usefull, but why would a developer attempt to use high-res textures in a videogame on a console.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't you normally write textures to the ram, then stream it, physically limiting you to the space available in ram? Unless you're streaming off disc, which is extremely slow and rarely used, and also require a lot of compression?

And while the disc has the ability to hold extra content, it's very rare that space is a limiting factor. I never heard of a developer cutting content for a game on that basis alone, 99% of the time content is dropped because of time and cost constraints.

either way, I personally haven't seen any major benefits of blu-ray. Other than the darkness which had some interesting tv things that the 360 didn't have, and the sound in MGS4 blu-ray has yet to prove itself as a requirement of 'next gen' games.

As for disc swapping, the same ammount of time is required to swap discs or load to harddrive, so I don't see any difference, neither seem nextgen to me.

And crmbre, read times being faster on dvd is just one advantage, no matter how you look at it, so I wouldn't say blu-ray is better in every way.

[GameHero]

THIS BOX IS TAPPED OUT...IT'S SPENT!

[Kurylo3d]

I think the benefit this bad boy gives the developer is the fact that now the software that runs on it doesnt eat up the memory that can be used on a game. Like if u have 512 mb memory and are running the dev software... your eating up some of that memory... where as now with this thing... u dont have to touch that memory and tailor it to use that 512 on the game itself... basically allows them to use more memory... im not expecting a huge boost personally.

[kewlkat007]

......Maybe we get less glitchy games....

[360]

Is this the huge news?

[xg-ei8ht]

mintaro

Crysis may well be on DVD, but is heavily compressed data. That is installed on your HD.

Crysis warhead is about 7.2gb on a dual layer. And this is the problem, with dual layer in 360. It starts to slow it down. As games get bigger.

Basically, devs store more data at certain parts of the disc, for quicker loading, but often use repeated data if the game is not that big.

I can't remember the size of warhead installed, but i think it was 12gb or something.

Dirt on PC was 10gb. i think.

But it also depends in a game, if it uses the same textures, data etc. And this does not take up much space. Top class audio takes up alot of space uncompressed.

I'm not knocking DVD9. It's served us well. But i'm liking blu-ray, not just for games, but movies as well.

[zonetrooper5]

I just went through this comment section and deleted comments which weren't needed. RRoD is not related to this article and yes I've seen the pictures, if you want to talk about hardware issues then find an article or a forum topic and do it there.