GDC Recap
GDC 09 Roundup
The first major game conference of the year got underway earlier this week in San Francisco. GDC (Game Developers Conference) brings all of the game developers under one roof where they show off new technology and announce new games. This is not E3, so gamers should check their hype at the door. As for game announcements - there were a few , but most we already knew about. Let’s take a quick look at what happened at this year’s GDC.
The one announcement that generated tons of buzz was OnLive. OnLive is best described as on demand gaming. OnLive employs technology that streams games to you from their proprietary servers and all you need is an entry level PC or Mac, or you can buy a microconsole and hook it up to your TV. The company has claimed the ability to reduce input lag to one millisecond. The main question is can the technology handle the stress of hundreds of thousands of players? Current company plans has the release date as Winter 2009 and a beta is planned for sometime this summer.
Gaming wise Nintendo was the only one of the big 3 to have a keynote. Their announcements include a storage solution for the Wii, a new Zelda game for the DS releasing this year, and Arcade titles coming to the Wii Virtual Console.
The GDC Awards were held on Wednesday and Fallout 3 came away the winner for Game of the Year. The highlight of the show was at the end when Infinity Ward debuted a teaser trailer for Modern Warfare 2. Being a teaser, nothing clear was actually shown but that has not stopped the army of bloggers from analyzing it for clues. Modern Warfare 2 is slated for release on November 10.
While Sony had a public presence at GDC, they decided to preview God of War 3 behind closed doors. Of course with a little thing called the internet, there is no such thing as closed doors and you can check out the footage below. A few more details emerged on God of War 3 including the fact the game will max out at 60FPS, but there will be times where the game drops as low as 30FPS. Other announcement news from Sony included a new Ratchet and Clank game entitled A Crack in Time. A trailer will air on GTTV this Friday night and the full game should release this fall.
Project Offset, who was acquired by Intel last year, was also on hand and showed off two new technical demos. According to their web site they are still hard at work on their game code named “Project Offset”. Hopefully we can see what they have been working on later this year at E3. Check out their new technical demos below.
Unfortunately GDC seems to become an annual victim of the internet hype machine. Everywhere you turn everyone is hyping exclusives or announcements, that while fantastic, seem to drown beneath the weight of the hype surrounding them. GDC is meant as a conference to show off technology, which is great in its own right, rather than a marketing platform for the actual games themselves. That’s why the industry has E3 and we are hopeful it can live up to its own hype.
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March 27th, 2009
it is truly a shame that the GDC has become all hype. You figure with a Nov release they would have gameplay footage of what is sure to be a hit in COD5. Thanks for the updates keep em’ coming.