- Texas Ben
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Bungie bringing Halo 2 to the PC:
aka, we are Microsofts -blam!- right now
Welcome to marketing folks! Please tell me that this announcement didn't set off anyone else's bull-blam!- alarms. Lets take a look at the facts:
Fact: The Xbox uses a 733 MHz Pentium 3 (Tualitin core)
Fact: The Xbox has 64 megs of main system ram
Fact: The Xbox uses a modified version of MS windows 2000
Fact: Bungie got Halo 1 running on the G5, a 64bit big endian only architecture that only uses OpenGL
Now for the flames:
lets take a look at the FAQ. Halo 2, you may remember, is a "shoot them up" featuring the adventures of Master Chief and his wacky sidekick, Cortana.
Ouch, just ouch! Take a look at the marketing people speak! Seriously, if that doesn't set off the "Warning! Marketing people!" alarm, then nothing will. Now lets take a look at more of it:
Windows Vista is the next generation Microsoft operating system that will by turns, be sweet, awesome, radical, and potentially translucent (in places).
Ok, besides the blatant marketing people pandering here, do you know what these effects are going to do to your system? With Avalon (and Aero) as MS likes to call their new GUI, they had to use ether GeForce 5900s or Radion 9800s, JUST TO SUPPORT THE USER INTERFACE. According to MS, the recommended system requirements are:
Pentium 4 3.0 GHz
1 Gig Ram
7200 RPM SATA hard drive
Radion 9800 128 meg
Ouch, that means that all your hot gamer rigs, unless you've got a 6800 GT, are are min recommended speck! We all know what MS recommended specs are like. Anyone using a laptop here? Have fun shelling out $2000 for a new one.
My point is this. This is marketing crap to get you to buy a new PC with Vista on it. (Oh, and have fun paying extra for the gaming version of Vista, thats going to cost a lot). Bungie has, or had, a lot of skilled coders. They got ONI running on the Mac, the PC, and the PS2 (the PS2 is not a lot of fun to program for). They got Halo running on the Mac and PC also. If they wanted to, I have no doubt that they could get Halo running on a SPARC if they really wanted to. Ether their talent has atrophied to the point of non-existance, or they just don't want to because of marketing. Halo 2 runs happily on a GeForce 3 and a Pentium 3. I'm not saying that I expect it to run at 1600x1200 at those specs, I fully understand you coding to the metal for the xbox and not getting anywhere near that level of performance on a PC. I do however, expect a 1 GHz P3 with a GeForce 4 to run it. I would LIKE to see the mac run it. So, I just want to know, are you the sloppiest PC coders of all time, do you really need 3X the system specs and an entirely different OS just to get the game running? Or is this marketing?