Introduction

It was in early January 2005 that we received our first Xbox360 development kit from Microsoft and were tasked with moving the MotoGP series onto the next-generation of hardware. Over the previous 5 years we’d developed three versions of the game on Xbox and PC but this was the first time the game was going to receive the radical overhaul needed when jumping a generation.

Our Core Technology Group had been writing our tools in preparation for the next-generation of consoles for up to 2 years previously, but most of the game team were coming from PS2 and Xbox projects with little idea of what to expect.

Next-gen buzzwords were everywhere: normal maps, HDTV and HDR were all new and all being touted as the next big thing.

At that stage in a console’s life cycle you have to make a lot of decisions about what’s important and what’s not – separating the technological wheat from the chaff. There’s very little information to go on and because near-launch games have to be developed in such a short space of time, there’s little chance of rectifying big mistakes made early on.