Postmortem: MotoGP '06
August 8, 2006
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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.
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