ArmA2 - The Xbox 360 thread

[maxqubit 1]

360 gaming is hassle free ... nuff said

(just yesterday i gave my Bioshock copy to a girl gamer collegue. Hassle free-free. Put in dvd -> Play ... i remember a few years ago she bought a pc for gaming, but she had trouble getting games to run. I will give you that, PC is better ... if you put money and time into it, hence it is not mass-market-friendly. Well surprise, neither is Arma2:) ... so if BIS is not into 'mass market' they have the sensible option to neglect consoles like 360 and PS3)

[avibird 1 155]

360 gaming is hassle free ... nuff said

(just yesterday i gave my Bioshock copy to a girl gamer collegue. Hassle free-free. Put in dvd -> Play ... i remember a few years ago she bought a pc for gaming, but she had trouble getting games to run. I will give you that, PC is better ... if you put money and time into it, hence it is not mass-market-friendly. Well surprise, neither is Arma2:) ... so if BIS is not into 'mass market' they have the sensible option to neglect consoles like 360 and PS3)

WOW you are saying number 5 from my outline.

5. Video games are not the main focus of the overall company and if it gets to compicated and looks like the profits will be minimum they may not want to put the effort and time.

Hey if you still have the elite we still play a few times a week let me know same name as my gamer tag AVIBIRD 1

[Baff1 0]

They couldn't port ArmA to the 360, let alone ArmA 2, I don't expect to see either of these two titles on the current generations of Xbox.

[avibird 1 155]

They couldn't port ArmA to the 360, let alone ArmA 2, I don't expect to see either of these two titles on the current generations of Xbox.

BOHEMIA did not even try to port ARMA1 to the XBOX 360 so why are you saying this and yes they would love to port ARMA2 but look at the outline below, some major issues need to be worked out. Yes the console can handle the game but how much will they need to cut down and will it still run good that is the major ?.

Here is a basic outline of the major issues why:

1. Can they get the game to work on the current consoles and will it run well.

2. The PC game needs to make money with sales. How much ?

3. They need to get a console publisher to take the chance with this game ( most publisher wants a COD/BF game to target a bigger market of players)

4. Console games needs to be almost bug free and must go through detail process to be allowed to reach the console market.

5. Video games are not the main focus of the overall company and if it gets to compicated and looks like the profits will be minimum they may not want to put the effort and time.

Number 1 and 3 are the biggest issues right now. BOHEMIA main focus is the PC right now and let them get all the PC market out and lets hope the sales continues to be good.

[Radioactive 10]

Even if it did get ported all the players would think its shit, unless they watered it down and made it simple like they did with Battlefield bad company being put on the consoles

[maxqubit 1]

Even if it did get ported all the players would think its shit, unless they watered it down and made it simple like they did with Battlefield bad company being put on the consoles

Partly true. A typical Halo/Cod player could think of Arma2 being 'shit' ... My guess is that of prolly 5M MW2 360 buyers, only 10% would be 'into' ArmA2/360 ... they other 90% would would prolly say 'ArmA2 is just shit'

But even then BIS could sell ArmA2 to that 10% happy few 0.5M gamers on 360;)

(Added to the pc sales they could make that magic 1M sales for ArmA2:))

[MPBR 10]

Partly true. A typical Halo/Cod player could think of Arma2 being 'shit' ... My guess is that of prolly 5M MW2 360 buyers, only 10% would be 'into' ArmA2/360 ... they other 90% would would prolly say 'ArmA2 is just shit'

But even then BIS could sell ArmA2 to that 10% happy few 0.5M gamers on 360;)

(Added to the pc sales they could make that magic 1M sales for ArmA2:))

- Development costs and suddenly the profit looks pretty poor. not to mention the bad publicity from all the ADHD that think it is "shit".

I mean .. its going to take a huge amount of resources and time to cut what we have down to playable of slower consoles.

[cnickcj 0]

I was reading this on a forum and thought this was interesting,

The core i7 965 supposedly has 64 gb/s memory bandwidth. The Xbox 360 Xenon CPU by IBM has 51 gb/s memory bandwidth. So you think the Xenon would be slower right?

Well get this, one site I found stated that the Xenon has 115 peak GFLOPS, and another site only said 98 GFLOPS. Either way, that stomps the 51 GFLOPS that Intel's website says the Core i7 965 can do.

What really matters is that the Xenon only has to do one thing really well; games .

ATI 'Xenos' graphics processor:

240 Gflops (programmable) + 697 Gflops (non-programmable)

only has to do one thing really well; games

The only real reason there are lot of performance problems ,this is because there are 1000s of possible pc systems that the game has to run on .

If everyone had the same pc nobody would complain

xbox 360

3.2 GHz PowerPC with 3 dual-threaded processor cores , is that 6 threads ?

Edited June 25, 2009 by cnickcj

[maxqubit 1]

I mean .. its going to take a huge amount of resources and time to cut what we have down to playable of slower consoles.

Imho your are plain wrong there. I think the huge amount of resources are into getting ArmA2 to work on some crappy minimum system spec'd computorrr (ehh, like my brick)

Minimum specs:

• Dual Core CPU (Intel Pentium 4 3.0 GHz, Intel Core 2.0 GHz, AMD Athlon 3200+ or faster)

• 1 GB RAM

• GPU (Nvidia Geforce 7800 / ATI Radeon 1800 or faster) with Shader Model 3 and 256 MB VRAM

[cnickcj 0]

One week after announcing a recession-bucking $21.3 billion in non-PC game industry sales, the NPD Group revealed that US PC software sales had plummeted 23 percent to $701.1 million dollars at retail ,,

According to the PCGA's 2008 Horizon's Report, PC gaming software saw global revenues reach $12.7 billion in 2008, a year-over-year rise of $1.9 billion, or nearly 18 percent. Overall, the study found that the PC software and hardware market stood at $68 billion in 2008, with the PCGA saying that number is expected to balloon to $143 billion by 2013.

Edited June 25, 2009 by cnickcj

[Baff1 0]

@ Maxqubit the minimum specs you posted are double the CPU power of an Xbox 360, 5 times it's total RAM and a generation ahead in GPU with dedicated GFX RAM 3x as fast.

I was reading this on a forum and thought this was interesting,

The core i7 965 supposedly has 64 gb/s memory bandwidth. The Xbox 360 Xenon CPU by IBM has 51 gb/s memory bandwidth. So you think the Xenon would be slower right?

Well get this, one site I found stated that the Xenon has 115 peak GFLOPS, and another site only said 98 GFLOPS. Either way, that stomps the 51 GFLOPS that Intel's website says the Core i7 965 can do.

What really matters is that the Xenon only has to do one thing really well; games .

ATI 'Xenos' graphics processor:

240 Gflops (programmable) + 697 Gflops (non-programmable)

only has to do one thing really well; games

The only real reason there are lot of performance problems ,this is because there are 1000s of possible pc systems that the game has to run on .

If everyone had the same pc nobody would complain

xbox 360

3.2 GHz PowerPC with 3 dual-threaded processor cores , is that 6 threads ?

If you add all the GFlops in an Xbox 360 together at the same time, my GFX card alone can treble that output.

Not to mention 3 x the memory bandwidth.

And what your memory bandwidth is, is far less relavent than how much memory you actually have.

My GFX card alone has double all the memory in an Xbox 360 combined.

While the Xenon may have 115 "peak" Gflops (at 10 degress's Kelvin), it does not have 115 average Gflops. The peak Gflops of the i7 965 is 128. It holds the world record.

Of course this is for a single floating point calculation (Think calculating Pi to the longest possible decimal place). Not something we expect to use in a video game, more something for calculating a landing vector to Saturn.

Edited June 25, 2009 by Baff1

[cnickcj 0]

@ Maxqubit the minimum specs you posted are double the CPU power of an Xbox 360, 5 times it's total RAM and a generation ahead in GPU with dedicated GFX RAM 3x as fast.

with all the drivers plus windows has and communication between each component , doesn't this slow a computer down ? just to have windows running takes up a lot of processing power , i am not a computer wizz but i would say the xbox meets the minimum specs ...

If you add all the GFlops in an Xbox 360 together at the same time, my GFX card alone can treble that output.

Not to mention 3 x the memory bandwidth.

And what your memory bandwidth is, is far less relavent than how much memory you actually have.

My GFX card alone has double all the memory in an Xbox 360 combined.

post your specs because maybe you have a super computer ,, and does your computer run this game at very high settings ?

Edited June 25, 2009 by cnickcj

[maxqubit 1]

@ Maxqubit the minimum specs you posted are double the CPU power of an Xbox 360, 5 times it's total RAM and a generation ahead in GPU with dedicated GFX RAM 3x as fast.

Unfortunately nothing has been optimized so a lot of specs are waisted.

(Anyway, we will see what MW2, BFBC2, Bioshock2, IL2:BoP, OFPDR will bring on 360 ... for me it always looks good, even if the 360 specs are crap)

[f0nz 10]

Been playing the demo a bit, and this game is so ideal for the 360. I'm playing with the default layout for my 360 controller and most (if not all) actions can be accomplished without touching the keyboard/mouse. I just need to figure out how to invert my Y-axis and I'll be set, but I digress.

It's a real shame that ArmA II may not be making its way over to the 360. I know I'd buy it if it did.

[Bullet Theory 10]

I think the game would be too big for the xbox, but if it can happen, it'd be fantastic.

[Gonzo89 10]

Been playing the demo a bit, and this game is so ideal for the 360. I'm playing with the default layout for my 360 controller and most (if not all) actions can be accomplished without touching the keyboard/mouse. I just need to figure out how to invert my Y-axis and I'll be set, but I digress.

It's a real shame that ArmA II may not be making its way over to the 360. I know I'd buy it if it did.

Hmm, controlling is fine, but commanding in it's current form wouldnt work on consoles. You've got menu's assigned to every number button, with sub menu's coming off them, and then the F keys to change squad members. How do you encorporate a slick system onto a console without losing the same level of immersion? With difficulty I imagine.

[Stidsy 10]

My hopes for console clan gaming are resting on this game - big fingers crossed

[MPBR 10]

The other thing, due to the severe resolution limitations on the Xbox and HD screens. on a 40-50" screen, how will a soldier look @ 1k away ?. for a 40-50" you really need to be looking at 3000/3500+ x (16:9/16:10) otherwise its just going to look like a dot.

How many xbox titles have not only draw distances that far, but also important objects the size of man that are critical to your survival.

and still worried about the controls....

[Grimnirsson 0]

*sigh* I'm actually getting a bit tired of all the same points being brought up over and over and over.

The controls are no problem if done right - it was said a zillion times already that BI made a good job with OFP: Elite and that the controls do work fine. So why shouldn't it be possible to do on the 360?

And all the talking about how much more powerful PCs are...again and again...I mean we do have so many games that look absolut great on the 360 and even if all the stuff that happens in a open-world milsim like ArmA2 might lead to lower graphics than on the high-end PCs - so what? This game is not about graphics alone and the 360 is much more powerful than the Xbox 1 so we should at least get a decent looking game this time. Would work for me. (GTA IV is a big world, too and looks very good, so game developers are able to do such stuff on a console)

But all this long time now with lots of guesses and comments and arguments from the fans who want to have the game (and from the PC boys of whom many don't want to see it happen) on the 360 and no recent comments by BI has brought me now to the point that I actually no longer care whether this game will be published on the 360 or not.

I'm with Max here, I have so many great games on the 360, Codemasters is obviously able to publish a sim on the 360 (and yes I know, ArmA2 is of course a lot 'simier' than this mere arcade shooter, everything is better with ArmA2 etc.... - so don't start this debate here again), and we even have semi-realistic Tac Shooters like the GRAW series which offer an excellent gaming experience, besides all the other games not being shooters - I really no longer care. If BI is able to publish it, then that's great and I'll buy and play it for a looooong time, that's for sure. If BI for whatever reason can't or don't want to publish it on the 360, then so be it.

Grim *tired of hoping and guessing*

[MPBR 10]

*sigh* I'm actually getting a bit tired of all the same points being brought up over and over and over.

The controls are no problem if done right - it was said a zillion times already that BI made a good job with OFP: Elite and that the controls do work fine. So why shouldn't it be possible to do on the 360?

And all the talking about how much more powerful PCs are...again and again...I mean we do have so many games that look absolut great on the 360 and even if all the stuff that happens in a open-world milsim like ArmA2 might lead to lower graphics than on the high-end PCs - so what? This game is not about graphics alone and the 360 is much more powerful than the Xbox 1 so we should at least get a decent looking game this time. Would work for me. (GTA IV is a big world, too and looks very good, so game developers are able to do such stuff on a console)

But all this long time now with lots of guesses and comments and arguments from the fans who want to have the game (and from the PC boys of whom many don't want to see it happen) on the 360 and no recent comments by BI has brought me now to the point that I actually no longer care whether this game will be published on the 360 or not.

I'm with Max here, I have so many great games on the 360, Codemasters is obviously able to publish a sim on the 360 (and yes I know, ArmA2 is of course a lot 'simier' than this mere arcade shooter, everything is better with ArmA2 etc.... - so don't start this debate here again), and we even have semi-realistic Tac Shooters like the GRAW series which offer an excellent gaming experience, besides all the other games not being shooters - I really no longer care. If BI is able to publish it, then that's great and I'll buy and play it for a looooong time, that's for sure. If BI for whatever reason can't or don't want to publish it on the 360, then so be it.

Grim *tired of hoping and guessing*

humm, I have no issue's if BI decide and invest into making it a console port.

I have however just raised some points that I think are important issues or limitations that may have to be conceeded in order for it to be an enjoyable experiance.

Correct me if I am wrong, but Arma 2 has many more controls now that OFP ? Been along time since I had OFP on my machine .. and I do mean a long long time :)

After spending more and more time in Arma 2, I am finding engagments are happening @ decent range (300-1K) away (some custom missions etc as well (man I love the editor)) and it just made me think how a console with a 40-50" screen running a relativly low resolution (1080 is low for 40-50") will display the enemy at that range.

As I stated, I hope that if they do make a console port, it is not too compramised and it may help hook some into upgrading there PC to get to really experiance clan based Arma 2 MP etc.

Edited June 26, 2009 by MPBR

[Grimnirsson 0]

As I stated, I hope that if they do make a console port, it is not too compramised and it may help hook some into upgrading there PC to get to really experiance clan based Arma 2 MP etc.

You see what I mean? You say that you would like to see a console version etc. and then your conclusion is, people need to upgrade and play it on their PC to 'get a really experienced clan based MP' - what makes you think that such a MP is not possible over Xbox Live???

It's as I said in my previous post, it's always the same PC > console stuff that is discussed, it's always about the same old points, it's the same old 'discussion' over and over and over.

Grim

[Uziyahu--IDF 0]

Those who are against a port to console need to shut up. You've already got your PC version, so go play the thing!

Operation Flashpoint: Resistance played BEAUTIFULLY on the less-powerful old, black XBox. (I don't know how apparent this was to B.I., who probably experienced lag connecting from the Czech Republic.) In fact, the multiplayer was some of the best I've ever experienced in all my days playing OFP and Armed Assault.

B.I. showed that it CAN be done and that it CAN be enjoyed.

The real problem seems to be getting it advertised and sold! All the games stores here in America seemed to only have 1 or 2 copies of OFP: Elite. I talk to some Finn, and he says that they had shelves LINED with copies of the game in Helsinki. My conclusion: Farging GoatMasters U.K. shipped the bulk of the game to nearby Finland and castrated sales in the U.S.

---------- Post added at 03:57 AM ---------- Previous post was at 03:56 AM ----------

i was trying to map out a good setting for a xbox controller for arma 1, and there just isnt enough buttons.

You forget that the XBox 360 also has a text-pad addon available for the controller. In fact, you can connect a USB keyboard to the 360.

---------- Post added at 03:59 AM ---------- Previous post was at 03:57 AM ----------

If i was a wizard , i would send a handful of programmers from nasa and

ArmA 2 is programmed in KOBOL?

[Baff1 0]

Those who are against a port to console need to shut up. You've already got your PC version, so go play the thing!

Operation Flashpoint: Resistance played BEAUTIFULLY on the less-powerful old, black XBox. (I don't know how apparent this was to B.I., who probably experienced lag connecting from the Czech Republic.) In fact, the multiplayer was some of the best I've ever experienced in all my days playing OFP and Armed Assault.

The Xbox was significantly more powerful than the PC OpF was designed for.

The immensely more lucrative Ps2 was significiantly less powerful.

No Ps2 version was ever made.

You want it? You should have it.

My best bet, next gen consoles come in two years time. They will port it when it is easy to do and not bother when it isn't, just like last time.

Edited June 26, 2009 by Baff1

[dublinhitman 10]

i recently bought a pc mainly for ARMA2 i never played any PC games i was always into the consoles but

all i have to say to pc gamers is how the fook can you lads do it lol

so i got the xbox360 controller and i'm just as good @ flying/ shooting .

but still need the keyboard for silly things like V for getting over a fence or B for binoculars and other keys

anyway respect to the PC gamers

[cnickcj 0]

The Xbox was significantly more powerful than the PC OpF was designed for.

The immensely more lucrative Ps2 was significiantly less powerful.

No Ps2 version was ever made.

You want it? You should have it.

My best bet, next gen consoles come in two years time. They will port it when it is easy to do and not bother when it isn't, just like last time.

There are so many PC gamer programmers that own BI , wow i can't believe it ,

how can you dictate or believe something can't been done when you have never tried . they said it was impossable to make moving pictures on a screen ,

we have this , they said no one would ever reach the moon , man went there , they say , this game will not run on a console ?

they ask for xbox 360 owners to ungarde there PC to join a multi player game or join a clan ..

I play games with ppl on the xbox 360 which i speak to often , in the past i also have played games on my PC and upgraded installed patches , reformated hard drive , edited the config sys ,drivers , dirx 8 , 9 ,10 etc....

not any more thanks , i want a easy gaming experience , just because another person doesn't mind doing all these upgrades it doesn't mean i do or anybody else , i put a disk in and go ...

I really feel sorry for ppl who have brought this game and knows nothing about computers , i guess there are some unhappy ppl out in the gaming world , also you will find when the next consoles are out the kids will have grown some years on their age and the console market will grow with them ,

devs will be making better games and i can imagine they are already working on titles for the next gen consoles , i wonder how the PC gaming marklet will stand at this point , i wonder how many PC gamers will turn to consoles ?.....

All we want is a chance to play this game , it just happens to be the case that we play games on consoles ...

Don't get me wrong i love my pc and get upset when something goes wrong with it , i have two one for music and another for communication ......

[/color]

ArmA 2 is programmed in KOBOL?

the two companys i mentioned seem to hire the worlds best programmers and work with some of the worlds best technology .. but i think you never got the point ....

Edited June 26, 2009 by cnickcj