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"IGN INFO"

Here is some information from IGN about the Gaemcube backed up with my views.

First 3rd party developers

Acclaim Entertainment: 12 GCN titles in development including 18 Wheeler Pro Trucker, Crazy Taxi, Legend of Wrestling, Jeremy McGrath Supercross World, All-Star Baseball 2003, Turok Evolution. Extreme-G 3, All-Star Baseball 2002, Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX 2, and NFL Quarterback Club 2002 are scheduled to launch with GCN in the US on November 5, 2001.

Activision: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 and Spider-Man The Movie are currently planned for GCN release, along with game versions of The Weakest Link and Stuart Little.

Capcom Entertainment: Mickey Mouse and Resident Evil 0. Also has more than half a dozen unannounced projects in the works for GameCube. Expect some announcements and unveilings of these high-profile titles at Space World 2001.

Crytek Studios: Says it will bring its first-person shooters X-Isle and Engalus to GCN.

Electronic Arts: Has more than 10 games in development for GCN including Madden NFL 2002, NBA Street, SSX Tricky, FIFA Soccer, Harry Potter, James Bond, and more.

Factor 5: Developing the highly anticipated Star Wars Rogue Leader: Rogue Squadron II with publisher LucasArts. Has also expressed interest in bringing its secret 3D action-shooter Thornado to GCN, but that project has reportedly been put on the backburner until Rogue Leader is wrapped.
K
emco: Working on Batman: Dark Tomorrow for GCN. Also underway with Universal Studios.

Koei: Has two projects underway for GameCube.

Konami: Several projects underway for Nintendo GameCube. Also has deal with Universal Interactive to release GameCube titles based on The Thing, Jurassic Park III and -- believe it or not -- Crash Bandicoot.

Infogrames: Has announced that it has more than five projects underway for Nintendo GameCube, but has not commented on what they are. Versions of games based on the
Terminator and Terminator 2 movie licenses are likely.

Interplay: Porting the Core-developed Galleon to GCN.

Midway Games: Nine titles underway for GCN including Spy Hunter and Red Flag Soccer. NFL Hitz 2002 and NFL Blitz 2002 will launch with GCN in November.

Namco: Has several projects in the works for GCN including a hugely anticipated fighter. The company will show off some its of GCN products at Space World 2001.

Natsume: Planned versions of Harvest Moon and Legend of the River King for GCN.

Paradigm Entertainment: Working on several, still undisclosed projects for GameCube.

Sega: Working on more than 10 GCN titles including Super Monkey Ball, Virtua Striker 3 Version 2002, Phantasy Star Online Version 2, and Sonic the Hedgehog.

Swing Entertainment: Developing a GCN version of its game Creatures.

Tecmo: Has one project underway for GameCube. Insiders have indicated that a Ninja Gaiden title is very likely for the console.

Titus Software: Has multiple projects underway for GameCube, one of which is rumored to be a next-generation Robocop game.

Take-Two Interactive: Announced Duke Nukem Forever for GCN. More titles planned.

THQ: 15 GCN titles in development including WWF Wrestlemania 2002, MX 2003 Featuring Ricky Carmichael, Jimmy Neutron, Rugrats, Rocket Power, SpongeBob SquarePants, Tetris Worlds, Scooby Doo and Hot Wheels.

Ubi Soft: Has 19 GCN titles in development including Donald Duck, Batman Vengeance, Largo Winch, Rayman M, Rogue Spear, Tarzan, Crouching Tiger: Hidden Dragon, a project codenamed Rally Simulation and more.

Vivendi / Bits Corp: Developing Die Hard: Next Generation exclusively for GCN.

Blimey that is a lot of 3rd party support much, much more than the 64 ever had. And namco and Capcom's promised uveilings including a beat em up in Space world is something to look forward to.


Now on to the first and second party developers:

Nintendo (EAD): Has several announced GCN titles in development and more than a dozen others still yet to be announced. Announced projects include Luigi's Mansion, Pikmin, Animal Forest, Mario Kart, Legend of Zelda, Mario Sunshine, Marionette, and 100 Marios. Nintendo is expected to announce several additional GCN titles, one or two of which may even launch with the console, at Space World 2001 in Tokyo, Japan this August.

Ign missed out Silicon knights who are making Too Human a dark RPG and Eternal darkness the Resident Evil beater.

They also missed out Left field who are making 1080 snowboarding 2 these people are best known for Excitebike for the N64,

Nintendo Software Technology (NST): Wave Race: Blue Storm. The developer has other, unannounced projects underway as well.

HAL Laboratories: Super Smash Bros. Melee is the only known GCN title that Nintendo's second-party is working on so far.

Marigul and subsidiaries: Doshin the Giant and Dobutsu Banchou.

Camelot: Secret RPG, and "two or three other candidates," according to company heads the Takahashi brothers.

NDCube: Working on GCN software, but specifics regarding what are not known. It is thought that the company, which created F-Zero for Game Boy Advance, could also be developing a GameCube version.

Rare: Star Fox Adventures: Dinosaur Planet, Kameo: Elements of Power, Donkey Kong Racing, Perfect Dark Zero and more still-secret projects. Rare registered the domain name for Conker's Other Bad Fur Day, for example, which suggests a GCN sequel could be planned.

Retro Studios: Metroid Prime and Raven Blade.

Nintendo's main strength is in first and second party support and this line up blows me away well done Ninty with all the 3rd party stuff aswel Sony should be worried.

Now comparison:

Polygon Power

[Note: We're unable to accurately compare the specifications for the below consoles because the method the companies used to measure performance are so different. Sony and Microsoft's numbers are unrealistic and denote the raw (read: not real) performance of their respective systems, while Nintendo's and Sega's numbers are based on real performance during gameplay. With that said, the figures you see are just smoke and numbers. We refer you to compare the actual games.]

GameCube: 6 to 12 million polygons per second (conservative, but realistic estimate)
PlayStation 2: 75 million polygons per second (realistically first-gen games are more like 3-5 million)
Xbox: 150 million polygons per second (does not consider real gameplay environments)
Dreamcast: Roughly 3 million polygons per second
Nintendo 64: Around 150,000 polygons per second
PlayStation: Around 360,000 polygons per second (lacks comparable effects)
Main Clock Speed

GameCube: 485MHz
PlayStation 2: 300MHz
Xbox: 733MHz
Dreamcast: 200MHz
Nintendo 64: 93.75MHz
PlayStation: 33.86MHz
Memory


GameCube: 24MB of 1T-SRAM (main), 16MB of 81MHz DRAM (main), and 3MB of embedded 1T-SRAM in the graphics chip
PlayStation 2: 32MB Direct Rambus RAM (main), 4MB of embedded DRAM on the graphics chip
Xbox: 64MB of RAM (unified memory architecture)
Dreamcast: 16MB (plus 8MB Video RAM, 2MB Sound RAM)
Nintendo 64: 4MB (+parity) Rambus D-RAM (expandable to 8MB)
PlayStation: 2MB (plus 1MB Video RAM, 512kb Sound RAM)
Memory Bus Bandwidth


GameCube: 2.6 GB/s (Gigabytes per second)
PlayStation 2: 3.2 GB/s (Gigabytes per second)
Xbox: 6.4GB/s (Gigabytes per second)
Dreamcast: 800 MB/s (Megabytes per second)
Nintendo 64: 500 MB/s (Megabytes per second) or about 0.5 GB/s
PlayStation: 132 MB/s (Megabytes per second)
Software Format


GameCube: Proprietary GameCube (Optical) Disc, 1.5 GB capacity
PlayStation 2: Proprietary DVD, 4.7 GB capacity
Xbox: Proprietary DVD, 4.7 GB capacity
Dreamcast: Propriety CD, 1 GB capacity
Nintendo 64: Cartridge, 64MB capacity (so far)
PlayStation: CD, 650 MB capacity


As you can see the GC and PS2 are very close and although the technology used by Nintendo is very advanced compared with the PS2 some of the specifications are not so but what puts both of them to shame is the X-box who has completley killed them both excelling in basically ll departments but it is the games that matter and if Nintendo have good specs which they do and is easy to work on which it is then there is no problem.

Dringo

Unread your post? Ok, here goes:

.nevig elpmaxe eht naht sylop erom raf gnihsup won si 2SP

Ok, you get the picture!

Ah, sorry.

Please, everyone go back and un-read my last post.

Oh God NO!

We had the awful "Bonus would like to concede that he was wrong about the Gamecube" thread whilst you were on holiday that highlighted this.

100+ thread that became true console wars! Please don't lets go back there, for the love of God no!

Dringo wrote:
> GameCube: 24MB of 1T-SRAM (main), 16MB of 81MHz DRAM
> (main), and 3MB of embedded 1T-SRAM in the graphics chip

So, if I interpret this correctly, GC has 1Mb less graphics RAM than PS2 - and everyone's been saying that PS2 suffers because of this?


>PlayStation 2: 75 million polygons per second
>(realistically first-gen games are more like 3-5 million)

True, many first-gen games may be 3-5 million. GT3 however is a different story, with the lowest quote being 20 million, and the highest being 25 million.

As usual, it is not my intention to say that PS2 is a better machine. For the first quote above, I simply find it ironic and amusing that people (not all Ninty's, I must admit) have been beating PS2 owners over the head with this "4Mb VRAM" thing for months, and now strangely it's all gone quiet.

For the second quote, I simply wanted to point out that PS2 is now pushing far more polys than the example given.

Good stuff

Yep and graphical condensing which is explained up there sounds very cool Turbonutter take note.

High density are cartridges.

Right - the past tense for fit? Should be fat right?
Surely...

can someone please explain to me how they fitted Resident evil 2 onto a N64 cart? how da hell did they fit all the game and the cut-scens onto a 64megabyte cart when on the psx it took up a whole Cd?

Lots of info Here. GCN looks damn good. At last a race with 3 strong competitors is on the horizon. Gaming is gonna be good. Oh yes.

I see you ahve ignored this but for those interested in loading times ehre is some moer stuff from IGN how loading is in games:


Luigi's Mansion: Miyamoto himself used Luigi's Mansion to prove that load times were not going to be a problem on the GameCube. The actual load took place in under 10 seconds which is relatively transparent, especially without a load meter. Within the game, we don't see any loading from room to room or even with cut-scenes.



Wave Race: Blue Storm: Another great example of GameCube's nominal load times can be seen with Blue Storm. It booted up its levels in almost no time at all. One level shown in this video featured a load of just over five seconds.



Super Smash Bros. Melee: HAL's rough 'n' tough franchise varies with load times. In single-player it's under five seconds for most of the levels. In single-player it can take around seven seconds. Talking seconds sounds ridiculous, but the time is apparent. There is one other area we noticed that SSBM has trouble with and that is loading a new fighter into the single player levels. For instance, in Link's single-player level he jumps down from above into the arena but the motion pauses for about three seconds before he appears. The good news is that the system only loads the character once for that level, so you'll only have to sit through it the first time.


Eternal Darkness: Silicon Knight's psychological thriller had a section of the demo that was highlighted to point out load times. A puzzle was solved, and then a camera panned into the next room. Then the camera flashed back to the main character. Supposedly there was a load time there, but it is invisible to users. In fact all mid-game room-to-room loading is non-existent. The primary load, however, from character selection to loading the main level takes around eight seconds. Again, anything below the ten second mark falls below the "annoying" mark. The movie we've included here loads a cut-scene first -- which SK skips over -- and then loads the level.


Star Wars Rogue Leader: Rogue Squadron II: After you select your aircraft, it takes about 10 seconds for the level to load. However, once that happens you won't have to worry about load times at all. The levels that Rogue Leader features are huge and you don't get an ounce of load time exploring other parts of them.



Star Fox Adventures: Dinosaur Planet: Rare's new epic featuring Fox McCloud excels in load speed intially, while performing poorly during gameplay. Choosing a level and then loading it takes place as it would on a Nintendo 64. You do not see it load, it's quite amazing. However, the current version of the game seems riddled with mid-level load times, and we're talking bad, noticeable lag. Basically it looks like a hiccup in the system. As you walk through the level it will slightly halt and then begin moving again. If it only happened a few times it wouldn't be so bad, but it happens all the time. We're assuming Rare is going to tweak this by the game's release for GameCube launch.


Kameo: Elements of Power: By far the most frustrating game as far as load times were concerned was Kameo. Coincidentally this was also the earliest game shown in Nintendo's booth. Kameo isn't due out until well into 2002. The loathsome load times we speak of were actually not loading up the level, but just loading up the main menu! Once you actually selected a level it averaged around 10 seconds to load it. But, for example, if you were to quit out of a level and try to reselect a level it took for what seemed like a lifetime. Presumably these issues will be worked out by the time the game releases in 2002.