Path: chuka.playstation.co.uk!scea!peter_alau@playstation.sony.com
From: matth@bellatlantic.net (Matthew Hulett)
Newsgroups: scea.yaroze.freetalk
Subject: Re: E3 Questions for all who attended, esp. Mario
Date: Sat, 06 Jun 1998 02:20:42 GMT
Organization: SCEA News Server
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>I wasn't even aware that there was a project X untill I herd about it
>in this newsgroup.

   Well, here is what I know, if you care... Project X is a console
being created by VM Labs. At the beginning of the yaroze program, Bill
Rehbock was our fearless leader, and Greg LaBrec was our webmaster.
Greg was lured away by VM Labs last August, and Bill followed him a
month later. Bill said in an interview that he was so amazed by the
machine, and by the libraries being written, that he could not resist
the opportunity. There is more to the story of why they left Sony, but
no one will ever tell pions like you and me, and I suppose it is not
our business, although it did seem to disrupt the yaroze program a wee
bit.
   VM Labs also hired Chris Svenson (sp.) away from Next-Generation
magazine, and one of the writers was joking about how Chris was
gleery-eyed after seeing the demos, lots of people are buzzing about
the machine.
   Professional development kits are only going to cost $7500, which
is amazingly cheap, and this is obviously part of their plan to gain
third-party support.
   The compiler is supposed to be very flexible and 'forgiving',
making life easier for the programmer.
   There are a few demos I have read about. One is Tempest 3000,
written by VM Labs owner (?) Jeff Minter himself. One is of a display
of melting pyramids, supposedly Jeff likes psychedelic images.
One demo is to show the versatility of the compiler: they took the
publically posted Doom code, and compiled it straight to run on the
console. It supposedly runs pretty good, and is only using 1/28th of
the power the console has to offer. And the last demo I read about is
a bunch of spinning 3D cubes, with all the other demos running
real-time and texture-mapped onto the cubes.
   I read about an October release date for this X-mas season, but we
all know how dependable those rumors are.
   Here is a good article, an interview with our former fearless
leader, now head of third party developer support at VM Labs:

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/business_and_legal/19980403/vmlabs_01.htm

   Now, if I could just convince Mario that there are ethics that rise
above NDAs, I could find out a lot more!  [LOL]   The people have a
right to know, freedom of information rules, down with the corporate
zoot-suits!!! True gamers are blood brothers and know no secrets!!! 
   I am just kidding... ;-))

>That's how Sega thought when they did a suprise release of the Saturn.
>They didn't want people to say, "Oh! Saturn is comming out in a few
>days, so I won't bother with this 32x thingie". Greed got the better
>of them, as well as ignorance. They thought that people would get
>excited very quickly and go out and grab the new saturn. But people
>eyed the new system with caution, Rather than looking at the system
>and going "Yippe!".

   Greedy jerkies also heard about PSX and it's 3D capabilities, and
wanted to try to get an advantage over Sony. They designed Saturn for
2D games, and they saw that Sony was going to whip 'em silly. They
chucked in a few chips or something at the last minute, to try to
increase the 3D power of the machine... and they ended up creating a
machine that is theoretically 50% more powerful than the PSX. But, the
dual processor design is so hard to develop for and progarm with, I
suspect that that potential will be forever unrealized. Tsk tsk...
[LOL]
   Did you ever see the inside of a Saturn, what an ugly mess they
created in desparation to compete with Sony. I just bought Tomb Raider
II, I think I will go bask in some Sony goodness right now!

-Matt