Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

No GoldenEye For Xbox Live 73

Posted by Zonk from the i-expect-you-to-die dept.
Joystiq reports that, as revealed on a recent VGM podcast, GoldenEye is not likely coming to Xbox Live anytime soon. From the article: "I would say is that as far as I know we don't have plans to bring those types of games on Xbox Live Arcade ... Some of the games that were ... on the N64, those games were pretty large and are still gonna be pretty hard to distribute digitally depending on the title."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

No GoldenEye For Xbox Live More

No GoldenEye For Xbox Live

Comments Filter:
  • I guess it's fair. After all, Golden Eye won't be coming to the Revolution either.
  • Bundle goldeneye with a disk of other classics and sell it. Goldeneye would overtake halo for users, imo.

  • The licenses are owned by other people... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Kevin143 ( 672873 ) <slashdotNO@SPAMkfischer.com> on Thursday April 13, 2006 @04:54PM (#15125303) Homepage
    EA owns the current Goldeneye/Bond license, not Microsoft or Rare. So, to publish Goldeneye on Xbox Live, Microsoft would have to deal with EA which they clearly do not want to do. It's too bad; I'm sure Goldeneye on Xbox live would be a monster seller. I don't think space limitations are the issue, the biggest N64 games were 65 megabytes.
  • The 360 hard drive is only 20 gigs, with only a 13 gig user partition (the other partition is swap space, cache, console settings, etc.).

    13 gigs is not big enough to keep a bunch of games stored. Space Invaders, Gauntlet, yes... Full on first person shooters, no!

  • Misinformation (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Cutriss ( 262920 ) on Thursday April 13, 2006 @04:57PM (#15125331) Homepage
    I think even if you look at what Nintendo's planning on doing in this space ... it's 8- and 16-bit games, it's not 32- and 64-bit games.

    Actually, Nintendo has already stated that N64 games will be part of this, so bzzt - wrong answer.

    And anyway, the ROMs themselves aren't that big. 16 MB tops if I remember correctly. I'm sure Nintendo could set this up in such a way that, assuming the entire game image isn't downloaded before execution, the critical components are downloaded first and then the remainder streamed as the user plays the game. Of course, Nintendo does pride itself on presentation quality, so my best guess is that they'd force a complete download before execution, so that a network service interruption doesn't cause the game to crash or pause because the download stalled.
    • It would be brilliant if Nintendo were to include a compressed archive of (for example) all the textures from all their first-party games, located on some read-only memory in the Revolution. That would reduce the download size of games (particularly post-SNES) considerably, and allow first or third-party expansions/mods of those games to be more easily developed and run.
      • They could also decide to stop gouging customers for every penny they're worth, and stick 50-100 titles on a retail disc that sells for $60, and not bother with the downloading aspect at all.
    • The N64 allowed for up to 256 MB, but Goldeneye and most other titles only used 64 MB.

      • Re:Misinformation (Score:4, Informative)

        by psocccer ( 105399 ) on Thursday April 13, 2006 @05:24PM (#15125619) Homepage

        I'm pretty sure most cart roms were measured in megabits, not megabytes, putting goldeneye in around 8-12MB instead. According to the specs at the bottom of the Nintendo 64 wikipedia [wikipedia.org] page they measured the roms in megabits, between 32Mb and 512Mb, making roms top out at 32MB which is not much data to move around on a broadband connection.


        • Size really isn't an issue anyway.

          Sure, there is limited space available on the HD for games like this, but lets be honest, I have multiple 300+ Meg demos I've downloaded to it from Microsoft.

          It wasn't a big deal and didn't take very long.
          (would be nice if you could download them in the background though...)
        • Of course you know what this means.. did anyone think of this just now?

          Even for a big game, on a modest cable modem connection, it'll be downloaded
          in 10 seconds flat.

          Isn't that service!?

    • Re:Misinformation (Score:4, Informative)

      by Soul-Burn666 ( 574119 ) on Thursday April 13, 2006 @06:48PM (#15126182) Journal
      Rom sizes (from what I have):
      GoldenEye 007 - 12mb
      Perfect Dark - 32mb
      Turok 2 - 32mb
      LoZ:Ocarina Of Time - 32mb
      LoZ:Majora's Mask - 32mb

      And there's a hell lot of content for that compact size.
      • Keep in mind textures were extremely small and blocky back then. If I recall correctly the N64 had something like only 4MB of RAM (additional 4 with the underused expansion pack). It causes me great pain to see the same textures resurface in games like Super Mario 64 for the DS.

        Also, "hell of a lot of content"? GoldenEye, Perfect Dark and OoT of time I can see. Turok 2 and Majora's Mask were godawful.
        • If I recall correctly, that was 4MB of Video RAM, not regular RAM, which was later upgradeable to 8mb (and i think through third party expansion packs after the system's demise, possibly even 16 and 32, but don't hold me to that, those were rumors from back in the day). Either way, the N64's horrible Anti-Aliasing problems were rather disgusting, but modern emulation makes those games look a HELL of a lot better, I'd imagine that the revolution will employ similar methods.
          And yeah, Turok 2 sucked, but the m
    • The carts were officially measured in MegaBits, but even the biggest ones werent too big.

      I believe Resident Evil 2 was the largest cart on the N64, and it was 64MB.
  • Wasn't Nintendo planning on having all of its older titles availible on the revolution? If so, Goldeneye could be a major hit for the system. If they have some way to play it online against other opponenets, that would be even better.
  • So does this dismiss the rumor that dreamcast games will be ported over to xbox live?

    Yah, the HD is only 13 gigs, but some of the demos on arcade are over 1 gig, and you can redownload anything you purchase. So putting about 5 dreamcast games on the harddrive is entirly reasonable.

    I have about 4 game demos (each nearly 1 gig), 6 games from xbox live, and 8 gigs free. I'm definately not hurting for space.

    • Re:Dreamcast (Score:1, Troll)

      by Synic ( 14430 )
      Is there anything on DC that wasn't on another platform or is worth porting?
      • Power Stone 2
        • Smash Brothers was on the N64 and Gamecube, silly. =P
        • It's coming out for PSP.

          The troll is actually sort-of right, most DC games got ported to other systems (because they were so damn good).

          I think Toy Commander is probably the best one that doesn't have a port or a very similar sequel elsewhere. And some of the ports were to the GBA and not so hot (though Chu Chu Rocket and Silent Scope were surprisingly good), so could stand to be redone.
  • Sprite based games are one thing, but how impressed will everybody be when they see blurry N64-era textures blown up into high-def? I'd think a game like Goldeneye would have to be significantly reworked to make it presentable in high resolution, IP rights issues aside.
    • Having played plenty of N64 games on emulators in 1600x1200 I can say that the games do look quite nice in that resolution, despite the low res textures. Of course, if you want high res textures in N64 games the place to visit is here [emutalk.net]. :)
  • Any game that was developed by Rare + Published by Nintendo will almost certainly not be available in ANY back catalog at all. This includes Goldeneye, Killer Instinct, Blast Corps... perhaps Banjo(?) as well.

    And anyone who mentions "Starfox" or "Donkry Kong" being a Rare property deserves a cockpunch.
    • Microsoft owns Rare. Why would their games be "rare?" And I'm pretty sure Nintendo wouldn't be able to stop Microsoft from releasing Rare games.

      I would guess the biggest reason you won't be playing GoldenEye on an Xbox360 anytime soon is because Microsoft would have to create an emulation layer of some sort to run it. The chances of Nintendo ignoring that kind of action are slim to none considering their stance on emulation.
      • I would guess the biggest reason you won't be playing GoldenEye on an Xbox360 anytime soon is because Microsoft would have to create an emulation layer of some sort to run it. The chances of Nintendo ignoring that kind of action are slim to none considering their stance on emulation.

        No they wouldn't. Like you said, "Microsoft owns Rare". You know, the company with the source code? The main problem here is how little of its property Rare actually owns 100% of. Depending on the terms of the GoldenEye l
        • Yes, Rare has the source code, but how willing would they be to actually port it to the 360? Microsoft owns Bungie as well, but you didn't see Bungie rewriting code for Halo or Halo 2 to run on the Xbox 360 natively.

          As far as Nintendo's publishing rights go, it is possible that there is a certain time limit. Of course, that's a moot point because what's the point in worrying about publishers when there isn't a product?

      • Re:Rare games will be "Rare" (Score:4, Insightful)

        by The_Real_Quaid ( 892126 ) on Thursday April 13, 2006 @05:35PM (#15125701) Homepage
        It doesn't matter who owns Rare. The games that were published by Nintendo are (partly) retained by Nintendo. That includes the games I listed above - which for the most part are Rare's most popular games.

        Some games, such as Conker and Jet Force Gemini, were published by Rare. This is why M$ gets full rights to these games.

        The flip side is that Nintendo can't release those Rare games either. They will only exist "as-is" unless more negotiations take place. I doubt any of the parties will bend on this.

        • Re:Rare games will be "Rare" (Score:1, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward
          That's not quite accurate. Nintendo owned 49% of Rare since the SNES days. At the end of N64 and early Gamecube era Rare really stopped being able to deliver. So they decided to sell its 49% share to Microsoft. A lot of the sale negotiations were about which properties would go with Rare and which would stay with Nintendo.

          It turns out Nintendo settled for the properties that were the most "Nintendo" Star Fox and Donkey Kong. Obviously, Donkey Kong because Nintendo needed to protect its existing Donkey Kong
  • Some of the games that were ... on the N64, those games were pretty large and are still gonna be pretty hard to distribute digitally depending on the title."

    Sounds like an excuse. Distribution shouldn't be a problem. I got Half-Life 2 and Day of Defeat over Steam. Those seemed pretty large.

    Now on the other hand, if he had mention problems with storing the games...

  • Just remake it (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Phantasmo ( 586700 ) on Thursday April 13, 2006 @07:23PM (#15126384)
    EA has the Bond license.

    EA is the publisher for Free Radical, which employs most of the original Goldeneye team and produces games with a greatly enhanced version of the Goldeneye engine (or at least a Goldeneye playalike).

    Call me crazy, but:
    Bond license + next-gen engine = killer, multiplatform, online Goldeneye remake
  • I guess by thoise statements that he made he doesnt know about Nintendos plans. Wich Nintendo will be distributing n64 games for the revolution. I would laugh so hard if the list of games for the virtual console comes out and goldeneye is on it . Looks likeEverybody is counting nintendo out again prematurly just like people did with the ds.

  • bloody hell.. (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Just download the bloody ROM for an N64 emulator, or buy the real thing - you can pick up an N64 and Goldeneye for price of 1 or 2 month's broadband rental, or you could get one of the mods for unreal and halflife, or you can realise how over-rated it really was to begin with.. :P I loved Goldeneye when it came out, but back then you only had a handful of console FPS games and most of them were Doom...

  • Really, why not? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MilenCent ( 219397 ) * <johnwh AT gmail DOT com> on Friday April 14, 2006 @01:35PM (#15131461) Homepage
    It won't happen for these reasons:
    1. The James Bond license, in a complete switch from the usual state of things, actually makes the game much cooler.
    2. Emulating an N64 is still not trivial, would rely on using information that would have to be gained in a clean-room reverse engineering, and even then may be subject to a lawsuit from Nintendo. Of course they could always look at public emulators, but I'm unsure that wouldn't carry its own liability.
    3. The ROM has Nintendo's logo all over it, all that would have to be scrubbed. Further, I'm reasonably sure Nintendo actually owns the copyright on the game. They were the original publisher in any case.

    However, the game's size is likely NOT a determining factor. The Wikipedia page for Goldeneye 007 [wikipedia.org] states that the game's ROM is 16 megabytes. The size limit for Xbox Live Arcade games is 50 megabytes [lockergnome.com]. Even counting in twice the game's ROM size to hold an emulator, it would still probably fit.

    However, consider this: Rare still probably has the source code and art assets for the game. They could probably recompile the game to make use of the X-Box 360's hyperflash sparklemagic technical pixie thingies. In fact, they would have to do this, otherwise people would laugh at how the 360 now has a FIRST-GEN N64 GAME WITHOUT ANY GRAPHIC ENHANCEMENT, gasp! So that means, at the very least, better textures.

    The N64 game's ROM was only that small because it used heavy texture compression and because people weren't accustomed to 360-level texture sharpness. Look at it now: the game is still cool, but it's blurry as hell. Unfortunatly, to improve the textures would probably greatly increase the game's size, and that 50 megabyte Live Arcade limit looks like a hard (if arbitrary) one.

    That's speculation of course, but it sounds about right to me. Anyone care to subject it to the iron knifeblade of reason?

Slashdot Top Deals

There is very little future in being right when your boss is wrong.

Close